On this week's If Then, Slate's April Glaser and Will Oremus talk about a key detail in the new tax plan that could have a huge effect on gig workers in the tech sector--and maybe even robots. They also discuss Apple's "batterygate" iPhone situation: What happened, and what can we take from their unusual apology? The hosts are also joined by Slate's Future Tense editor Torie Bosch to talk about the anthology she co-edited What Future: The Year's Best Ideas to Reclaim, Reanimate & Reinvent Our Future.

While the United States, the U.K., France, Australia, and many other nations have introduced rules and regulations pertaining to drones, they remain very much in flux. The guidelines are often complex and difficult to understand even for people who work in the drone industry, much less casual pilots who received a drone for Christmas. Making matters worse, aviation authorities, like the FAA often lack the resources or the mandate to effectively locate and penalize rule-breakers.

On the morning of December 13th, 1937, Japanese troops pounded on the door of Xia Shuqin's family home in Nanjing, China. Thirteen people had taken shelter under this particular roof: Eight-year-old Xia, her mother and father, two grandparents, four sisters (one, four, 13 and 15 years old), and four neighbors. The Japanese army had ridden into the city on horseback that morning and faced little resistance; the Chinese army had made a full, chaotic retreat the prior evening, December 12th. When Xia's father answered the door, the Japanese soldiers immediately shot and killed him. They bludgeoned and killed her one-year-old sister. They raped and killed her mother. They raped and killed her 13-year-old and 15-year-old sisters. Xia and her four-year-old sister were the only survivors of this onslaught.

As an artificial intelligence researcher, I often come across the idea that many people are afraid of what AI might bring. It's perhaps unsurprising, given both history and the entertainment industry, that we might be afraid of a cybernetic takeover that forces us to live locked away, "Matrix"-like, as some sort of human battery. And yet it is hard for me to look up from the evolutionary computer models I use to develop AI, to think about how the innocent virtual creatures on my screen might become the monsters of the future. Might I become "the destroyer of worlds," as Oppenheimer lamented after spearheading the construction of the first nuclear bomb? I would take the fame, I suppose, but perhaps the critics are right.

This philosopher, Sam Harris is convinced that general AI is the greatest threat that humanity faces. Despite building the most compassionate and prosperous society the world has ever seen with technology barely indistinguishable from magic the governments of the world are on the verge of suicidal wars. In recent history governments around the world have killed 250,000,000 of their own citizens. It reveals a great irrational faith in government to consider general AI to be the principal threat facing our species. There's a good chance that the digital gods we build will be benign helpers of humanity, there is also a chance that they may snuff us out but there is a certainty that evil of the government multiplied by the irrationality, out group preference and impulsiveness of people will turn this planet into a radioactive wasteland.

With intelligent automation marching steadily toward broader adoption, media coverage of this historic technology disruption is turning increasingly alarmist. "New study: Artificial intelligence is coming for your jobs, millennials,"1 announced one business news outlet recently. "US workers face higher risk of being replaced by robots,"2 declared another. These dire headlines may deliver impressive click stats, but they don't consider a much more hopeful--and likely--scenario: In the near future, human workers and machines will work together seamlessly, each complementing the other's efforts in a single loop of productivity. And, in turn, HR organizations will begin developing new strategies and tools for recruiting, managing, and training a hybrid human-machine workforce. Notwithstanding sky-is-falling predictions, robotics, cognitive, and artificial intelligence (AI) will probably not displace most human workers. Yes, these tools offer opportunities to automate some repetitive low-level tasks. Perhaps more importantly, intelligent automation solutions may be able to augment human performance by automating certain parts of a task, thus freeing individuals to focus on more "human" aspects that require empathic problem-solving abilities, social skills, and emotional intelligence. For example, if retail banking transactions were automated, bank tellers would be able to spend more time interacting with and advising customers--and selling products.

As artificial intelligence and robotics continue to become staples of human civilisation, what does that mean for us and our jobs? According to a report conducted by the Royal Society of Arts and YouGov back in September, four million jobs in the private sector in the UK could be replaced by robots in the next decade. When you add into the mix that Stephen Hawking is delivering pessimistic warnings that AI could replace humans altogether, our future, suffice it to say, looks a little grim. Now, the effect this is likely to have on our economy is being studied. Research undertaken by the Economist Intelligence Unit suggests that if robots do take over our jobs, instead of creating a healthier financial market, the British economy could shrink by a staggering £314 billion.

China is planning to build a 13.8 billion yuan ($2.1 billion) technology park dedicated to developing artificial intelligence (AI), state-backed news agency Xinhua reported Wednesday. The campus will be constructed within five years and situated in the suburban Mentougou district in western Beijing. It will cover 54.87 hectares, Xinhua said. The technology park will be home to around 400 businesses and is expected to create an annual output value of about 50 billion yuan. High-speed big data, cloud computing, biometrics and so-called deep learning, a strand of AI, will be the focus of the new park.

Edward D. Hess, Professor of Business Administration & Batten Executive-in-Residence – Darden School of Business, and co-author of Humility Is the New Smart Technology will continue to advance much faster than the business world will adopt and much faster than the social and governmental sectors will adapt. The two big areas that will practically lead the way in 2018 are The Industrial Internet of Things and Global Politics. Global industrial Incumbents who are ahead now in technology adoption and who are building AI-Cloud based platforms to serve an ecosystem will continue to advance and ultimately that will lead to massive global industry consolidations leading to large reductions in the number of human employees. The power of large AI-based platform organizations will be the story of the future. The impact is still 3-5 years out but, when it hits, it will be big. The dominant Future of Work issues in 2018 will be political. How will China advance toward its goal of becoming the AI global leader and who will contest that? What happens in the mid-term elections in the United States? And will Germany's to be formed new government continue to exhibit the leadership needed in Europe and globally?

Major brands, such as Target and Home Depot, have fallen at the hands of payment system data breaches over the past couple of years. It's safe to say that after the investigations, consumers were upset at the lack of stringent security systems and protocols in place to keep their data out of malicious hackers' hands. Because of high-profile breaches, the expectation is that the governing bodies will make PCI compliance and regulations even more stringent. Unfortunately, compliance does not equal data security. Compliance checks today are not continuous or automatic, even in the largest of global enterprises.