SoftBank Chairman and CEO, Masayoshi Son (C), Foxconn Chairman and CEO, Terry Gou (R), and Alibaba Group Executive Chairman Jack Ma (L) pose with Pepper, the world's first personal robot that can read emotions in 2015. When billionaire Terry Gou acknowledged eyeing a $7 billion U.S. investment at his New Year's press meeting in Taiwan, it solidified his role as the Third Musketeer in East Asia's emerging involvement in Donald Trump's "America First" push. Gou is the founder chairman of Foxconn Technology (aka Hon Hai Precision Industry), the biggest supplier of Apple iPhones and iPads as well as other brand-name devices. Foxconn does most of its assembly in mainland China. So when the 66-year-old Gou said talks had started on a display-screen plant that could create 30,000-50,000 U.S. jobs, his aims fell into place with earlier pronouncements by Asian tech tycoons Masayoshi Son and Jack Ma as they paid visits to Trump Tower after the new president's election.

President Donald Trump is widely expected to sign his latest executive order Wednesday seriously restricting immigration and refugees from seven countries in the Middle East and Africa, five of which the U.S. bombed under the previous administration. Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump accused President Barack Obama of supporting liberal immigration and refugee policies that the Republican billionaire-turned-politician said threatened national security. Trump directed his anti-immigration rhetoric toward Mexico and the Middle East, particularly singling Muslims as targets for tough, new visa policies. While he at one time suggested implementing a ban on all Muslims, Trump has since said he would focus on several countries whose population he felt presented the greatest risk. The list of countries was confirmed by congressional aides and immigration experts who the new administration had briefed on the upcoming order, according to Reuters.

Cyber security is a major challenge in today's world, as government agencies, corporations and individuals have increasingly become victims of cyber attacks that are so rapidly finding new ways to threaten the Internet that it's hard for good guys to keep up with them.

Every step forward in artificial intelligence (AI) challenges assumptions about what machines can do. Myriad opportunities for economic benefit have created a stable flow of investment into AI research and development, but with the opportunities come risks to decision-making, security and governance. Increasingly intelligent systems supplanting both blue- and white-collar employees are exposing the fault lines in our economic and social systems and requiring policy-makers to look for measures that will build resilience to the impact of automation. Leading entrepreneurs and scientists are also concerned about how to engineer intelligent systems as these systems begin implicitly taking on social obligations and responsibilities, and several of them penned an Open Letter on Research Priorities for Robust and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence in late 2015.1 Whether or not we are comfortable with AI may already be moot: more pertinent questions might be whether we can and ought to build trust in systems that can make decisions beyond human oversight that may have irreversible consequences. By providing new information and improving decision-making through data-driven strategies, AI could potentially help to solve some of the complex global challenges of the 21st century, from climate change and resource utilization to the impact of population growth and healthcare issues.

This week, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) released the first images from its new weather satellite, GEOS-16. With more than 4,000 man-made satellites in orbit, one more might seem like a mundane news, but this particular satellite has significant implications for travel. Its presence is also a perfect example of the growing importance of connected intelligence as a technological necessity for virtually every industry. From a tech perspective, the new satellite is like upgrading from a black and white flip phone to the latest iPhone. The'Advanced Baseline Imager' - the main instrument in the new satellite - is capable of capturing at least 60 times more data per day than its predecessor, and that's not the only data the satellite is gathering.

America's largest tech companies face a growing backlash over the potentially negative impacts of their strategic decisions and innovations. For example, companies like Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are investing in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and product roadmaps that will replace millions of jobs during the coming years. Experts in marketing, technology and social awareness say it's time for technology providers to assume greater responsibility for the personal pain that comes along with the collective gain. Emerging technology is at almost perpetual odds with the status quo, but U.S. society is coming to realize that dynamic can lead to job losses, unfair treatment of social services and a stain on civic engagement. The power and influence that some tech companies command is being reevaluated in light of the myriad ways people are being disenfranchised in some way by their actions.

They see it as a way of saying "Hasta la vista, baby" to years of sluggish economic growth. The federal Liberals are expected to use the upcoming federal budget to foster the development of cutting-edge artificial intelligence in the hope it will be a springboard to attracting investment and creating a highly-skilled new sector of jobs. Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains says fostering AI is one of the pillars of the government's economic growth strategy. He and others see an opportunity for Canada to exploit its competitive advantage in a technology that is becoming ubiquitous across all sectors -- from major companies such as Google or Microsoft to the banking and automotive sectors. The government's vision of AI-enabled growth is not rooted in the apocalyptic science fiction of Terminator movies where robots destroy humanity (Arnold Schwarzenegger appropriated the Spanish phrase "Hasta la vista, baby" in Terminator 2: Judgement Day before sparking some spectacular explosions). Instead, Bains and others point to two Canadian "pioneers" in AI -- Geoff Hinton at the University of Toronto and Montreal computer scientist Yoshua Bengio.

The robot on an oil drillship in the Gulf of Mexico made it easier for Mark Rodgers to do his job stringing together heavy, dirty pipes. It could also be a reason he's not working there today. The Iron Roughneck, made by National Oilwell Varco Inc., automates the repetitive and dangerous task of connecting hundreds of segments of drill pipe as they're shoved through miles of ocean water and oil-bearing rock. The machine has also cut to two from three the need for roustabouts, estimates Rodgers, who took a job repairing appliances after being laid off from Transocean Ltd. "I'd love to go back offshore," he says. The odds are against him.

Infosys, a global leader in consulting, technology, outsourcing and next-generation services, today announced that it has been awarded in the'Best in Show' category by TM Forum Live! Asia". TM Forum is a leading global industry association for digital business. The award was given for the'Cognitive Digital Agent' - a project championed by Globe Telecom, Philippines along with Infosys, Amdocs and Huawei. The project demonstrated the feasibility of using cognitive computing technologies aligned to telecom business processes to enhance customer experience in a more intuitive and natural fashion. To address changing consumer needs and demands in today's digital economy, Infosys, along with Huawei and Amdocs, established the Cognitive Digital Agent - a five-month project, led by Globe Telecom. This was aimed at creating the next generation of customer care services, leveraging artificial intelligence technologies. The core solution is driven by Infosys' expertise in natural language processing, machine learning and cognitive computing. The Cognitive Digital Agent has the capability to address complex queries and answer questions through omni-channel access including interactive voice responses (IVR), portals and wearables. The Cognitive Digital Agent creates a difference in situations where, if a call center is contacted, the responses are generated using natural language processing - making them more consumer friendly, or on social media platforms and in smart watches where the machine agent responds to queries 24x7. TM Forum recognized the project for some of these exceptional demonstrations of business outcomes across channels, and the inventive use of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI). "Our goal has been to explore the use of cognitive computing and artificial intelligence technologies such as natural language processing and machine learning to create the next generation of customer care services, which, in turn, enabled us to create this compelling project that can significantly improve customer satisfaction.

Mark Carney, the Bank of England Governor's, recent "Robots to steal 15 million jobs" warning is closely followed by a Japanese life insurer announcing that they are replacing 34 staff with robots to improve productivity by 30% and save just under £1m a year in salaries. In this instance the robots are an artificial intelligence (AI) system described as'cognitive technology that can think like a human'. It is capable of reading medical certificates and gathering data to calculate claim payments and when you also hear that an American insurer is already using AI and boasting of paying a claim for a stolen mobile phone in 3 seconds using their system known as'AI Jim', the attraction to insurers is obvious. To some, a'robot revolution' will just be another technological advancement, albeit one of significance to compare with the industrial revolution or the internet. To others it may be a very worrying radical change with the potential for global transformation, both socially and economically.