Amazon's workforce has exploded in recent years, more than doubling since the end of 2014, when it employed 154,000 people. As of the latest count, there were 306,000 employees working worldwide for the Seattle tech giant. But another group is growing just as quickly as the company's human workforce: the number of robots working alongside people in Amazon fulfillment centers. The company said this week that it has 45,000 "robotic units" operating in 20 distribution centers working with people to fill and ship customer orders. The number is up 50 percent from the 30,000 bots that Amazon reported across 13 fulfillment centers in the third quarter of 2015.

Essential Politics: Details emerge on Legislature hiring Holder, new report on California's housing crisis This is Essential Politics, our daily look at California political and government news. The law firm of Eric Holder, the former U.S. attorney general, has been hired by the California Legislature to defend state policies during the term of President-elect Trump. Rep. Darrell Issa on Wednesday launched a new effort to change the rules of the nation's skilled worker visa program . The law firm of Eric Holder, the former U.S. attorney general, has been hired by the California Legislature to defend state policies during the term of President-elect Trump. Rep. Darrell Issa on Wednesday launched a new effort to change the rules of the nation's skilled worker visa program .

There'll be a to-do list from the IT department in the president's "in" tray when Donald Trump enters the White House later this month. In a cabinet exit memo published Thursday, the Office of Science and Technology Director John P Holdren and U.S. CTO Megan Smith review President Barack Obama's technology achievements, and set 10 technology priorities for his successor. At the top of Holdren's and Smith's list is to invest in fundamental research, and to publish the results. Such work may one day lead to profitable products, but the pay-off is too far in the future to motivate most businesses to contribute -- and were they to do so, they would probably keep the results to themselves. Building a team of scientists and technologists to lead the government's activities is next.

Developed by UK tech company Babylon, the initiative follows widespread criticism of the much-maligned hotline, which has been beset by problems. The app, initially available to people in Camden, Islington, Enfield and Barnet, will address urgent but non-life-threatening conditions. Users will be able to type details of their ailments and the artificial intelligence will ask further questions to assess their condition, while matching the responses with medical databases. According to the Financial Times, the process requires 12 messages and an average of ninety seconds to make a provisional diagnosis. In comparison, the average call time for a 111 user spanned from 10 to 12 minutes.

Companies are investing more money in emerging technologies that can help anticipate and detect a variety of threats, including phishing scams and advanced persistent threats, both of which are weighing heavily on the minds' of corporate board members. For 2017 CIOs are eyeing tools that use anomaly-detecting analytics and machine learning algorithms to protect their companies' data. "Our level of investments is increasing because of the increasing capabilities of the threat actors," says Bob Worrall, CIO of Juniper Networks, who spent 12 percent more on cybersecurity tools in 2016 that he spent in 2015. His budget will increase more in 2017 as he purchases tools to shield Juniper's corporate data and intellectual property. "As the bad guys get smarter we have to as well."

The military has for the first time fired a high-powered electromagnetic projectile from a ground artillery piece, raising Pentagon hopes for arming both the U.S. Army and Navy with advanced technological weaponry, Popular Mechanics reported Tuesday. The tungsten projectile, known as the Hypervelocity Projectile, can reach Mach 3 or over 2,300 miles per hour when fired, faster than any round in service. It potentially could even reach supersonic speeds. Already a historic piece of firepower when fired from an Army howitzer, the projectile was developed for an even more powerful, high-tech piece of Navy weaponry that previously existed only in science-fiction - the railgun. The railgun abandons traditional gunpowder-based firearms for what's essentially a large, overpowered electrical circuit.

"If you think this election is insane, wait until 2020. Thus spake the irrepressible Dr. Peter Diamandis, founder and executive chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation and co-founder and executive chairman of Singularity University amongst other organizations, in a blog published the day before the U.S. election. He pointed to exponential advances in five areas of technology that describe and enable something I consider to be far removed from true democracy. First, the exploding social media environment will contain so much personal information that political campaigns will continuously mine its every video, photo, and comment to the last byte in order to understand your wants and needs, thoughts and feelings, friends and foes in the most intimate detail. Supported by extensive artificial intelligence (AI) models, they will "know you" better that you know yourself. With the addition of almost endless data from the trillion-sensor-strong Internet of Things, campaigns will know where you are ...

The UK's National Health Service (NHS) is to begin trialing a chatbot app for dispensing medical advice, with the aim of reducing the burden on its 111 non-emergency helpline. The 111 service went live in 2013, and serves as the first port of call for urgent advice in cases where it's likely overkill to scream for an ambulance right away -- if you've misread a prescription and taken more pills than you should've, for example. The AI-powered app could become another alternative, questioning users about their medical matter and symptoms before suggesting the best course of action. The NHS is developing the app with Babylon Health, one of the new breed of paid, doctor on-demand services. It's actually being adapted from Babylon's existing mobile app, which features a chatbot-like symptom questionnaire users interact with before being connected with a general practitioner (GP) via video call.

To the editor: Professor of neuroscience Robert M. Sapolsky blathers on about what "we" imagine as the course of our lives, which he speaks of as "evolving," when properly, despite new cells in our bodies constantly being formed to replace worn-out ones, he might have used the notion of development. He fails to account for the unknown quality of a consistent consciousness, clearly visible in the eyes of 6- or 7-month-old babies in strollers passing by daily. My neurons may be in constant process of exchanging old for new; but I for example am the very "same" person who resigned from the Cub Scouts at the age of 10 when I was told to wear a uniform and be like Sapolsky's "we." As though his subject wasn't our physical processes, Sapolsky concludes with propaganda based on his resolution to resist our political future under Donald Trump, saying he feels despair and wants "us" to struggle with him alongside the elites of the routed Democratic Party. He himself will not change, so I leave him to his "despair," poor man.

While we're used to seeing laser weapons in the Star Wars films, the futuristic technology could soon be a reality for the UK military. The UK Ministry of Defence has awarded a £30 million ($37 million) contract to create a laser weapon which can track targets at distances and operate in varied weather conditions. If the prototype is successful, the UK's first laser weapons could come into service by the mid-2020s. While the MoD has not specificed whether the laser could be used for any specific threats, director energy weapons could have a range of used. The MoD has partnered with Dragonfire, a UK industrial team to create the laser weapon.