Big Tech's AI Predictions for 2017 Lolita Taub The Huffington Post "For the final Cognitive Business post of the year, I asked artificial intelligence centric Fortune 500 leaders for their 2017 enterprise AI predictions. Microsoft, IBM, Baidu, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, GE, SAS, and Oracle responded. What they had to say is exciting..." Artificial Intelligence Is Going to Make It Easier Than Ever to Fake Images and Video James Vincent The Verge "Smile Vector is just the tip of the iceberg. It's hard to give a comprehensive overview of all the work being done on multimedia manipulation in AI right now, but here are a few examples: creating 3D face models from a single 2D image; changing the facial expressions of a target on video in real time using a human "puppet"; changing the light source and shadows in any picture... live-streaming the presidential debates but making Trump bald..." Artificial Feathers Let Drones Morph Their Wings Like Birds Evan Ackerman IEEE Spectrum "Thanks to overlapping feathers and a joint at the end of the wing, most birds can fold their primary flight feathers back, which significantly reduces the surface area of their wings... These folding wings can vary their surface area by 41 percent. When the wing is completely retracted, lift decreases by 32 percent, and drag decreases by 40 percent, boosting the top speed of the drone from 6.3 meters per second to 7.6 meters per second."

Yesterday I was lucky enough to meet with Ben Goertzel in his lab at Hong Kong Science Park to take a tour of Hanson Robotics and meet with the team working on his Artificial General Intelligence project, OpenCog. The lab itself was not that impressive, a fairly cramped space filled with synthetic disembodied faces attached to robot frames. But it was a humdrum of activity as all around people were fiddling with wires and adjusting faces and furiously typing away at their keyboards. And even though the space they are working out of may not be overwhelming awe inspiring, what they are attempting to do here is. To put it simply, they are trying to create humanoid robots that are as intelligent as we are.

Artificial intelligence has become a new-age fear for Americans who fear an "I, Robot" society. However, AI can be used to accomplish tasks that would otherwise be nothing short of a miracle. "(AI) is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines and especially intelligent computer programs," said John McCarthy from Stanford University's Computer Science Department. AI emerged during WWII, with Allan Turing's "Bombe" machine, which significantly reduced the work of code breakers and ultimately cracked the "Enigma" code. Without Turing's machine, it is likely the German U-Boats would have continued their dominance in the Atlantic, which would have led to a drastic turn in the war with a successful blockade on Britain.

REVOLVING DOOR -- "Trump appoints his business attorney to manage international negotiations," by CNN's Elise Labott and Teddy Schleifer: "Jason Greenblatt, the executive vice president and chief legal officer for Trump's business empire, will take on the title of special representative for international negotiations. A source familiar with the appointment told CNN that Greenblatt will primarily will be working on Israel-Palestinian peace process, the American relationship with Cuba and trade agreements."

A drone belonging to a film crew was reportedly shot down Friday in the Iranian capital Tehran by the country's anti-aircraft forces after it approached the president and the supreme leader's offices. The drone was shot down as "it approached the no-fly zone" near the office of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a source told Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA), according to Reuters. The drone belonged to a documentary-making team that had acquired permission to shoot but "unintentionally started moving it towards the no-fly zone." According to Tehran's deputy governor general for security affairs, Mohsen Hamedani, the state television crew were shooting Friday prayers and "did not know about the prohibited airspace." In August, the commander of Tehran air defense forces said that the capital's airspace was under full control and "no aircraft can enter it without permission."

On this Christmas Eve, I give you the greatest successes in the tech world over the past year. In case it wasn't already apparent, Elon Musk has done pretty well for himself in the past 12 months. Roberto Baldwin detailed how Musk's car company made major strides toward vertically integrating sun to volts and realizing his master plan to get everyone driving (or being driven by) his EVs. Meanwhile, where Musk's extra-terrestrial pursuits with SpaceX saw some setbacks, Mariella Moon explained how NASA truly thrived in 2016 (particularly on social media), despite having fewer relative resources than in years past. Turns out, most of us think learning about space is cool, but apparently not cool enough to get Congress to increase the agency's funding. Netflix increased its own funding by raising the cost of its streaming services.

A Nobel Prize-winning economist has warned that the rise in robotics and automation could destroy millions of jobs across the world. Angus Deaton, who won the Nobel Prize last year for his work on health, wealth, and inequality, told the Financial Times he believes robots are a much greater threat to employment in the US than globalisation. Addressing the theory that Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential elections was fueled by a backlash against globalisation, Deaton told the FT: "Globalisation for me seems to be not first-order harm and I find it very hard not to think about the billion people who have been dragged out of poverty as a result. I don't think that globalisation is anywhere near the threat that robots are." He added: "It's hard to think that Mark Zuckerberg is actually impoverishing anyone by getting rich with Facebook. But driverless cars are another matter entirely."

My daughter had been hounding me for days to mail Santa Claus her Christmas list, but I kept putting it off. Then this week, she had a change of heart and told me it's OK if we wait until the last minute, because "most of the toys are made by machines, and the elves just have to turn them on." Even a five year old, it seems, understands how modern manufacturing has changed, and her insight got me thinking about the future of elf jobs. With advances in automation and machine-learning, elf technology is getting really good. Engineers are focusing their efforts on designing "the machine that builds the machine," promising to spit out toys as fast as bubbles from a bubble machine.

According to a set of intelligent humans interviewed for this story, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are going to help drive the tech economy in 2017. When CIO.com posted a query on Help a Reporter Out, a site designed to help journalists connect with sources, asking about startup trends to watch in 2017, the overwhelming majority of respondents pointed to AI. This coming year and beyond, AI will help companies "disrupt sectors that haven't been fully disrupted," says Anthony Glomski, principal of AG Asset Advisory, a financial advisory firm. "AI is in its beginning stages with massive potential impact." Here are eight startup categories and trends experts believe will be big in 2017.

This year delivered a whole host of body blows to the UK's thriving startup sector. There has been an investor slowdown, few notable IPOs, increased market volatility and shining lights sold abroad. Then there was the biggest punch of them all, the Brexit vote to leave the European Union and all of the issues this brings up for a sector reliant on foreign talent. So what can the UK tech startup scene expect in 2017? It will no doubt be a year of further turmoil, and startups will need to be prepared for the worst, but there are also green shoots of hope for smart founders and investors who are focusing on the right areas.