Welcome to California Inc., the weekly newsletter of the L.A. Times Business Section. Traders return to business Monday after learning Friday that orders for long-lasting manufactured goods sank 6.8% in July, the biggest fall in nearly three years. Even so, manufacturers have rebounded from a slump in late 2015 and early 2016 caused by cutbacks in the energy industry and a strong dollar. Cheaper food: The impact of Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods Market will reach consumers Monday, when the high-end grocery chain begins cutting prices. Whole Foods will reduce prices on certain "bestselling staples," including bananas, salmon and organic large brown eggs.

Earlier this year, Collin Smith came into possession of an "intelligent" first aid kit. When he did, the first thing he did was try to outsmart it. The kit in question was the Comprehensive Rescue System, a sturdy, gray, 17-pound case of supplies custom-built by emergency management startup Mobilize Rescue Systems. It contains gauzes, bandages, and ointments like any first-aid kit, but also carries tourniquets, chest seals, and QuikClot--the kind of stuff you hope you'll never have to use, but that can keep someone with severe injuries alive while they're waiting on an ambulance. But a first aid kit is only as effective as the person using it, which is why Smith wasn't interested in the supplies so much as he was in the iPad embedded in its lid, which came installed with an interactive app that distills some 1,600 pages of triage and emergency-response decision-trees drawn up by Mobilize Rescue's team of SWAT- and military medics, emergency medicine physicians, EMS providers.

The same technology that helped a computer beat a human in the ancient Chinese strategic game Go could dramatically change the way wars are fought, a report suggests. Artificially intelligent systems today can competently identify images and rapidly carry out repetitive virtual tasks. The technology is far from consciousness or replacing human warfighters but even in its current state, it will force the U.S. military to reassess its major strategies, analysts argue. As adversaries, namely China, invest in AI applications, the Defense Department should preempt any AI-driven attacks by conducting AI-themed war games, and by investing more in its own use of the technology, according to a report written on behalf of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, the intelligence community's research and development unit. Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs published the study.

A huge batch of letters penned by visionary British cryptographer Alan Turning has been found at the University of Manchester. Professor Jim Miles was tidying a storeroom when he discovered the correspondence in an old filing cabinet. At first he assumed the orange folder, which had Turing's name on the front, had simply been re-used by another member of staff. But a closer look revealed 148 documents, including a letter sent by GCHQ, a draft version of a BBC radio programme about artificial intelligence, and invitations to lecture at some top universities in America. Turing worked at the University of Manchester from 1948, first as a Reader in the mathematics department and later as the Deputy Director of the Computing Laboratory.

It could even happen soon: At a recent cybersecurity conference, 62 industry professionals, out of the 100 questioned, said they thought the first AI-enhanced cyberattack could come in the next 12 months. This doesn't mean robots will be marching down Main Street. Rather, artificial intelligence will make existing cyberattack efforts – things like identity theft, denial-of-service attacks and password cracking – more powerful and more efficient. This is dangerous enough – this type of hacking can steal money, cause emotional harm and even injure or kill people. Larger attacks can cut power to hundreds of thousands of people, shut down hospitals and even affect national security.

Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has constituted a Task Force chaired by V. Kamakoti of IIT Madras to explore possibilities to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) for development across various fields. The'task force on AI for India's Economic Transformation' will submit concrete and implementable recommendations for government, industry and research institutions, an official statement said. In addition to regular members, it will have official participation from NITI Aayog, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Department of Science & Technology, UIDAI and DRDO. The panel comprises experts, academics, researchers and industry leaders. The Minister said with rapid development in the fields of information technology and hardware, the world is about to witness a fourth industrial revolution.

The next major cyberattack could involve artificial intelligence systems. It could even happen soon: At a recent cybersecurity conference, 62 industry professionals, out of the 100 questioned, said they thought the first AI-enhanced cyberattack could come in the next 12 months. This doesn't mean robots will be marching down Main Street. Rather, artificial intelligence will make existing cyberattack efforts – things like identity theft, denial-of-service attacks and password cracking – more powerful and more efficient. This is dangerous enough – this type of hacking can steal money, cause emotional harm and even injure or kill people.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) keeps on exciting the world with its many uses and potentials. Through deep learning (also called deep neural networks), we now have computers and robots which are capable of thinking independently like humans. And this quality makes them even more efficient than us! Image recognition, natural language processing, and machine translation may not be perfect yet. But, when it comes to data analysis, we know that computers are way, way faster and more precise than we are.

Robots are taking our jobs. Almost everything you can learn in our current education system will be automated soon. Supply chains are in upheaval as production moves closer to the consumer and products are made by individual robots rather than rows of underpaid workers. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are threatening thousands of white-collar jobs. As manufacturing shifts away from the traditional Asian hubs, shipping lines now suffer from massive overcapacity that will probably stay for a long time. We are aware of all of these trends.

Steven Croft, the Lord Bishop of Oxford, who is a member of the House of Lords' Artificial Intelligence Committee, said jobs would be lost as more "mundane tasks" become automated. His comments come as experts have warned robots could take over from humans as developments in artificial intelligence threaten to become smarter than those who create it. Speaking on Sunday on BBC Radio 4, Dr Croft said issues needed to be tackled including our use of data. Asked where future pressure points could arise, he said: "The first one I would say is data and the issue of control of our data, which is really slightly out of control at the moment and the Government is proposing new legislation this year to catch up with the technology.