A recent estimation put 40% of the world's jobs at risk of automation over the next 15 years. That's a major shift, but it's nothing new -- throughout history, advances in technology have replaced human jobs time and again. Between 1947 and 2014, for example, the number of U.S. workers employed by the railroad industry dropped by 86% as a result of new technology and automation. At the same time, this tech dramatically increased productivity, allowing the amount of freight being moved to increase by 182%. Today it's the field of robotics -- or rather, "cobotics" -- that's changing the way we work.

I was once asked by a colleague in the Philosophy Department here at Stanford if robot musicians will ever exist, to which I replied that they may -- someday -- but only if we first figure out what it means to have robot philosophers. The exchange was admittedly a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it revealed a blind-spot in the way we talk about the future of AI: in our tendency to ask whether or when a given task will be taken over by automation, it is easy to ignore the deeper issue of what such a takeover would mean. We're less concerned with how these tasks are accomplished, and more concerned with the outcome -- generally measured in cost, speed and safety. But when we imagine "automating" a pursuit like music making, we're forced to balance the product of work with something deeper -- the meaning we derive from the process of doing it. Of course, automation is only accelerating in the age of AI, and it's natural to ask how far it will go.

If you make a purchase by clicking one of our links, we may earn a small share of the revenue. However, our picks and opinions are independent from USA Today's newsroom and any business incentives. Shopping for your boyfriend can be difficult, especially if the relationship is still new. There are some great gift guides out there for the men in your life, but the ideal gift for your boyfriend is something he'll find useful on his own, with the option of being something you could also enjoy together. We've been testing tons of different products throughout the year, and we've assembled this list of gift ideas for that special guy in your life.

New and existing Spotify Premium users can get a free Google Home Mini. The music streaming service announced the giveaway Tuesday for eligible Premium Individual and Premium Family master account users, which is available through Nov. 15 or while supplies last. Spotify offered Google's smart speakers for free last year for its premium family users. The difference with this deal is it's also for users with individual premium plans, the company said in a news release. If you already got the promotion, sorry, you're not eligible for another.

Our Chief Product Officer Chris Francia's insights on the aspects of AI and how it drives our disruptive innovation in digital advertising…. You would be hard-pressed to find any company with roots in the digital space not mention it as part of their current or future growth plans. Yet, as with any new technology that burst onto the marketing scene, there is a fair amount of misinformation about it. For starters, AI will neither be the doom of our society nor will it magically solve all of our problems. But outside of those two umbrellas, AI can assist and improve current workflows and technologies.

The tiny Smart car was meant to be a revolutionary new idea in urban mobility. But more than 20 years after its creation, the Smart car pulled out of the U.S. after years of increasingly dismal sales. Now, its parent company, Daimler, is looking in a new direction. About CNBC: From'Wall Street' to'Main Street' to award winning original documentaries and Reality TV series, CNBC has you covered. Experience special sneak peeks of your favorite shows, exclusive video and more.

Last week, I went to see the 40th anniversary re-release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (or ST:TMP for short). I had seen the movie as a kid when it first came out in 1979, after seeing many episodes of Star Trek via re-runs pretty much every-day throughout the 1970s (which were responsible for increasing the show's popularity since it had been cancelled after 3 seasons after its debut in 1966). The 40th anniversary screening had a little featurette before the movie that had some of the actors and producers talking about the onerous process of bringing this troubled movie to the screen (it was called The Longest Trek: Writing the Motion Picture,"). Seeing it again now, after all these years, I was struck by a few different things about the movie and its history that I either didn't know or hadn't thought about. For one thing, the re-issue had the same music as the TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation (ST:TNG) n, which struck me as odd.

Newswire) GBT Technologies Inc. (OTCPINK: GTCH) ("GBT", or the "Company"), a company specializing in the development of Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled networking and tracking technologies, including its GopherInsight wireless mesh network technology platform for both mobile and fixed solutions, announced that it has entered into a Joint Venture ("JV") Agreement with BitSpeed LLC ("BitSpeed"), a software development company located in the Los Angeles area. BitSpeed is currently partnered with a major Cloud Platform (GCP) and has an agreement to supply its software through GCP's Partner Advantage program, where their customers can buy certified solutions directly from GCP. BitSpeed's Concurrency application competes in the Extreme File Transfer market, which is a subset of the larger Managed File Transfer or MFT market. "Managed file transfer is a type of software that allows the transfer of files inside an organization or between multiple organizations. This method is a fast, secure, reliable, and a transparent way of exchanging files, with additional features such as tracking and monitoring. As a result, one can discover the loss of data from a specific point, and also receive an acknowledgement after successful completion of a file transfer process. With the advent of digitalization, companies are becoming heavily dependent on the successful transmission of digital files bearing critical information. Hence, this transmission should be secure, reliable, and quick to run the business process smoothly in real time. The demand for efficient and effective file transfer has been increasing in the past few years."

Only a few years ago, using artificial intelligence in journalism was cutting edge, but nowadays it is quickly entering the workflow of a growing number of news organizations. The knowledge around machine learning methods is becoming more accessible as the cost of AI projects has gone down since many models are readily available online and can be implemented -- even by small newsrooms. Using these models, our team of data scientists took on, at first sight, an enormous challenge: analyzing and deriving insights from a decade's worth of WSJ articles. By using well-established language analysis methods like Doc2Vec, we were able to quickly reveal what the Journal has been reporting on, pinpoint gaps in coverage, and identify topics that were of particular value to our readers. This approach enabled us to translate a large set of documents (WSJ news articles) into a list of representative numbers, known as "vectors."

Speakeasy AI Delivers Dynamic Audio Machine Learning That Creates Tailored Language Models Based on Voice of the Customer.