This, the 50th-anniversary summer of Arthur C. Clarke's and Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," is arguably the beginning of big-budget Hollywood science fiction as we now know it. Without "2001," the "Star Wars," "Alien," and the "Star Trek" film franchises might not be the force they are today. For this decidedly serious and sometimes ponderous 1968 film opus proved that science fiction could be both profitable and profound. "Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke and the Making of a Masterpiece," is author Michael Benson's recently-published, fascinating and extraordinarily detailed take on the pair's four-year collaboration. The film's principal photography began on a U.K. sound stage at Shepperton Studios outside London on December 30, 1965. Benson writes "2001: A Space Odyssey" encompassed four million years of human evolution, from pre-human Australopithecine man-apes struggling to survive in southern Africa, through to twenty-first-century space-faring Homo sapiens, then on to the death and rebirth of their Odysseus astronaut, Dave Bowman, as an eerily posthuman "star child."

Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that spun out to become a business under Alphabet, has hired former Netflix and Cruise Automation executive Tawni Nazario-Cranz as its chief people officer. Nazario-Cranz will be responsible for hiring workers, shaping the company's culture, and diversity initiatives. She will report directly to Waymo CEO John Krafick. The executive comes with a long background in human resources, including a 10-year stint at Netflix, Bausch & Lomb and FedEd Kinko's. She was most recently Cruise, GM's self-driving unit, a position she held for eight months before leaving in April, according to her LinkedIn profile.

The dark side of technology was among the topics explored at NYC Media Lab's second Machines Media conference, which was sponsored and hosted by Bloomberg at its global headquarters in the city on May 15. Though some of the sessions were more about looking at what tech is currently available to media, even those brought up the shadow of manipulation and misinformation. In the session entitled "State of the Art," Gilad Lotan, VP, head of data science, Buzzfeed, pointed out that the problem of fake or misleading news cannot be blamed solely on media companies or new technology. "People aren't necessarily searching for facts," he said. He added that feeding that desire for stories and favored narratives can result in fake news that is "more manipulation than false information." In fact, the story delivered may not include anything false at all.

This week's IRL focuses on two shows that don't appear to have much in common. But now Westworld viewers may be able to find a new appreciation for The Good Place, at least until season 3 rolls around. The Good Place is a Good Show. This much most people have already heard. It has a unique concept and a clever plot driven by some insane and insanely endearing characters.

The season that started with a big comet impact is about to enter Week 9, and by this point many have already unlocked some of the battle pass's top-tier rewards, like the fully-upgraded Omega and Carbide skins or the Visitor skin from the Blockbuster Challenge. And with that, we turn our attention forward to Season 5, which, in true Fortnite style, is an absolute mystery. Epic has, however, announced a new end date for Season 4 and a new start date for Season 5. A recent post from an Epic employee on Reddit says that the new start date for Season 5 is Thursday, July 12. This makes sense: midway through the season Epic moved the challenge reset from Tuesday to Thursday, and this shift reflects that. The previous end date for Season 4 was Monday, July 9, with Season 5 assumed to be beginning the next day after downtime at 4:00 a.m.

According to the new research report "Artificial Intelligence in Supply Chain Market by Offering, Technology, Application (Fleet Management, Supply Chain Planning, Warehouse Management, Virtual Assistant, Freight Brokerage), End-User Industry, and Geography - Global Forecast to 2025", published by MarketsandMarkets, the market is expected to grow from USD 730.6 million in 2018 to USD 10,110.2 million by 2025, at a CAGR of 45.55% between 2018 and 2025. Major drivers for the market are the growth of big data, demand for greater visibility and transparency into supply chain data and processes, and adoption of AI for improving consumer services and their satisfaction. The major restraint for the market is the limited number of the artificial intelligent technology experts. Browse 64 market data Tables and 44 Figures spread through 176 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Artificial Intelligence in Supply Chain Market - Global Forecast to 2025" The software market is expected to grow at the highest CAGR for artificial intelligence in supply chain by 2025. The adoption of AI-based software solutions is increasing as it has beginning to apply machine learning capabilities that can automatically detect errors and make course corrections while processing real-time data streams.

When Google unveiled the Duplex phone-calling reservation AI at I/O last month, the world was shook. Despite the potential convenience it presented, the system's ability to mimic human inflections in conversation was uncanny and borderline-creepy. Back then, we only heard recordings of what Assistant could do with Duplex technology. At a recent demo in New York, though, I got a chance to chat with the real thing, playing the role of a restaurant staffer on the call. More people will be taking calls made by Google Assistant soon, as the company begins public tests of the Duplex technology. Only a select group of users and restaurants across the US will be involved in the initial wave, though.

When Google first demonstrated its AI phone-calling technology Duplex back in May, the pre-recorded demo struck many observers as eerie. Piped through the speakers on stage at the Google I/O developer conference while a video capture of an Android phone played on screen, we heard an artificial voice call both a hair salon and a restaurant to books reservations on behalf of a human. Right away, many in the tech community cited two big problems. First, the people on the receiving end of the call were unaware that the voice speaking into the phone was a machine, meaning Duplex was essentially fooling unsuspecting humans. Second, the bot in the demo never indicated it was recording the phone call, raising the eyebrows of privacy advocates and prompting follow-up questions from journalists (including writers at WIRED).

There are two distinct ways of looking at the new Sonos Beam soundbar: from the perspective of a person who already owns Sonos speakers, or as a person who does not have any Sonos speakers. The company says nearly 40 percent of Sonos purchases within the past year were made by people who already own a Sonos speaker, and that once people buy a Sonos product, they use it for years. You will think you are listening to Beyonce or Childish Gambino or "Chill Hits" on Spotify. But what you're really hearing is "Buy more Sonos." You will wake up with no recollection of having bought the thing, and you may have some explaining to do. However, if you've never owned a Sonos speaker and you happen to be looking for a TV soundbar that lets you use Amazon's Alexa to control the experience, then the Beam is worth considering.

ADP uses real, empirical, anonymized data from more than 30 million employees to anticipate how human work behaviors will evolve, and the impact that macro trends will have on the way people want and need to work. This year's Datathon focused on unearthing new ways to use the company's data and encouraging technologists across the company to incorporate data into all practices. "Our first Datathon was about testing the speed and process by which we can leverage our world-leading HCM database, which compiles proprietary data from over 90,000 clients," said Marc Rind, chief data scientist at ADP. "This time around, we brought in partners from across ADP to explore their needs and ideate on comprehensive solutions. We gathered the industry's greatest innovators for two weeks of end-to-end development, and will ultimately be able to deliver unmatched value to our clients as a result." Three teams conceived solutions that used machine learning and artificial intelligence to bring ADP data to life for how the future of work will evolve in three key areas, and outputs included the following.