Welcome to California Inc., the weekly newsletter of the L.A. Times Business Section. California ended the year adding just 3,700 jobs in December, according to a jobs report released Friday, but that modest gain inched the unemployment rate down to 5.2%, what one economist called a reflection of a state "firing on all cylinders." That news was overshadowed by the inauguration of President Donald Trump, whose first speech as commander in chief helped the market snap a five-day losing streak. Still, Wall Street was holding its collective breath over what would come next. Oscar time: Nominations for the 89th Academy Awards will be announced Tuesday, kicking of a month of campaigning by the studios.

Machine learning has been a constant on tech trend lists for years. This year, it's time to embrace what humans can learn by interacting with machine learning. As Google's head of Machine Intelligence, Blaise Aguera y Arcas noted in a recent Medium article: "Machine intelligence will expand our understanding of both external reality and our perceptual and cognitive processes." In the spring of 2016, Google's AlphaGo software, fueled by machine learning, beat the world's greatest human Go player, Lee Sedol. The victory was a major milestone for a specific type of AI, called deep neural networks, that is more closely modeled on the way humans think.

In 2008, engineering student Samay Kohli wanted to build a humanoid robot, but his professor told him it would not be possible. Along with his fellow student Abhay Singhal, not only did they achieve that task, but they have also built GreyOrange, a multi-national robotics company based in India and operating across Asia. "We've done some stuff that India was not supposed to do," Mr Kohli told the BBC. "People are not supposed to build hardware, robot products, out of India and we've been able to do that." So how did GreyOrange grow from an engineering classroom to an international robotics player?

Machine learning has been a constant on tech trend lists for years. This year, it's time to embrace what humans can learn by interacting with machine learning. As Google's head of Machine Intelligence, Blaise Aguera y Arcas noted in a recent Medium article: "Machine intelligence will expand our understanding of both external reality and our perceptual and cognitive processes." In the spring of 2016, Google's AlphaGo software, fueled by machine learning, beat the world's greatest human Go player, Lee Sedol. The victory was a major milestone for a specific type of AI, called deep neural networks, that is more closely modeled on the way humans think.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no more the theme for science fiction or Hollywood movie. The fusion of cyber and the manual task is transforming the economic and security landscape not only in India, but across the world. Artificial intelligence is not something new. However, AI is an important development and consumers in India will witness its prominent role – both in society and at work – in 2017. In addition, there is expectation that the use of artificial intelligence will proliferate across multiple business, social and government spheres.

Why is it that every time humans develop a really clever computer system in the movies, it seems intent on killing every last one of us at its first opportunity? In Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL 9000 starts off as an attentive, if somewhat creepy, custodian of the astronauts aboard the USS Discovery One, before famously turning homicidal and trying to kill them all. In The Matrix, humanity's invention of AI promptly results in human-machine warfare, leading to humans enslaved as a biological source of energy by the machines. In Daniel H. Wilson's book Robopocalypse, computer scientists finally crack the code on the AI problem, only to have their creation develop a sudden and deep dislike for its creators. Is Siri just a few upgrades away from killing you in your sleep? And you're not an especially sentient being yourself if you haven't heard the story of Skynet (see The Terminator, T2, T3, etc.) The simple answer is that -- movies like Wall-E, Short Circuit, and Chappie, notwithstanding -- Hollywood knows that nothing guarantees box office gold quite like an existential threat to all of humanity. Whether that threat is likely in real life or not is decidedly beside the point. How else can one explain the endless march of zombie flicks, not to mention those pesky, shark-infested tornadoes? The reality of AI is nothing like the movies. Siri, Alexa, Watson, Cortana -- these are our HAL 9000s, and none seems even vaguely murderous. The technology has taken leaps and bounds in the last decade, and seems poised to finally match the vision our artists have depicted in film for decades. Is Siri just a few upgrades away from killing you in your sleep, or is Hollywood running away with a tired idea? Looking back at the last decade of AI research helps to paint a clearer picture of a sometimes frightening, sometimes enlightened future. An increasing number of prominent voices are being raised about the real dangers of humanity's continuing work on so-called artificial intelligence.

Today, a large crew is necessary to sail cargo ships to their long distance destinations. In the future, not even one crew member on board may be needed for the same task. Rolls-Royce envisions a future shipping command center, equipped with a highly advanced AI system that can manage all freight ships in the ocean.

The outcomes of the future are pretty uncertain eventualities. But yet, we as humans strive to predict future outcomes and scenarios in a variety of ways. For example the complete guesswork of choosing your lottery numbers, to the more logical science & technology based efforts of meteorologists predicting future weather patterns. Needless to say, human beings have an innate desire to analyze patterns and contemplate the unknown. When it comes to the future of the mobile marketing industry, things are a little more certain than next week's big numbers.

Kristen Stewart is quickly becoming one of my favorite people. She's gone from Twilight to indie darling, picking some amazing films that show us she has way more talent than Bella Swan gave her credit for. Stewart is gearing up to debut her directorial debut, a 17-minute short film called Come Swim, which was inspired by a painting Stewart had previously completed. The film integrates the painting using a technique called "style transfer," which uses convolutional neural networks to have an algorithm change a video in real time. If we saw this on an airplane we'd probably throw up.

It's been an interesting day. The 45th President of the United States of America took office just two hours ago, and he is clearly unlike any other President that has gone before him. So just for fun, I thought I might feed his inauguration speech into Watson in real-time, in order to see what the smartest computer in the world had to say about it. Would he notice any anomalies, or insights that the professional political commentators might have missed? Might we some people respect Trump a little more if they looked at his speech more analytically than emotionally?