Dear Everyone, This is part two of Robots, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future. Part two is going to delve into why a highly automated society has all sorts of benefits--even if it creates high unemployment. Technology is the greatest destroyer of jobs since the industrial revolution. With automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence moving into society at an exponential rate, unemployment could hit close to 50%--and that's just in America. Numbers in China could reach an estimated 77%, and 69% in India.

One of the biggest concerns surrounding artificial intelligence is that the technology will eliminate jobs as it becomes increasingly more sophisticated. According to a new report from Forrester Research, "intelligent agents and related robots" will eliminate 6 percent of U.S. jobs by 2021, wiping out, as The New York Post points out, 8.6 million jobs, or the equivalent of Florida's entire workforce, in just five years. And that's only the beginning of a "disruptive tidal wave" that will swallow up millions more jobs in the coming decades. "By 2021, AI within intelligent agents will evolve significantly beyond today's relatively simple machine learning and natural language processing (NLP)," reads the report. "Emerging applications will feature improved self-learning and more complex scenarios. As basic agents gain consumer adoption, next-generation AI will not power intelligent agents until 2020 or beyond."

A growing number of U.S. workers are covered by health insurance that sticks them with a bigger share of the medical bill but also softens that blow by providing a special account to help with the expense. Companies are turning more to these so-called consumer-directed health plans, which push patients to shop around for the best prices for care, because they can cost less than other types of coverage and help hold down future increases. Nearly 3 in 10 employees have this kind of coverage, up from 2 in 10 in 2014, according to an annual study of private insurance trends from the Kaiser Family Foundation released Wednesday. A decade ago, these plans were almost unheard of. Patients and employers generally pay less toward the premium, or cost of the coverage itself.

By combining the art of selling with predictive analytics you can contact leads when they're ready to buy – with excellent results. Here's what you need to know. Predictive selling combines your data and powerful analytics. It uses artificial intelligence to find patterns in data, creating forecasts about the future and helping to increase productivity. Consider B2B sales, where a large amount of data that gets generated through everyday interactions and transactions, which further generates a trail of insights which if decoded correctly can help identify hidden buying signals and focus the efforts of a sales person effectively.

Imagine wanting a cup of coffee and suddenly finding it before you, freshly prepared to your exacting standards. In the not-so-distant future, this will be reality for Muggles, too. In fact, thanks to a surge in consumer data, brands and marketers can already make better inferences about consumer wants and needs, but as AI and machine learning are more deftly integrated, insights will only get better, as will the ability to anticipate consumer needs – and to even make decisions on behalf of consumers without any input from them whatsoever. Like, say, ordering a cup of coffee. As it stands, digital enables brands to customize offers for specific users rather than provide generic solutions.

Our Seattle Accelerator's third batch taught us a thing or two about the machine learning and data science space. Now, as we kick-off our fourth batch, we're excited to put those learnings and insights to use to help the next generation of machine learning and data science startups. Over the past four months, we've traveled North America, talked to more than a dozen VCs and investors, sifted through hundreds of applications, and consulted our mentors and startup alumni in search of high-caliber, mature startups that are ready to scale up their businesses through enterprise customer access. As a result of these efforts, we've selected 10 later-stage startups to join our Machine Learning Accelerator in Seattle. Collectively, the chosen startups have received 5.3M in average funding with 3M average annual recurring revenue.

The OrCam MyEye is the latest device in assistive technology. It is able to turn any text into speech with a click of a button and uses artificial intelligence to recognise people's faces.

At the Disrupt SF Hackathon today in San Francisco, a team of seasoned software engineers unveiled Pepper the Inflight Service Bot, a robot flight attendant that doesn't hate picking up barf bags, can circulate in a plane even when there's turbulence, and can speak to passengers in their own language. The hacker team for the Inflight Robot included Peter Ma, Eddie Aguilar, Diego Gonzalez, Brian Cottrell and Savalas Colbert. According to Ma, the team came together and was inspired to build a robotic flight attendant at Disrupt based on the APIs and tools made available to them here. They intend to develop the Inflight Robot further after the event, adding in further language capabilities, and other features.

Artificial intelligence technology is in the process of transforming our lives. We already have robotic vacuum cleaners, smart thermostats, and autonomous cars. And over the next 15 years, AI will continue to make inroads into nearly every area of our lives -- from education and entertainment to healthcare and security. But are we ready for that? Creating true AI is a notoriously difficult task.