The Internet of Things (IoT) is poised to bring millions of devices online, and as many as a quarter million unique IoT applications will be developed by the year 2020. That means opportunities for skilled developers and technologists will abound. However, there are other, subtler ways the IoT will affect the job market. "We're seeing tech companies around the globe getting organized and creating IoT strategies, but where they're struggling is they don't have the processes and talent in-house to make these things happen," says Ryan Johnson, categories director for global freelance marketplace Upwork. By tracking data from Upwork's database, Johnson and his team have identified major technology skills companies need to drive a successful IoT strategy. Skills like circuit design, AutoCAD and microcontroller programming will address businesses' need to adapt circuit design to new form factors and system requirements; design new hardware and add programming and data memory onto microcontrollers, Johnson says.

Technology is developing rapidly and every year there are new buzzwords that best explain current happenings and trends in the tech world. We all know what 2015 brought us, so now let's look into the future. The reason why these particular trends caught our attention is that they're more facts than predictions – the technology is already there and in 2016 will only become more popular. People love to use buzzwords in the tech industry, so check out our list of the top ten technology buzzwords that you won't be able to avoid in 2016. Scientists have been working on AI for years and in 2016 we will see its new applications.

This interview took place at the Boao Forum For Asia Annual Conference on March 28 in Qionghai, Chine. An open letter by artificial intelligence scientists to ensure that artificial intelligence has good consequences is available at www.futureoflife.org/misc/open_letter.

Everyone's talking about Machines At the start of the year I wrote a post about my personal experience on how Machine Learning (ML) could be used to augment human ability rather than replace it. Since then it has been hard to miss the increased number of articles in the mainstream press discussing how advancements in this field will reshape nearly every aspect of our lives and perhaps not always in a positive way. As the FT recently headlined it: "Robots: Friend or Foe?". So what will change exactly? In the near future we will be getting around in driverless Ubers, dealing with customer service bots, being operated on by robotic surgeons and once we have stopped working we can look forward to robot caregivers looking after us.

Whatever its name, it's the same thing – machines recognizing clinical problems in digital images ahead of the radiologists charged with making the diagnosis. The artificial intelligence (AI) trend is new, but it's gaining ground quickly, according to industry experts. The advent of these technologies and radiology's growing interest in and dependence on them has been discussed at national and international meetings, including the RSNA, HIMSS, and SIIM annual meetings, during the past year. But, there's still a long way to go. "We're just barely scratching the surface of using artificial intelligence in the last few years," said Eliot Siegel, MD, professor and vice chair of research information systems for the University of Maryland Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine. "There's an emergence of increasing interest in the largest companies in the world, including Google, Microsoft, Apple, and IBM, in actually starting to use these technologies for data extraction and evaluation."

It's clear that the age of applied AI is at hand. Deep learning toolkits are becoming essential tools for software engineers and data scientists. Tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook have open-sourced their artificial intelligence frameworks. Applied AI developers now develop software that doesn't just do what it's told, but also has the ability to anticipate the needs of its users through a combination of pattern recognition, knowledge, planning, and reasoning. There is a growing--and urgent--need for information on applied AI, as opposed to the kind of research presented at academic conferences.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and robots in the technology sector are some of the emerging trends of the century, spearheading a revolution where workers may soon be replaced by robots and automated systems. Disney is already jumping into the world of robotics through projects developing at Disney Research, a global network of research labs working on a variety of innovative technologies and automated systems. One of the most recent productions is a set of robotic arms that mimic human movement. Here's a closer look at some of the latest developments in the field of robotics, and what the future may hold for both consumers and companies as AI and robots become more commonplace: Technology that Mimics Human Movement One of the most interesting projects underway at Disney Research labs is a camera-mounted robot named'Jimmy'. This particular robot is designed to stream video content to an operator that is wearing a virtual reality headset.

We still have a ways to go before we get to a human equivalent artificial intelligence. You can tell we have a ways to go, because while there's plenty of furor and hype, even the experts are talking hypothetically. What the various prognosticators are really doing, right now, is revisiting the "what if" scenarios associated – scenarios that were imagined, described, and taken to their logical conclusion by science fiction writers thirty and forty years ago. We will know we're getting close to having a true AI when the experts can do more than just wave their hands. Of the two main paths to AI, I doubt the rules-based folks will get us there.

Furthermore, it says it successfully identified nine of the terrorists involved in November's terror attacks in Paris, according to the Daily Mail. And it asserts that its technology was able to accurately classify 25 out of 27 facial images of poker players and non-poker players in a blind test. Claiming that the human face reflects a person's DNA, Faception has developed 15 "classifiers," each of which describes a certain personality type or trait. These classifiers are used to encode facial images taken from video streams, cameras and on- and offline databases to "match an individual with various personality traits and types with a high level of accuracy," according to the company's website. But experts warn that the technology is limited and that ethical issues arise.

Centuries ago, 90% of the world's population was involved in agriculture. Today, hardly 2% is involved in it, yet we are able to produce enough food to feed us all. The industrial revolution not only changed the world's economy, but also people's jobs and lifestyle. Employees moved from manual to machine to computer-related jobs. Various economies in the world turned from a machine-based economy to a knowledge-based one.