It's no secret that I love technology. From the domination of mobile to the latest in recruitment tools and gamification, and how video and live streaming is having an impact on hiring and training--changes are afoot that many of us couldn't have imagined 15 or so years ago. The reason this "tech meets HR" marriage is so exciting is how quickly the technology evolution has disrupted HR and enhanced the way HR professionals get things done. Now there's another big disrupter on the horizon, one that you would be wise to keep your eyes on: Artificial intelligence. In layman's terms, artificial intelligence (or, AI as it's commonly referred to), is an area of computer science where computers are "developed" to behave much the way humans do.

With the adoption of Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa, the Internet of Things (IoT) is already part of our home lives. Many of us also use a smart thermostat to monitor the temperature of our living rooms, and maybe even a smart doorbell to keep an eye on the front porch. What technologies do you think are likely to change the way people do business? I definitely believe embedding communications via WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) will be the next big thing for businesses, especially since it directly affects our rate of communication and in turn our rate of efficiency. Anything that will make life easier will affect our productivity and is going to be here to stay.

Not to be a Grinch or a Scrooge, but you'd better watch out when it comes to some of this season's hottest Christmas toys. Last year, I wrote about Mattel's Hello Barbie, which responds realistically to your child by using natural language processing, machine learning and advanced analytics to parse what a child says and respond accordingly. In order to do this, the toy has to record what the child says, send it to a cloud-based server, and receive instructions back. On Barbie, there's a "listen" button the child has to press to start recording what she says in order to get a response. Mattel claims that only they and their tech partner (currently) have access to these recordings, but with the newest generation of talking toys, the audience is a bit larger.

Artificial intelligence (AI) got a lot of press in 2016, not least because of the victory of Google's AI program over Lee Sedol, the world's best Go player. That triumph of machine over human elicited numerous responses, some enthusiastic and some anxious, all sharing the assumption that the goal of artificial intelligence is to achieve "human-level intelligence" or, as some predict, "superintelligence." "I don't care so much whether what we are building is real intelligence," says Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google. "We know how to build real intelligence--my wife and I did it twice, although she did a lot more of the work. We don't need to duplicate humans. That's why I focus on having tools to help us rather than duplicate what we already know how to do. We want humans and machines to partner and do something that they cannot do on their own."

From mid-2017, expertise currently distributed across several different locations will be pooled in Unterschleissheim. 'In order to succeed, we are establishing new forms of collaboration under'project i 2.0', with small teams of specialists for rapid response and collaboration across the company, as well as a high level of individual decision-making authority,' explains Frohlich. The new work structures will be characterised by agile teams, short distances - and, above all, short decision-making processes. At the new campus, software developers will be able to take the code they have just written across the way for testing in an actual vehicle. 'We are combining the advantages of a start-up, such as flexibility and speed, with those of an established company, like process security and industrialisation expertise,' adds the Development head.

Honda and Google's parent company, Alphabet, are in formal talks to develop self-driving vehicles, the Japanese carmaker said on Thursday, months after the US firm signed a deal to use its technology in Fiat Chrysler minivans. The prospect of a deal between Honda and Alphabet's self-driving unit Waymo, which was spun off from Google earlier this month, is part of attempts by some car manufacturers to address the high cost of developing reliable automation software by teaming up with technology firms rather than going it alone. Honda, however, said any collaboration with Waymo did not mean it was abandoning efforts to develop its own autonomous driving system. While its driverless project has not garnered as much attention as similar plans by bigger firms such as Toyota, Honda unveiled a prototype driverless car in June and has said it hopes to see the fully autonomous vehicle appear on motorways in four years' time. "In addition to these on-going (in-house) efforts, this technical collaboration with Waymo could allow Honda research and development to explore a different technological approach to bring fully self-driving technology to market," Honda said in a statement.

There are still big questions to be answered about media agency practices, transparency and effectiveness. All the while, adtech technology and data management becomes more sophisticated. So, what does 2017 and beyond have in store? If we've learned anything over the last several years in programmatic it's that--in a world of commoditized inventory and 3rd party data--getting a programmatic edge requires diving deep into the data for insights. That means being better than your competitors at knowing where and how much to bid, which correlates directly with an organization's skill at data science.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp Says Going Public Is'A Possibility' Not to be a Grinch or a Scrooge, but you'd better watch out when it comes to some of this season's hottest Christmas toys. Last year, I wrote about Mattel's Hello Barbie, which responds realistically to your child by using natural language processing, machine learning and advanced analytics to parse what a child says and respond accordingly. In order to do this, the toy has to record what the child says, send it to a cloud-based server, and receive instructions back. On Barbie, there's a "listen" button the child has to press to start recording what she says in order to get a response. Mattel claims that only they and their tech partner (currently) have access to these recordings, but with the newest generation of talking toys, the audience is a bit larger.

The listing carries no penalties but will likely be an embarrassment for Alibaba, which has been trying to burnish its image in international markets. The move by the USTR comes even as the company claims to have used "big data" technologies to zero in, for example, on 13 factories and shops that were selling knockoff RAM modules under Kingston and Samsung brands, according to Alibaba's news hub Alizila. Its counterfeit goods monitoring and identification algorithm, for example, monitors about 100 dimensional characteristics, ranging from price to the online shops decorations, transaction records, product-release pattern and consumer complaints. Merchants and goods are rated on a 0 to 100 scale, with 80 usually treated as a red flag. The company also uses optical character recognition and the scanning and analysis of images and logos for suspicious listings.

A computer's ability to accurately identify images is a white whale for many technology companies, from Baidu to Google. One Australian startup has found a corner of the market to dominate, winning contracts with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and IP Australia for algorithms that can detect and compare logos. SEE ALSO: Airbnb is getting into the airline booking disruption game with'Flights' TrademarkVision, which has support from Australia's CEA Startup Fund, uses machine learning to support image searches that can identify similar trademarks. Having a unique trademark or logo is vital, but many intellectual property registration bodies often require outdated forms of non-visual search that make comparison difficult. Australia, for example, relies on keywords, Europe on Vienna codes and the U.S. on design codes.