We hear and read in the popular media about Artificial Intelligence (AI) all the time. We have movies about them. We hear about Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking warning us about AI's apocalyptic consequences. We hear from the World Economics forum about AI's effect on taking away our jobs. We here about how disruptive AI will be for businesses.

Or Meaningless New research offers insights into what gives work meaning -- as well as into common management mistakes that can leave employees feeling that their work is meaningless. GE's Big Bet on Data and Analytics This case study focuses on GE's "industrial internet" strategy. Aligning the Organization for Its Digital Future In this report, MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte explore how digitally savvy executives are aligning their people, processes, and culture with an eye toward long-term digital success. Data Sharing and Analytics Drive Success with IoT This MIT Sloan Management Review study concluded that obtaining business value from the internet of things depends on companies' willingness to share data with other organizations. Beyond the Hype: The Hard Work Behind Analytics Success This report by MIT Sloan Management Review and SAS found that few companies have a strategic plan for analytics or are executing a strategy for what they hope to achieve with analytics.

Would you have sex with a robot? Would a robot have the right to say no to such a union? These were just a few of the questions being asked at the second Love and Sex with Robots conference hastily rearranged at Goldsmiths University in London after the government in Malaysia - the original location - banned it. It has proved controversial, not only to countries with conservative views. There were no representatives from the sex industry in attendance and no sex robots on display, leading some to question the point of the event.

The report anticipates economic effects across several fronts. AI, like any new technology, is key to growth because it increases output without requiring increases in labor or capital. "In the last decade, despite technology's positive push, measured productivity growth has slowed in 30 of the 31 advanced economies, slowing in the United States from an average annual growth rate of 2.5% in the decade after 1995 to only 1.0% growth in the decade after 2005," the report states. Any increase in aggregate productivity from adopting artificial intelligence would be a welcomed change. But the resultant job automation is causing alarm.

Artificial intelligence (AI) had a coming out party of sorts in 2016. Even though it has been in development for decades, this year, with the perfect combination of cheap computing power and access to increasing amounts of data, it seems AI's time has come. Its first foray in business has been directed at making salespeople more efficient at every level of the sales workflow. If you think about it, it makes sense to start with the part of the company that drives revenue. Certainly the vendors recognize that, says Alan Lepofsky, an analyst at Constellation Research, who is working on the impact of AI on work.

IMAGE: Figure 1 shows three kinds of patterns, "I ", "C ", and "T ", expressed in 3x3 blocks used for the associative memory operation experiment. Researchers at Tohoku University have, for the first time, successfully demonstrated the basic operation of spintronics-based artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence, which emulates the information processing function of the brain that can quickly execute complex and complicated tasks such as image recognition and weather prediction, has attracted growing attention and has already been partly put to practical use. The currently-used artificial intelligence works on the conventional framework of semiconductor-based integrated circuit technology. However, this lacks the compactness and low-power feature of the human brain.

I believe it was Sartre who wisely said hell is conversational AI. Despite the best intentions of engineers, today's machine learning really is the savior and handicap of personal assistants. Berkeley-based startup Semantic Machines might suffer the same Achilles' heel, but its team of 18 artificial intelligence PhDs thinks it can get farther than the current state-of-the-art establishment. To understand what Semantic Machines is trying to build, you have to think about what existing personal assistants lack. Behind relatable names and repetitive humor, Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana and Alexa all essentially work the same way -- they recognize and parse speech, classify intent and then execute commands.

BlackBerry's track record for mobile security and leadership in automotive software makes moving into autonomous driving research a natural fit, the company's chief executive John Chen said Monday at the opening of a new research centre in Kanata, Ont. "Autonomous vehicles require software that is extremely sophisticated and highly secure," Chen said. "Our innovation track record in mobile security and our demonstrated leadership in automotive software make us ideally suited to dominate the market for embedded intelligence in the cars of the future." Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attended the launch of the Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Centre (AVIC) by the Waterloo, Ont.-based smartphone pioneer. "With the opening of its innovation centre in Ottawa, BlackBerry is helping to establish our country as the global leader in software and security for connected car and autonomous vehicle development," Trudeau said.

AWS (Amazon Web Services) introduced a handful of new artificial intelligence (AI) services at its re:Invent conference last week. Among the new products are Polly, a more lifelike text-to-speech service, Rekognition, an image analysis and face recognition service that can be added to applications and Lex, a standalone version of the technology that powers the company's Alexa AI assistant. "Amazon AI services are fully managed services so there are no deep learning algorithms to build, no machine learning models to train, and no up-front commitments or infrastructure investments required," the company said in a statement. "This frees developers to focus on defining and building an entirely new generation of apps that can see, hear, speak, understand, and interact with the world around them." So far, few developers have been able to build, deploy, and broadly scale apps with AI capabilities due to the vast amount of data and specialized expertise in machine learning and neural networks required, Amazon said.

Otsimo provides free games for autistic children to help improve attention spans using machine learning and gamification. Autistic spectrum disorders, or ASDs, impose huge costs, both human and economic, on sufferers, their families, and the community. The human toll, in terms of care and impaired relationships, is almost impossible to quantify. Looking at the US alone, the economic expenditure last year was estimated at about $268bn. The exact causes of the pathology are still unknown, and there is no medical solution except for early and intensive education, which can at least reduce the symptoms.