Regarding Fear and Artificial Intelligence (AI), one question often comes up:'Will we be killed by a Terminator Doppelganger?' I don't know if this will happen eventually, but I do know that we already have robots fighting our wars. This century is therefore, the first time in human history that we engage in Unmanned Warfare. What is the current status of this'Unmanned Warfare'? What do people think about drone strikes and will terminators be the next step?

There have been several discussions lately around machine intelligence that are started to converge in how they may change competition and regulation in all markets but is likely to become a bigger issue in 2017. This is a bubble waiting to burst. The recent letter for Apple to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regarding policy changes to help promote automated self-driving vehicles stressed not just a level playing field to promote new technology and data sharing but also the impact of automated vehicles on the public good, including their consequences for employment and public spaces. Other issues around consumer product automation in the home with Amazon Echo Alexa and Google Home have raised the bar in interactive systems and questions over the type of privacy and data use issues these may bring. Other issues have been raised over the use by Facebook of algorithms for "editing" the social media sites for certain political issues or in the case of their entry to the Chinese market and creating a censoring app to comply with regulations.

Digital-related investment in industrial production is growing fast. Through 2020, enterprises expect to pump $907 billion annually into digital technologies on the industrial floor, according to PwC's Industry 4.0 research. That investment is expected to increase revenues by $493 billion annually and reduce costs by $421 billion each year. But where and how those dividends will be unearthed is only now coming into view. PwC sees enterprises following a path that spans prediction, prescription, optimization, and new business models.

The time of year when crystal balls get a viewing and many pundits put out their annual predictions for the coming year. Rather than thinking up my own, I figured I'd regurgitate what many others are expecting to happen. Chris Preimesberger (@editingwhiz), who does a monthly #eweekchat on twitter, covers many of the worries facing organizations. People focus so much on the'things' themselves rather than the risk of an internet connection. This list discusses how IoT will grow up in 2017, how having a service component will be key, the complete mess of standards and simply, 'just because you can connect something to the Internet doesn't mean that you should.' NW talks about how cyber attacks will get worse due to IoT and gives some ideas on how to protect your data in 2017.

With that in mind, I'd like to share one way that Avnet has been using machine learning in the enterprise this year, with highly compelling results. In October 2016, the internet experienced a massive denial of service attack that affected more than 80 major websites and cloud service providers from Amazon to Twitter. A bit of malware that hijacked hundreds of thousands of unsecure Internet of Things devices to overwhelm specific targets. In the cybersecurity arms race, malicious hackers are increasingly looking to machines to strengthen their attacks. So larger organizations like Avnet are also tapping into the power of machines--in this case, machine learning--to strengthen our defenses.

Recently popularized by IBM's highly intelligent Watson supercomputer, which competed on the hit game show Jeopardy, cognitive computing refers to machines that are capable of learning concepts and patterns through advanced language processing algorithms. A system that involves incredibly advanced artificial intelligence, cognitive computing is one facet of computer science that isn't for the faint of heart. Although much of the hype is centered on big business and big data processing, there are a number of consumer applications. Whereas business leaders might use the technology to increase their bottom line, streamline daily operations and achieve greater profitability, consumers can take advantage of computing to ease some of the burdens of everyday life. In fact, many consumers are using some form of it without realizing it.

We live in an era of accelerating change, when scientific and technological advancements are arriving rapidly. As a result, we are developing a new language to describe our civilization as it evolves. Here are 20 terms and concepts that you'll need to navigate our future. Back in 2007 I put together a list of terms every self-respecting futurist should be familiar with. I reached out to several futurists, asking them which terms or phrases have emerged or gained relevance since that time. These forward-looking thinkers provided me with some fascinating and provocative suggestions -- some familiar to me, others completely new, and some a refinement of earlier conceptions.

IBM Watson may be able to win "Jeopardy!" The IBM Watson for Cybersecurity beta program launched this week with 40 partners around the world in an effort to help security analysts make better, faster decisions from vast amounts of data, but experts say this is the same promise offered by many other products. IBM said Watson for Cybersecurity will feature natural language processing that can help it to "understand the unique language of security." "The truth is a lot of security vendors today are attaching '[artificial intelligence]' or'cognitive' to a number of products that are really just advanced analytics or machine learning, which are also important elements that can help in the fight against cybercrime," Diana Kelley, executive security advisor for IBM Security, told SearchSecurity. "What Watson will bring to the equation that is unique is the ability to digest vast amounts of both structured data as well as all of the intelligence that exists in natural language, like blogs, white papers and research reports. For example, there are around 10,000 security research papers published each year, and 60,000 security blog posts published every month."

If Hollywood is to be believed, the development of super-intelligent AI will spell the end of civilization as we know it and spark an unwinnable war between man and machine. It doesn't make for nearly as exciting entertainment, but artificial intelligence also offers tremendous upside, from the potential to deliver customized education to everyone, to improving disease diagnosis and treatment and eradicating poverty. Although AI researchers are focused these beneficial outcomes, the dystopian vision portrayed in so much science fiction is also a real possibility. At the recent Singularity University (SU) New Zealand Summit we talked with Neil Jacobstein, the former president and current chair of the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Track at SU, about how the outcomes feared by so many can be avoided.

By 2020 it is estimated that the global internet of things (IoT) market will have grown to more than $1.7 trillion. According to a study by Gartner, by the end of this year alone the number of IoT devices on the planet will have reached more than 4 billion. It is not unreasonable to suggest that by the end of this decade, these devices will outnumber humans. Such exponential growth has facilitated two major developments. It has boosted technology markets around the world and it has warped the landscape of cyberspace.