At the Amazon re:Invent conference, Amazon announced Lex, a deep learning service that is based upon the technology used by Alexa in Amazon's portable Bluetooth and Wi-Fi enabled Echo speaker. Shortly after Amazon's announcement, Google introduced Actions on Google which allow developers to build Google Assistant-based conversational apps, including integration with the Google Home device. You as a developer to integrate your services with the Google Assistant. Conversation actions which enable you to fulfill a user request action through a two-way dialog. When users request an action, the Google Assistant processes this request, determines the best action to invoke, and invokes your Conversation Action if relevant.

This has been the year of artificial intelligence (AI). From the buzz around workplace automation at this year's World Economic Forum to Stephen Hawking's recent discourse on the potential windfalls and risks of AI, the future of machine learning is on everyone's minds. My recent attendance at a Shared Services Forum event only confirmed the fact. You couldn't walk five steps without hearing someone discussing the role that robotics and AI will play in the future of HR. These advanced technologies have been in use for some time, but their application in the field of HR is still in its early days. There is really only one aspect of HR where robotics and AI have begun to make a real impact--shared services.

The company has been a leader when it comes to digital technology, and it plans to keep pushing the bar higher. Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX) has led the way for not just fast-casual restaurants, but all of retail when it comes to using customer-facing technology in its stores. The company was the first major chain to integrate digital payment into its app, making it a common sight to see people pay by holding up their phones to a scanner. That happened well before payment via phone become a relatively common thing, and it forced other chains to follow. Starbucks also led the way with Mobile Order & Pay.

Artificial carries a negative connotation. Artificial somehow imitates, is fake, or is subpar. It is negative, dare I say: icky. When we think of olestra vs. pressed organic olive oil, we think artificial vs. natural. One will have you running to the bathroom, the other promotes healthy levels of cholesterol.

After three years of almost single-handedly juicing up the slow-growing economy, Janet L. Yellen and the Federal Reserve should be looking at easier days ahead. Yellen, in what will probably be her last full year as Fed chair, may finally get help from somewhere else in Washington. Tax cuts and infrastructure spending planned by President-elect Donald Trump, if backed by the Republican-controlled Congress, would lighten the load for a Fed whose easy-money policies have been the primary economic support for the nation. She is already breathing easier on the Fed's employment mandate; the jobless rate has fallen to a nine-year low of 4.6%. Inflation, too, is under control and, by all accounts, creeping toward the central bank's optimal level of 2%.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This work was supported by FCT (INESC-ID multiannual funding) through the PIDDAC Program funds and under project PEst-OE/EEI/LA0021/2011 and the FP7 Cooperation Work Programme: Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Biotechnologies, KBBE-227258 (BIOHYPO project). Quotient Bioresearch received part-funding from the European Union in the scope of BIOHYPO project. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: During the elaboration of this manuscript, Ian Morrissey and Daniel Knight were employed by Quotient Bioresearch and belonged to the BIOHYPO European project.

Baidu is demonstrating some of its most recent tech advancements in novel ways, including a partnership with KFC China (yes, the fried chicken KFC). The search giant sometimes referred to as the'Google of China' partnered with KFC to open a new "smart restaurant" in Beijing, which employs facial recognition to make recommendations about what customers might order, based on factors like their age, gender and facial expression. The restaurant also offers up augmented reality games via table stickers, but these are also deployed at 300 other KFC locations in Beijing. The facial recognition tech is unique to this one location, though Baidu has previously worked with KFC on another type of smart restaurant at a pilot location in Shanghai, where a robot customer service agent can listen for and recognize orders made by customers using natural language input. Baidu's tech in this new restaurant, however, is all about guessing what you want before you can even ask; image recognition hardware installed at the KFC will scan customer faces, seeking to infer moods, and guess other information including gender an age in order to inform their recommendation.

In March of 2016, a twenty-seven-year-old Syrian refugee named Rakan Ghebar began discussing his mental health with a counsellor. Ghebar, who has lived in Beirut since 2014, lost a number of family members to the civil war in Syria and struggles with persistent nervous anxiety. Before he fled his native country, he studied English literature at Damascus University; now, in Lebanon, he works as the vice-principal at a school for displaced Syrian children, many of whom suffer from the same difficulties as he does. When Ghebar asked the counsellor for advice, he was told to try to focus intently on the present. By devoting all of his energy to whatever he was doing, the counsellor said, no matter how trivial, he could learn to direct his attention away from his fears and worries.

Artificial intelligence (AI) could take up to 47% of jobs in the next two decades according to a report by the federal government in the US. While there will be significant potential for wealth gains from increased productivity due to AI, the report also warns of threats to existing jobs. The prolonged use of AI will also bring about wage inequality between lower-skilled, less-educated workers and those with higher skills. "Effects of AI on the labour market in the near term will continue the trend that computerisation and communication innovations have driven in recent decades. Researchers' estimates on the scale of threatened jobs over the next decade will range from 9 to 47%," says the report titled Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy.

Starbucks has led the way for not just fast-casual restaurants, but all of retail when it comes to using customer-facing technology in its stores. The company was the first major chain to integrate digital payment into its app, making it a common sight to see people pay by holding up their phones to a scanner. That happened well before payment via phone become a relatively common thing, and it forced other chains to follow. Starbucks also led the way with Mobile Order & Pay. That technology allows people to skip the line, creating a better experience for regular customers while offering shorter lines for casual visitors.