Some might remember the 2000 sci-fi film The 6th Day. Arnold Schwarzenegger famously instructs his refrigerator to order more milk when it informs him that the milk had expired. While at the time this convenience might have seemed preposterous, today smart products like this are quickly filling our homes. Insights firm Gartner suggests that the average household could be equipped with more than 500 smart devices by 2022. Samsung has recently launched one such device called the Family Hub Refrigerator.

In 2008, when Hillary Clinton first ran for the Democratic presidential nomination against Barack Obama, I asked one of her oldest allies how she could be losing a race that appeared to be hers to win. "I've known Hillary for many years, ever since she came to Arkansas," former Sen. Dale Bumpers told me. "She'll find a way to screw it up. Eight years later, the conventional wisdom is that Clinton is a much better candidate. She learned hard lessons from her failure in 2008; her campaign this year is smarter and less chaotic.

Each fall, groggy teenagers resign themselves to another year of fighting their body clocks so they can get to class on time. It's well known that teens who don't get at least eight hours of sleep a night face a slew of problems. That's why both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control recommend shifting middle- and high-school start times to 8:30 a.m. or later. Yet during the 2011-12 school year -- the most recent statistics available -- only 17.7 % of the nation's public middle, high and combined schools met the 8:30 a.m. In California, the average start time was 8:07 a.m.

So many people are registering drones and applying for drone pilot licenses that federal aviation officials say they are contemplating the possibility of millions of unmanned aircraft crowding the nation's skies in the not-too-distant future. In the nine months since the Federal Aviation Administration created a drone registration system, more than 550,000 unmanned aircraft have been registered with the agency, said Earl Lawrence, director of the FAA's drone office. Speaking at the first meeting of a new government-industry drone advisory committee, Lawrence said new registrations are coming in at a rate of 2,000 a day. The FAA began issuing drone pilot licenses to commercial operators less than a month ago. Already, 13,710 people have applied to take the pilot exam, and 5,080 have passed it, Lawrence said.

He Zhigang's eyes pleaded with the elevator dial as he stood waiting on the ground floor. The red numbers wouldn't budge. He glanced at his phone. He pushed back his helmet, lifted the delivery bag of steamed buns and prepared to run up 20 flights of stairs. The hungry office worker probably won't remember who brought him lunch on a Friday afternoon, or that it was 11 minutes and 20 seconds before the allotted time.

After decades of stagnation in research and development of artificial intelligence solutions, machine learning has blossomed again – and its seeds are spreading to financial services. Sofia Lotto Persio reports on how AI is improving the field. Almost 20 years later, in March 2016, Google's AlphaGo programme beat South Korean champion Lee Sedol at four matches of Go, a strategy game, in what represents another historic breakthrough for artificial intelligence (AI). In the two-decade span between these achievements, AI has progressed tremendously. Go is a much more complex game than chess, as there are more possible positions on the board than there are atoms in the universe.

NOTE: Part 1 of 2: The following is an excerpt from Thomas International's white paper on Cognitive Fit. It can be found here: http://campaigns.thomasus.com/cognitive/ Employees with strong cognitive ability are a competitive advantage to an organization-- particularly when they are in roles that require quick learning, first-time problem solving, thinking "on your feet" and dealing with ambiguity. People who score well on cognitive ability tests are more likely to develop a greater knowledge of the job more quickly, make effective decisions and successfully reason and strategize to solve problems. In fact, a landmark study from 1998 reviewed 85 years of research and found that higher cognitive ability is linked with higher productivity and performance.

With great power comes the responsibility to discern when and how to use such power. As we enter an age where the stuff of speculative science fiction--specifically Artificial Intelligence (AI)--becomes reality, climbing the mountain "because it's there" is no longer a sufficient motivational and ethical framework for our future. In order to create a future where essential human values such as autonomy and personal privacy remain vital, we must act with awareness and forethought. Fortunately, the same tech giants who are dedicated to developing sophisticated AI recognize the potential for profound societal shifts the technology will produce. A recent article in The New York Times highlights how thought leaders from Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft want "to ensure that A.I. research is focused on benefiting people, not hurting them."

Attention everyone who's smugly proclaimed that they "just don't need a full night's sleep." You might have fooled us coffee-chuggers before, but now there's evidence that you're not quite superhuman. According to a new paper published in the journal Brain and Behavior (via Medical Xpress), University of Utah researchers studied patterns in the 839 people, dividing them into two groups: those who slept six hours or fewer per night, and those who got more. They then divided the short sleepers into two more groups: those who felt fine during the day, and those who reported feeling drowsy. When they put them in the MRI scanner -- a dark, boring tube of white noise (perfect for a little nap) -- both sets of short sleepers showed signs of sleep in their brain patterns while getting scanned.

Artificial intelligence systems will be able to give managers real-time insights about their business operations -- as well as detect early warnings of problems before they occur. This article is part of an MIT SMR initiative exploring how technology is reshaping the practice of management. Editor's Note: This article is one of a special series of 14 commissioned essays MIT Sloan Management Review is publishing to celebrate the launch of our new Frontiers initiative. Each essay gives the author's response to this question: "Within the next five years, how will technology change the practice of management in a way we have not yet witnessed?" Workers on the factory floor have suddenly gathered at a point along the production line.