During the recent Consumer Goods Forum global summit here in Cape Town, I had the opportunity to briefly chat with Vivienne about some of the issues confronting the digital disruption of this industry sector. [The original transcript has been edited for clarity and space.] Named one of 10 Women to Watch in Tech in 2013 by Inc. Magazine, Vivienne Ming is a theoretical neuroscientist, technologist and entrepreneur. She co-founded Socos, where machine learning and cognitive neuroscience combine to maximize students' life outcomes. Vivienne is a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, where she pursues her research in neuroprosthetics. In her free time, Vivienne has developed a predictive model of diabetes to better manage the glucose levels of her diabetic son and systems to predict manic episodes in bipolar suffers. She sits on the boards of StartOut, The Palm Center, Emozia, and the Bay Area Rainbow Daycamp, and is an advisor to Credit Suisse, Cornerstone Capital, and BayesImpact. Dr. Ming also speaks frequently on issues of LGBT inclusion and gender in technology. Every once in a while I have the opportunity to discuss wide-ranging topics with an intellect that stimulates, is passionate and really cares about the bigger picture. Those opportunities are more rare than one would think. Although set in a somewhat unexpected venue (the elite innards of consumer capitalism) her observations on the inescapable disruption that the new wave of modern technologies are prescient and thoughtful. Ed: In a continent where there is a large focus on putting people to work, how do you see the challenges and disruptions resulting from AI, robotics, IoT, VR and other technologies playing out? These technologies, as did other disruptive technologies before them, tend to replace human workers with machine processes. Vivienne: There is almost no domain in which artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and automation will not have a profound and positive impact. Medicine, farming, transportation, etc. will all benefit. There will be a huge impact on human potential, and human work will change. I think this is inevitable, that we are well on the way to this AI-enabled future.

The tsunami of innovation and waves of disruption are not slowing down,

World of fitness trackers is still in its infancy. While there are endless fitness tracking devices out there, a smart coach that can entice you to push that extra bit for fitness is still not where it should be. You know we all need to be pushed for fitness, else we are too lazy. This is where wireless Vi headphones comes in. Developed by LifeBEAM, that considers picking data from the ear more accurate than from the wrist, Vi is a pair of biosensing earbuds bundled with logic artificial intelligence app, fitness tracking and coaching ability.

Dublin, CA – On June 10, 2016, daVigor, Inc. launched an Indiegogo campaign for RelaxingPal, a game changing, intelligent eye-mask for sleep and relaxation. The company, daVigor, has been started by Krishna Yeddanapudi, an entrepreneur from Silicon Valley, California. Krishna has also assembled a highly competent team to develop RelaxingPal. Prior to daVigor, Inc., Krishna was the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) and main founder of Robin Systems. He established Robin's product, for the first three years, from scratch. Now, the RelaxingPal team is looking to raise money through Indiegogo backers and fans.

Kasisto, a spinoff of Siri-maker SRI International, added two bots to the personal finance bot space today with the introduction of MyKAI and KAI Banking. The two bots are available for Facebook Messenger, Slack, and via SMS -- MyKAI for consumer finance and KAI Banking to help banks interact with their customers on these platforms. Kasisto's two bots join Abe, Penny, and Finn in the personal finance bot market and represent a bet that people are interested in banking inside a messaging app rather than in a standalone online banking app. Kasisto's new bots can answer a lot of people's questions about their personal finances, along with other things like, "Will robots take my job?" The prospect of automation raises questions about labor.

Jean-Philip Poulin was feeling "joyful" and "excited" when I interviewed him recently in Montreal. I know this because he showed me his real-time emotion metrics during our conversation, which were being parsed by a machine-learning algorithm that uses heart-rate data transmitted from his Microsoft Band 2 fitness tracker. Poulin is the COO of Sensaura, a Montreal-based software startup that proposes to bridge the gap between consumer wearables and affective computing. If its founders are as successful as they believe they will be, their product will hasten the inevitable future of emotionally intelligent machines: video games will know when you're bored, advertisers will know when you're swayed, and mental health professionals will know when you need a check-in. So far, progress in affective computing has depended on facial recognition software, which reads people's emotions pretty much the same way that people do: by looking at their faces for cues.

This is part 2 of a 3 part series providing a gentle introduction to writing Apache Spark applications on Databricks. This post focuses on the tools and features that are helpful for data scientists to solve business problems instead of managing infrastructure. The big challenge for data scientists is to take a model from the prototyping all the way into production. This process is often littered with a variety of different environments, samples of data that do not reflect production data quality, and a litany of infrastructure challenges. These problems become even worse when multiple teams are restricted to sharing one cluster for all of their work.

It's an in-wall smart-home controller that you can install yourself. It takes the place of an in-wall light switch, connects to your Wi-Fi network, and can control smart lighting, thermostats, door locks, and other devices via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or ZigBee. With today's firmware update, you'll also be able to use its 4.3-inch touchscreen to call an Uber, monitor your step count as tracked by your Fitbit fitness tracker, and trigger IFTTT recipes. Wink has also activated the Relay's onboard mic and speaker, so you can use multiple Relays as an intercom system. "This is a good example of a product that's getting better over time," said Wink CTO Nathan Smith.

Fahad Aziz is the Co-founder of Caremerge, an "award-winning technology company revolutionizing communication and coordination of care for seniors." As an industry leader in the tech space, Aziz has his finger on the pulse of disruptive healthcare tech. He says a few technologies are poised to seriously upend'business as usual' in healthcare in the near future, and they are not necessarily what you'd expect. In 2012, Vinod Khosla predicted that in time, "technology will replace 80% of what doctors do." He is spot on, according to Aziz.

An Osaka-based startup founded by health care product group Fujimoto Holding Co. and toymaker Wiz Co. has released an upgraded version of a stuffed robot doll designed to be a conversation partner for elderly people. The new Unazuki Kabochan, released June 17, has been programmed with a greater variety of words and phrases, totaling around 450, allowing a greater scope of response to the user's words and actions, according to PIP & WiZ Co. The previous model could handle some 400 words and phrases, but sometimes failed to reply appropriately according to context. Selling for a suggested retail price of 27,000 at department stores and shops handling nursing care devices, the new Unazuki Kabochan can also sing 13 songs, eight more than the older unit, and the need to reset after it is switched off has been eliminated, the company said. The 28-cm, 680-gram doll is made to resemble a 3-year-old boy.