From Musk's vantage point, Tesla has a huge advantage over autonomous vehicle competitors because it gathers a massive amount of data in the real world. This quarter, he said Tesla will have 500,000 vehicles on the road, each equipped with eight cameras, ultrasonic sensors and radar gathering data to help build the company's neural network, which will serve as the digital equivalent of the self-driving cars' consciousness.

Smart manufacturing is connected manufacturing. During the session, Challenges & Best Practices in Deploying IIoT, at the Advanced Design and Manufacturing Expo in Cleveland earlier this month, David Iyoha, director of software solutions at Fortech, spelled out the considerations that must be in place to make sure the manufacturing enterprise is connected effectively. "Smart manufacturing is data driven. It's flexible with centralized data. The IIoT is the heartbeat of smart manufacturing, the glue," said Iyoha.

Today, I came across "Get Lauren" an art-installation / performance by Lauren McCarthy, and that got me thinking. For her installation, Lauren has equipped a couple of real people with internet-of-things devices and has followed the participants for 24 hours for a number of days. Through the devices Lauren was able to interact with the people and their environment, setting the lights, playing music or providing information. Lauren was, in fact, a human equivalent to the Artificial Intelligence used by products like Alexa or Siri. I find it interesting, essentially intriguing, to have a "real" human behind this service.