In 2003, Ken Hall was art director for Realtime Words, the large video game developer that made APB, which later became APB Reloaded, a highly popular free-to-play video game. At the time, free-to-play games, where players get most of the game for free but must pay to unlock the rest of the game or improve their performance, were still in their infancy. The strategy was aimed at hooking the casual gamer, but Hall had a rude awakening, perhaps like Dr. Frankenstein might have felt when his company received data showing gamers in South Korea were playing as much as 35 hours a week, and that was on top of their day jobs. He thought, what kind of monster have we created? "We were inadvertently creating compulsive gameplay loops," Hall says.

In 2003, Ken Hall was art director for Realtime Words, the large video game developer that made APB, which later became APB Reloaded, a highly popular free-to-play video game. At the time, free-to-play games, where players get most of the game for free but must pay to unlock the rest of the game or improve their performance, were still in their infancy. The strategy was aimed at hooking the casual gamer, but Hall had a rude awakening, perhaps like Dr. Frankenstein might have felt when his company received data showing gamers in South Korea were playing as much as 35 hours a week, and that was on top of their day jobs. He thought, what kind of monster have we created? "We were inadvertently creating compulsive gameplay loops," Hall says.

In the age of artificial intelligence, predicting which jobs will fall to automation is as much about what machines can do as it is about what they can't. More than half of all jobs in America -- both blue and white-collar -- are resistant to automation, according to an acclaimed study published in 2013 by two Oxford University researchers. Co-author Carl Benedikt Frey, who directs Oxford's Technology and Employment program, broke down three areas where human intelligence still beats artificial intelligence: perception and manipulation, social intelligence; and creativity. Each type has what Frey calls a "bottleneck," which slows the pace at which certain workforces can be automated. The premise is simple: Technology won't replace human workers if it can't do the job.

This week in Princeton, New Jersey, Siemens brought together several hundred technologists, from inside the company to partners and media, to share some expected updates about the accelerated evolution of their work in artificial intelligence (AI) and the "rise of autonomous systems." After nearly 200 years in existence, and several decades of developing everything from smart factory robotics (starting in their own manufacturing facilities) to intelligent machines and connected manufacturing systems, the company has most recently been reaching out to build tech ecosystems with an open embrace, while also working more intensely with universities, government agencies, start-ups, and entrepreneurs. Siemens has long been considered one of the world's top companies in industrial and B2B technologies and has been developing software before the world understood what software was and would mean, long before Industry 4.0 became "a thing." The thing is, while Siemens is one of the world's top ten largest software companies, it is under-recognized for its work in Industrial IoT and the software, systems and networks that make manufacturing more efficient and companies more profitable. The Siemens team, including a number of incredibly bright and passionate engineering experts, recent PhDs, data scientists and industry experts, enthusiastically shared demos across digital remote services using VR glasses and computer vision software, an "Ag Pod" developed to address the global food shortage, voice control car tech, autonomous power restoration for energy grids, and 3-D printing for the "on-demand" economy.

Welcome to Small Humans, an ongoing series at Mashable that looks at how to take care of – and deal with – the kids in your life. Because Dr. Spock is nice and all, but it's 2018 and we have the entire internet to contend with. During my first pregnancy, I craved a mamaRoo rocker, believing it would alleviate by stress as a new mom. Instead, I did things the old-fashioned way, rocking my baby in my arms and using baby wraps for multitasking. Nearly three years later, I'm thinking about it again as we wait on our second child.