Welcome to California Inc., the weekly newsletter of the L.A. Times Business Section. Investors are still digesting news that the nation's economic growth declined at the end of last year for the second straight quarter, denying President Trump the 3% annual increase he had promised his tax cuts would create. And growth this year and next won't hit that level either, economists say. Total economic output rose 2.9% in 2018. Beige Book: The latest Beige Book from the Federal Reserve comes out Wednesday.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has revealed his own version of Tony Stark's artificial intelligence system, Jarvis, after spending a year writing computer code and teaching it to understand his voice. The multi-billionaire showed off his creation in a cringeworthy video peppered with awkward quips, including, "Jarvis, your Mandarin is so soothing", but also demonstrated impressive tech like a computer-controlled T-shirt cannon and a front gate that recognises guests and lets them in. Jarvis, while not as powerful as Iron Man's fictional version, can also set up conference calls and even make toast, and is voiced by Morgan Freeman. Before any of that, however, Mr Zuckerberg had first to teach his thermostat, television and music player to talk to Jarvis. In a Facebook post he said: "One aspect that was much more complicated than I expected was simply connecting and communicating with all of the different systems in my home. "Before I could build any AI, I first needed to write code to connect these systems, which all speak different languages and protocols.