The US government shut down 30 days ago. WIRED spoke with more than a dozen federal workers who have struggled to pay bills, worked side gigs, and relied on free food programs to get by. In late September, a federal worker based abroad learned that her husband, who is also a federal worker and a military veteran, had "high risk, very aggressive cancer." Doctors told the couple that the cancer needed to be removed immediately or it would no longer be treatable. Her husband is covered by TRICARE, the health care program offered to members of the military and veterans.

Leaders at artificial intelligence companies often ask users (and investors) to imagine a not-so-distant future where AI coaches, trained on personal data and past interactions, help users achieve their wildest dreams. Want to be more active? Here's a workout designed by AI. Want to monitor your long-term well-being? Try this AI health app.

Game development is an expensive and time-consuming business. Right now, 2,000 people are working on the next instalment in Ubisoft's blockbuster Assassin's Creed series, across 18 studios around the globe, and it's a project that will take 2 to 3 years. Imagine how any of those people might feel to learn that last year, a self-taught programmer racked up nearly 280,000 from a series of games he made while sitting in his pants on hot days in a two-bedroom flat in Harlesden. And that each one took him about 30 minutes. "The first one, I'll be honest, probably took seven or eight hours," says TJ Gardner.

For the first time in 63 years, writers and actors are on strike, grinding Hollywood to a halt with a historic double strike. You've probably recognized some of the celebrities at the picket line. These actors, similar to writers on strike, are demanding increased pay and protections from artificial intelligence. But the vast majority of striking members are far from household names, actors who are all but certain to survive the major economic consequences of both strikes as they drag on for weeks or even months. Instead, they're working-class individuals forced to live "paycheck to paycheck," according to SAG LA's Vice President Michelle Hurd--and they want the world to know a few facts.

As one of the first pioneers of earned wage access, our passion at Earnin is building products that deliver real time financial flexibility for those with the unique needs of living paycheck to paycheck. Our community members access their earnings as they earn them, with options to spend, save, and grow their money without mandatory fees, interest rates, or credit checks. Since our founding, our app has been downloaded over 13M times and we have provided access to $10 billion in earnings. We're fortunate to have an incredibly experienced leadership team, combined with world-class funding partners like A16Z, Matrix Partners, DST, and a very healthy core business with a tremendous runway. We're growing fast and are excited to continue bringing world class talent onboard to help shape the next chapter of our growth journey. As a Fintech company where Machine Learning (ML) is one of the key features, our operations highly rely on machine learning models, from business decisions to customer experiences.

Delaget, a SaaS (software as a service) company that serves restaurant operators their data analytics through seamless automation, announced their newest partnership with Instant Financial. Instant Financial is a provider of fee-free on-demand pay solutions, on a mission to help workers get out from the cycle of living paycheck to paycheck, which impacts millions of Americans today. The Instant platform offers a pay management solution and Visa debit card that allows employees to access their hard-earned wages, when they need them, and helps them get on a path to financial independence. The addition of Instant to the Delaget Marketplace creates new opportunities for both organizations, as well as enables existing clients to integrate seamlessly, bypassing the time required for custom integrations. This partnership is timely with the rise in popularity of on-demand pay and moves toward making EWA a staple of employee benefits, particularly in the QSR space.

A few years ago, at the Princeton Club in Manhattan, I chanced on a memorable chat with the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. His spouse, the philosopher Rebecca Goldstein, with whom he was tagging along, had been invited onto a panel to discuss the conflict between religion and science and Einstein's so-called "God letter," which was being auctioned at Christie's. Pinker had recently published Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. I was eager to pepper him with questions, mainly on religion, rationality, and evolutionary psychology. I remember I wanted Pinker's take on something Harvey Whitehouse, one of the founders of the cognitive science of religion, told me in an interview--that my own little enlightenment, of becoming an atheist in college, was probably mostly a product of merely changing my social milieu. I wasn't so much moved by rational arguments against the ethics and existence of God but by being distanced from my old life and meeting new, non-religious friends. I recall Pinker almost pouncing on that argument, defending reason's power to change our minds. He noted that people especially high in "intellectance," a personality trait now more commonly called "openness to experience," tend to be more curious, intelligent, and willing to entertain new ideas. I still think that Pinker's way of seeing things made more sense of my experience in those heady days. I really was, for the first time, trying my best to think things through, and it was exhilarating. We talked until the event staff shelved the wine, and parted ways at a chilly midtown intersection.

SMBs using the UZIO payroll system will no longer need to worry about maintaining federal, state, or local requirements for minimum wage on a "per paycheck" basis. The newest round of updates will allow employers to set minimum wage rates for employees, which the system will automatically compare against employee pay stubs. If the system determines an employee is receiving less than the required minimum wage, their compensation for that pay period will be adjusted accordingly to meet the mandated minimum. Since many states require employers to provide PTO information, UZIO has also implemented "Paid Time Off Details", an information field that is automatically generated on each employee paycheck, providing employees with their time accrued, used, and total PTO balances. Adding more to the payroll, UZIO has added a new feature where employers can modify the working hours of salaried employees from the default 40 hours to custom hours.

Companies can't afford to spend another year contemplating the shift toward AI and IoT-based automation because they risk being displaced by companies that are adopting these technologies today. The trends are showing that the digitally driven, greatly automated enterprises with agile business models stand the greatest chance at survival as the world shifts to a digital economy. The companies of yesterday ran heavy enterprise systems that took too long to evolve, creating a massive roadblock for digital transformation. To change this, companies have become nimbler in adopting smarter automated systems that can maintain their competitive edge over time. While robotic process automation (RPA) was a major turning point in digital transformation, AI-driven automation is proving to be the better choice for higher performance, low latency and autonomous decision-making.

Now is not the time to rely on grand predictions. That may seem like an incongruous statement coming from the leader of a customer intelligence company, but it's true. And as we find ourselves in the first part of 2021, and more and more yearly predictions come out, that sentiment remains. There is no greater example of risky predictions than Las Vegas. There is a reason the house always wins in the long-term -- gambling on an event before it happens is a losing proposition.