Devastated by industrial crisis, America's former "steel city" has reinvented itself as an innovation hub. But today its main challenge is to keep its "One Pittsburgh" promise by ensuring that everybody in its diverse population shares the benefits of new growth. Pittsburgh is back from the brink. A flagship of triumphant industrialisation in the early 20th century, the city has since seen its steel mills decline and then shut down. As the economy lurched from one crisis to another, Pennsylvania's rusting "steel city" became an emblem of decline, like other urban "dead stars" in the rustbelt of America's Middle West. But Pittsburgh never gave up.

What's your plan for steel?" is a question Bill Gates always uses whenever someone pitches him an idea of how to stop global warming [1]. Agriculture and the industry are responsible for almost half of the gas emissions worldwide and the steel industry is a major contributor. We encounter steel everywhere in life. I guess most of you are reading this article sitting on a steel chair – and for a good reason. The adaptability and durability of steel are unique and it is used to construct cars, buildings, gas pipelines, electrical transmission towers, and tools that we use on a daily basis.

A group of leading Turkish steel makers and traders, including Baştuğ Metallurgy, have entered into a coalition with artificial intelligence lab Fetch.ai to help develop the world's first decentralized, blockchain-based and AI-powered, tokenized metals exchange. The steel mills and trading firms plan to begin trial transactions on the innovative platform next week. "I am extremely pleased to be working with Baştuğ and the other steel mills and trading companies which are part of the consortium," said Fetch.ai CEO Humayun Sheikh. "Having them on board is a testament to the strength of our project and will speed up our efforts in building this revolutionary marketplace. The decentralized exchange will change the way metals and other commodities are traded and funded."

Rhetoric about robots taking jobs is nothing new: From Oxford University to Elon Musk, the fear of AI as an existential threat abounds. But here's the more complicated truth: It depends on which sector you work in. Some will be far more impacted than others – and that includes manufacturing. That's why small business leaders in manufacturing should care about these questions: "How will AI impact the industry?" A forecast by Gartner (available for clients) predicts that AI will eliminate more jobs than it creates through 2019 (mostly in manufacturing).

Where were you on the day of the world's first giant robot duel? Maybe you were working at your desk, brushing your teeth, labouring over your tax return, ironing the perfect pleat in tomorrow's pants. Meanwhile, giant robots were chainsawing other to shreds in a Japanese shed. SEE ALSO: Robotics expert Dr. Ross Mead reveals the truth about your favorite movie robots The world's first giant combat robot duel just happened on Tuesday, Oct. 17, pitting America and Japan against each other in a Twitch-livestreamed battle for the ages. Representing the United States, two epic robots from MegaBots Inc., founded by Matt Oehrlein and Gui Cavalcanti.

Once heavily invested in the AI and machine learning systems that helped run the NASA Space Shuttle, Splice Machine CEO Monte Zweben is trying to overhaul the structure that lies at its very core. Despite 2017 being described as the breakthrough year for machine learning and AI, the process by which computers learn complex skills and functions without human intervention is nothing new. One person who can attest to that is Monte Zweben, CEO of Splice Machine, who in a previous life was the deputy branch chief of NASA Ames Research Center's artificial intelligence (AI) hub. Spending seven years there during the 1980s and 1990s, Zweben and the rest of his team were using machine learning, not only to discover cosmic phenomena through radio telescopes, but also to maintain and plan the famous space shuttle missions. This, Zweben said in conversation with Siliconrepublic.com,