Hashtag Trending – Elon Musk and your brain, sneaky TurboTax, robots eyeing our jobs

Elon Musk wants to tap into your brain, TurboTax targets low-income taxpayers to pay for its services, and a new report says robots ARE going to take our jobs.

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Have you seen the Matrix? Elon Musk certainly has, and he wants to make inserting a computer connection into your brain as simple as a trip to the dentist. Neuralink, a company in which Musk himself has invested $100 million, detailed what it’s doing to make this cyberpunk dream a reality during an event in San Francisco. Neuralink, a hot topic right now on LinkedIn, is a “sewing machine-like” robot that can implant super thin threads deep into the brain, and it’s hoping to work with human subjects as soon as the second quarter of next year.

TurboTax is targeting low-income taxpayers by strong-arming them to fork over some cash for its paid versions of its tax filing software. An investigation by ProPublica, trending all over Reddit, reveals the sneaky steps TurboTax has taken to maintain a steady number of Deluxe users paying for its service. The company was worried about those numbers dropping as a result of President Trump’s new tax legislation. The article goes on to say that the company made strategic decisions on how it advertised free tier, and pushed its deluxe services at students and the unemployed.

And lastly, it turns out robots are going to take our jobs, according to a new study. While the focus of automation and job displacement has been focused on factory-floors and retail jobs, a report in Axios argues that evidence is building that even high-skilled work is at risk. That means software engineers, lawyers, information security analysts and more roles are potentially at risk of automation as the technology becomes more powerful.

That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network.

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada
Alex Coop
Alex Coophttp://www.itwc.ca
Former Editorial Director for IT World Canada and its sister publications.

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