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Democratic congressional leaders from the Hispanic, Black and Asian Pacific American caucuses scolded Google CEO Sundar Pichai for the recent hiring of a former Trump administration official who had supported the Muslim ban.

In a letter dated Nov. 19, the lawmakers expressed concern over Google's hiring of Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff for Kirstjen Nielsen, the former secretary of Homeland Security. Taylor joined Google recently to work on government affairs and national security issues.

"We are deeply troubled with Google's decision to hire someone from the Trump Administration that has defended the very same cruel DHS policies Google senior leadership has previously announced," the letter said. It was signed by Joaquin Castro, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, as well as Karen Bass, head of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Judy Chu, chair of the Asian Pacific American Caucus.

Trump's actions have been "devastating to refugees and immigrant families," the House members wrote. "During his time with DHS, Miles Taylor undoubtedly demonstrated his support for the Trump Administration's immigration policies."

The letter comes as Google faces increased scrutiny by lawmakers, regulators and among its own employees for business practices, government contracts and controversial decisions made by leadership. In August, more than 1,000 Google employees signed a petition, demanding Google abandon bids or potential bids with U.S. Customs and Border Protection contract.

Employees also expressed concern about Taylor at recent all-hands meetings, where executives defended his hiring and downplayed his involvement in DHS policies.

In response to a request for comment, a Google spokesperson pointed to comments made a few weeks ago by Karan Bhatia, vice president for government affairs, explaining that Taylor's expertise is in counterterrorism and national security, and that he will not be involved in immigration issues.

The letter from House leaders berated Pichai and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, citing reports from The Washington Post and Buzzfeed about Taylor's role in the Trump administration.

"This recent company hire appears to contradict Google's own moral and ethical values and completely disregards the concerns expressed by many of your employees and customers that value immigrants and human rights," the letter said.

The lawmakers pointed to a tweet from Pichai, opposing family separation at the border.

"The stories and images of families being separated at the border are gut-wrenching," Pichai wrote. "Urging our government to work together to find a better, more humane way that is reflective of our values as a nation #keepfamiliestogether."

Google is not alone among tech companies in employing former conservative administration officials. Facebook hired former George W. Bush aide Joel Kaplan in 2011, which The Wall Street Journal reported was part of a larger effort to bring more diverse viewpoints into its executive ranks.

House members wrote in the letter to Pichai that, "We find it alarming when companies choose to reward and hire individuals that have played active roles in implementing cruel policies that target and hurt the communities we represent and Google is no exception."

While big tech companies tend to skew to the left in terms of political contributions and support for candidates and causes, liberal lawmakers have attacked the same companies for a lack of diversity among their employee base and for the ways their technology is used.

At an October hearing, Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, grilled Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the company's civil rights audit and alleged housing discrimination enabled through its ads service. Several Democratic lawmakers wrote to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos last year, expressing concern about reports that the company was promoting its facial recognition technology to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

WATCH: How to download everything Google knows about you

Economic growth in China is slowing down amid an ongoing trade war with the U.S. — but Swiss wealth management giant UBS is not budging from its "overweight" position in Chinese stocks.

Chinese gross domestic product grew 6% year-over-year in the third quarter, the weakest pace in at least 27.5 years. UBS forecast that growth in the world's second-largest economy will end this year at 6.1% before slowing even more in the coming years to 5.7% in 2020 and 5.6% in 2021.

"I think what's been very interesting with regards to the Chinese market is that even though growth is slowing, you can actually see that the economic restructuring that they have been trying to pursue is actually bearing fruit," Tan Min Lan, the wealth manager's head of chief investment office in Asia Pacific, told CNBC's "Street Signs" on Thursday.

She explained that economic restructuring in the last few years has led to consumption contributing a larger share of Chinese growth now, compared with a few years ago. In addition, China has been growing the share of higher value added manufacturing in its economy and consolidated sectors such as upstream materials and property, she said.

Those changes have benefited some companies. As a result, earnings of Chinese companies have done better than expected, said Tan.

"If you look at the third-quarter reporting season, overall earnings growth is closer to about 10% year-on-year growth, which is an acceleration in the second quarter which is about 5%," she said. "We think that Chinese stock market continues to have a lot of interesting opportunities that one can pursue."

In a 2020 outlook report released on Wednesday, UBS said it likes stocks of Chinese internet companies and businesses in the 5G smartphone supply chain.

Without naming specific stocks, the wealth manager said "share prices of Chinese internet companies have been mixed this year, weighed down by heavy investments in new growth areas like video, cloud, payments and expansion to low-tier cities."

But some of those investments could start to deliver better profits and margins in the coming year, it added.

"So driven by improving profitability and margins in new growth segments ... we expect earnings growth to accelerate for the Chinese internet sector in 2020 after two years of challenging conditions," said UBS.

The closure of Waymo's self-driving car facility in Austin, Texas, this month eliminated jobs for about 100 contractors, some of whom described surprise at the sudden decision.

Waymo, the self-driving car subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, confirmed with CNBC earlier this month that it was closing the Austin facility but downplayed the move, saying it would affect fewer than 10 full-time employees.

CNBC has now learned that the closure affected many more people, including contract workers from firms Adecco and Genesis10, according to conversations with nine people who worked for Waymo in Austin and elsewhere. Five of these people estimated around 100 workers, or more, were affected. A Waymo spokesperson said the number was "significantly less" than 100 without offering a precise number, citing confidentiality agreements with the contracting agencies.

Some described the firing as a surprise, and two said that managers described it as a financial decision, although Waymo denies any cost-cutting measures, pointing to investments elsewhere. These people requested anonymity because they signed agreements that forbid them from talking about their time at the company.

A Waymo spokesperson described the move as a facility closure, not a layoff or downsizing. In a statement, the company said, "Waymo is growing our investment and teams in both the Detroit and Phoenix areas, and we want to bring our operations teams together in these locations to best support our riders and our ride-hailing service. As a result we've decided to relocate all Austin positions to Detroit and Phoenix and some of our employees have already confirmed they'll relocate. We are also working closely with our staffing partners to ensure temporary workers are offered transition pay and relocation assistance."

In the months leading up to the firings, the company has faced challenges to the business and delays to the technology. CEO John Krafcik said in 2017 that Waymo wouldn't need to wait until 2020 ⁠— when analysts expected self-driving cars to go fully autonomous ⁠— but that it would give riders fully autonomous rides within "months." However, CNBC reported in August that Waymo still largely relies on human safety drivers, and the company only started offering fully autonomous rides there recently. In September, Morgan Stanley cut its valuation on Waymo by 40% from $175 billion to $105 billion, concluding that the industry is moving toward commercialization more slowly than expected.

Austin is where Waymo says it conducted its first full-self driving route on public roads back in 2015. Both the company and the city of Austin had expectations of launching ride-sharing services with self-driving vehicles, similar to the Phoenix Waymo One service, according to Austin city documents.

Workers described the closure on Nov. 5 as sudden -- the contracting firms called some people and simply told them not to come to work that day with no further explanation. One person at the site said the firms held an emergency meeting during the day where workers were told to take their items and leave or they'd be escorted by security. Workers said they were offered an opportunity to move to other Waymo facilities in Phoenix or Detroit with relocation assistance.

In response, the Waymo spokesperson said that the closure was communicated well in advance and should not have been a surprise.

Two Waymo workers heard from management that the Austin closure was a financial decision needed to keep Detroit and Phoenix growing. Waymo told CNBC that it is growing its overall investment in the company and expanding its teams in those locations. However, two Phoenix workers told CNBC that the Austin closure has increased their workload dramatically -- one said they'd lost half the people in their department, meaning that they'd have to do double the work.

Three of the contractors from Austin said while the closure was sudden, morale had been declining for some time. Two described what seemed like efforts to separate Waymo contractors from full-time employees -- for instance, contractors were told to speak less with certain Waymo supervisors and full-time employees, and management invited them to feedback sessions but rarely answered their questions. Waymo says it never gave any instructions to staffing agencies or contractors that they should speak less to full-time employees.

"We encourage our contractors to come to Adecco for any employment-related questions or escalations. As their employer, our team is always available to address their needs and provide correct information," said an Adecco spokesperson. "This is something FTEs may have reinforced, and we believe the intentions would have been in the best interest of contractors."

Genesis10 declined to comment for this story.

Alphabet has faced criticism in the past for its extensive use of contractors, who do not receive the same treatment as full-time employees and are often paid less. A May report in the New York Times said that the company now employs more contractors than full-time employees, and several U.S. Senators have since called on the company to convert contractors to employees after six months. At the 2019 Alphabet shareholders' meeting, one company employee criticized Google for letting full-time employees out of mandatory arbitration for sexual harassment claims while not extending this same protection to contractors.

WATCH NOW: This Arizona town is overrun with self-driving cars -- here's what it's like.

Don't give up on the entire technology sector of the market, according to CNBC's Jim Cramer.

The "Mad Money" host advised that selling off would be a poor miscalculation, urging investors to "ask yourself what you're selling."

"If you're dumping an ETF, be my guest — those are just moronic amalgamations of stocks slapped together by people who make a living by convincing you that the tech sector is still a real, cohesive thing," he said. "But if you're dumping the kind of tech stocks that are working here — especially the better run software-as-a-service names — I think you're making a big mistake."

Cramer sought to dispel thoughts that it's time to get cautious about the tech stocks that have powered the market to new highs or because of potential escalations in the U.S.-China trade war.

Software stocks like ServiceNow, Salesforce.com and Adobe may still face pressure from the trade front, as President Donald Trump continues to pressure Chinese trade negotiators with more tariffs to agree to a trade deal, but Cramer continues to put his faith in the group.

"In fact, these stocks will probably be the first to go down again because the algorithms ... sell them on any trade worries," he said. "But after that, their stocks tend to come bouncing back with alacrity because these companies are forces of nature."

Pointing to Kohl's, whose shares deflated nearly 20% to almost $42 per share in Tuesday's session on a disappointing earnings report and forecast cuts, Cramer noted that retailers have to equip themselves with the right software to stay competitive.

Management blamed its quarterly earnings and sales declines, along with its reduced profit outlook, in part on an "increasingly competitive promotional environment."

"The lesson here is simple: If you want to stay competitive in retail, you need to pay these software-as-a-service companies a fortune," Cramer said. "That's why I rebel against this idea that you need to lighten up on tech [stocks]."

Disclosure: Cramer's charitable trust owns shares of Salesforce.com and Kohl's.

Disclaimer

From detection to diagnosis, digitization is widely being accepted as the new approach to medicine.

Health care practitioners and patients are quickly embracing digital apps and advanced technology to get to the bottom of an ailment.

But can technology and artificial intelligence ever replace doctors?

"I don't think at this stage, we are 100%, or even close to 100%, sure that AI can replace a historical high-touch type of doctor-patient relationship," said Dr. Chun Yuan Chiang, a health practitioner and founder of IHDPay Group, a health care payments firm.

"In terms of diagnostic aid, it's a different category. So, I would say at the end of Day 4, the patient wants recovery," he told CNBC's Nancy Hungerford at a panel discussion at East Tech West conference in the Nansha district of Guangzhou, China on Tuesday.

Still, experts say AI — defined broadly as machines programmed to mimic human intelligence in areas such as problem-solving and learned behavior — has reshaped the medical landscape.

"We used to use x-rays to detect lung cancer. The problem is you can only go to stage 3 or stage 4 with x-ray," said another member of the panel Dai Ying, chief innovation officer for GE Healthcare in China.

"Now, with CT you can see all lung modules, and with AI can tell where it is and how big it is. It's much more advanced than before," he said referring to computed tomography scans used to detect medical conditions.

Diagnosis of ailments and diseases is being done remotely these days. Health care providers are connected via centralized systems that can monitor patients remotely. But can AI replace a doctor's visit for those that are remote?

"We are building telemedicine in our apps today where you can consult a doctor from the convenience of your homes, not for emergency," said Jai Verma, CEO and board member of insurance company Cigna DIFC, and global head of government solutions at Cigna International. "I think AI, internet of things, are going to change the way we deliver health care in the future."

Verma also believes that along with AI, blockchain technology will make it easier for heath care companies, professionals and patients to share medical records, and that many insurance companies are already looking at integrating blockchain into their modern systems.

Blockchain, the technology behind cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, is a public ledger of every transaction that has taken place.

As health-care providers plough millions into AI-powered machines, blockchain and other expensive innovative technologies to improve the future of medicine, there are concerns that health care costs could go up.

Experts think otherwise.

"I think the technology is going to help us streamline the operations and reduce our operating costs," said Verma, pointing out that most costs these days are associated with manual work. "AI would help you to make it automated, so the future systems are going to help reduce your costs."

In China, one of the largest health care markets in the world, Dai said AI can play an important role in improving efficiency for the hospitals. "I don't think AI is all the time adding to costs," he said. "In most cases, it saves the costs."

However, concerns about fraud and data privacy persist as medical records get exchanged electronically.

Verma, who works for insurer Cigna, noted that many people misuse health care identities. "We lost a lot of money on fraud with people using the (ID) card and accessing the care for someone else," he said adding that dispersing of incorrect medicine is a big risk with digitization.

Chiang pointed out that efficiency can be brought about by preventing fraud or moral risks, and that his company is committed to safety and authentication. "We provide a platform that everybody can use … to make sure it's the right doctor, real doctor, real pharmacists, real drug, real insured person etc."