China's 19-year-old Go player Ke Jie reacts during the second match against Google's artificial intelligence programme AlphaGo in Wuzhen, eastern China's Zhejiang province on May 25, 2017. Artificial intelligence is firmly embedded throughout the economy. Financial services firms use it to provide investment advice to customers, automakers are using it in vehicle autopilot systems, technology companies are using it to create virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri, and retailers are using artificial intelligence (AI) together with customers' prior sales histories, to predict potential purchases in the future, to name but a few examples. The potential of AI to boost economic growth has been discussed in numerous forums, including by Accenture, the Council on Foreign Relations, the McKinsey Global Institute, the World Economic Forum, and President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, among others. The most dramatic advances in AI are coming from a data-intensive technique known as machine learning.

Stating in a tweet this week that artificial intelligence would be the most likely cause of World War 3, entrepreneur and tech mogul Elon Musk added a new chapter to his crusade against unregulated AI. Coming on the heels of Vladimir Putin's pronouncement that the best innovator in AI technology would be the next global leader -- as well as Musk's own statement that AI is more dangerous than North Korea -- the new tweet comes amid a peak of global tensions regarding nuclear ICBMs. Govts don't need to follow normal laws. They will obtain AI developed by companies at gunpoint, if necessary. Musk has positioned himself as a neo-Luddite in the AI race but has also made the controversial claim that the best way for us to safeguard human civilization against runaway AI is to essentially merge our minds symbiotically with AI technology.

Apparently capitalism is collapsing, North Korea will nuke us all, and a total environmental breakdown will turn the whole world into a bad Mad Max rerun. Oh yeah and superintelligent machines will rise up and kill us all. It all reminds me of Harold Camping, the doomsday guru who took out ads saying the world would end on May 21, 2011. It must be right around the corner. If we keep predicting Armageddon via sun spots, evil machines and the plague, eventually maybe we'll be right. Hey, even a blind squirrel can find a nut once in awhile. But the more I look at things, the more I think we're firmly in the grip of a mass hysteria of epic proportions, magnified by the megaphone of the Internet. HINT: Capitalism is fine, it's just evolving into something that works better for everyone, as it should (care of the mind blowing power of cryptocurrencies); North Korea is not nuking shit because they know they won't exist the very next day; and I'm betting on brilliant kids like Boyan Slat, renewable energy and plain old "necessity as the mother of invention" to stave off Mad Max. You have firm evidence that if we don't act fast it's all over for us!

A little bit of hype can build excitement about potential, while too much leads to false hopes and misguided planning assumptions. "Right now, the myths surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) are rampant," says Alexander Linden, research vice president at Gartner. "Wisely for now, most organizations' commitments are tentative and more oriented toward experimenting and learning, rather than trying to transform their enterprise or industry as fast as they can." Enterprise architecture and technology innovation leaders must walk a fine line between embracing and overplaying AI technologies' role in delivering business value for digital business. "Leaders shouldn't trust any of the myths and hype around AI. Instead, they must become centers of expertise if they are going to educate senior business executives on the real benefits -- and shortcomings -- of AI," says Linden.

Raviv Turner is Co-Founder and CEO at CaliberMind. On this episode, he and I discuss the challenges B2B marketers face in understanding the lengthy buyer's journey. It's long, it's complex, there are more people involved, and there is a ton of data spread across both structured and unstructured sources, making it difficult for B2B sales teams to accelerate their revenue goals. Raviv's career path includes being an entrepreneur, a product designer, a marketing technologist, and a Former Israel Signal Intelligence Community Officer. He applied the knowledge he learned about Big Data while working as an Intelligence Officer into his work building software products.

China's 19-year-old Go player Ke Jie reacts during the second match against Google's artificial intelligence programme AlphaGo in Wuzhen, eastern China's Zhejiang province on May 25, 2017. Chinese netizens fumed on May 25 over a government ban on live coverage of Google algorithm AlphaGo's battle with the world's top Go player, as the programme clinched their three-match series in the ancient board game. Artificial intelligence is firmly embedded throughout the economy. Financial services firms use it to provide investment advice to customers, automakers are using it in vehicle autopilot systems, technology companies are using it to create virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri, and retailers are using artificial intelligence (AI) together with customers' prior sales histories, to predict potential purchases in the future, to name but a few examples. The potential of AI to boost economic growth has been discussed in numerous forums, including by Accenture, the Council on Foreign Relations, the McKinsey Global Institute, the World Economic Forum, and President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, among others.

Optimus, a drone manufactured by Airobotics, the Israeli drone maker that says it has recently been granted the first certificate in the world to fly a fully automated drone, with no human operator, is seen during a demonstration for Reuters near their offices in Petah Tikva, Israel March 20, 2017. Picture taken March 20, 2017.

You might not have, but Alexa did. Voice assistants have been successfully hijacked using sounds above the range of human hearing. Once in, hackers were able to make phone calls, post on social media and disconnect wireless services, among other things. Assistants falling for the ploy included Amazon Alexa, Apple's Siri, Google Now, Samsung S Voice, Microsoft Cortana and Huawei HiVoice, as well as some voice control systems used in cars. The hack was created by Guoming Zhang, Chen Yan and their team at Zhejiang University in China.

Microsoft Taiwan and Taipei Medical University (TMU) have teamed up for a project to develop artificial intelligence (AI) applications, according to a Chinese-language Liberty Times report. Microsoft will supply science-, big data- and AI-related learning materials and content to integrate with TMU's medical care database to provide students with online and offline courses, a digital certification system and Datathon platform for them to acquire AI-development ability, the paper noted.

Google looks to be quietly forming a team of artificial intelligence experts in mainland China, according to the United States-based internet giant's recent jobs listings online. A check on Monday of the postings on social networking platform LinkedIn showed it had been recruiting since May for a research scientist, technical lead and software engineer in machine learning technology in Beijing. In addition, there was another post for product manager in cloud machine learning that was first listed in June. Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence focused on computer programs that have the ability to learn when exposed to new data. In July the Chinese government set out an ambitious plan to leap frog the United States and become the global leader in artificial intelligence by 2030.