The definition of civility typically revolves around the rules, mores and assumptions for how we deal with each other. The previous talks in this series have focused on that kind of civility in a variety of human activities including sports, education, business and law enforcement. But I'm going to be talking about something that is not human--the increasingly clever computing technology that surrounds us. And how we think about, relate to and interact with this technology. For the title of this talk, I chose the most evocative term, artificial intelligence, or AI for short. It was "cooked up," as its author the mathematician John McCarthy once told me, for a grant proposal he wrote in 1955. He was seeking funds for a conference the following summer at Dartmouth College. It was a brainy marketing pitch.

One of these commercials for Clorets mints is being billed as the first campaign from McCann Erickson Japan's new AI creative director. The other is the work of a human. One is about a flying dog. The other features a barefoot calligrapher. Mondelez brand Clorets Mint Tab is asking the Japanese public to vote on which ad is more effective, without telling people which one is the product of artificial intelligence.

We are about to see a black hole for the first time ever, scientists hope. A team of scientists are hope to use a computer algorithm and a range of equipment to take the first ever picture of a black hole's event horizon next year. The picture will be taken by a project called Event Horizon Telescope – a network of nine radio telescopes placed all around the world. From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater. The image was taken by Nasa's HiRISE camera, which is mounted on its Mars Reconaissance Orbiter The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station.

OSAKA – Omron Corp. has developed a new in-vehicle sensor for monitoring drivers from real-time video and pictures. The Osaka-based automated control equipment maker aims to put the sensor into use in 2019 or 2020. The sensor, which draws on artificial intelligence, uses a camera to monitor the driver's condition. In the event of a sudden change, the sensor will sound an alarm or stop the automobile safely. The new sensor will support autonomous driving technology by offering a new method for managing a vehicle when changing driving mode from autonomous to manual safely.

By now, every business knows it has to be smart in its online strategy. Gone are the vanity metrics of yesteryear, with numbers of downloads, visitors, and the like. This startup based in Singapore and India is using AI to automate a lot of what goes into generating sales leads and acting on them fast. More and more sophisticated tools are coming into the market to help with tracking what's actionable that really matters to the business. Conversion rate optimization, funnel analysis, real time heat maps, abandoned cart recovery, sales lead generation – there are tech tools for all that and more.

Scientists at Microsoft Research and their colleagues are developing an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can tell stories based on photos. The aim is not just to explain what items are in the picture, but also what appears to be happening and how it might potentially make a person feel, US-based website livescience.com For example, if a person is shown a picture of a man in a tuxedo and a woman in a long, white dress, instead of saying, "This is a bride and groom," he or she might say, "My friends got married. They look really happy; it was a beautiful wedding." "The goal is to help give AIs more human-like intelligence, to help it understand things on a more abstract level and what it means to be fun or creepy or weird or interesting," Margaret Mitchell, study senior author said.

Loyal readers will recall that last spring we conspired with artificial intelligence expert Randal Olsen to develop the ultimate U.S. road trip. The map Olson came up with -- he did all the work, really -- optimized the best way to drive by car to 50 major U.S. landmarks, using machine learning algorithms and Google Maps. We're happy to report that Olsen is back at it, just in time for summer road tripping. By leveraging the power of genetic algorithms and other artificial intelligence technology, Olsen's optimized loop route will get you across the country and back in a little over eight days -- starting in Concord, New Hampshire, and dropping you back in Boston, Mass. How did Olsen generate his road trip map?

A self-learning knowledge base is often found to be a key component of enterprise level self-service solutions. Leading knowledge base technologies use machine learning algorithms to automatically collect customer queries, learn from representatives' responses, and continuously expand the knowledge base over time. As its name might suggest, the self-learning knowledge base continues to improve in accuracy and performance as it receives additional information. Knowledge Base systems which are integrated with digital self-service solutions improve with each customer interaction that occurs through the self-service interface. The machine-learning algorithms which are found in more advanced knowledge base systems are usually designed to evaluate and process large amounts of data received through customer interactions.

That's the conviction held by Russian entrepreneurs Artem Kukharenko and Alexander Kabakov, whose startup, NTechLab, recently launched a facial recognition app that nearly obliterates the concept of anonymity. Called FindFace, the app has remained exclusive to Russia since going live earlier this year. Soon, though, Kuhkarenko and Kabakov are introducing a cloud-based platform that makes their frighteningly accurate algorithm available to everyone, the pair said in a Skype interview in May. In a practical sense, what this means is that none of us is safe from an always-probing public eye. "In 10 or 20 years, there won't be a place on the earth [where] ... nobody [can] see you," Kabakov said over Skype.

Deep learning and artificial intelligence are set to be the next big innovations that change the way that people run their businesses. At Shopify's Tech @ Scale in Toronto -- an event that included a day full of talks exploring how developers and engineers could stay agile in a world of fast-moving technology -- one talk included expert insights on exactly how these emerging technologies would impact both businesses and their customers. "The fabric of the internet is not ready to scale for what's coming. If you think of the components we built our service on top of, the one part that is not ready to scale is security because it is the most centralized." Chris Matys, chief analytics officer at Georgian Partners, moderated a panel featuring Damian McCabe, VP of Engineering at Connected Lab; Hesham Fahmy, VP of Technology at ecobee; Inmar Givoni VP of Big Data at Kobo; and Karl Martin, co-founder and CTO of Nymi.