Many experts believe that artificial intelligence (AI) might lead to the end of the world--just not in the way that Hollywood films would have us believe. Movie plots, for example, feature robots increasing in intelligence until they take over the human race. The reality is far less dramatic, but may cause some incredible cultural shifts nonetheless. Last year, industry leaders like Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Bill Gates wrote a letter to the International Joint Conference in Argentina stating that the successful adoption of AI might be one of humankind's biggest achievements--and maybe its last. They noted that AI poses unique ethical dilemmas, which--if not considered carefully--could prove more dangerous than nuclear capabilities.

This summer, the Google X lab launched a balloon into the stratosphere over Peru, and it stayed there for 98 days. Launching balloons into the stratosphere is a usual thing for the Google X lab--or just X, as it's now called after spinning off from Google and nestling under the new umbrella called Alphabet. X is home to Project Loon, an effort to beam the Internet from the stratosphere down to people here on Earth. The hope is that these balloons can fly over areas of the globe where the Internet is otherwise unavailable and stay there long enough to provide people with a reliable connection. But there's a problem: balloons tend to float away.

The first thing that happened when I downloaded Allo, only a few seconds after I had given Google's new messaging app my phone number and snapped a selfie for my profile pic, is I got a cheery message from a new friend. "Hi David Pierce!" it said, in white letters on a blue bubbly background. Then another message, because my new Google Assistant evidently understands that you should never send a single text with more than two sentences, because what is this, Dostoevsky? "I can help you find what you need and get things done," it read. One more message about using my location, and then a little white bubble pops up on my side of the conversation: "OK, go on," it said. So I tapped it, the button turned the aqua color of my sent messages, and Google and I were off and running.

Some customer questions are pretty simple to answer, and many businesses strive to do so with FAQ documents on their websites. The idea is to keep service agents free to handle more complicated queries. The reality is that unless an inquiring customer knows exactly what phrases or "keywords" to search for, it might be tough to find the information they need. Artificial intelligence software firm Inbenta this week raised another 12 million to develop a solution to that shortcoming--in the form of software that translates customer questions into terms that a site's search algorithms should find it easier to understand. For example, if someone types "Can I bring my Doberman to this hotel?" Inbenta's software "knows" that person might be interested in the company's policies regarding domestic animals.

It starts without warning--or rather, the warnings are there, but your ability to detect them exists only in hindsight. First you're sitting in the car with your son, then he tells you: "I cannot find my old self again." You think, well, teenagers say dramatic stuff like this all the time. Then he's refusing to do his homework, he's writing suicidal messages on the wall in black magic marker, he's trying to cut himself with a razor blade. You sit down with him; you two have a long talk. A week later, he runs home from a nighttime gathering at his friend's apartment, he's bursting through the front door, shouting about how his friends are trying to kill him. He spends the night crouching in his mother's old room, clutching a stuffed animal to his chest. He's 17 years old at this point, and you are his father, Dick Russell, a traveler, a former staff reporter for Sports Illustrated, but a father first and foremost.

ON JUNE 1st 2009, an Air France airliner travelling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris flew into a mid-Atlantic storm. Ice began forming in the sensors used by the aircraft to measure its airspeed, depriving the autopilot of that vital data. So, by design, the machine switched itself off and ceded control to the pilots. Without knowing their speed, and with no horizon visible in a storm in the dead of night, the crew struggled to cope. Against all their training, they kept the plane's nose pointed upward, forcing it to lose speed and lift.

The first thing that might come to mind thinking of drones is their military application. Unmanned flying weaponry, however, is not a new approach. In the 1860s, balloons loaded with explosives and sent with the prevailing winds towards enemy targets, were used as the first drones. Today, they have become such an innovative technology that its use has extended to the civilian and commercial sector, becoming a part of our everyday life. Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) or by the public referred as drones, have the potential to solve problems, improve safety and save costs across a number of industries, throughout the developing world and in disaster relief scenarios.

Ford Motor Co. is shifting all of its North American small-car production to Mexico, Chief Executive Mark Fields said Wednesday. "Over the next two to three years, we will have migrated all of our small-car production to Mexico and out of the United States," Fields said. Ford currently makes its Fiesta subcompact in Mexico, but its Focus and C-Max small cars are made in suburban Detroit. Making them in Mexico would boost company profits because of low wages there. The company is building a 1.6-billion assembly plant in San Luis Potosi, Mexico.

Inbenta, a San Mateo, CA-based enterprise-grade artificial intelligence solutions, raised 12m in Series B funding. The round was led by Level Equity, with participation from Amasia and Scale Capital through its Amérigo Chile fund. In conjunction with the funding, founder and partner George McCulloch and Amasia chairman Ramanan Raghavendran joined Inbenta's board of directors. The company intends to use the funds to expand sales and marketing, and to further drive product development for its technology. Founded in 2005 by Jordi Torras, CEO, Inbenta has developed natural language processing (NLP) technology that powers search, chatbots, and self-service solutions for customer support and e-commerce.

"Inbenta was founded in 2005 with a vision of leveraging artificial intelligence in an entirely new manner to transform how companies and customers interact," said Jordi Torras, founder and CEO, Inbenta. "That vision has been realized, and now Inbenta is in a period of dramatic and profitable growth including global expansion into 23 countries and support for over 20 languages. This Series B financing will help bring our technology to a much larger group of demanding customers who need enterprise-grade solutions, and to further drive the innovation that underpins our technology." The funding will be used to expand sales and marketing, and to further drive product development for Inbenta's industry-leading natural language processing (NLP) technology that powers search, chatbots, and self-service solutions for customer support and e-commerce. Inbenta's products are now used by over 200 customers around the world, including Ticketmaster, B&H, CA Technologies and 8x8 to enhance customer engagement, increase retention, and drive sales.