We offer an opportunity for companies and individuals working on interesting problems in AI to introduce their work to the community through the IAMA. Please contact /u/dejormo for more information. We would love to hear from you!

The past 3 years have revealed troubling predictions about AI from very concerned smart people. Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking collaborated with 1,000 AI experts back in January to produce an open letter emphasizing the'potential pitfalls' of building'superhuman' artificial intelligence. Hollywood productions also fanned the fires of anxiety. From Ex Machina to Avengers: Age of Ultron, box-office hits played on the thread of AI with bad intent and robots challenging man. But, while headlines from the media and science fiction movies binged on this catastrophic theme, businesses developing AI pressed on to silently and dramatically, disrupt the business topography.

People get up to weird things in New Zealand. At the University of Auckland, if you want to run hours upon hours of experiments on a baby trapped in a high chair, that's cool. You can even have a conversation with her surprisingly chatty disembodied head. BabyX, the virtual creation of Mark Sagar and his researchers, looks impossibly real. The child, a 3D digital rendering based on images of Sagar's daughter at 18 months, has rosy cheeks, warm eyes, a full head of blond hair, and a soft, sweet voice. When I visited the computer scientist's lab last year, BabyX was stuck inside a computer but could still see me sitting in front of the screen with her "father." To get her attention, we'd call out, "Hi, baby. Look at me, baby," and wave our hands. When her gaze locked onto our faces, we'd hold up a book filled with words (such as "apple" or "ball") and pictures (sheep, clocks), then ask BabyX to read the words and identify the objects.

Like me, I'm sure that many of you nerds have read the book "I, Robot." "I, Robot" is the seminal book written by Isaac Asimov (actually it was a series of books, but I only read the one) that explores the moral and ethical challenges posed by a world dominated by robots. But I read that book like 50 years ago, so the movie "I, Robot" with Will Smith is actually more relevant to me today. The movie does a nice job of discussing the ethical and moral challenges associated with a society where robots play such a dominant and crucial role in everyday life. Both the book and the movie revolve around the "Three Laws of Robotics," which are: It's like the "3 Commandments" of being a robot; adhere to these three laws and everything will be just fine. Unfortunately, that turned out not to be true (if 10 commandments can not effectively govern humans, how do we expect just 3 to govern robots?).

Amazon has already filled millions of homes with the Alexa assistant through its suite of smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and Amazon Echo Dot (available from Amazon). Now, after years of waiting, Amazon has finally announced multi-room audio support. In layman's terms, that means users can synchronize their music across their Echo, Dot, and Echo Show. Right now, you'll be able to sync audio from Amazon Music, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, and Pandora. If you're like me and use Spotify, support for that and Sirius XM is supposedly coming soon.

Everything we experience is filtered through thick veils of of personal baggage, self-interest and delusion, constantly skewing the world into the most comforting state possible. Universes of fragile concepts stand between what you think happened and what actually happened. It's an interactive crime drama that allows the audience to shift perspectives among three characters at will, telling a single story from disparate points of view. In the free online prototype, viewers press A, S or D on the keyboard to instantly swap perspectives among a babysitter, a father and a man intent on robbing their house. Otis doesn't pause when the perspective changes; the story carries on for all three characters.

This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a buyer's guide to the best technology. When readers choose to buy The Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. The best media streaming device for most people is the updated Roku Streaming Stick. It's as fast to use as any streamer available and has a wider selection of apps than others offer. And unlike its main competitors, Roku doesn't try to sell content from its own store; rather than prioritizing one streaming service over another within its interface, it lets you customize what it displays to suit your preferences.

Oaxaca, Mexico - The small village of San Pedro Sochiapam, deep in the mountainous region of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, is home to the Chinantec people. Here steep footpaths end at chicken coops and cornfields grow on mountainsides, while the villagers clear brush with machetes and children enjoy ice-cream cones from a stall near the town hall. But, in its day to day routines of life, this community is struggling to maintain a unique and important cultural tradition - whistling. "Chinantec whistled speech is a form of communication where people can really whistle whatever they can say in the spoken language, even though there's more ambiguity in the whistled channel," explains Mark Sicoli, a linguistics professor at the University of Virginia, noting that the presence and absence of glottal stops, tones, and stress patterns make it a particularly productive form of communication. The sounds carry across canyons better than a shout in sharp, birdlike chirps that allow people to make plans, negotiate, and chat without ever saying a word.

If your aging iPhone is too old or damaged to trade in for whatever you think it's worth, here's some good news: As long as it can still connect to a wireless network--and every iPhone from the original 2007 model to today's iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus still can--there are plenty of ways to use it that don't require a cellular data plan. Here are TIME's picks for the smartest ways to get the most out of an old Apple smartphone. You can use your iPhone as a dedicated music player either by streaming songs from a service like Spotify when connected to Wi-Fi, or by downloading tunes straight to the device. This can be handy in any number of scenarios, especially if you want to listen to music without draining your primary phone's battery, say during a lengthy commute. You don't need to buy an Amazon Echo or Google Home to retrieve information without reaching for your phone.

Join us for Third Rail With OZY, a terrific new TV show presented by OZY and WGBH, to debate provocative hot topics with experts and celebrities every Friday night. The subject of this week's show -- "Is the Truth Overrated? Is Lying the American Way?" -- features special guests Malcolm Gladwell, Roxane Gay, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz and Seth Weathers. Tune in tonight at 8:30/7:30c on PBS, or online, and please be sure to weigh in on social media (#ThirdRailPBS) and/or email us at thirdrail@ozy.com with your take! Think your friend looks fat in that dress but don't want to tell her? It's unlikely she'll know you're faking that supportive smile.