This article argues that AI technologies will make image, audio, and video forgeries much easier in the future. Combined, the trajectory of cheap, high-quality media forgeries is worrying. At the current pace of progress, it may be as little as two or three years before realistic audio forgeries are good enough to fool the untrained ear, and only five or 10 years before forgeries can fool at least some types of forensic analysis. When tools for producing fake video perform at higher quality than today's CGI and are simultaneously available to untrained amateurs, these forgeries might comprise a large part of the information ecosystem. The growth in this technology will transform the meaning of evidence and truth in domains across journalism, government communications, testimony in criminal justice, and, of course, national security.

Choosing „The Inevitable" as a title for one's book makes a clear statement: I am in a position to declare the future. I don't bother if I am right or wrong. Kevin Kelly has done it before: "Author of What Technology Wants" is displayed proudly on the book's cover. Kelly has a known track record as a technology evangelist. He has been editor famous of the Californian counterculture's catalogue Whole Earth Review, co-sponsor of the first Hackers Conference and executive editor at Wired Magazine. The Inevitable makes a big promise: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that Shape Our Future. Cool trick: Every review of the book will surely spend the maximum allowed number of characters just to sum up these twelve forces! As a matter fact, the book has received much attention, but hardly any criticism. Although the book is listed as a "New York Times Bestseller" and is among the Top Ten in Amazon's Business Processes and Infrastructure-section, no solid review is to be found via Google – only interviews with the author, which basically function like advertisement. The impression of a Silicon Valley conspiracy is hard to resist. To be fair: In the opening chapter, where Kelly sets the tone, everything is done to avoid the impression that The Inevitable will just present random guesses at the future. The basic concept is this: There are some technical developments which are inevitable. But within the areas defined by these cornerstones, many options are possible. That sooner or later someone just must have come up with the invention of the telephone is, according to Kelly, inevitable. The i-phone, on the other hand, is not inevitable. The car was inevitable – the SUV is not. One might argue about the specific examples. But that there are some inventions which, in the history of a civilization such as ours, are very likely to happen is per se an appealing thought. A second element of inevitability is process. Once installed, a process will run by itself. If successful, it will be replicated. Kelly's example for this is the scientific method. "This methodical process of constant change and improvement was a million times better than inventing any particular product, because the process generated a million new products over the centuries since we invented it." Again: One might argue if something like the scientific method exists and if it does exist, it will really breed products. But as a general approach, looking for processes in order to detect inevitabilities seems promising. Some parts of the book indeed follow this line. In these parts, Kelly shows us how to think about the future in an interesting and inspiring way – without making predictions. "You'll simply plug into the grid and get AI as if it was electricity.

In 2012, there was an air of innocence when I took over as the Readers' Editor of this newspaper. Terms such as'accuracy', 'fairness', 'authentic sources', and'verification', and C.P. Scott's dictum "Comment is free, but facts are sacred" did possess a striking potential to keep journalism on the straight and narrow path. Algorithm was a part of mathematics and technology and it had hardly revealed its stranglehold on the information ecology. Artificial intelligence was a footnote. Albert Einstein's wry remark, "Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity," was invoked sometimes to prove a point.

A Kiwi company developing artificial intelligence has delivered its latest digital human, called Rachel. Rachel can see, hear and respond to you. She is an avatar created by two-time Oscar winner Mark Sagar, who worked on the blockbuster movie of the same name. Mr Sagar, of Auckland-based company Soul Machines, says his aim is to make man socialise with machine, by putting a human face on artificial intelligence. "So what we are doing with Soul Machines is trying to build the central nervous system for humanising this kind of computer," he says.

Please invite your friends and colleagues to join the conversation and let me know what you think, and what we're missing. Just reply to this email, or email steve@axios.com. Let's dive right in with a question: 1 big idea: Could robots make us even more polarized? Sam Jayne / Axios Over the last decade or so, we've seen ordinarily apolitical topics polarize us into angry opposing mobs, among them vaccines, atmospheric gases and Russia. When there has been a super-strong view one way or another, it's been sucked into the hothouse and associated with an ideology.

It is no doubt that the sub-field of machine learning / artificial intelligence has increasingly gained more popularity in the past couple of years. As Big Data is the hottest trend in the tech industry at the moment, machine learning is incredibly powerful to make predictions or calculated suggestions based on large amounts of data. Some of the most common examples of machine learning are Netflix's algorithms to make movie suggestions based on movies you have watched in the past or Amazon's algorithms that recommend books based on books you have bought before. So if you want to learn more about machine learning, how do you start? For me, my first introduction is when I took an Artificial Intelligence class when I was studying abroad in Copenhagen.

It would be a lot appreciated and helpful if you take 5mn of your time fulfilling this survey. Even though I'm a business student, I have some strong interests in Sciences and moreover Innovation. Lately, I have been like some of you really impressed by some technological achievements in transportation made by Google, Tesla or Uber... just to name a few. Having also some interests in the automobile sector I couldn't not try to imagine what the future will look like with the change to come, so I tried to put my vision through this work. With your help, this survey will help me to have a better understanding of the question.

Worse still, AI is not yet fully democratized and has remained largely the bastion of major tech companies. As it stands now, the vast majority of AI is being developed within the enormous black hole of a few major technology companies. The problems they are tackling, even if real and worthwhile, address just a tiny portion of AI's potential to impact the tech industry and the overall economy, not to mention humanity as a whole. These companies' control of the vast majority of talent, data, and other resources necessary to develop life-changing technologies is bad for any number of stakeholders who would otherwise stand to benefit from AI.

Q: I looked up my name at a people search site. Wow! Anyone can see my age, where I live, names of my relatives and more, for free! Can I remove these very personal details? A: I'm glad you searched for yourself, and I wish more people would. Many people are shocked to learn how much is freely exposed online: name, age, current address, past addresses, voting records, criminal history and so on. It's almost impossible to delete yourself from the internet completely, but you can easily crack down on these people search databases, no lawyer required.