It was a striking story. "Machine Bias," the headline read, and the teaser proclaimed: "There's software used across the country to predict future criminals. And it's biased against blacks." ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize–winning nonprofit news organization, had analyzed risk assessment software known as COMPAS. It is being used to forecast which criminals are most likely to reoffend.

Those fretfully debating artificial intelligence (AI) might best start by appraising the half dozen general pathways under exploration in laboratories around the world. While these general approaches overlap, they offer distinct implications for what characteristics emerging, synthetic minds might display, including (for example) whether it will be easy or hard to instill human-style ethical values. Most problematic may be those efforts taking place in secret. The "Moore's Law crossing" argument is appraised, in light of discoveries that brain computation may involve much more than just synapses. Will efforts to develop Sympathetic Robotics tweak compassion from humans long before automatons are truly self-aware? It is argued that most foreseeable problems might be dealt with the same way that human versions of oppression and error are best addressed -- via reciprocal accountability. For this to happen, there should be diversity of types, designs and minds, interacting under fair competition in a generally open environment. As varied concepts from science fiction are reified by rapidly advancing technology, some trends are viewed worriedly by our smartest peers. Portions of the intelligencia -- typified by Google's Ray Kurzweil [1] -- foresee AI, or Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) as likely to bring good news, perhaps even transcendence for members of the Olde Race of bio-organic humanity 1.0. Others, such as Stephen Hawking and Francis Fukuyama, warn that the arrival of sapient, or supersapient machinery may bring an end to our species -- or at least its relevance on the cosmic stage -- a potentiality evoked in many a lurid Hollywood film. Swedish philosopher Nicholas Bostrom, in Superintelligence [2], suggests that even advanced AIs who obey their initial, human defined goals will likely generate "instrumental subgoals" such as self-preservation, cognitive enhancement, and resource acquisition. In one nightmare scenario, Bostrom posits an AI that -- ordered to "make paperclips" -- proceeds to overcome all obstacles and transform the solar system into paper clips. A variant on this theme makes up the grand arc in the famed "three laws" robotic series by science fiction author Isaac Asimov [3]. Taking middle ground, SpaceX/Tesla entrepreneur Elon Musk has joined with YCombinator founder Sam Altman to establish OpenAI [4], an endeavor that aims to keep artificial intelligence research -- and its products -- accountable by maximizing transparency and accountability. As one who has promoted those two key words for a quarter of a century, I wholly approve [5].

In 2014, the term "fake news" hadn't yet become part of the American lexicon and the 2016 U.S. presidential race was only beginning to make headlines. But in California, a man named Jestin Coler was hard at work creating one of the most divisive media trends in modern history. Dubbed the godfather of the fake news industry, Coler's efforts began with publishing fabricated stories -- including an article about Colorado food stamp recipients using welfare benefits to buy marijuana -- that garnered enough traffic to generate tens of thousands of dollars a month in ad revenue. The idea quickly caught on. Competing sites sprang up around the world as other publishers raced to create fake news masterpieces of outrageous, conspiratorial, and highly partisan news ahead of the election.

For die-hard fans of the Syfy drama "Battlestar Galactica," the closing night reunion panel at the ATX Television Festival was a treat-filled trip down memory lane. Seven key cast members -- Edward James Olmos (Admiral Adama), Mary McDonnell (President Laura Roslin), Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck), James Callis (Gaius Baltar), Tricia Helfer (Number Six), Grace Park (Boomer/Number Eight) and Michael Trucco (Sam Anders) -- and executive producer Ronald D. Moore came together to celebrate the groundbreaking series that was as much post-9/11 allegory as it was grand space adventure. The "BSG" gang still clearly enjoy each other's company and had both the audience and each other cracking up throughout the nearly two-hour Q&A session at Austin's Paramount Theatre. From awkward sex scenes (Callis and Helfer) to uncontrollable giggles (McDonnell and Sackhoff) to Olmos's Adama-like leadership qualities, the cast mates and Moore fondly recalled funny and touching moments from their time on the series, which ran from 2004 to 2009. Callis recalled a scene in which he fell and hit his head requiring a trip to an emergency room.

It's hard to talk about EA's multiplayer Star Wars shooter without accidentally stumbling over your words and mentioning the company's other large-scale war series: Battlefield. Long before Disney gave Electronic Arts the exclusive rights to create Star Wars video games, the Battlefront series was taking notes from DICE's own shooter -- draping science fiction trappings over the WWII game's vehicle combat, large battlefields and even its name. When EA took over the franchise its own game inspired, however, the resulting game was accused of being gorgeous, but shallow. Fortunately, the company seems to have heard player complaints. According to Star Wars Battlefront II executive producer Matt Webster, the next game in the series could play like a more accessible, but still sufficiently deep Battlefield title. Hints of this were all over the game's E3 reveal: a revamped multiplayer mode with character classes, a point-based progression system and, perhaps most importantly, the promise that all online DLC would be free.

Virtual or smart assistants, AI, or whatever you want to call them, these services have taken off in a big way this year, with virtually every new flagship smartphone touting their inclusion. We have universal players in Alexa and Google Assistant, and smaller propriety options from the likes of Samsung, HTC, and now even Andy Rubin's new Essential Phone. Better search results, personalized responses, and contextual information right at your fingertips. Not to mention that interacting with voice is a faster, more convenient, and a more human way to ask questions and be told certain pieces of information. Certainly, smart assistants have their uses and I'm sure that they're going to be a helpful tool for many.

If there's one thing you can count on when you see a Tom Cruise franchise action movie, it's the look on his face. It is cool and poised, sleek and alert; it's all dashing resolve. But during "The Mummy," I kept looking at Cruise and having a strange sensation, which is that the emotion those familiar features seemed to be radiating was, in a word, confusion. Throughout the movie, he looked a little slack and a little blank, a little what-the-heck-is-going-on? It could, theoretically, have been an element of Cruise's performance. His character, a tomb raider named Nick Morton, gets invaded by the spirit of an Egyptian mummy; his soul then becomes a battleground between good and evil (at least, that's the idea).

Katy Perry is sharing everything with her fans. The 32-year-old singer opened up about past suicidal thoughts during a live streamed therapy session to promote her new album, Witness, on Friday. WATCH: Katy Perry Previews New Album'Witness,' Goes Live on YouTube in'Big Brother'-Style House During a meeting with Siri Sat Nam Singh, a licensed therapist who appears on Viceland's The Therapist, Perry revealed that her 2013 song, "By the Grace of God," was inspired by her former thoughts of suicide. "I feel ashamed that I would have those thoughts, feel that low and that depressed," she said, adding that the song was written "because I do believe in something much bigger than me and I call that god for me." "You can be right or you can be loved," she added.

Apple launched the next iteration of its MacOS – High Sierra at the World Wide Developers Conference Monday. While the company did introduce the OS at the event, many of its features weren't revealed at the event. Apple's MacBooks are displayed following an Apple event in San Francisco, March 9, 2015. Siri integration in iTunes: Prior to MacOS High Sierra, Siri only used to search through iTunes, but did not offer integrative features. Siri is now more deeply integrated into the operating system and will actually let you give it some more complex commands which would require artificial intelligence to function -- for example, you could ask the voice assistant to play "rock music," and it will actually sort through your iTunes library and find music that belongs to the rock genre.

In the fall of 2016, a pop song was released in Japan. "Daddy's Car," derivative of a Beatles tune, had a soothing beat and vaguely uplifting lyrics: "Good day sunshine in the backseat car / I wish that road could never stop." The ditty was distinctive for its authorship. Sony's Computer Science Laboratories in Paris produced the song, which was written by an artificial intelligence (AI) system called Flow Machines. The melody and harmony were composed by AI, and a human musician mixed the sound and wrote lyrics for the track. AI -- the new set of technologies that perform tasks that require human intelligence, such as speech recognition, decision making, and learning -- is rapidly working its way into business operations within many global industries. Some members of the entertainment and media (E&M) industry have downplayed its potential. After all, these are creative industries in which both the germ of the business and the value added to it stem from the contribution of human ingenuity and people exchanging ideas. The most successful E&M products and services rely on connecting creative content, brands, and experiences with audiences.