HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do. That classic exchange between HAL 9000 and Dave Bowman in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey is what I used to think of when I heard the term artificial intelligence. Recently, CIO.com senior writer Thor Olavsrud reported on a real-world example of artificial intelligence getting the better of humans -- one that has far-reaching implications here on earth. Now when I think about AI, I think about poker. Carnegie Mellon University's Libratus AI beating four world-class Texas hold'em players at their own game may not give you the same chills as HAL refusing to open the pod bay doors, but the win was big news for science, IT and business.

Since the 2016 presidential election, one topic dominating political discourse is the issue of "Fake News". A number of political pundits claim that the rise of significantly biased and/or untrue news influenced the election, though a study by researchers from Stanford and New York University concluded otherwise. Nonetheless, fake news posts have exploited Facebook users' feeds to propagate throughout the internet. Obviously, a deliberately misleading story is "fake news" but lately blathering social media discourse, is changing its definition. Some now use the term to dismiss facts counter to their preferred viewpoints, the most prominent example being President Trump.

Amazon's voice assistant has finally arrived on British television screens, with the latest edition of its Fire TV stick. The £40 ($50) device transforms any TV screen into a streaming service and it will now come with Alexa - the female helper from Amazon Echo - as standard. Upgraded hardware will let new viewers quickly search for content and rewind programmes using only their voice, while software updates mean owners of previous versions can also get in on the act. Amazon has released a new version of its bestselling Fire TV streaming stick which comes with voice assistant Alexa built in. The new Fire TV Stick has been completely redesigned, with a quad-core processor and faster Wi-Fi.

Google Home owners beware: Burger King is plotting to hijack your smart speakers with its latest advertising campaign. The 15-second TV ad ends with a Burger King employee asking: 'OK Google - what is The Whopper burger?' - a phrase designed to cause the device to reel off facts about the popular patty. Even those without device won't necessarily escape: Burger King president José Cil told Buzzfeed it'could trigger' other devices too, including Android cell phones - leaving many on Twitter unimpressed. Both the Google Home speakers and those cell phones that have the Google app's voice-activated function active are constantly listening for the phrase'OK Google'. That's a signal for the machine to treat whatever is said next as either a command - the speaker can be used to dim a home's lights, for example - or a search query.

Today's "marketing stack" really consists of three individual layers. Data management contains all of the "pipes" used to connect people and identity together; orchestration ties all the execution systems together to reach customers at the right time and channel; and AI is the brains behind the stack. This technology layer cake was presented at this year's Industry Preview by Brian Anderson of LUMA Partners who talked about the future of marketing technology. Anderson's unifying marketechture drawings looked like an amalgamation of various whiteboarding sessions I have had recently with big enterprise marketers, many of whom are building the components of their marketing "stacks." Marketers are feverishly working to build a vision that can be summed up like the image below.

FILE - In this June 22, 2016, file photo, a drone aircraft with a payload of simulated blood flies during a ship-to-shore delivery simulation in Lower Township, N.J. With the number of commercial drones expected to soar into the millions in the next few years, it spells an opportunity for budding drone mechanics to make a good living without spending a lot of time on training. A community college in northwestern Minnesota that has been teaching unmanned aircraft maintenance for larger military-type drones is expanding its program to include smaller drone repair.

Yasuo Kuniyoshi is a man with an extraordinary plan. Kuniyoshi, a professor at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, has been attempting to produce an utterly convincing artificial being for the past 30 years. "A robot," he says, "that has developed the real ability to understand correctly what people are saying, and is able to converse and interact with them naturally, just as humans do with each other, based on its own experiences and bodily sensations." I've been thinking about Kuniyoshi's work since seeing the recent Hollywood remake of "Ghost in the Shell." The original anime from 1995 was hugely influential and, together with "Akira" and "Spirited Away," is one of the most well-known Japanese animes in the West.

If you own an Amazon Echo, you probably know its strange secret: The device records a lot of what you say. Deep inside that dark tower, Echo keeps a vast trove of recordings. Your friends' voices are preserved. Anyone who has ever been to your house and said, "Alexa!" On the upside, this amazing technology puts instant information a voice command away.

Astrophysics and cosmology are rich with data. The advent of wide-area digital cameras on large aperture telescopes has led to ever more ambitious surveys of the sky. Data volumes of entire surveys a decade ago can now be acquired in a single night and real-time analysis is often desired. Thus, modern astronomy requires big data know-how, in particular it demands highly efficient machine learning and image analysis algorithms. But scalability is not the only challenge: Astronomy applications touch several current machine learning research questions, such as learning from biased data and dealing with label and measurement noise. We argue that this makes astronomy a great domain for computer science research, as it pushes the boundaries of data analysis. In the following, we will present this exciting application area for data scientists. We will focus on exemplary results, discuss main challenges, and highlight some recent methodological advancements in machine learning and image analysis triggered by astronomical applications.

Computers can now tell you if the profile picture you use on social media sites or your online dating profile is making the right first impression. Scientists have developed an algorithm that uses artificial intelligence to predict what kind of first impression you will make on other people based on your photograph. The technology could prove useful for ensuring your appearance sends the right signal to prospective employers when going for an interview or what message your Facebook profile picture sends about you. The AI showed that Benedict Cumberbatch was a good choice to play Julian Assange in the Fifth Estate (top). Similarly Joseph Gordon Levitt was rated as a good match to play Edward Snowdon in the film Snowden (bottom).