Notes from Reality is a series of posts on AI and its impact on humans, what can be done today, and what may happen tomorrow. No one has all the answers, but we are trying to arrive at the right questions. In this post, I interviewed Dr. David Bray, Harvard Executive In-Residence and Eisenhower Fellow. This effort began with the post "Let the New Machine Age Begin." The process to write that led to another interview with Dr. Bray and Michael Krigsman, a noted analyst, which is posted here.

When you talk to an AI chatbot, who do you think writes those professional, peppy responses? There's certainly an algorithm behind the scenes, but humans put together those phrases. Tech companies are creating teams of writers, including playwrights, poets, and novelists, to help write lines that don't sound like they came from a machine. The work can range from creating a consistent character for a chatbot, to inspiring an immersive virtual reality. Jonathan Foster, manager for Cortana's editorial team at Microsoft, heads a team of 22 writers around the world who help give Cortana, Microsoft's personal assistant, a consistent voice.

Ridley Scott is returning to his "Alien" franchise, but don't fret, the first clip from the new feature film "Alien: Covenant" leaves "Prometheus" far behind. The first clip from the latest installment in the long-running franchise brings back Michael Fassbender as (what we're presuming) is David the android (but now with the new name "Walter"). However, everyone else in this "Prologue" titled clip appears to be brand new to the horror series. Big names like James Franco, Danny McBride, Billy Crudup and Katherine Waterston have all signed aboard to be a member of Scott's new (and presumably doomed) crew. But despite the new faces, the clip itself feels much more reminiscent of the 1979 original film, "Alien."

With the rise of email came the rise of spam filling inboxes. Email has become sophisticated faster than spamming technology and now, the internet's junk mail is often caught in a folder; out of sight and out of mind are messages with the subject line "Kindly get back to me urgently" and the greeting "Dear Beneficiary." There's good news for anybody who sees fake news -- not the sort that's simply true but politically difficult for the president; but actual, fake, conspiracy theory-baiting chum -- as another form of spam. At least that's what Dean Pomerleau, research scientist at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, said recently during a panel in New York on the proliferation of fake news. We solved the spam problem using artificial intelligence, he argued, and with A.I., we can solve the problem of fake news by filtering out credible news from the misinformation.

A week hasn't even passed since the inauguration, but television news is saturated with the flurry of activity from President Donald Trump's administration. Trump, via Twitter, promised to launch an investigation into illegal voting and threatened to "send in the Feds" if Chicago police can't fix the "carnage." And that was just between Tuesday and Wednesday. This heightened scrutiny compelled the Internet Archive, a repository of everything posted on the web, to launch its Trump Archive in early January. You, perhaps, digitally time-traveled with the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, or checked out free books, movies and software. The Trump Archive, which draws content from The Internet Archive's TV News Archive, includes more than 520 hours of televised Trump speeches, interviews, debates and other broadcasts tracing back to 2009.

Artificial intelligence ( AI) is the latest buzz word of the tech industry, with smart algorithms powering your personal assistants and recommending which TV shows to binge on next. And now, AI is getting ready to make music: Brisbane, Australia-based digital music startup Popgun wants to use machine learning to figure out which music is trending on services like Apple Music and Spotify - and then train algorithms to write songs that the users of these services may also like. Popgun is just one of eleven music startups that are part of the inaugural Techstars Music class, a new program run by tech incubator Techstars that gives participating companies $120,000 launch capital as well as a three-month incubation program hosted in Los Angeles. Others include Hurdl, a Nashville-based startup that wants to incorporate wireless LED bracelets into live concerts; Jaak, a London-based startup that is building a rights management system based on the same technology as the crypto-currency Bitcoin; Weav, a new York-based company that is developing generative music for fitness studios that's timed to your heartbeat; and Pippa, a New York-based startup that is working on dynamic ad insertion for podcasts. Techstars Music is being led by Bob "Moz" Moczydlowsky, who previously headed Twitter's music efforts.

Fashion photography is a time-consuming process, to put it mildly. The constant adjustments to angles and lighting can take ages, and that's not including formatting your photos for different media outlets. StyleShoots might just have the problem licked, though. It's launching Live, a robotic photo studio that theoretically eliminates the need for a camera crew. The intelligent machine combines a depth sensor, lighting rig and camera (a Canon 1DX Mark II) to capture photos and videos using simple instructions on an iPad -- the stylist just has to decide on the intended results while models go through poses.

What comes to mind when you think of a door-to-door salesman? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that terms like "phony" or "artificial" come to mind. The words phony and artificial probably aren't on your radar when a movie or product suggestion pops up on your phone or computer, right? As consumers, we generally trust that these accounts, curated with information about us, are actually fairly well qualified to make recommendations and influence our media consumption and purchasing decisions. Netflix and Amazon recommendations are one of the most basic examples of the use of artificial intelligence (aka machine learning) in marketing.

We're just a couple of months into 2017, and you may already be sick of hearing about the latest overhyped marketing trend: artificial intelligence (AI). Before you sigh and think, "Really, another one?" AI can mean a lot of things, from self-driving cars to Siri and Spotify. But basically, AI is really about taking basic tasks that humans do and automating them. And since there are a lot of hands-on processes in B2B marketing, there's a big opportunity for AI to make an impact.

They give new tools to the powerful and their challengers. In the Syrian city of Aleppo, the struggle to frame the conflict for the international community ran parallel to the battle for control over the land itself. While drone footage from Russia Today showed videos of rebel-held and heavily-bombed eastern Aleppo, Syria's Ministry of Tourism published footage of the city's intact western half, complete with the soundtrack from HBO's hit show Game of Thrones. Life with the regime was normal. Life with the rebels was hell.