Peter Drucker was prescient about most things, but the computer wasn't one of them. "The computer ... is a moron," the management guru asserted in a McKinsey Quarterly article in 1967, calling the devices that now power our economy and our daily lives "the dumbest tool we have ever had." Drucker was hardly alone in underestimating the unfathomable pace of change in digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI). AI builds on the computational power of vast neural networks sifting through massive digital data sets or "big data" to achieve outcomes analogous, often superior, to those produced by human learning and decision-making. Careers as varied as advertising, financial services, medicine, journalism, agriculture, national defense, environmental sciences, and the creative arts are being transformed by AI.

Machine learning isn't confined to science fiction movie plots anymore; it's fueled the proliferation of technologies that touch our everyday lives, including voice recognition with Siri or Alexa, Facebook auto-tagging photos and recommendations from Amazon and Spotify. And many enterprises are eager to leverage machine learning algorithms to increase the efficiency of their network. In fact, some are already using it to enhance their threat detection and optimize wide area networks. As with any technology, machine learning could wreak havoc on a network if improperly implemented. Before embracing this technology, enterprises should be aware of the ways machine learning can fall flat to avoid setting back their operations and turning the c-suite away from implementing this technology.

'Ex Machina' is nominated for Best Writing – Original Screenplay during the 88th Oscars Nominations Announcement at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The rise of social media and the ubiquity of cell phones has caused some people to bemoan the state of actual human interaction in the 21st century. But anthropologist Rebecca Gibson argues in a new paper in the journal Sexuality & Culture that our obsession with interaction with the digital has a long history -- and an interesting future. Working through the lens of sci-fi, Gibson tracks the evolution of, in particular, the kind of stories that involve human and android romance and sex, delving into them anthropologically to show how these stories illuminate the human condition. First, Gibson explores Phillip K. Dick's character of Rachel in his 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, suggesting that early conceptions of androids focused on whether they themselves knew they were not human, and she situates this within a framework of Freudian psychoanalysis.

Automation and algorithms already play a big role in the media industry. Programmatic advertising, algorithm-operated front pages and machine translation are some of the ways automation has infiltrated the news desk. So-called "robot journalists" are another blooming example of automation in the newsroom. The name is a bit disingenuous, since it's not really a robot, nor really a journalist, but an algorithm. By the use of Natural Language Generation (NLG), the algorithm generates text from a pool of data, and writes the text based on a set of predefined rules and templates.

It's become clear that the algorithms Facebook and Google designed to deliver news to their users have failed. But while fake news is a headache for those tech giants right now, the underlying research question--whether and how machines tell truth from lies on the internet--is one that will persist as long as the world wide web stays an open forum. Facebook and Google's sizable machine learning divisions have created algorithms that effectively surface information that users want to see. But they've been unable to actually understand or vet that info--and in fact, experts across the tech industry say it's unrealistic to expect any AI or machine learning algorithm to do this task well. All our best efforts so far are built on research in natural language processing, which teaches AI to read a piece of text, understand the concepts within, and provide insight about its meaning. "Modern machine learning for natural language processing is able to do things like translate from one language to another, because everything it needs to know is in the sentence its processing," says Ian Goodfellow, a researcher at OpenAI.

The future is here and so are mounting fears about artificial intelligence (AI). A growing concern due to the way that AI is portrayed in movies and TV shows, is that jobs will be replaced by robots. According to presentations at MIT Technology Review's EmTech conference, we shouldn't have anything to worry about. Current robots, with even the most advanced AI capabilities, are not equipped with the hardware or software to be intelligent enough to even maneuver themselves out of a corner. Robots can be programmed to make our lives easier, but they certainly couldn't take over our jobs.

According to the Financial Times, Pablo Picasso once said, "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." Unfortunately for us, computers may now be asking more questions than they answer. As a result, the possibilities are rather overwhelming, with answers more ambiguous and uncertain than straightforward. Similarly, we might ask ourselves where we draw the line when it comes to what we find ethically acceptable in terms of artificial intelligence (AI) as it relates to composition/creation in the worlds of art, writing, performing arts and music--as well as liberal arts education. Most of us are aware of music streaming services that select songs for us based on data about users' listening preferences.

Going into "Trace Decay," the eighth episode of "Westworld," some fans held out hope that Sidse Babett Knudsen's clever performance as the theme-park underboss Theresa Cullen wasn't at an end. Yes, last week, Theresa died--brutally and with lots of blood spatter, and with Anthony Hopkins's Ford smirking from the corner. The killer was her softhearted colleague and former lover, Bernard, who was unmasked as a robotic cup-bearer built by Ford. But in "Futureworld," the 1976 sequel to the original "Westworld" movie, the Delos corporation, bent on world domination, replaced humans with robotic clones. Could Theresa survive, in some form, to scheme another day?

We're 30 years removed from the final episodes of the original Knight Rider, the hit series in which David Hasselhoff was aided in his crime fighting by automotive artificial intelligence assistant, KITT. But that doesn't mean that we're not still clinging on for the perfect in-car AI system -- and thanks to new Kickstarter Dashbot, we may not be waiting too much longer. Heck, it even has the quasi-retro interface working in its favor! Dashbot is a smart AI assistant, designed to be 100 percent voice-controlled so drivers keep their hands on the wheel and, just as importantly, their eyes on the road. Connecting to your smartphone via Bluetooth, it promises to be the on-the-road smart assistant we have been hankering after.

Google Play Music, Google's music streaming service, is getting smarter. On Monday, an update to the Google Play Music app will kick in a new feature that can predict what you want to hear next. In fact, Google is so confident in the app's accuracy, that it completely revamped the welcome screen on Play Music so you can just tap to start listening to a playlist suited for you based on the time, your location, and a variety of other factors. Google says it's able to accomplish this through machine learning, the technology that's starting to power a lot of intelligent services Google makes like Google Photos and the new Google Assistant. It also plays into Google's broader mission to use machine learning and artificial intelligence in all of its products.