Speculating what will cause our ultimate demise has been the stuff of science fiction for years--if it's not aliens wiping out the human race, it's probably robots. This is a proven trope that keeps moviegoers flocking to the likes of Independence Day, Ender's Game, The Terminator, or The Matrix. To deviate from the norm takes a little extra work, but one way directors can suggest a different route is with a short format proof-of-concept sales pitch. Created with nearly 40,000 in Kickstarter funding, "Rise" is a short film aspiring to feature length. Its central theme is to Terminator what District 9 was to Independence Day.

Actor and writer Wil Wheaton wants to "add an A to the STEM acronym and make it STEAM." He'll be speaking at the USA Science and Engineering Festival April 16-17 in Washington about why he thinks the arts should be represented in the acronym commonly used when referring to the science, technology, engineering and math fields. Wheaton, 43, best known for his role as Wesley Crusher on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" in the 1980s and '90s and more recently as a fictionalized version of himself on "The Big Bang Theory," says that he has always been fascinated by science and technology, and has made it a goal of his to ensure that kids get the encouragement they need to pursue those fields. Wheaton spoke with U.S. News by phone about why he got involved in the festival, how science fiction and fact have shaped his life and career and why he thinks it should be "science, technology, engineering, arts and math." How did you get involved with the USA Science and Engineering Festival?

Will 2016 go down in history as the year we failed to heed the warning about artificial intelligence overthrowing humanity one stone at a time, because we were distracted by swapping faces with our friends, our pets or nearby breasts? Face-swapping apps aren't actually new – several have been around since 2013 – but they have become this year's mobile craze, in a lineage that includes Draw Something, Dubsmash, Flappy Bird, FatBooth and (in the earliest days of Apple's App Store) virtual pint-drinking and lightsaber apps. The craze may only last as long as it takes for the next novelty app genre to emerge, but in the meantime, here are five apps for giving face-swapping a go. App crazes may come and go, but tech startups shunning vowels is a trend that will never die. Masquerade) made headlines this month when it was acquired by Facebook less than three months after launching.

Risk Group, an independent and integrated strategic risk research organization, is happy to announce the launch of Risk Roundup, an integrated strategic risk dialogue facing nations: its government, industries, organizations and academia (NGIOA) in cyberspace, geospace and space (CGS). Nations currently stand on the verge of the most transformative period in all of human history. As Information Technology, Genetics, Nanotechnology, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence merge and converge to make the once impossible imagination, possible, it is not only human and machine intelligence that will merge and create unthinkable possibilities: The likes of Molecular manufacturing will bring earth shattering potential to build virtually any physical item quickly and inexpensively directly from pure information. The pace of technological change coming our way will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life, its expectations and experiences, will be irreversibly transformed. It will also change the whole global dynamics, security and power structure.

Favourite ... Jon Snow was killed in the season finale of Game of Thrones. SIRI is great at finding directions -- maybe even to Westeros. It turns out your Apple gadget's artificial intelligence is a Game of Thrones super fan and will happily answer all your questions about the gory fantasy series. Your iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch will even come up with different responses if you ask the same question twice. If you ask, "Is Jon Snow dead?" in a reference to the show's season cliffhanger, Siri might reply: "Well, you know what they say to Death ... But why would tomorrow be any better? Puppy love ... Jon Snow finds Ghost as a pup in Game of Thrones. Or, as Scandal actress Kerry Washington showed on Twitter, Siri might respond with a reference to Snow's canine companion. I just hope someone is setting up doggie daycare for Ghost."

We've long been fascinated with the idea of smart robots that serve human society. Think about Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot" short stories, Robby in the film "Forbidden Plant," and R2D2 or BB8 in "Star Wars." In these works, robots have some significant advantages over people. They are highly intelligent without being ruled by emotions. They act according to logical if-then processes.

In fact, some of Weizenbaum's colleagues and students exhibited very strong emotional connections to the program. As the preceding passage suggests, Weizenbaum discovered something disturbing: people approached the bot as if it were a real, intelligent entity who was genuinely interested in their condition -- even when they knew that it was a computer program. This condition is now referred to as the "Eliza Effect", and although the behaviour of its sufferers isn't always as extreme as the case above (alone time with robots is not consistently requested), it propelled Weizenbaum to become a staunch critic of AI. The Eliza Effect is a prime example of how an object, in this case a typewriter, can form a visceral connection with just a few rudimentary human elements. All it took to elevate a keyboard and screen to a human level was a basic conversational program.

You may have heard that "conversational interfaces" are the new hotness in digital product design. Why open and close a bunch of apps on your phone to get stuff done when you can invoke a text-message-like window and just say what you want done to a chatbot? Well, here's one reason: what if the bot is annoying or tedious to talk to? In conversational UIs, personality is the new UX. "We want people to enjoy dealing with our software, but now we have a very limited palette with which to design the experience," says Ben Brown, co-founder of Howdy, a "digital coworker" chatbot that runs within the office communication tool Slack and automates things like project-status meetings and taking lunch orders.

If you think chatbots are hot right now -- being used in psychotherapy, turning into racist trolls, and presenting an existential threat to Apple -- just wait until they turn into full-fledged personal assistants. In five years time, digital personal assistants will even more important than your smartphone, says University of Washington computer scientist Pedro Domingos, author of "The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World." "What you have right now on your smartphone is dozens of apps," Domingos tells Tech Insider, "with each app doing it's own thing." On any given Friday night, you use one app to find a restaurant, another to buy a movie ticket, another to figure out how to get to where you're going, and another to find a date to take out with you. "It's incredibly annoying," he says, since the apps "don't talk to each other and you have to learn all these different interfaces."

IBM Corp. is rolling out two new TV ads during the U.S. Open this week to showcase its cognitive computing system Watson. The spots feature startups that are using the platform to build apps serving industries from healthcare to travel to retail. Watson, which is named after IBM's founder Thomas J. Watson, was introduced to the public in 2011, when a computer powered with the artificial intelligence technology competed on the "Jeopardy" game show (and won). Last year, IBM formalized a Watson Group business unit -- pumping 1 billion into its development -- and it promised to set aside 100 million to seed companies that are developing mobile apps with the technology. The new TV ads show off some of the fruits of this funding effort, featuring startup companies and IBM's own businesses that are using Watson's artificial intelligence technology.