Beyond our quantum-computing conundrum, today's so-called A.I. systems are merely advanced machine learning software with extensive behavioral algorithms that adapt themselves to our likes and dislikes. While extremely useful, these machines aren't getting smarter in the existential sense, but they are improving their skills and usefulness based on a large dataset. These are some of the most popular examples of artificial intelligence that's being used today. Everyone is familiar with Apple's personal assistant, Siri. She helps us find information, gives us directions, add events to our calendars, helps us send messages and so on.

In shows like HBO's "Westworld" and AMC's "Humans," Hollywood pits robots, with artificial intelligence, against humans. Half a century ago, a science fiction film about a space mission planted the first seeds of doubt about just how the human race could coexist with man-made sentient beings. "Consider the fictional robot HAL in '2001: A Space Odyssey,' " said Ken Ford, a computer scientist and founder and CEO of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, in Pensacola, which has won awards for its robotics innovations. HAL eventually turned on its master in that classic film, sending shivers down the spines of moviegoers everywhere. Some of that wariness about artificial intelligence still exists, but Ford said the fear is unwarranted, and in the case of fictional robots, misplaced.

Smule connects people all over the world to sing and create music together through our Sing! Our users feel that Sing! is like a home -- inclusive, honest and welcome. Because of this cozy feeling of home, our community has grown tremendously as an attractive home for people all over the world. Here's an example of how Sing! users share and enjoy each other's recordings: Recently, we are experiencing some growing pains. New users say that Sing! doesn't have that homey feeling anymore.

Some 70 years ago, computer scientist Alan Turing famously set the bar for artificial intelligence: a computer that could convince a human conversation partner that it was a person. On a recent spring afternoon in the Flow Machines laboratory, located on a quiet street in the Fifth Arrondissement of Paris, senior researcher Pierre Roy was more concerned with his music-making AI software's ability to create a convincingly catchy song. "So far, from the technical standpoint, no one knows how to do a proper song, to tell a story," he said. "It's a hot topic in AI." Flow Machines, a project of Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Paris that receives funding from the European Research Council, is developing an AI program that can compose compelling, professional-quality music -- an aim shared by similar ventures such as Jukedeck in the UK and Google's Magenta project. Ever since Turing defined his test, popular culture has fixated on the idea of sentient AI, both benign and catastrophically malign. But AI today has become something of a catch-all term for software that augments human intelligence, usually by mining vast troves of data.

The original Ghost in the Shell (GitS) movie was practically compulsory material in the hacker subculture of the late 90s, early 2000s. The original touched on themes that all geeks can appreciate, including robotics, sentient AI, human augmentation, active ("thermal-optic") camouflage, transferring human consciousness to a machine, and more. The main protagonist was a hacker called the Puppet Master, and the idea of hacking technically augmented humans was ahead its time (the Internet of Things wasn't even a "thing" then). This is probably why GitS imagery and themes have been iconic in hacker culture (like this GitS-ish t-shirt). As a fan of the complete Ghost in the Shell franchise (manga, TV shows, sequels), I was excited for the live-action remake of the movie, despite my wariness for "reboots" in general.

Computer Vision experiment from creative coding studio Støj applies object recognition application to the trailer of'Wolf of Wall Street' and applies various presentations of results. Object detection is the process of identifying specific objects such as persons, cars and chairs in digital images or video. For most humans this task requires little effort regardless of how the objects may vary in different sizes, scales and rotations or are even partially obstructed from view. For long these tasks have been difficult for computers to solve, but recent developments have shown impressive improvements in accuracy and speed, even while detecting multiple objects in the same image. We wondered what a fast paced movie trailer would look like seen through the lens of an object detection algorithm.

In dozens of urban centers across the globe, city planners are putting eyes in the sky to help them make more-informed decisions about improving city life. Using advanced technology in digital aerial photography, laser imaging and analytics, cities are tackling a wide variety of problems. Singapore has created a 3-D cityscape to help make decisions about where to place solar panels and plant rooftop gardens, among other things. New York City firefighters are using drones to get better overhead views during fires. In Philadelphia, lasers beamed from airplanes are used to detect dangerous roof damage in dilapidated properties.

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.