Ian Bogost (previously) describes the "deflationary" use of "artificial intelligence" to describe the most trivial computer science innovations and software-enabled products, from Facebook's suicide detection "AI" (a trivial word-search program that alerts humans) to the chatbots that are billed as steps away from passing a Turing test, but which are little more than glorified phone trees, and on whom 40% of humans give up after a single conversational volley. Georgia Tech artificial intelligence researcher Charles Isbell says it's "Making computers act like they do in the movies." Isbell suggests two features necessary before a system deserves the name AI. First, it must learn over time in response to changes in its environment. Fictional robots and cyborgs do this invisibly, by the magic of narrative abstraction. But even a simple machine-learning system like Netflix's dynamic optimizer, which attempts to improve the quality of compressed video, takes data gathered initially from human viewers and uses it to train an algorithm to make future choices about video transmission.

So why is Google giving you this right-wing conspiracy acid-trip? Basically, it's quoting Google's own "featured snippets," results that show up at the top of the page for certain search terms. Unlike the "Knowledge Graph," which shows reliable, well-sourced replies, featured snippets "provide an automatic and algorithmic match to a given search query," Google told Recode. In other words, the information is first surfaced by a bot from not-necessarily-reliable sources, then read back to you by Google Home (powered by Google Assistant AI). The device focuses on featured snippets because it would be impractical to read a list of search results.

Last week I wrote about how science infuses science fiction in the Syfy network series The Expanse. Now comes a story about how the researchers at MIT's CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) are turning science fiction into science. The researchers created a system that allows a robot to correct its mistakes in real time when a human observer notices that a mistake is being made. The observer just sits there and watches; she doesn't physically interact with the robot or anything else. If the observer recognizes that a mistake is occurring, the robot changes course and does the right thing.

Are you concerned about the continued development of smart gadgets increasing their ability to listen, think, speak and feel more human than humans? When we think about science fiction movies like The Terminator, iRobot, Maximum Overdrive, RoboCop, 2001: A Space Odessey, The Machine, Transcendence, Project Almanac, Robot and Frank, and The Matrix Revolutions, many people worry these smart gadgets will overpower the world. Voice Command Devices (VCD) are evidence of how science and technology leaped into an incredible world of artificial intelligence (AI). Voice-activated smart devices such as Alexa, Siri, and Google are programmed to interact, play music, provide the weather, play audiobooks, keep up with your calendar appointments and provide other real-time information requested by the user. One funny, but kind of freaky occurrence has been reports made by individuals who were on the telephone with someone who owns one of these VCD's and heard those devices suddenly start to talk on their own.

Dr Hensman (above), who was most recently a lecturer at the University of Lancaster, has more than 35 published academic journal articles to his name, based on his industry-defining research on Gaussian processes. This approach moves away from the use of limited decision trees for AI, which are based on'if X then Y principles', to focusing on the development of self-learning, autonomous agents. These can be applied to a whole variety of problems from autonomous vehicle control, to non-player characters in video games, to smart city simulations. Dr Hensman will be encouraged to continue his academic research while at PROWLER.io – and his findings will support the development of world-leading AI technology. "Until now I've had no interest in departing from full-time academia," said Dr Hensman.

"The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself." Anyone who shops online or uses a music streaming service will have experienced recommendations. Their accuracy can be surprising at first glance, but these recommendations aren't made by accident. They are based on sophisticated machine learning techniques, pattern analysis and automated decision making. Systems like these rely on a technology infrastructure that can import, analyse and interpret huge volumes of data and take appropriate action without the need for human intervention.

Google is facing accusations of spreading fake news, after being repeatedly discovered sharing falsehoods and conspiracy theories through its "featured snippets in search" functionality. The feature automatically pulls in short answers to common queries from popular websites. It can show them in the search results directly, and is also the basis for the quick answers provided through Google's smart speaker device, the Google Home. When it works, it leads to the search engine helpfully answering questions like "who is the richest man in the world" without requiring the user to click a further link – in this case, pulling eight names from a listicle on the Indian Express. But when it doesn't, it pulls from sites sharing fake news, propaganda and simple lies. Worse, it can result in the Google Home reading the same statements as fact, without even the presence of the other search results to provide much needed contextual clues that the answers might be misleading.

It's mainstream and it's coming faster than anyone thought possible. Global developments in robotics and artificial intelligence will disrupt most industries, including the PR and creative industry. Speaking at the Holmes Report's PRovokes 2016 summit in Miami, Lipson shared an action packed keynote, with plenty of thought provoking examples to remind us we now live in harmony with robots, which are getting smarter by the day as a result of artificial intelligence (AI). "The industry is moving so fast it's surprising everyone in the field, where we've seen complete lines of research made obsolete," said Lipson. "For most of us, our view of robots was what see saw portrayed in Hollywood movies – robots were happy, emotional, cunning, smart and sophisticated. Recent studies mis-perceive AI to be these kinds of things. "If you look at industry today, millions of robots operate in factories with super human features, able to be very precise and very fast, but without intelligence.

Peter Shulman, an associate history professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, was lecturing on the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s when a student asked an odd question: Was President Warren Harding a member of the KKK? He confessed that he was not aware of that allegation, but that Harding had been in favor of anti-lynching legislation, so it seemed unlikely. But then a second student pulled out his phone and announced that yes, Harding had been a Klan member, and so had four other presidents. For most of its history, Google did not answer questions. Users typed in what they were looking for and got a list of web pages that might contain the desired information.

The next time you enter a query into Google's search engine or consult the company's map service for directions to a movie theater, remember that a big brain is working behind the scenes to provide relevant search results and make sure you don't get lost while driving. As Fortune's Roger Parloff wrote, the Google Brain research team has created over 1,000 so-called deep learning projects that have supercharged many of Google's products over the past few years like YouTube, translation, and photos. With deep learning, researchers can feed huge amounts of data into software systems called neural nets that learn to recognize patterns within the vast information faster than humans. In an interview with Fortune, one of Google Brain's co-founders and leaders, Jeff Dean, talks about cutting-edge AI research, the challenges involved, and using AI in its products. The following, done against the backdrop of the 50th annual Turing Award, an honor in computer science from the Association for Computing Machinery, has been edited for length and clarity. What are some challenges researchers face with pushing the field of artificial intelligence?