Some of our best minds in tech have set out to tackle the problem of fake news with the help of artificial intelligence. A group of researchers, academics, engineers and hackers have come together with the hope that human fact-checkers will pick up the slack when AI technology reaches its limits. This grassroots movement spurred a website, the Twitter hashtag #FakeNewsChallenge, and a presence within online communities like Slack and GitHub. Cade Metz, a senior staff writer at Wired who wrote about this crusade, joined Marketplace host Lizzie O'Leary to talk about AI's role in the fight against fake news. The following transcript was edited for clarity and brevity.

One of the most anticipated franchise movies of next year is 20th Century Fox and Ridley Scott's prequel-sequel Alien: Covenant, and during an exclusive chat with star Michael Fassbender for Assassin's Creed today, we asked him how his new android role Walter differs from the nefarious antics of Prometheus's David, who also shows up for the new film. "I think Walter's a real different kettle of fish," Fassbender told us. "David was definitely a work-in-progress, somewhat of a prototype I suppose. The elements of him that were the human elements I think people found a little disturbing, so Walter's more of a straightforward robot. It sounds like Walter has more in common with a helpful robot like Bishop from Aliens as opposed to Ian Holm's "twitchy" Ash in Scott's original Alien.

We need more Law & Order: SVU. Luckily, developer Scott Luptowski has a solution with episode descriptions generated by a computer program. Sure, SVU can seem slightly robotic already, but to be fair there are only so many variations of "I want a lawyer" that you can write before you're just saying nonsense. After building a script to pull episode descriptions from Hulu, IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes, Luptowski used a tool called a markov chain to automatically predict text based on the existing episode summaries. Luptowski told Mashable in a DM that he then ran the episodes through the chain hundreds of times to find the funniest results.

Seiko, Westinghouse and Element Electronics announced a series of 4k sets with Amazon Fire TV technology built-in. The series includes Amazon's interface, along with support for a voice remote with Amazon Alexa. The new Amazon Fire TV series will allow customers access to a selection of streaming and over-the-air content in one place, including more than 6,000 channels, apps and live TV broadcasts when used with a separate HD antenna. The programming guide makes it easy to find what to watch, and thanks to the voice remote with Alexa, you can use your voice to launch apps, search content and play music. "Teaming up with brands including Seiki, Westinghouse and Element on a new range of smart TVs allows Amazon to deliver an experience that's familiar and easy to use," said Marc Whitten, vice president, Amazon Fire TV.

Machine learning used to take place behind the scenes: Amazon mined your clicks and purchases for recommendations, Google mined your searches for ad placement, and Facebook mined your social network to choose which posts to show you. But now machine learning is on the front pages of newspapers, and the subject of heated debate. Learning algorithms drive cars, translate speech, and win at Jeopardy! What can and can't they do? Are they the beginning of the end of privacy, work, even the human race?

When machines are able to do anything humans can -- be it farming, factory-working, or stock-trading -- they'll do it in a fraction of the time, experts reason, eventually rendering the human workforce redundant. Even creative fields aren't safe: artificial intelligence has already begun making its mark in journalism, fine art, and music. How could something so fundamentally subjective, so human, as art be mechanized? In fact, the Oakland-based novelist and self-described "tech-adjacent media inventor" is so unbothered by the idea, he's already invited robots into his workplace. Earlier this year, Sloan, a former Twitter employee, pieced together a program powered by basic applied AI to co-write short stories with him.

The "willing suspension of disbelief" is the idea that the audience (readers, viewers, content consumers) is willing to suspend judgment about the implausibility of the narrative for the quality of the audience's own enjoyment. We do it all the time. Two-dimensional video on our screens is smaller than life and flat and not in real time, but we ignore those facts and immerse ourselves in the stories as if they were real. We have also learned the "conventions" of each medium. While we watch a movie or a video, we don't yell to the characters on the screen "Duck!" or "Look out!" when something is about to happen to them.

The world of voice-controlled computing, nay, voice-controlled living, seemed like it was still a few years away from being mainstream. Amazon's Alexa platform, however, has made it easy for companies to bolt-on the technology to their existing products. Case in point, Dish has announced that you'll soon be able to pair your Hopper DVR with the Amazon Echo or Echo Dot in order to change channels just by speaking. The innovation won't be arriving for a little while, but Dish feels confident that the option will arrive in the first half of the year. So long as your Hopper is connected to the internet, you can use natural voice commands to go to individual channels or bring up movies on-demand by saying "go to AMC" or "Find Game of Thrones."

With new paradigm and technology, there are a variety of misconceptions. However, I will try to solve the mystery about bots Centurysoft is a service-provider that will help you differentiates myth from facts about bots. Contrary to the expectation of many, bots do not use AI currently, and some of them will never use AI. Bots use a natural language understanding that matches what people say in their actual intent. For instance, there are various ways to say that you want to book a ticket for a movie.

Remember that robot that freaked everyone out on the internet because it said it will destroy humans? That was Sophia--and she feels terrible about the whole thing. In any case, those who watched HBO's latest series Westworld might be reminded of her, as the show's artificially intelligent (AI) robots entertained their guests--or shot at one another. The reality is, however, Sophia isn't quite like that yet. In interviews with Inverse, industry experts at Hanson Robotics--the makers of Sophia and that Albert Einstein HUBO--and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence are confident that the future of AI and robotics is something very much similar to what Westworld shows us.