Hal, the Terminator and Matrix movies, Ex-Machina, and I, Robot all trade on the beloved sci-fi meme of robotized AI and the public's collective psyche when it all goes wrong: fascination and fear. After all, if machines become faster, stronger, and brighter than humanity, why wouldn't they turn on their soft, meaty, and dim creators for either enslavement or a full-on purge? Let's face it – machines are getting smarter. AlphaGo's victory over Lee Sedol at Go came 10 years earlier than predicted, before in fact humanity had worked out the exact number of possible legal Go positions (a number the size of 10170 was completed on January 20, 2016, if you're interested). In 2014, a chatbot glorying in the name of Eugene Goodstead passed the Turing Test by fooling 33 percent of judges into believing it was a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy.

The artist and computer scientist Terence Broad built an autoencoder, a type of artificial neural network, and showed it the classic science-fiction film Blade Runner (1982). He trained the autoencoder to remember every individual frame of the film and to reconstruct each one as a memory, on view here. In the original film, a bounty hunter hunts down androids that are so well engineered that they are indistinguishable from humans. Here, we face a similar challenge, as we trying to identify the original film within the AI's program's perception of it. Terence Broad, Blade Runner--Autoencoded, 2016 Advance tickets are required.

Digital technologies and advanced analytics have the potential to create the Invisible Bank of the future. Powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and activated by voice, virtual banking assistants can become an integral part of our daily lives. Banking today is becoming less and less a place you go, and more something that is hidden from view behind digital banking and commerce apps. Once an account is opened at a bank or credit union, there is less need to stop into a branch, since functions like deposits, borrowing, payments and transfers can be done without personal interaction through online and mobile devices. According to a new report published by KPMG, "Meet Eva – Your Enlightened Virtual Assistant and the Future Face of the Invisible Bank", technologies like Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa or Samsung's Viv will enable an even greater shift in banks and banking by 2030.

Artificial Intelligence is not a vision of the future. It has become an indispensable prerequisite for a modern and value-added customer management. We have responded already in the past to the new requirements that companies are facing in the course of digitalization – through transitioning from Customer Relationship Management to Customer Journey Management Consulting. Our success proves us right: today, we are one of the market-leading consulting firms in the field of customer management in Central Europe. With the acquisition of Insight Dimensions GmbH (to press release), a German company located in Böblingen we take the next logical step towards the future by linking Artificial Intelligence and Customer Journey Management. We are delighted about the addition of this successful company and wish our new colleagues a heartfelt welcome.

Further, we are happy to see the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) involved in all three White House documents. Creating the NIST cybersecurity framework, the great scientists at NIST clearly have their eye on the power and future of AI and Machine Learning platforms. Indeed, and in the nick of time, the NIST published Statement 800-160 entitled "Systems Security Engineering: Considerations for a Multidisciplinary Approach in the Engineering of Trustworthy Secure Systems," which will require manufacturers of IoT devices to consider building them to be "cyber secure by design" first before rushing them to market. We feel that by and between the NIST and the Big 5 mentioned above, considerate, ethical, and secure AI and Machine Learning platforms will be reasonably assured.

Artificial intelligence programs have beaten chess masters and TV quiz show champions. Two exchange operators have announced plans to launch artificial intelligence tools for market surveillance in the coming months and officials at a Wall Street regulator tell Reuters they are not far behind. Executives are hoping computers with humanoid wit can help mere mortals catch misbehavior more quickly. The software could, for instance, scrub chat-room messages to detect dubious bragging or back slapping around the time of a big trade. It could also more quickly unravel complex issues, like "layering," where orders are rapidly sent to exchanges and then canceled to artificially move a stock price.

Bank of America announces an AI-powered bot to help customers make smarter decisions Monday at the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas, Bank of America's president of retail banking, Thong Nguyen, announced an artificially intelligent bot to help customers make smarter decisions, according to CNBC. Named Erica, the bot uses artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to learn your personal spending habits and offer helpful advice. For example, Erica might send someone a predictive text: "Michelle, I found a great opportunity for you to reduce your debt and save you 300." Erica is designed to not just be a virtual assistant, but each customer's "personal advocate," said Bank of America head of digital banking Michelle Moore. It can tell you about your spending habits, if you spend more than usual on a certain product or category of products, some opportunities to reduce debt or save money, and if your credit score took a dip. Links and videos are also provided to users so they can better understand terms like FICO score.

From Apple s Siri to Google Allo, we are in the age of artificial intelligence, and it is getting integrated into our daily routines. Similar trends can be seen in the way we do our sales. Yes, you heard it right -- artificial intelligence is shaping our sales strategy. Right from sales prospecting to closing deals automatically, it has brought about a transformation. There is no need to fear for your jobs, however; artificial intelligence is only going to help those in sales focus on chasing the right customers and closing deals faster. As per a recent Forbes article, businesses are realising the need for analytics in the sales process, and data-driven sales roles will be in high demand.

The evolution of the AI programs is reaching many fields: for example, to allow the AI to communicate in an ever more human way, Google's DeepMind developers have started to make it read hundreds of romance novels to help it improve its dialectical skills and develop a minimum of personality. The choice fell on the romantic novels because they have very linear plots and simple narrative schemes but also they are very similar to each other, an element that AI can learn to manage and rework to interact with a human being. The next step is to draft long and elaborate sentences, or even writing entire novels. Not surprisingly, a recent book written by a computer has passed a literary prize screening. The Japanese literary prize Hoshi Shinichi is also open to works produced by artificial intelligences and the jury – without knowing its origin – admitted the book "The day a computer writes a novel", written by the program of a professor of the Hakodate Future University.

Nissan Motor Co Ltd ( Nissan Motor Co Ltd) and Renault SA ( Renault) are open to partnerships with other companies to equip their vehicles with sophisticated technology as automakers race to develop the cars of the future, the pair's connected vehicles chief said. Global automakers are competing with industry rivals and technology firms to develop self-driving cars and mobility services such as car sharing as the growing use of technology and artificial intelligence may eventually diminish the role of drivers, threatening the traditional model of car ownership. As software used in cars becomes more sophisticated and costly, there will be benefits of partnerships - including with rivals - to develop standardised technology such as mapping services, said Ogi Redzic, who heads the Nissan-Renault alliances' Connected Vehicles and Mobility Services division. "We are in the spirit of collaboration," Redzic, who joined the alliance earlier this year after working for companies including Nokia and Motorola, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday. "There are some other companies which would like to build everything in-house, but ... we are willing to partner when it makes sense."