It used to be that one great technology defined an era. The steam engine, for example, served as the catalyst for the rise of the industrial age. Nowadays, however, a number of amazing technical advances and inventions are contending for bragging rights as the leading technology of our times. I would argue that one is particularly worthy of such boasting: machine learning. Although it has been in slow and steady development for years and has been used in a few enterprise applications, it has recently burst onto the scene in response to the explosion of data in today's increasingly connected digital world.

During the next five years, messaging will become the preferred path for customer and stakeholder interaction, ultimately displacing call centers and replacing or augmenting mobile apps. For commercial brands and government programs looking to extend and expand their customer base, they must satisfy this customer demand for next-gen messaging channels and rapid response. Booz Allen Hamilton (NYSE: BAH) and Conversable announced today a joint strategic focus to advance, test, and deliver world-class automated interactive messaging, tools, services, and experiences that fundamentally enhance and transform customer care in all channels. The days of commercial brands and federal programs spending millions of dollars and many years to launch an essentially single-use mobile application are coming to an end. Leading brands and programs will increasingly look to bots and automation in messaging to better analyze and understand customer requests, and reach out to new consumers who are rapidly becoming more adept and comfortable with executing commerce through more robust, tailored, responsive and secure messaging platforms.

Machines and medicine have gone hand in hand for the past couple of decades, although for the most part they are used as tools where they can scan a person's body, but at the end of the day it's up to the doctor to interpret the findings. Like a machine could detect spots on a person's lungs, but it won't know what it means. However it seems that in the future, it is possible that with an algorithm, AIs could detect if we have depression. This is thanks to an ongoing research project called SimSensei developed by researchers at the University of Southern California. The idea is that with the use of a Kinect, it will be able to "read" a person's body language to look out for signs that could hint at depression, like nervousness, anxiety, and so on.

Mycoworks– Mycoworks is a biomaterials company that uses mycelium and agricultural waste to create natural alternatives to leather. Their materials are performance engineered, animal-free, sustainable, and cost-competitive, with immediate applications in footwear and fashion. SyntheX Labs– SyntheX used synthetic lethality to create peptide therapeutics that can treat incurable cancers. They have developed an evolutionary platform which can test 10 billion protein variants in one petri dish to evolve new therapeutics. Ava Labs– Ava creates wines molecule by molecule to replicate the terroir of classic high end wines without grapes.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men in the United States. This buildup of abnormal cells in a man's prostate -- a gland below the bladder and in front of the rectum -- often has no early symptoms and usually grows very slowly. Treatment choices depend on many factors. More than half of prostate cancers stay within the gland and don't become life-threatening. But doctors don't have a way to reliably predict which tumors will progress and which are unlikely to cause problems.

Would you trust a robot to help deliver your baby? Robots could eventually play integral roles in labor wards, according to findings from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Robots are currently employed in hospitals to carry out simple actions, like dispensing medication. But can they understand patient needs and make scheduling decisions? The researchers have been working for the past two years to determine whether robots can be more than just helpful companions. They've been conducting experiments to see if a robot can serve as an effective "resource nurse."

A computer program has been developed that can tell if a person is lying by analysing linguistic cues in emails, texts and even online dating profiles. Researchers from City University in London detailed their findings in a paper set to be published in Journal of Management Information Systems. The paper, titled "Untangling a Web of Lies: Exploring Automated Detection of Deception in Computer-Mediated Communication," describes tell-tale signs that someone is lying. Deceitful emailers have a tendency to avoid personal pronouns--such as "I" and "me"--while also including language that flatters the recipient. The paper's authors say their findings could be used within a business context, to identify corporate deception and spot when a customer might not be telling the truth.

In 2012, Dennis Mortensen had 1,019 meetings, each of which required an average of roughly eight back-and-forth emails to schedule. Every time Mortensen comes across a contact interested in meeting with him, the CEO and founder of New York City-based artificial intelligence firm x.ai simply sends them a return email copying Amy, who takes care of the rest. "In raw numbers, I've saved about an hour every day -- an hour which I would otherwise have to use in really rudimentary work where I add not much value," Mortensen said of Amy's help scheduling meetings. Virtual assistants like Amy are becoming more common. Just as household technology platforms like Apple's "Siri" and Microsoft's "Cortana" has helped consumers navigate their lives more easily, other forms of rudimentary artificial intelligence platforms are starting to proliferate the market, many of them upending traditional business roles.

Society is caught between blind faith in technology and resistance to progress, between technological possibilities and fears that it has a negative impact. Increasingly Artificial Intelligence, the latest buzzword for everything software related, is stirring up much of the fears. In an interesting paper: Is This Time Different? The Opportunities and Challenges of Artificial Intelligence, Jason Furman, Chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers sets out his belief that we need more artificial intelligence but must find a way to prevent the inequality it will inevitably cause. Despite the labor market challenges we may need to navigate, Furman's bigger worry is that we will not invest enough in AI.

Robot" begins a second season on USA on Wednesday night with a two-part opener broadcast back to back. A conspiracy thriller set in the present day – it's still 2015 on the series' clock – it's science fiction in the sense that it involves technology, but not in the quasi-supernatural manner of flying saucers, Godzillas, time travel or synthetic human or mutant superheroes and such. Still, it shares with much sci-fi a sense of the ordinary world pushed a click toward the uncanny. Into every generation a confused and disaffected hero is born. Robot" it's Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), a cyberwhiz who was recruited – Season 1 spoilers ahead – to the underground hacking collective fsociety by a person (Christian Slater) who turned out to be his father, who turned out to be dead, a figment of his imagination projected wholly into his world, though invisible to everyone else – a "Sixth Sense" move, dramatically. Robot' season premiere hit online three days early, then got pulled back » Of course, imaginary characters have as much substance in fiction as "actual" ones, so things do get muddled, and I would not be surprised to learn that I have got things in this show upside-down or backward.