It's undeniable that robots are part of our future; they already play huge roles in numerous facets of our everyday lives right now. But should you rely on robo-advisors to control your finances? In a new piece for CNBC, Eric Jansen, the founder, president and chief investment officer of AspenCross Wealth Mangement, breaks down the pros and cons of employing a robo-advisor. It sounds like something out of sci-fi, but yes, it's now a reality thanks to recent AI and FinTech developments: you can now hand your cash to robots so they can apply their cold, calculated machine efficiency to make it grow into more money. Go to any FinTech hub like New York City or San Francisco and you'll find numerous companies specializing in this service.

Driving a car is one of the most fun things to do, well, not so much when you're stuck in hours of traffic. Still, one has to realize that despite the fun aspect, driving is not as safe as we would like due to our constant need to grab our smartphones. Additionally, most vehicles on public roads today lack the built-in smarts to aid drivers during their daily commute. That's where Chris comes into play, a device designed to help drivers enjoy their journey without having to sacrifice safety. Chris is a digital assistant for drivers that allows them to enjoy apps and other features on their mobile device without the need to for physical interaction.

Media love both success stories of AI and'dystopias driven by Artificial Intelligence: machines replacing human workers, AI exceeding human intelligence, robots taking control and so on. But, if you look beyond this hype, you will realize that there is a real revolution in progress. To understand the potential of AI, just examine the recent advances in fields like Deep Learning and their applications in domains such as Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing. There is a massive disruption in progress -- powered by a combination of technologies, enabling machines to make sense of massive volumes of data and perform cognitive functions. Artificial Intelligence can be defined as'the technology enabling systems to encapsulate cognitive functions along with adaptive and learning capabilities -- leading to self-improvement'.

Should robots be given'personhood' status? That was the topic being debated by the European parliament earlier this month, along with whether or not a kill switch should be added in case there is a terminator style uprising. Does this mean that robots and machines are slowly taking over? There hasn't been a machine uprising. You may be thinking that the likes of robots, smart machines and artificial intelligence is something you might only read about in Sci-Fi novels or see in films, but actually, artificial intelligence and smart machines are nothing new.

Voice controlled technologies are growing in popularity everywhere. From home automation to cab booking or ordering a meal, customers are getting pampered with the luxury of using voice to control things around them. In this blog post, I present a tutorial to build a voice-activated Oxford dictionary using Amazon Alexa. You can talk to the dictionary and ask for definitions, example usage, synonyms or antonyms of any English word present in the Oxford dictionary. Often I stumble across some word from a classic English literature.

"Conversational AI" is a hot topic right now, what with the tech giants' virtual assistants all competing to be the most human-esque, and Microsoft (msft) just gave itself a boost by purchasing a startup called Semantic Machines. The move could improve Microsoft's Cortana assistant, as well as the "social chatbots" that it is deploying on social networks. Semantic Machines is a company that's been developing technology for voice-enabled agents that can speak like a person and understand what others tell it. The use cases on its website echo those recently demonstrated by Google with its Duplex app, for example interacting with real people to make appointments on behalf of the user. In a blog post, Microsoft noted that the Berkeley, Calif.-based company comes with some well-known talents in the field, such as UC Berkeley professor Dan Klein and Stanford's Percy Liang.

Artificial intelligence is a latest buzzword in the technology industry. Suddenly all the startups and companies who operate in technology field are claiming to use artificial intelligence or machine learning in one way or the other to solve their customer's problems. But like all other buzzwords, is artificial intelligence also just a hype cycle which will fizzle. Artificial intelligence specifically is notoriously famous for reaching a crescendo of hype every decade and then going through a period of non activity and non investment which is known as the AI winter. So first of all let's try to understand what exactly is artificial intelligence.

Amazon has agreed to review its labor practices at Foxconn plant in China where its popular Echo Dot smart speakers are assembled. SAN FRANCISCO -- The Chinese plant where Amazon's popular Echo Dot smart speakers are assembled underpaid workers, some of whom worked as many as 14 consecutive days and more than 100 overtime hours per month, according to a U.S.-based labor rights group. Amazon says it knew of problems at the plant and has requested corrective action. The report by China Labor Watch found that the Foxconn plant in Hengyang in China broke multiple Chinese labor laws, underpaying workers and subjecting them to verbal abuse. More than 40% of the staff there were temporary employees, while China only allows 10% of any workforce to be temps.

From Apple's Siri to Microsoft's Cortana to Amazon's Alexa, talking AI assistants now willingly, and most of the time accurately, respond to our commands. Voice is the new interface. Voice adds many opportunities for interacting with computers at the time and place of our choosing, with new locations and activities including driving, exercising, cooking, and operating machinery. The rapid progress in natural language processing (NLP) over the last five years has been behind the development of much improved software which "understands" human speech and can respond at a high level of accuracy and relevance. The same machine learning methods--deep neural networks--that spurred the progress in NLP have also contributed to a significant expansion of the range of activities the software can support.

AI capabilities are advancing rapidly, but the results are mixed. While chatbots and digital assistants are improving generally, the results can be laughable, perplexing and perhaps even unsettling. Google's recent demonstration of Duplex, its natural language technology that completes tasks over the phone, is noteworthy. Whether you love it or hate it, two things are true: It doesn't sound like your grandfather's AI; the use case matters. One of the striking characteristics of the demo, assuming it actually was a demo and not a fake, as some publications have suggested, is the use of filler language in the digital assistant's speech such as "um" and uh" that make it sound human. Even more impressive, (again, assuming the demo is real), is the fact that Duplex reasons adeptly on-the-fly despite the ambiguous, if not confusing, responses provided by a restaurant hostess on the other end of the line. Of course, the use case is narrow. In the demo, Duplex is simply making a hair appointment and attempting to make a restaurant reservation. In the May 8 Google Duplex blog introducing the technology, Yaniv Leviathan, principal engineer and Yossi Matias, VP of Engineering explain: "One of the key research insights was to constrain Duplex to closed domains, which are narrow enough to explore extensively.