This is a preview of a research report bundle from BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about BI Intelligence, click here. AI is the future of technology. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have even publicly debated whether or not that will turn out to be a good thing. Voice assistants like Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa have become more and more prominent in our lives, and that will only increase as they learn more skills.

From January 14th until Valentine's Day, Alexa will offer dating advice to those who ask. Matchmaking company Three Day Rule put together 30 dating tips that Amazon Echo users can summon by saying, "Alexa, ask Three Day Rule for today's tip." Three Day Rule's advice runs the gamut from swiping fatigue on apps to encourage you to talk to strangers in real life. TDR's advice is meant to get you out of your comfort zone and away from habits that could be "negatively impacting" your dating life. "Today, you are going to walk up to three strangers you find attractive and strike up a casual conversation," Alexa chirps confidently in one clip.

You came home early today. Yeah, I wasn't feeling too well so thought I would have an early night. I have a booming headache and a runny nose. Would you like me to order some cold and flu tablets? They should be with you tomorrow morning before you leave for work. Oh, by the way, I checked your bank account today and you have been good this month.

Better Life Lab is a partnership of Slate and New America. "I see you keep winning Elizabeth also you have an awesome smile." These messages would have been innocent enough, hardly a blip in the often-crass landscape of direct messages women have come to expect on dating apps. But these were messages I received from a man I've never met and who is twice my age on LinkedIn. In the thick of the #MeToo movement that has brought so much attention to the unsavory abuses of workplace relationships for sexual and romantic gratification, I was surprised to see this blatant flirtation creep into my professional space.

You've seen them spread throughout the consumer world in the form of Amazon Echo, Google Home, and others. Now, voice-activated digital assistants are coming to your office. The announcement of Alexa for Business late last year and the voice assistant takeover we saw at CES last month show us that to power today's evolving business setting, we need to propel the workplace with trainable digital assistant technologies that are smart, predictive, and able to learn. These devices leverage the capabilities of natural language processing (NLP), predictive analytics, and machine learning to offer recommendations about next steps in unique situations, provide insights, and guide complex workflows -- all in a cognitive and conversational user experience. The B2B sector is deeply affected by trends and developments in the B2C world, and B2B customers are looking for the same buyer experiences that consumers get.

Ahead of Valentine's Day 2018, CBS News reported that the FBI is warning those looking for love online to be wary of scammers on dating sites and apps. Online dating services can be lucrative targets for fraudsters. According to the article, online dating scams cost Americans up to $210 million over the past three years. "A fraud scammer sets up a series of false personal profiles on these online dating sites, and then reaches out to form relationships. At first, the relationship seems pretty genuine. Then, once the relationship is formed, at some point the scammer determines an'extraction point' where she or he begins to ask the other party for money to'help them out.'"

It is the voice-activated device that it supposed to make it simple to play music, check the weather or order a takeaway. But things weren't quite so straightforward for one Amazon Echo owner – after an advert for the smart speaker triggered their own device and left them with an unwanted order for cat food. The owner complained to the advertising regulator about the'socially irresponsible' advert, which was shown on television screens on October 5. The advert demonstrated various people using the Amazon Echo device – which is voiced by an'intelligent personal assistant' known as Alexa. At one point in the advert, a man's voice says: 'Alexa, re-order Purina cat food,' to which the virtual assistant replied: 'I've found Purina cat food.

Right now, when you ask Alexa a question on a piece of Amazon-branded hardware like the Amazon Echo or Echo Show, your question is whisked off into the cloud for processing. The internal hardware in an Echo device is not fast or powerful enough to handle the question on its own, so there's a slight delay as your question is thrown to the cloud, answered, thrown back, and then finally made audible by Alexa. But that limitation is poised to change soon. According to The Information, Amazon is creating its own artificial intelligence chips for future Echo devices that will be powerful enough to handle simple questions "in-house," as it were. Questions like "What time is it?"

Nara Rajagopalan, CEO of infrastructure software maker Accelerite, told eWEEK recently that "AI isn't just a hype; thinking machines will rule our lives--but perhaps not literally." He appears to be on the right track. Look at what Siri, Cortana, Google and Alexa are doing for us more and more all the time. Look at how many new chatbots pop up on our phones and laptops to help us through a purchase transaction. Look at how we're conversing with cars as if they are our BFFs.

Jeff Heepke knows where to plant corn on his 4,500-acre farm in Illinois because of artificial intelligence (AI). He uses a smartphone app called Climate Basic, which divides Heepke's farmland (and, in fact, the entire continental U.S.) into plots that are 10 meters square. The app draws on local temperature and erosion records, expected precipitation, soil quality, and other agricultural data to determine how to maximize yields for each plot. If a rainy cold front is expected to pass by, Heepke knows which areas to avoid watering or irrigating that afternoon. As the U.S. Department of Agriculture noted, this use of artificial intelligence across the industry has produced the largest crops in the country's history. Climate Corporation, the Silicon Valley–based developer of Climate Basic, also offers a more advanced AI app that operates autonomously. If a storm hits a region, or a drought occurs, it adjusts local yield numbers downward. Farmers who have bought insurance to supplement their government coverage get a check; no questions asked, no paper filing necessary.