In the past 5 years, technology has revolutionized how marketers interact with their customers. Now, you've got access to advanced software and customer data for more relevant, targeted and engaging marketing. No wonder that 50 to 65% of executives expect to spend more on marketing technology in the coming year. But, what if I told you that we're only at the beginning? In the next 5 years, marketing is going to make a huge pivot- probably almost unrecognizable from its current form. You probably won't perform search engine optimization.

The film scores tallied by Rotten Tomatoes are what many moviegoers use to decide how to spend their money. As you might expect, this doesn't make some folks in Hollywood too happy. In fact, they're pretty darn upset. The New York Times takes a look at the rift the movie ratings site has created with its Tomatometer. I'd argue studios should stop blaming a website and just start making better movies, but what do I know.

One Cincinnati-based startup recently launched a DIY kit of smart-home connected products – which includes voice-controlled Amazon Echo Dot technology -- that it says can help senior citizens live independently for longer. The kit offered by TruSense, with starting prices at about $200 (and a $50-per-month subscription fee), is sold as a package deal that includes a monitoring service and app that allows loved ones to virtually keep track of you remotely, and be alerted if you may need assistance. For now, TruSense is only available in the U.S. Does the price make sense? The $50 a month cost is more than comparable monitoring plans from Lowe's Iris and SimpliSafe, but roughly on par with professional services like ADT and AT&T Digital Life," according to a CNET review. "To be worth it in the long run … the app will need to offer accurate data and useful insights.

How can your organization keep up with the pace of voice-first application development? Here are 5 tips to avoid being left behind as organizations build conversational solutions for the Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple HomePod and other smart devices. If you follow technology news, you can't miss the new trend of conversational user interfaces (UI), which includes the Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Facebook Messenger bots and digital intelligent assistants. The voice-first world of conversational interfaces is booming, and many banks and credit unions want to be part of the revolution. However, a lack of skills and knowledge in this dynamic market makes it very difficult for most institutions to embrace this new trend.

First, Symantec revealed that hackers--probably based in Russia, although the security firm didn't go so far as to name names--had hacked more than 20 power companies in North America and Europe, and in a handful of cases, had direct access to their control systems. And then Equifax confessed it had been the target of a breach that stole 143 million Americans' data, one of the worst data spills ever, and one that raises questions about data centralization, particularly for Social Security Numbers. Megabreaches aside, Facebook admitted that a Russian troll farm had spent $100,000 on influence ads during last year's election. Google patched a flaw in Android that would allow a nasty "toast overlay" attack to take control of devices. WIRED dug into the long-running series of scams and theft plaguing new currencies in the cryptocoin economy.

The past 3 years have revealed troubling predictions about AI from very concerned smart people. Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking collaborated with 1,000 AI experts back in January to produce an open letter emphasizing the'potential pitfalls' of building'superhuman' artificial intelligence. Hollywood productions also fanned the fires of anxiety. From Ex Machina to Avengers: Age of Ultron, box-office hits played on the thread of AI with bad intent and robots challenging man. But, while headlines from the media and science fiction movies binged on this catastrophic theme, businesses developing AI pressed on to silently and dramatically, disrupt the business topography.

Editor's Note: The following is a guest post from Ramiro Amaral, director, strategy and consulting, and Pascoe Craig, senior account director, at SapientRazorfish. Once a novelty item, voice assistants such as Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant are getting more traction and becoming an accepted and valued part of the consumer's life. Integrated into everything from countertop speakers to cars, these offerings are helping deliver on the promise of a more intuitive and human-centered way of interacting with technology. These voice-based interfaces, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms and cloud-based infrastructures, are changing the way consumers perform everyday tasks, from searching and cooking to commuting and communicating and are slowly creating new habits, mental models and expectations around specific categories. Very soon, the technologies in the connected home will be managing requests, automating preferences and determining the flow of products as our personal assistants. As such, all businesses will need to evolve to meet the changing needs and preferences of the customer and keep pace with the technology that is wholly transforming the world as we know it.

Today, I came across "Get Lauren" an art-installation / performance by Lauren McCarthy, and that got me thinking. For her installation, Lauren has equipped a couple of real people with internet-of-things devices and has followed the participants for 24 hours for a number of days. Through the devices Lauren was able to interact with the people and their environment, setting the lights, playing music or providing information. Lauren was, in fact, a human equivalent to the Artificial Intelligence used by products like Alexa or Siri. I find it interesting, essentially intriguing, to have a "real" human behind this service.

Today I'd like to cover Intelligent Assistants. Perhaps this is cheating a bit, because it's a post I originally published on Medium on June 22nd. Then I had played with my first two home assistants (Amazon Echo I bought for my mom and a Google Home I received as a gift) and realised the potential these devices have not only in the home, but very soon also in the car and office. This year, 35.6 million Americans will use a voice-activated assistant at least once a month, doubling last year's figure, forecasts eMarketer. I don't normally like to predict things, but here's one: Home assistants are here to stay.

A new computer algorithm, developed by researchers at Stanford University, can correctly determine someone's sexuality with up to 91% accuracy just by analysing a photo of their face. It's the robotic equivalent of a "gaydar" and it's sure to stir up a minefield of discussion, but first, a few caveats. The study used 35,326 photos from a US dating site and the artificial intelligence only distinguished sexuality between two photos (always one straight, one homosexual) of people of the same gender – the study did not include transgender or bisexual people. The photos used were portraits of faces, so the AI's judgments are made based on a "faceprint" determined from things like eyebrows, cheeks, hairline, neckline and nose, rather than clothing or hairstyle. Among men the system was accurate 81% of the time, and with women it was 71% accurate, but when given repeated photos of the same man (and so, more data) the accuracy increased to 91%.