As someone interested in both technological innovation and the financial markets, I find myself bombarded with news regarding developments in artificial intelligence. Simply put, artificial intelligence is everywhere. From virtual personal assistants to online customer support, artificial intelligence is already having a profound impact on society. Artificial intelligence will change the course of history undeniable. That is the reason tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, and Facebook have spent billions trying to better understand and utilize the technology.

Whatever happened to Lenovo's crazy bendable gadget prototypes envisioned as tablet/smartphone hybrids and phone/smart bracelet crossbreeds? How about the company's fashionable smart shoes, which were also showcased at last year's Tech World "global event" in (extremely) early pre-release form? We're guessing both groundbreaking projects have either been abandoned or they need several more years of R&D work, and the same probably goes for a fresh batch of concept devices unveiled at the third annual Lenovo Tech World "innovation summit." After all, it's not too ambitious of Lenovo to think it can throw its hat in the digital assistant ring before long. CAVA, aka the Context Aware Virtual Assistant, makes a customarily sophisticated (read vague) promise of taking "deep learning" to the next level, leveraging "natural language understanding technologies to manage calendar events and remind you based on your habits."

One of the biggest challenges for a marketer is implementing an effective personalized campaign -- one that fits not just a target demographic, but their unique set of customers. But personalized marketing spans a vast spectrum of choices and dimensions, meaning there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all personalized marketing campaign. The best way, the right way, the only way…those are all dependent on your business and the challenges you're facing. That doesn't offer much clarity, so we've created ABC-Commerce, a fictitious business that will help us illustrate the benefits of AI driven personalized marketing. We'll be using them as our example throughout this post.

USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham asks people about getting their news on Snapchat. We've been watching the NBC News Stay Tuned newscast, which is tailored for the young people who use Snapchat, and it's quite different from the NBC Nightly News we've been watching on network TV for years. This is a good thing. Savannah Sellers is the co-host of NBC's new Stay Tuned news show for Snapchat (Photo: Snapchat) If we want to get the next generation watching news, this could be the way to do it. Hire two young hosts, put them in hip attire, use language that assumes you know very little ("O.J. Simpson became famous for pushing yards on a football field") have fast-moving graphics, quick cuts and split screens, eliminate lengthy sound bites and tell young folks the essence of the story.

Mario Gamper, Vice President of Strategic Design, discusses why AI assistants might force Experience Design into a rhetorical turn. Here's a thing I'm curious about: What impact will the advent of AI assistants have on the design teams that create digital user experience and interfaces? As the success of gadgets like Alexa show, we're edging towards a paradigmatic shift to voice as our main mode of interacting with computers. This shift will send shockwaves through the design discipline. When the center of digital UI moves beyond visual, designers will probably need a new curriculum--one that includes a fundamental education in rhetoric and persuasion.

Science fiction turns fact--the term artificial intelligence seems ubiquitous at the moment, whether it's marketing technology firms boasting about superior processing power for campaign personalization or the coming singularity and robot apocalypse. Those of us in the trenches of the digital advertising world have become immune to the lure of buzzwords, no matter how many times and in how many contexts they are repeated. But at some point our curiosity bests us and we have to ask, "How much of this is the real deal and what's sheer hype?" AI is an even more unusual case--sure, chatbots and virtual personal assistants are neat, but how does that relate to the digital media world, and more precisely digital advertising and media monetization? In the end, it's all about UX--AI has the potential to be the ultimate user experience tool. But to see why, we have to take a step back and consider the roots of AI, or really--and pardon the philosophical turn--intelligence itself.

Microsoft is building an artificial intelligence (AI) research hub to speed up the integration of AI into products and services. Harry Shum, executive vice president for Microsoft's AI and research group, spoke about the new lab, called Microsoft Research AI, for the first time this week at an event in the U.K. In a blog post, he wrote that the lab will combine various disciplines -- such as machine learning, perception, and natural language processing -- to develop more sophisticated AI. This integrated approach aims to develop systems that can understand language and take action based on that understanding. Machine reading, which combines AI disciplines such as natural language processing and deep learning, is an example. "We believe AI will be even more helpful when we can create tools that combine those functions and add some of the abilities that come naturally to people," Shum wrote.

Rotten Tomatoes vice president Jeff Voris, middle, with senior editor Grae Drake, right, are filmed by creative director Jimmy Johenning at the Beverly Hills offices of the review aggregation website. Rotten Tomatoes vice president Jeff Voris, middle, with senior editor Grae Drake, right, are filmed by creative director Jimmy Johenning at the Beverly Hills offices of the review aggregation website. How Rotten Tomatoes became Hollywood's most influential -- and feared -- website On a recent Wednesday morning, the staff of Rotten Tomatoes gathers in a Beverly Hills office, laptops open -- steeling themselves for the next onslaught of reviews for Hollywood's biggest upcoming movies. But first, supervising producer Cookie Zito gives an update. "We just found out'War for the Planet of the Apes' is certified," she announces, as a couple dozen Rotten Tomatoes employees break out in applause.

Science fiction has shaped the aesthetics and sounds of tech today. So, here's a question: what if Apple's Siri talked to 2001: A Space Odyssey's HAL 9000? The subject: why Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant have feminine voices and why HAL - not to mention, IBM's Watson - talk like guys.

Jefferson Graham demonstrates that Apple's Siri actually does have a sense of humor. Watch what happens when he says, "Hey Siri, I'm a little silhouette of a man," on TalkingTech. A link has been sent to your friend's email address. A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. Jefferson Graham demonstrates that Apple's Siri actually does have a sense of humor.