What meaningful careers exist in data science (stats/ML/optimization)? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. What meaningful careers exist in data science (stats/ML/optimization)? This is a great question, coming from academia myself, I can relate to it. It really depends on what you personally find meaningful, and what your goals are. Would you be happiest doing cutting edge machine learning that impacts millions of people?

It would be easier to count all the stars in the night sky than the number of articles written about the death of SEO. I've never written one personally but I was having a discussion with the author of a great piece here on Search Engine Journal on AI and its impact on search and the question came up: Between machine learning and the limited space available for organic search, is it on its death spiral? The most interesting thing about this question may not be the answer but the journey in understanding the question itself, as it's therein that we understand the strategies that will make it either true or false. Between machine learning, the limited space available for organic search, and the growth of both voice search and personal assistants, is it on its death spiral? To explore this question, we're going to look at each of these three areas individually, what they mean together, and finally (and what you likely most want to know), what you need to do about it.

We've long been used to talking to our technology. Apple's Siri first launched six years ago, after all. But industry experts say that entirely voice-controlled gadgets, like Amazon's Echo smart speakers, are getting us more comfortable than ever with bossing around our tech. The Echo works like this: You put one in your home and connect it to your Wi-Fi network. Then, after a bit of customization, you're able to order it to do certain tasks using one of several "wake words," like "Alexa."

Shawn Rickenbacker teaches Humans Machines, a Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship course. An architect, he is a Taylor Senior Fellow and Favrot Visiting Chair. Artificial intelligence is at most people's fingertips everyday. But we may not understand its implications and complexities. "When you speak to Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa to retrieve info, or use Facebook, you're actually engaging with artificial intelligence," said Shawn Rickenbacker, a Taylor Senior Fellow at the Phyllis Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking and Favrot Visiting Chair in the Tulane School of Architecture.

We have more publications, websites, television and radio networks, blogs and quite frankly more ways to communicate than ever before. Today, thousands of companies and millions of people are creating fresh content for people to consume on their computers, tablets, smart phones, smart TVs and other devices. Now for the bad news: If you happen to be one of those content creators, artificial intelligence (AI) is going to increasingly take over that task. This is great news for companies that produce content. As AI comes online, those companies will get more and more content at less and less cost.

Bots are popping up everywhere from Facebook to home personal assistants. Advances in natural language processing, machine learning and other AI technology created the foundation for bots, but the field has a long way to go before it reaches its full potential. The Alexas and Cortanas of the world do an effective job at accomplishing requested tasks as long as people present them one at a time. A multi-threaded version of these digital personal assistants would allow them to remember multiple situations. This use case is closer to how people actually want to engage with the bots.

How convenient would it be to have a smart superphone that can carry out tasks autonomously -- even while offline? We're not just talking about random tasks like updating email or displaying social alerts. We're talking about full-blown actions like making calls, sending messages and more. The idea sounds pretty crazy, right? Believe it or not, it may soon be a reality.

The future is dystopian: a world in which we humble humans will be replaced by fleets of slick automatons – mechanical menials destined to not only solder, weld and glue us out of jobs, but account, diagnose, and translate us out, too. Or, so goes a certain line of argument. Certainly, there have been some heavyweight concerns voiced about the rise of artificial intelligence. Of course, there are counterarguments too. Just as the Industrial Revolution sparked fears around the supplanting of man by machine (fears which lead some as far as destroying the new mechanical marvels: hence today's use of the word'Luddite' to denote those opposed to technological progress), all new vistas are likely to provoke both optimism and hesitance.

Recently, I finished binge-watching the first season of HBO's popular series, Westworld. The show sheds light on machines coming of age and the extent humans can go to exploit technology. From Matrix to Ex Machina, all these sci-fi movies reveal a darker side of not only humans but also the machines. I dread the idea of machines becoming smarter than us or a day when machines lead our lifestyles. But that might or might not happen in the next century, most probably I will not live to see that time.

The proliferation of portable, voice-enabled gadgets like Amazon's Tap speaker and Doppler Labs's smart, wireless earbuds enables us to play music, search the Web, and answer phone calls around the house and on the go using verbal commands. But because these devices are susceptible to damage from dirt and moisture and last only a few hours per battery charge, we don't use them as much as we might. Boston startup Vesper has devised a solution: miniature piezoelectric microphones that use a cantilever structure to harvest energy from sound and promise to be more durable and energy-efficient than conventional microphones. Vesper says that once its microphones are incorporated into gadgets, which will happen later this year, we should be able to use our voice-enabled devices outdoors and in inclement weather with less worry, for days on a single charge. To demonstrate its microphones' toughness, Vesper plunges them into beer and soda; envelops them in hot steam infused with cooking oil; subjects them to simulated dust storms; and drops them from heights onto hard surfaces (see videos above and below).