Will Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant ever be able to talk to each other? Is broadband internet as important as water and electricity? We have it out on these topics and others in War of the Worlds, our new weekly video series that's part talk show, part game show, and part cross-platform debate. This story, "Watch War of the Worlds: Siri and Alexa are frenemies, China stops stupid drones and more" was originally published by Macworld.

Marketing is no longer about right-brain versus left-brain. Technology is getting smarter, and consumers are turning to machines to help them make better purchase decisions. As people turn to their devices to make product recommendations and automate their services, one has to wonder: Will brands start marketing to machines versus humans? "Marketing to machines -- that kind of scares me," says Jeff Barnett, CEO of CRM giant Salesforce Commerce Cloud. While the concept may seem a bit dystopian, it's not completely farfetched.

When we think of artificial intelligence, most people think of two specific things: androids, and the future. We think of creations that will look, more or less, like humans, and things which are far off from our modern times. Artificial intelligence (for better or worse) doesn't look like androids that do our laundry or pilot our spaceships (yet) but it is absolutely here – perhaps even the White House is getting involved. The very best businesses and brands are learning how to manipulate artificial intelligence to boost their brands and improve their customer interactions. In Sweden, there is a retail bank called Swedbank which has integrated Nina, an intelligent virtual assistant, into its system.

If you hate slow walkers, biting ice cream or Taylor Swift, you're not alone. A new dating app has been announced that matches you with potential partners based on what you mutually hate. 'Hater' is the brainchild of a former Goldman Sachs employee, Brendan Alper, 29, and it launches publicly around the world on February 8. Hater works by being downloaded and then asking users to swipe to show how much they love or hate certain things. Swiping up denotes'love' of a certain topic, down means you'hate' it, right is'like' and left is'dislike'. The topics vary widely, and include everything from Donald Trump to'butt selfies'. Diverse: The topics vary widely, and include everything from Donald Trump to'butt selfies' (pictured: two topics currently on Hater) At present, there are over 2,000 topics to like, dislike, hate or love, and once you've been through enough of them, the app will let you see your matches At present, there are over 2,000 topics to like, dislike, hate or love, and once you've been through enough of them, the app will let you see your matches, with each percentage determined by your shared dislikes.

Prompted by an activation phrase, Dragon Drive recognizes a driver named Lior by his voice. Voice command in cars shows so much potential to help drivers keep their eyes on the road, but since its implementation, the technology largely resulted in frustration. Sure, placing a call to a specific contact usually works, but just try finding a destination in the navigation system. It becomes worse when the car doesn't show what commands it understands. Nuance, the company behind the majority of voice systems in cars, thinks it has the problem licked through the use of machine learning and the cloud, essentially equipping cars with a virtual assistant.

Pity the 34 staff of Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance in Japan, diligently calculating insurance payouts and brutally replaced by an AI system. If you believe the reports from January, the AI revolution is here. In my opinion, the goings-on in Japan cannot possibly qualify as AI, but, in order to explain why, I have to explain what I think AI means. In one way, this attempt will be doomed to failure because there is no unified definition of AI. But I can, hopefully, provide a framework of understanding about the topic that may help.

After Star steals the spotlight from Alexandra, the group is forced to deal with a tragedy as tensions rise on "Star" Season 1, episode 7, titled "Black Wherever I Go." "Things get out of control during a rally Derek (Quincy Brown) organizes in response to the sudden loss of a close friend," the synopsis teases. In the promo for the Fox series, the group deals with the death of one of the shop's hair stylists, who was shot by a police officer. While in pain, Derek suggests taking their grief and putting it into a protest. In the "Star" Season 1, episode 7 "Black Wherever I Go" clip, Derek can be seen asking Alexandra (Ryan Destiny) if the group can sing for the protest, however, she doesn't want to because she is afraid Star (Jude Demorest) won't take it seriously. Simone (Brittany O'Grady) and Carlotta (Queen Latifah) are also pictured attending the peaceful protest, but it looks like things get out of hand because Alexandra can be seen getting taken away by a police officer.

Digital technologies and advanced analytics have the potential to create the invisible bank of the future. Powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and activated by voice, virtual banking assistants can become an integral part of consumers' daily lives. Banking today is becoming less and less a place you go, and more something that is hidden from view behind digital banking and commerce apps. Once an account is opened at a bank or credit union, there is less need to stop into a branch, since functions like deposits, borrowing, payments and transfers can be done without personal interaction through online and mobile devices. According to a new report published by KPMG, "Meet Eva – Your Enlightened Virtual Assistant and the Future Face of the Invisible Bank", technologies like Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa or Samsung's Viv will enable an even greater shift in banks and banking by 2030.

Information technologies are accelerating at an exponential rate, ushering in the fourth industrial revolution. This is a digital revolution and the pace of change is unprecedented. This revolution incorporates machine learning (think parallel processing and neural networks) and the concept of self-assembly or self-programmability. As technologies continue to advance, they accelerate the progress of other technologies, and so on, and so on. Thanks to parallel processing, big data, cloud technology, and advanced algorithms, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning are becoming more powerful.

Through techniques like machine learning, our devices are finally beginning to understand us on a much more fundamental level than ever before. Though true artificial intelligence is still not here quite yet, contextual data storage combined with the simplicity of almost perfected speech recognition has changed the way we interact with our devices, and will only be iterated upon until technology is so seamless that we will forget we are even using it. It seems quite clear that AI will be the future, but what about AR? Will augmented reality integrate with artificial intelligence to make our lives as simplistic as possible? Let's take a look a few possible scenarios, along with technologies on the market today that seem to be headed towards this transition. Artificial intelligence is used to describe a technology that can make decisions based on varying efficiency algorithms.