AI in Marketing : from abstract to reality

Stephen Hawking warns us that AI could be the best or worst thing to happen to humanity, according to Bill Gates robots should be taxed (at least, the businesses that use them) and Elon Musk has pretty much declared we need to become Cyborgs. Two years back (Ok, one year back to be honest) if someone had told me the machines would be taking over I would have replied "Skynet and what army?". But by now, like everyone else I cannot help but notice the shifts and patterns that point to the march of AI. People like Alphabet's Eric Schmidt have admitted they were wrong about their AI predictions. Things have obviously moved faster than expected. We have always had this visceral fear of machines (let's not even get started on our fear of change); most of the popular representation of sentient machines has therefore been evil. Ironically however, nothing will ever match the harm humans inflict on each other (short of that big asteroid sneaking up on us).