AI is asbestos in the walls of our tech society, stuffed there by monopolists run amok. What I do not do is predict the future. No one can predict the future, which is a good thing, since if the future were predictable, that would mean we couldn't change it. Now, not everyone understands the distinction. They think science-fiction writers are oracles. Even some of my colleagues labor under the delusion that we can "see the future". Then there are science-fiction fans who believe that they are the future. A depressing number of those people appear to have become AI bros. These guys can't shut up about the day that their spicy autocomplete machine will wake up and turn us all into paperclips has led many confused journalists and conference organizers to try to get me to comment on the future of AI. That's something I used to strenuously resist doing, because I wasted two years of my life explaining patiently and repeatedly why I thought crypto was stupid, and getting relentlessly bollocked by cryptocurrency cultists who at first insisted that I just didn't understand crypto.

AI chatbots can write a poem, do your homework, draft lawsuits, and maybe even take your job, if the hype is to be believed. Can they handle your investments, too? While the use of artificial intelligence in the realm of financial advice is nothing new--"robo-advisors" have been around for years, some of which use AI--the chatbot technology is rapidly becoming more accessible to individual investors. Google's Bard and Microsoft's chatbot, powered by ChatGPT and integrated into its Bing search engine, can interact with users in plain English and can engage in surprisingly human-seeming interactions. To test the investing abilities of Microsoft and Google's respective products, we challenged each one to pick two stocks--one growth stock and one value stock--and see how they did over a three-week span compared to one another as well as a human.

It's no secret the technology sector of the stock market has been crushed this year. The Nasdaq 100 index, a widely followed benchmark for high-growth tech companies, has declined by 29% in 2022 so far. But many individual stocks have been hit even harder, particularly those focused on serving consumers because it makes them more vulnerable to the broader economic slowdown. Interest rates have been rising because inflation recently topped a 40-year high, and that's placing a stranglehold on people's spending power. Still, some consumer-centric companies have managed to maintain rapid growth rates in this difficult period.

C3.ai (NYSE:AI) is a leading software company, which provides Artificial Intelligence services to enterprises. The company is poised to ride the wave of growth forecasted for AI. The global Artificial Intelligence (AI) market is forecasted to grow at a meteoric 20.1% CAGR from $387 billion in 2022 to over $1.3 trillion by 2029. C3.ai serves an envious list of large reputable customers from The US Air Force and the Department of Defence, to large energy companies such as Shell & Engie. They have been growing revenues at a 40% CAGR over the past couple of years, while the stock price has declined massively.

As technology continues to rapidly evolve, demand is soaring for providers of advanced services like machine learning (ML). It's a subfield of artificial intelligence that focuses on using large amounts of data to make predictions and improve productivity in a variety of business processes. Estimates suggest the machine learning industry was worth $15.5 billion in 2021, and it's set to soar almost tenfold to $152 billion by the year 2028. That growth will be driven by organizations finding new and exciting ways to apply ML, whether they're in e-commerce, manufacturing, or anything in between. Splunk (NASDAQ:SPLK) is a pioneer of ML technology.

This has been a brutal earnings season for investors who hold a lot of growth stocks. Markets are down, and Wall Street sentiment is shifting toward safer, more established businesses. Many of these growth stocks are issuing conservative outlooks for the fiscal year ahead, too, after several years of booming gains. It was still jarring to see Ambarella ( AMBA -6.21%) shares fall over 30% after the company reported solid fourth-quarter results. The company, which develops AI video processing tech in the autonomous driving and security markets, has some big markets it can target over the next few years.

China is on its way to developing a strong artificial-intelligence industry and won't be derailed by the Trump administration's steps to protect sensitive American technologies amid rising trade tensions. So says Nomura-Instinet analyst Joel Ying. In a note to clients Friday, Ying said Alibaba Group (BABA) and other Chinese internet giants are funding a slew of artificial-intelligence startups. "Despite headwinds from the U.S.-China disputes in the high-tech sector, we believe Chinese companies can still maintain strong momentum in the AI industry," he wrote. Get these newsletters delivered to your inbox & more info about our products & services.

STOXX launched an index that uses artificial intelligence-related algorithms to select companies exposed to the AI megatrend. The STOXX AI Global Artificial Intelligence Index is made up of around 200 companies from a wide range of industries that invest heavily in the development of new AI technologies such as technology, telecommunications, finance and internet services. According to STOXX CEO Matteo Andreetto, "AI technologies present an unrivalled investment opportunity, yet investors need solutions to discern hype from a real opportunity." The new STOXX AI index selects its constituents by using artificial intelligence technology – which STOXX says is the first thematic index to do so. To develop the index STOXX partnered with Yewno, an AI company based in Silicon Valley, which applied its knowledge graph technology to assess companies' intellectual property (IP).

Though it's just reaching the radar of mainstream investors, eSports have quietly risen to become a global phenomenon over the past several years. In fact, eSports revenues are expected to rise from $463 million last year to nearly $1.1 billion by 2019, according to market research firm Newzoo. However, it's important to remember that most companies involved in the budding eSports ecosystem are largely tech and media companies, which traditionally do not pay dividends. As such, I included both pure-play eSports names, as well as their suppliers, in the stock screen to research this piece. Now that this quick bit of housekeeping is out of the way, let's examine why game designer Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ:ATVI) and chipmaker NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) are two of the best income investments across the eSports landscape.

NVIDIA's (NASDAQ:NVDA) graphic cards have long been favorites among hardcore gamers, but who would've thought the chipmaker's stock would explode the way it has in recent times? The share price has more than tripled in just the past year, turning NVIDIA into a near eight-bagger in just five years. It's more an artificial intelligence computing company today, having made huge headway in two of the hottest technology fields of our times: AI and self-driving cars. For investors looking to find the "next NVIDIA," the trick is to find a company that is sitting on a big growth opportunity, or is already tapping into a soon-to-heat-up trend, but that is still flying under Wall Street's radar. These are stocks with the potential to soar.