To some, artificial intelligence (AI) may be categorized next to the likes of Bitcoin and blockchain: it's just another techie buzz word. For others, artificial intelligence could conjure up images of sentient robots hellbent on world domination. While artificial intelligence, in some ways, can be those things, what it is in practice often looks much different. The artificial intelligence that many people talk about today can also be referred to as machine learning, or the process by which software takes in data, learns patterns, and makes whatever adjustments it needs to make to achieve its goal. "Every industry is being shaken up by AI these days," explained Brad Newkirk, strategic leader at LumiGrow, a smart lighting company working to develop AI solutions for cannabis cultivators.

This story was published in partnership with The Moonshot Catalog. In the late 1960s, Nobel Prize-winning economist Herbert Simon posed the following thought exercise: Imagine you are an alien from Mars visiting a college on Earth, and you spend a day observing how professors teach their students. Simon argued that you would describe the process as "outrageous." "If we visited an organization responsible for designing, building and maintaining large bridges, we would expect to find employed there a number of trained and experienced professional engineers, thoroughly educated in mechanics and the other laws of nature that determine whether a bridge will stand or fall," he wrote in a 1967 issue of Education Record. "We find no one with a professional knowledge in the laws of learning, or the techniques for applying them," he wrote. Teaching at colleges is often done without any formal training. Mimicry of others who are equally untrained, instinct, and what feels right tend to provide the guidance. As a result, teaching is, to use another building metaphor, not up to code. There are widespread beliefs about the best way to teach and learn that have been proven wrong by science, yet they persist. Reading back over a textbook or taking lecture notes with a highlighter at the ready is often done by students, for instance, but these practices have proven of limited merit, and in some cases even counterproductive in aiding recall.

Fox News Flash top headlines for Jan. 29 are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. Punxsutawney Phil undergoes "great stress" every year on Groundhog Day and should be replaced by a robot, the leader of PETA says. Ingrid Newkirk writes in a letter to the furry celebrity's Groundhog Club that Phil deserves a break and should be allowed to retire. The request, posted on PETA's website, comes ahead of Sunday's annual ceremony which will determine whether spring arrives early this year.