Eileen Yu began covering the IT industry when Asynchronous Transfer Mode was still hip and e-commerce was the new buzzword. Currently an independent business technology journalist and content specialist based in Singapore, she has over 20 years of industry experience with various publications including ZDNet, IDG, and Singapore Press Holdings. If applied inappropriately, artificial intelligence (AI) can bring more harm than good. But, it can offer a much-needed helping hand when humans are unable to find comfort from their own kind. AI hasn't always gotten a good rep.

But while the San Francisco entrepreneur misses his mother and father in Australia, he doesn't worry about their health. That's because he's pinged multiple times per day about their medication management and activity levels via an app connected to the PillDrill Wi-Fi health hub in their home. When the parents pop a pill, the system updates that the medication has been ingested and even registers their current state of mind with a scannable mood cube -- a different emotion is pictured on five of the six sides to represent comfort levels and pain. Havas, the founder of the company that manufactures the PillDrill, isn't trying to be creepy; he's trying to be cognizant of his parents' health care -- and stay ahead of trouble. In 2012, around 300,000 Americans called poison control hotlines after accidentally ingesting medications, according to the National Poison Control Center.