Good thing it's Halloween season, because I'm not sure whether I should be scared of all these big tech announcements. Earlier this week, we saw Amazon roll out (in one case literally) a variety of devices they believe will make your life easier. There's the giant Echo Show that mounts on your wall as a digital bulletin board. There's the drone-like flying security camera to let you monitor every inch of your home. Then there's Astro, the seemingly adorable robot who rolls out your home to keep you safe and attend to your every needs.

With advances in stem cell research and nanotechnology helping us fight illnesses from heart disease to superbugs, is the fusion of biology and technology speeding us towards a sci-fi future - part human, part synthetic? In Ridley Scott's seminal blockbuster Blade Runner, humanity has harnessed bio-engineering to create a race of replicants that look, act and sound human - but are made entirely from synthetic material. We may be far from realising that sci-fi future, but synthetics are beginning to have a profound effect on medicine. At their state-of-the-art laboratories in Hong Kong, scientists from Canadian company Novoheart are using stem cells to create bio-artificial hearts the company calls "hearts in a jar". From just 2.5ml of your blood, Professor Ronald Li and his team are able to create stem cells that can then be turned into a miniature "clone" version of your heart that beats like yours and reacts to new drugs the way yours would.

The robotics industry becomes ever more a newsworthy sector of modern day life, given that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its relevant advancements become more pervasive in the day to day. Be it in the home, in one's car, or at work, AI is creeping with quicker forward movement to make the 21st century the era of substantial robotics development. When you realize that AI just cheated its way past the "I'm not a robot" Captcha security check this year (which was specifically developed to tell humans and robots apart), you start to appreciate the potential for science fiction scenarios frequently seen in movies, and put forth by authors, to become a reality. However, short of turning into a scene from I, Robot, there exists the other side of the coin in that robotics have helped to facilitate so many aspects of people's lives that the waking, working world wouldn't know what to do without this increasingly advanced technology anymore. One area most affected is the daily commute.

Movies and television have proved to be uncanny indicators of what's to come. Innovations that first appeared in 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Minority Report and even Star Trek and The Jetsons, are now fully integrated into how we work and play. But how much is too much? And are businesses equipped to handle these disruptions that have turned the traditional customer journey on its head? These topics and more were discussed during a thought-provoking keynote presentation called "The Sci-Fi Future of Customer Engagement" delivered by Jamie Anderson, Chief Marketing Officer for SAP Hybris.

Artificial intelligence has made great progress in helping computers recognize images in photos and recommending products online that you're more likely to buy. But the technology still faces many challenges, especially when it comes to computers remembering things like humans do. On Tuesday, Apple's director of AI research, Ruslan Salakhutdinov, discussed some of those limitations. However, he steered clear during his talk at an MIT Technology Review conference of how his secretive company incorporates AI into its products like Siri. Salakhutdinov, who joined Apple in October, said he is particularly interested in a type of AI known as reinforcement learning, which researchers use to teach computers to repeatedly take different actions to figure out the best possible result.

Artificial intelligence has made great progress in helping computers recognize images in photos and recommending products online that you're more likely to buy. But the technology still faces many challenges, especially when it comes to computers remembering things like humans do. On Tuesday, Apple's director of AI research, Ruslan Salakhutdinov, discussed some of those limitations. However, he steered clear during his talk at an MIT Technology Review conference of how his secretive company incorporates AI into its products like Siri. Salakhutdinov, who joined Apple in October, said he is particularly interested in a type of AI known as reinforcement learning, which researchers use to teach computers to repeatedly take different actions to figure out the best possible result.

When we talk about artificial intelligence (AI) most people still imagine robots who can talk, act, and behave (to a certain extent) like a human being -- like a C-3PO (Star Wars), sans the metallic look. Or maybe, a supercomputer that can read human behavior so well that it interacts seamlessly with us, while controlling the system -- like Hal 9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey) or Auto (Wall-E). While, arguably, we may not be there yet in terms of our command of AI, we are not that far. AI is definitely the direction tech development is taking, as evidenced by most recent trends, including the formation of a partnership by tech giants to push the frontier of AI. While we may not be nearing the Singularity, AI has taken leaps and bounds of improvement over the past few years alone.