Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the hot trends in 2019. As we approach 2020, the AI market is projected to reach $70 billion by then, according to the GSMA. The innovation that AI brings to industry, businesses, and consumers is almost tangible. The new decade is going to be enhanced with more automation everywhere and robotics powered by AI. Yet, there is a lot of hype and hysteria around the future of Artificial Intelligence and how humans will need to adapt and get used to co-living with it.

How do we distinguish between fact and falsehood? This is perhaps, one of the most debated questions of the past year. Google and Facebook are both in the spotlight for disseminating so-called "fake news", despite the artificial intelligence (AI) systems that these companies developed and deploy on their platforms. If AI is currently struggling to discern facts from fiction, could it be that human intelligence is still a necessary component for the continued successful integration of AI? In a much simpler time, Google was a search engine that indexed websites.

Multiple examples have recently gone viral, each demonstrating the shortcomings of Google's search methods and the ability of the AI utilised to generate factual information. Ask Google if Obama is planning a coup, and you'll get the answer that he might be. Ask Google if women are evil and Google delivers the answer that all women have a "degree of prostitute in them". Ask Google if all republicans are fascists, and Google produces an answer that includes the suggestion they're all Nazis. Most of these answers are derisory and inherently damage Google's brand. More dangerous, however, is the potential to warp users' perception of the world by providing incorrect and unfortunately inflammatory information. By giving patently false narratives top billing on Google lends these stories unwarranted credibility. Google's utilisation of AI is helping to usher in what has been called the "post-truth" era.

With a new scientific paper published every 20 seconds, startups and tech veterans alike are racing to apply artificial intelligence to help academics and businesses stay on top the relentless influx of new information. We at Sparrho are testing a new incentive model for researchers to communicate their academic publications to a wider audience. Perhaps a loved one suffers from insomnia and you want to keep up-to-date with the newest research, or you are a blogger or television researcher looking for new themes to cover, or in fact, you just want to know about the latest advances in hydrogen car technology before anybody else. Google your topic of interest, and you'll be greeted by plenty of news articles and popular science blog posts, but original research articles are hard to find. Even if you find them, how will you know which articles are most relevant and, more importantly, trusted by experts?