The recent U.S. backflip on Syria has certainly not helped the nation's residents. Before the Syrian Civil War in 2017, the estimated population was 22 million; today it is roughly five million fewer, with another six million "internally displaced." With Turkey launching an invasion, we can expect more Syrian citizens to become refugees. Beyond the occasional news feature inside of refugee camps, you hear very little about where Syrians end up, save when far right leaders demand it not be in their backyard. How can you tell if they will successfully integrate into the foreign populations they must seek aid from?

Summary: Where do we look to see the most advanced chatbots and the most complete application of AI? Chatbots designed as'artificially intelligent psychological counseling chatbots', 'therapeutic assistants' for short. Perhaps a better title for this would be "how far have we come?" About two months ago when we wrote the three part series on chatbots the most striking thing was just how fast and explosive this growth has been. And that's saying a lot in an industry that is characterized by exactly that, fast explosive growth. The fact that originally caught my eye was this.

In March of 2016, a twenty-seven-year-old Syrian refugee named Rakan Ghebar began discussing his mental health with a counsellor. Ghebar, who has lived in Beirut since 2014, lost a number of family members to the civil war in Syria and struggles with persistent nervous anxiety. Before he fled his native country, he studied English literature at Damascus University; now, in Lebanon, he works as the vice-principal at a school for displaced Syrian children, many of whom suffer from the same difficulties as he does. When Ghebar asked the counsellor for advice, he was told to try to focus intently on the present. By devoting all of his energy to whatever he was doing, the counsellor said, no matter how trivial, he could learn to direct his attention away from his fears and worries.

Attorneys defending Indiana Gov. Mike Pence's order to bar agencies from helping Syrian refugees resettle in his state faced unusually fierce questioning before a federal appeals court Wednesday, suggesting the panel might side with a lower court that found the order discriminatory. A three-judge panel for the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago zeroed in on the intelligence and intent behind the Republican vice presidential candidate's order, which a federal judge said in February "clearly discriminates" against refugees from the war-torn nation. Judges suggested that Indiana could've had a stronger argument for opting out of the refugee program -- in which states disperse federal money to resettlement organizations -- instead of excluding Syrians. "If you're in, you play by the government's rules," Judge Frank Easterbrook said. The oral arguments came the same day the White House announced that the refugee program will be expanded in the next year as concern continues about the refugee crisis stemming from Syria's civil war and conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Taanayel, Bekaa, Lebanon - After more than five years of brutal conflict, Hope of Syria may sound like an ambitious name - but this young team of robot engineers is eager to help shoulder the responsibility of rebuilding their country. The team, composed entirely of Syrian refugee students, recently won a national robotics competition in Lebanon, when their robot, SYR01, managed to shoot the most balls into a net. They will now compete in the Vex world robotics competition on April 20 in the US state of Kentucky, coming up against some 450 other teams from around the world. While winning the tournament is their first priority, team member Amjad al-Homsi, 17, says they also want to draw attention to the plight of Syrians. "[It's about] putting the spotlight on Syrians," Homsi, the team's engineering network manager, told Al Jazeera.

In the face of the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis, a start-up that develops AI is to puts its technology to use as a psychological aid for refugees by having supportive conversations with them via SMS messages. In the midst of a civil war and a near-total collapse of society, millions of Syrian refugees have been fleeing their country in search of anywhere where they can live safe in the knowledge their life is not under threat, but not without great psychological stress on those involved. However, due to the sheer number of people fleeing, and the difficulty they experience in simply trying to find shelter, they are unlikely to receive any form of support for the sake of their mental health. According to The Guardian, however, a start-up that develops AI, X2AI, is to use its systems to create a chatbot called Karim, which will allow anyone with a mobile phone to have conversations with it about their experiences in Arabic. Once the conversation becomes more developed, Karim will use its natural language processors to analyse the likely emotional state of the human on the other end and react with an appropriate response or questions for the refugee.

More than 1 million Syrians have fled to Lebanon since the start of the conflict and as many as one-fifth of them may be suffering from mental health disorders, according to the World Health Organisation. But Lebanon's mental health services are mostly private and the needs of refugees – who may have lost loved ones, their home, livelihood and community – are mostly going unmet. Hoping to support the efforts of overworked psychologists in the region, the Silicon Valley startup X2AI has created an artificially intelligent chatbot called Karim that can have personalised text message conversations in Arabic to help people with their emotional problems. As the user interacts with Karim, the system uses natural language processing to analyse the person's emotional state and returns appropriate comments, questions and recommendations. Related: How much should we fear the rise of artificial intelligence?