• New technologies involve important risks, which have special significance in developing countries.
• Three of these inter-related risks are worsening unemployment, increasing concentration of economic power and wealth, and the spread of biases in influential algorithms.
• Governments ought to carefully assess the above risks in their national context and then establish corresponding policies and programs.

Technological advances associated with the fourth industrial revolution — including artificial intelligence — allow the automation of an increasingly wide array of processes in increasingly interactive and sophisticated ways. These advances will likely give rise to many opportunities for economic and social development in developing countries, for instance by increasing food production.

But the new technologies also involve important risks, which have special significance in developing countries. They may build upon and exacerbate existing inequalities — both within developing countries as well as between developing and more developed regions.

Three of these inter-related risks are worsening unemployment, increasing concentration of economic power and wealth, and the spread of biases in influential algorithms. They will manifest in different ways and require different responses in diverse contexts. A cross-cutting problem is that too few developing country governments are giving these risks serious attention.

Risk 1: Worsening unemployment

The concern that new technologies — especially artificial intelligence — will lead to widespread job losses has been widely discussed. Of course, the fear that new technologies replace workers is an old one. But it's been pointed out that historically new technologies have often given rise to more new jobs than the ones that have been automated away.

What's perhaps different now is that the new, interconnected digital technologies will likely have a broader and more far-reaching array of abilities. And so the prospect of new kinds of jobs may well be diminished or limited to increasingly sophisticated domains, such as machine learning.

In addition, new technologies are now not just replacing jobs, but they are also enabling the disruption and restructuring of entire industries. For instance, Uber has already pulled the rug from underneath the conventional taxi industry in many places. Imagine the possible consequences of Uber's shift to driver-less cars.

Lower labor costs in many developing countries mean that investments in job replacing technologies will be lower. But other aspects of developing countries' contexts increase the possible severity of this risk.

First, the dearth of effective education systems and skills in countries like South Africa will make it more difficult for people to be retrained for the technology intensive new jobs that will become available. Secondly, all governments are struggling to grapple with the implications of new technologies and associated new business models. This struggle is particularly strong in developing country governments. The case of Uber in South Africa reflects this.

Risk 2: Increasing concentration of wealth

Many developing countries are characterized by high levels of inequality within their populations. Elites within these countries will be more likely to make use of AI and other new technologies. This will further increase returns to capital widening the gap between elites' productive capacity and that of everyone else.

A similar effect is likely at a global level. It's no coincidence that Russia's President Vladimir Putin has identified AI as the new terrain for global competition between nations.

New technologies' advantages for capital are not just due to increasing productivity, but also because they allow new business models that may control or even dominate entire sub-sectors and stifle competition. For instance, it could become possible for a single company to control large fleets of automated vehicles in one or more large areas.

Again, much will depend on whether states can keep up with these developments and respond effectively. Particular attention will need to be paid to intellectual property and competition law. For instance, the strict enforcement of intellectual property rights for AI algorithms may well support increasing economic concentration. It's also likely that national governments may have less and less influence over such decisions and trends. Even so, many developing country governments are not giving these developments their due attention.

Risk 3: Bias baked into algorithms

Finally, the AI algorithms that are at the centre of the fourth industrial revolution will reflect and perpetuate the contexts and biases of those that create them. Difficulties faced by voice recognition software in recognizing particular accents are a relatively innocuous example. Of course, the promise is that AI will enable such systems to learn to address such issues. But the learning process itself might be influenced by racial, gender, or other prejudices.

AI algorithms are developed almost entirely in developed regions. Thus they may not sufficiently reflect the contexts and priorities of developing countries. Ensuring that AI algorithms are appropriately trained and adapted in different contexts is part of the required response. It would be even better if developing countries become more engaged in the development of new technological systems from the get-go.

Governments need to act

These three risks require that academics, businesses, and civil society actors attend to the role of new technologies in developing countries. But a special responsibility lies with governments. For the most part, they seem to be distracted.

Governments ought to carefully assess the above risks in their national context and then establish corresponding policies and programs. This includes national skills development and work placement platforms, intellectual property and competition policies, and local technology adaptation and development.

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• Several PC manufacturers have announced new computers coming this year that will support Amazon's voice assistant, Alexa, hands-free.
• Some of these new PCs will come with special hardware that will make Alexa respond to commands more quickly and hear you better over loud music.
• This move is emblematic of Amazon's goal to put Alexa everywhere, in every device.

Amazon is putting its Alexa assistant into everything these days.

The Seattle-based company started with TV-streaming boxes and standalone Echo speakers. Now, Alexa is getting into more gadgets and computers — even those made by companies not named Amazon.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, several Windows PC manufacturers announced new computers coming this year that will support Amazon's voice assistant, Alexa, hands-free, just like how you'd interact with an Amazon Echo.

Last year, Amazon struck a deal with Microsoft that would let Alexa and Microsoft's Cortana voice assistant "talk to each other" on Windows 10 PCs, but an Amazon representative said these new Alexa integrations were unrelated.

HP announced its spaceship-like Pavilion Wave PC would support Alexa, while Acer said the voice assistant would launch on "select Aspire, Spin, Switch and Swift notebooks, as well as Aspire all-in-one PCs starting from Q1 2018." Asus says some of its Zenbook and Vivobook laptops will also support Alexa.

Some of these new PCs — like those in Acer's lineup — will come with special hardware that will let Alexa respond to commands more quickly and hear you better over loud music, similar to Amazon's Echo devices. But they all will use a new Alexa app for Windows 10 that's expected later this year.

While it's unclear how many customers will be enticed by these Windows PCs, Amazon should be happy about having HP, Acer, and Asus commit to supporting Alexa. Though Google and Apple are expanding their voice assistants, Amazon has maintained its lead by getting Alexa into as much hardware as possible.

You can now find Alexa on so many devices — even lightbulbs, ovens, and vacuum cleaners — but its heading to Windows 10 PCs is a big deal, considering how many people use and rely on Windows PCs every day. These particular PCs are likely to expose more people to Alexa, which only helps Amazon bring more people into its ecosystem.

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• Artificial intelligence is developing rapidly, and creating plentiful investment opportunities in its wake.
• HSBC breaks down the areas to watch in the AI space, focusing not just on software, but also hardware on equipment.

The robot revolution is coming. The question for stock investors is — are you prepared?

After all, artificial intelligence (AI) will eventually decide life-shaping things like whether we're insurable or have medical coverage, while also hugely impacting transportation and resource infrastructure, says HSBC.

That development is likely to carry with it major money-making opportunities. The trick is figuring out which corporations stand to benefit most.

"Companies that are early adopters of AI into their business may benefit from the first-mover advantage, increased productivity, reduced costs and potentially greater market shares," a group of HSBC global equity strategists led by Ben Laidler wrote in a client note.

The firm notes that automation and AI are one of the most under-owned thematic plays. In other words, there's upside waiting for investors savvy enough to grab it.

The chart below shows just how many billions of dollars are set to be unlocked in the coming years — and highlights the specific areas that will generate that growth.

In order to help in the stock selection process, HSBC has identified three primary categories — areas that focus on the hardware components and technology needed to support AI. This is where the firm thinks there's ample opportunities — not necessarily just in software, but also in machinery and tools.

Here are the group (all rationale from HSBC):

• Sensors — The development of natural language processing and a range of new enhanced sensors.
• Semiconductors — The high performance logic chips that are needed to analyze the data.
• Infrastructure and communication — Datacenters will expand to process the data and next generation 5G will be used to receive and transmit data.

Unsurprisingly, HSBC's stock screen is dominated by US and Korean companies. Out of the companies selected by the firm, the following US-listed ones have market values of more than $25 billion:

• Nvidia
• Intel
• Honeywell
• IBM
• Alphabet
• Broadcom
• NXP Semiconductors
• Salesforce.com
• Qualcomm
• Tesla
• Emerson Electric
• Parker-Hannifin
• Rockwell Automation
• Fortive

In the end, if you're as bullish on AI as HSBC, you'd be well-served to check out the sectors and companies outlined above. Because according to them, the machines are growing stronger, and with that sort of growth comes incredible opportunity.

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Artificial intelligence is starting to permeate the technology that we use everyday. 

That's especially true in smartphones, where apps that rely on machine learning and AI are increasingly common.

Statista mapped out the survey results of Deloitte's Global Mobile Consumer Survey which determined just how aware smartphone users are of technologies like machine learning and AI in their phones.

Turns out, people are becoming progressively aware of the advances in machine learning, especially when it comes to day-to-day features like predictive text and route suggestions. 

People are talking more and more about AI and machine learning, and for good reason: Both technologies received a lot of buzz in 2017, good and bad. Machine learning has now become so advanced that it can replicate itself which, if you believe the premonitions of Elon Musk, could bode ill for the future of civilization. 

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• Google had an impressive 2017 and its momentum could push it even higher in 2018, a UBS analyst notes.
• The company's plays in mobile computing, AI and its cloud services have positioned it well for growth.
• To view Google's stock price in real time, click here.

Google had an impressive run in 2017 and that momentum may help it overshadow competition in the new year. 

The stock is up 5% year-to-date, and has traded north of $1,000 per share since October.

UBS Analyst Eric Sheridan has named Google a top pick for growth in 2018, given the Silicon Valley giant's sustained operating performance, capital allocation, and its potential big boost from cash repatriation under the new tax law.

Sheridan also believes that Google is nailing four themes that could keep it at its highs:

1. Mobile Computing. Google is expected to spend more money in its shift to mobile computing, telling investors that it expects higher traffic acquisition costs, or the amount of money needed to pay PC makers, phone manufacturers and websites to promote its services and direct people to its sites, in the future. However, some analysts believe the spending may be necessary in order to boost revenue.
2. Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning. While many tech giants are increasingly investing in AI to power their offerings, Google is doing a great deal better than its competitors, according to three Chinese researchers. 
3. Media Consumption. Big tech firms may have shirked away from describing themselves as "media companies," but Google and its competitors have actively played large roles in becoming the go-to news destination for consumers.
4. Cloud Computing. Google recently signed a partnership with Cisco to migrate the data and applications of Cisco's users to its Google Cloud platform. The alliance will likely help Google compete against Amazon Web Services and Microsoft's Azure.

To read more about how Google and Facebook's online advertising dominance may be worth trillions of dollars, click here. 

SEE ALSO: Google and Facebook's share of the online ad market could eventually be worth trillions of dollars

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• This year's CES was full of products powered by Amazon's Alexa voice assistant.
• Apple, which usually influences the rest of the tech industry, has fallen far behind in the voice-based computing, and there's no sign it can catch up with Amazon or Google.
• Apple's HomePod speaker won't stand a chance against Amazon's rival Echo line or the other Alexa-powered devices when it belatedly launches later this year.

One of the favorite go-to talking points among Apple fans every year is how the company always seems to "win" the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas without ever showing up. 

For years, the event seemed to be merely a venue for the rest of the industry to show how it was catching up to what Apple had just done or trying to keep pace with what it was expected to soon do. The most famous example was in 2007, when Apple announced the original iPhone in the middle of that year's show, sucking out all the excitement out of Vegas. But Apple showed over and over again that it could set the agenda for the biggest consumer electronics conference in the world from afar.

Those days may be over. At this year's CES, Amazon displaced Apple as the most influential company at the show with the smallest presence there.

More importantly, this past week's event made clear that Amazon is dominating one of the most important trends in tech — voice-based computing. Not only has Apple fallen behind in that area, it's too late for the iPhone maker to catch up.

Alexa everywhere

At this year's CES, companies announced a slew of devices powered by Alexa, Amazon's voice assistant. There were Alexa-powered smart glasses, Alexa controls in Toyota cars, smart home gadgets that respond to Alexa commands, new Windows PCs with Alexa preinstalled, and so much more. It was nearly impossible to walk through the show floor for more than a few minutes without stumbling onto yet another Alexa-powered gizmo.

All those gadgets and announcements demonstrated how big a role voice is going to play in how we interact with technology — and just how dominant Alexa's position is. By contrast, Siri, Apple's Alexa rival, wasn't even in the conversation.

Alexa's dominance has taken years to build. Amazon's Echo smart speakers, which pioneered a new tech product and introduced Alexa to the world, gave the smart assistant a foothold inside consumers' living rooms. More recently, Amazon introduced cheaper Echo models, most notably the $50 Dot, that helped bring Alexa to the masses and allowed many to put it in multiple rooms. 

The combination of a pioneering product and inexpensive prices has allowed Amazon to sell millions of smart speakers and capture two-thirds of the market, even amid growing competition from Google.

Amazon's massive market share has attracted increasing numbers of developers. Thanks to the growing number of skills, or apps, they've produced for Alexa, Amazon's assistant is constantly getting better and learning to do more things. That in turn has made Alexa attractive to device manufacturers looking to add a voice assistant to their devices, something Amazon is more than happy to help them do.

Apple's HomePod will have none of the Echo's advantages

When Apple's HomePod, powered by its Siri voice assistant, hits the market later this year, it will have none of those advantages. Apple has only opened up Siri to developers in a very limited way and it's not available for use on non-Apple devices at all. And not only will HomePod hit store shelves years after the first Echo, it will sell for a steep $349. At that price, you could buy eight Echo Dots!

Yes, it's true that Apple puts a premium price on everything. And yes, the HomePod's high price is linked to the really great sound it offers. If you only want to listen to Apple Music or control the limited number of smart-home products that work with Apple's HomeKit technology, then the HomePod will be fine. 

But because of its price, you're not going to put a HomePod in every room of your house like you could with Echo Dot. Even then, I think it will have limited appeal, because you just won't be able to do as much with it as you can with an Echo smart speaker. For example, you won't get a HomePod to play songs from Spotify or Pandora just by issuing a voice command, because Apple hasn't opened Siri up to those services. 

Indeed, you shouldn't expect a slew of apps for the HomePod. I don't see how Apple's going to attract developers if it doesn't give them more leeway to tap into Siri, and if the company doesn't broaden the range of devices that can use its intelligent assistant.

Apple's strategy of keeping its technology relatively closed — its software generally only runs on its own devices and the company exercises a good deal of control over how developers' apps can work on its gadgets — worked fine for the iPhone and the Mac. But in order to be successful, voice-based computing systems need to be ubiquitous and in order to do that, they need to be open. 

Alexa is poised to dominate voice-based computing in large part because of Amazon's willingness to partner with a wide variety of gadget and software companies. That's never been more apparent than in the numerous Alexa-powered gadgets on display at CES. 

Apple missed a big opportunity

That Apple has fallen so far behind Amazon in voice-based computing is ironic, because the iPhone maker itself helped pioneer and popularize the technology with Siri. Apple has been shipping Siri on devices since the iPhone 4S, which launched in 2011. The technology is now on hundreds of millions devices, and comes preinstalled on every iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Mac the company sells.

Thanks to that, Apple had all the pieces in place to turn Siri into the dominant voice-based computing technology. But the company was slow to develop Siri and failed to realize the voice assistant's true potential. While Siri runs on lots of Apple devices, those gadgets weren't designed around voice-based interactions. Siri is just an alternate way of interacting with them, not their primary interface.

By contrast, by focusing on voice interactions and making voice central to its devices, Amazon has turned Alexa into a really powerful and compelling technology.

Apple won't just be late, it's missed the boat entirely

Apple fans like to point out that the company has a history of entering nascent markets late but succeeding anyway by developing products that far exceed their rivals and set consumer expectations. The iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, and the Apple Watch are among the most notable examples.

But it's too late in the game for Apple to reprise this history with the HomePod. Amazon's too far ahead and the HomePod and Siri are going to be too limited for Apple to knock Jeff Bezos' company off its perch.

I'm not the only one who sees this. When I asked one executive in the smart home space at CES if he thought Apple had a chance to bounce back and compete with Amazon and Google in voice computing, he chuckled dismissively.

To be sure, just because Apple's whiffed on voice computing doesn't mean it's doomed. It's not in danger of losing its lead in consumer tech. Actually, its iPhone business is still humming along nicely, and the company will likely report its best quarter ever later this month.

But thanks to Amazon's focus on Alexa and its own missteps with Siri, Apple's going to miss out on one of tech's biggest new trends. As CES showed, when it comes to voice-based computing, it's Amazon, not Apple, that's setting the standard.

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• Colgate unveiled a new smart toothbrush called the E1.
• It can map your mouth, emit "sonic vibrations," and provide real-time brushing feedback. 
• The toothbrush will cost $99.95, and you can only buy it through Apple.

Colgate is teaming up with Apple to sell you a high-tech toothbrush. 

Called the E1, the "smart" electronic toothbrush gives you real-time brushing feedback, maps your mouth, and uses "sonic vibrations" to remove more plaque, and can upload the data it collects to an iPhone app called Colgate Connect. The handle of the toothbrush is also equipped with artificial intelligence, so it can coach you on your oral health over time. 

Here's another look at the E1:

To help get kids excited about brushing, Colgate even made a game within its iPhone app. Called "Go Pirate," the game uses the toothbrush as a game controller. The longer you brush, the more coins you'll collect.

Colgate says the toothbrush will last 10 days on a single charge.

The E1 will cost $99.95, but you'll only be able to buy it on Apple's website or at select Apple stores. A toothbrush certainly seems like an odd choice for Apple, but Apple's increasingly pushed into the health space with the Apple Watch, and its online store is also home to a bevy of other third-party health products like smart scales, LED jump ropes, golf swing analyzers, and glucose monitors.

Apple is also reportedly making investments in its own health products, like developing a way to measure blood sugar, and working to turn the iPhone into a one-stop shop for all your medical information.

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This is a preview of a research report from BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about BI Intelligence, click here.

Major logistics providers have long relied on analytics and research teams to make sense of the data they generate from their operations.

But with volumes of data growing, and the insights that can be gleaned becoming increasingly varied and granular, these companies are starting to turn to artificial intelligence (AI) computing techniques, like machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing, to streamline and automate various processes. These techniques teach computers to parse data in a contextual manner to provide requested information, supply analysis, or trigger an event based on their findings. They are also uniquely well suited to rapidly analyzing huge data sets, and have a wide array of applications in different aspects of supply chain and logistics operations.

AI’s ability to streamline so many supply chain and logistics functions is already delivering a competitive advantage for early adopters by cutting shipping times and costs. A cross-industry study on AI adoption conducted in early 2017 by McKinsey found that early adopters with a proactive AI strategy in the transportation and logistics sector enjoyed profit margins greater than 5%. Meanwhile, respondents in the sector that had not adopted AI were in the red.

However, these crucial benefits have yet to drive widespread adoption. Only 21% of the transportation and logistics firms in McKinsey’s survey had moved beyond the initial testing phase to deploy AI solutions at scale or in a core part of their business. The challenges to AI adoption in the field of supply chain and logistics are numerous and require major capital investments and organizational changes to overcome.

In a new report, BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, explores the vast impact that AI techniques like machine learning will have on the supply chain and logistics space. We detail the myriad applications for these computational techniques in the industry, and the adoption of those different applications. We also share some examples of companies that have demonstrated success with AI in their supply chain and logistics operations. Lastly, we break down the many factors that are holding organizations back from implementing AI projects and gaining the full benefits of this disruptive technology.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

• The current interest in and early adoption of AI systems is being driven by several key factors, including increased demands from shippers, recent technological breakthroughs, and significant investments in data visibility by the industry’s largest players.
• AI can deliver enormous benefits to supply chain and logistics operations, including cost reductions through reduced redundancies and risk mitigation, improved forecasting, faster deliveries through more optimized routes, improved customer service, and more.
• Legacy players face many substantial obstacles to deploying and reaping the benefits of AI systems, though, including data accessibility and workforce challenges.
• AI adoption in the logistics industry is strongly skewed toward the biggest players, because overcoming these major challenges requires costly investments in updating IT systems and breaking down data silos, as well as hiring expensive teams of data scientists.
• Although AI implementations are unlikely to result in large-scale workforce reductions in the near term, companies still need to develop strategies to address how workers' roles will change as AI systems automate specific functions.

 In full, the report:

• Details the factors driving adoption of AI systems in the supply chain and logistics field.
• Examines the benefits that AI can deliver in reducing costs and shipping times for supply chain and logistics operations.
• Explains the many challenges companies face in implementing AI in their supply chain and logistics operations to reap the benefits of this transformational technology.

Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:

1. Subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and over 100 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >>Learn More Now
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• Yann LeCun, who helped launch Facebook's artificial intelligence research initiative, is stepping aside from overseeing the company's day-to-day AI efforts but will remain at the company.
• IBM veteran Jérôme Pesenti will replace LeCun and will also oversee Facebook's effort to integrate AI into its products.
• Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who recruited LeCun, has argued that AI is a key technology for the company and the world.

Yann LeCun, one of the best-known names in artificial intelligence, is stepping aside from his role overseeing the day-to-day operations of Facebook's AI research team.

LeCun will stay on with Facebook as its chief AI scientist, where he will be in charge of the general direction of the company's artificial intelligence research. The social networking company will replace LeCun with Jérôme Pesenti, an IBM veteran and former CEO of AI startup BenevolentAI.

Pesenti will take control of Facebook AI Research (FAIR), which LeCun launched in 2013. He will also be in charge of the company's Applied Machine Learning (AML) group. The AML team's mandate is to help integrate AI into Facebook's products and features, from photos and videos to the news feed.

"There was a need for someone to basically oversee all the AI at Facebook, across research, development, and have a connection with product," LeCun told Quartz, which first reported his move.

Pesenti and LeCun confirmed the changes in posts on their personal Facebook pages.

"In my new role, I will make sure we continue advancing the state of AI research and help make Facebook products more intelligent, useful and meaningful," Pesenti said in his post. "I am super thrilled and honored to join this team!"

LeCun, who also teaches at New York University, was personally recruited by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg has long argued that AI is the key to the future of both Facebook and the world and the best way for technology to augment human capabilities. The shakeup at the top of the company's efforts heralds a larger change within its AI organization, per the Quartz report. 

Pesenti will report directly to Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's chief technology officer, a move that could streamline the AI group's management structure. Additionally, Facebook's AML group will now work more closely with FAIR, as part of a larger initiative to unify the company's AI efforts. 

Recently, LeCun took the infamous Sophia the Robot (and Business Insider) to task for spreading what he sees as "complete bulls---" about artificial intelligence.

Read the full Quartz report here, including an interview with LeCun. 

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• Apple announced it will launch its HomePod smart speaker on February 9.
• The HomePod is very similar to the popular Amazon Echo and Google Home devices, but is powered gby Apple's voice assistant, Siri.
• Siri leaves much to be desired compared to other virtual assistants like Amazon's Alexa or Google's Assistant, which may impact the HomePod experience.

Apple's long-awaited attack in the smart-speaker wars is coming February 9. 

The $350 Apple HomePod will work very similarly to the popular Google Home and Amazon Echo devices: Once you plug the speaker into a wall and connect it to your WiFi network, a virtual assistant — in this case, Siri — can answer all of your questions and commands, from getting the weather to playing music to controlling the various smart devices in your home.

Having owned an Amazon Echo for more than two years, I can easily recommend a smart speaker for anyone and everyone; it will really change the way you live. That said, I have some concerns about the HomePod.

Speaking from personal experience, the success of these physical smart-speakers is almost completely dependent on the strength of the virtual assistant that lives inside them. And Siri, despite being the first major virtual assistant on the market, lags behind the competition.

Mind you, Siri has improved recently. Apple released a huge update to Siri in iOS 11, last year's big update for iPhones and iPads, which made Siri more natural-sounding and respond more quickly.

Indeed, Siri on my iPhone X responds much more quickly to commands than previous versions of Siri, which only bodes well for the HomePod. I love my Amazon Echo because it's so quick to respond that it feels totally natural; at the very least, Apple's HomePod will need to be similarly speedy if it hopes to compete.

But Siri is still behind the competition in other important ways. In particular, Siri just doesn't come across as a convincing virtual assistant.

Recently, I spent time asking questions to both Siri and my Amazon Echo.

All of these questions my Amazon Echo was able to answer, but Siri could not:

• What's your favorite video game?
• What's your favorite band?
• What's your favorite flower?
• What's your favorite kind of cookie?
• What's your favorite movie?
• Are you married?
• What's your favorite country?
• Sing me a song.
• What are your hobbies?
• What's your favorite dessert?
• What's your favorite book?
• Who's your favorite actor?
• What's your favorite season?
• What's your favorite month of the year?
• What's your favorite TV show?
• Who is your favorite musician?
• Who is your favorite president?
• What's your favorite planet?
• What's your favorite ice cream flavor?
• What's your favorite cuisine?
• What is your sexuality?
• What is your gender?
• What's your favorite weather?
• What's your favorite state?
• What's your favorite city?
• What's your favorite holiday?
• Are you a Democrat or Republican?
• Who are your parents?
• Who is your best friend?

Of course, none of these questions are essential to the experience of owning a smart-speaker, but they do make the virtual assistant feel more alive, real, and convincing. When my Echo responded to all of these questions, I really felt like Amazon put a lot of effort into designing this experience, going above and beyond to answer even the silliest of questions. Siri has none of that nuance, or frankly, personality.

Siri will improve over time, through software updates, like every other virtual assistant out there. But at the HomePod's $350 price point, you could buy three Amazon Echos (or Google Homes), or seven Amazon Echo Dots (or Google Home Minis). Apple boasts superior audio quality with its HomePod, but if you care more about having a quality virtual assistant, you can't go wrong with the competition right now.

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• A fake Coachella poster that went viral after its publication Tuesday was generated by artificial intelligence.
• The neural network and poster came out of Botnik Studios, an Amazon Alexa Accelerator graduate which uses computer systems to make art. 
• The neural network generated the list after being fed a bunch of real band names, including the names of every band ever written about on Pitchfork. 
• The fake band names are hilarious, but it wasn't all the AI's doing. Humans at Botnik handpicked the best phrases out of a collection of generated band names ranging from realistic to gibberish. 

A sense of humor may be one of the last things that distinguishes humans from robots, but that doesn't mean that artificial intelligence can't come up with a good joke.

Botnik Studios, an art collective that uses computers "to make cool stuff," brought those capabilities to light Tuesday with the release of its AI generated Coachella poster.

The poster features made up band names such as headliners Fanch, One of Pig, and Lil Hack — names which have no association with real musical acts but which all are eerily familiar enough to give a sense that they could be real.

That eerie familiarity is by design, said Jamie Brew, a former writer for parody sites The Onion and Clickhole, who now works as CEO of Botnik Studios. 

"Some people seem to have the same experience that I had when I first saw the finished thing," Brew told Business Insider. "The feeling of looking at a lineup for a festival and not recognizing any of the bands, and feeling out of touch because you must not be cool anymore."

Incubated by Amazon

Botnik Studios is a Seattle-based company that uses artificial intelligence and bots to create art. Though the company gives off the air of anarchy, it's one of the first companies to come out of the Amazon Alexa Accelerator — a startup incubator that focuses on building companies that work on bot-based voice technology. 

The company itself employees just five people, but Brew said that there are around 30 to 40 writers, editors, programmers and artists that are part of the larger Botnik community, and who use its technology for their own creations.

To create the Coachella post, Brew said that members of Botnik taught an artificial neutral network to guess what letter is most likely to follow another letter. The bot lives on the AWS cloud, and is a variant of a public AI model designed by Andrej Karpathy, who now runs AI for Tesla. 

To generate the poster, the network was fed thousands of band names, including a complete list of every band written about on Pitchfork, which trained it to come up with words that follow similar letter patterns. 

While AI came up with the names, Brew said it was ultimately humans that curated the final list out of a lot of unworthy candidates. 

"We think of it like farming," Brew said. "There are acres and acres of mostly total gibberish."

The Coachella poster is the second project Botnik has created using the neural network. The first was a "Hashtag Forecast" that generated a list of the "hottest upcoming web trends," such as #figfam and #tanglife. 

The group also made a name for itself with fake Seinfeld and Harry Potter scripts generated by a predictive keyboard app, which gives word suggestions based on the source text you feed it. 

Here's the full poster: 

SEE ALSO: A startup from Phil Libin's 'studio' thinks its artificial intelligence will make employees happier at work

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NOW WATCH: We talked to Sophia — the first-ever robot citizen that once said it would 'destroy humans'

Watch the full discussion on artificial intelligence and its implications for society.  Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget moderates a panel of AI experts from the Microsoft Cafe in Davos, Switzerland. Microsoft president Brad Smith, Princeton University professor Jennifer Rexford, and Mckinsey Global Institute chairman James Manyika discuss how to ensure AI can be a source for good. Opening remarks by Philip Hammond, Chancellor of the Exchequer.

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This is a preview of a research report from BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about BI Intelligence, click here.

Social media is becoming increasingly influential in shoppers' purchasing decisions. In fact, the top 500 retailers earned an estimated $6.5 billion from social shopping in 2017, up 24% from 2016, according to BI Intelligence estimates.

In addition to influencing purchase decisions, social media is a large part of the product discovery and research phase of the shopping journey. And with more and more retailers offering quick access to their sites via social media pages, and shoppable content becoming more popular, it's likely that social media will play an even larger role in e-commerce. 

In this report, BI Intelligence examines the advantages and disadvantages of each platform, and reviews case studies of successful campaigns that helped boost conversion and increase brand awareness. Additionally, we explore how retailers can bring social aspects into their own sites and apps to capitalize on consumers' desire for social shopping experiences.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• Social media is becoming more influential in all aspects of the purchasing journey.
• Facebook is the clear winner in social commerce, with its huge user base and wide-ranging demographics.
• However, retailers should have a presence on every platform their target market is on. Each platform will require a different strategy for retailers to resonate with its users.
• Retailers can also benefit from bringing social aspects in-house. They can do this by building their own in-house social networks, or by embedding social media posts into their sites.

In full, the report: 

• Provides an overview of the top social media platforms — Facebook, YouTube, Instagram — that retailers should be using, the demographics of each platform, as well as their individual advantages and disadvantages. 
• Reviews tools recently developed by these platforms that help retailers create engaging content.
• Outlines case studies and specific strategies to use on each platform.
• Examines how retailers like Sephora, Amazon, and Poshmark are capitalizing on consumers' affinity for social shopping by creating their own in-house social networks.

Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:

1. Subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and over 100 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >>Learn More Now
2. Purchase & download the full report from our research store. >> Purchase & Download Now

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• Bill Gates said that artificial intelligence is coming to replace some jobs, and there isn't a lot we can do to stop it.
• But if it plays out like Gates predicts, it will be a net positive for the world.
• We might all have more free time because of AI, he says.

Bill Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, thinks that artificial intelligence will take over a lot of jobs and ultimately will be a good thing.

In an interview with Fox Business, Gates said that robots taking over our jobs will make us more efficient, and lead to more free time.

“Well, certainly we can look forward to the idea that vacations will be longer at some point," Gates told Fox Business. "If we can actually produce twice as much as we make today with less labor, the purpose of humanity is not just to sit behind a counter and sell things, you know?"

Gates is arguing that AI, the technology that some fear is already stripping jobs from primarily low-wage workers, is just allowing us to better manage our time. In a way, he's right. If artificial intelligence allows us to get in our cars and reply to emails on our way to work, it would definitely save time.

But, companies like Amazon are starting to trial technology that could eventually eliminate the jobs of cashiers. Its new cashier-less grocery store uses AI to track what customers are putting in their baskets and charges them once they leave the store, no checkout required. Amazon has not announced plans to bring the technology to Whole Foods, the grocery chain it recently bought for $13.7 billion, and the new store does employ human workers to help customers and restock shelves.

"There will be challenges because the rate of change will be faster in these next 20 years than it’s been before," Gates said. He concedes that the government will likely be forced to rework its social safety net programs, and help displaced workers retrain for the new economy, but if done right, it will be a net positive for everyone.

If society is able to make all the food, homes, and consumer goods it needs, then workers should be allowed to relax, and focus on other interests, Gates argues.

That future is likely a long way off, but AI can already see and hear more accurately than humans. Some of the smartest people in tech have different views on how society should handle the rapidly-growing technology, but all agree that it will significantly change the world. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, recently said that AI is more important to humanity than the mastery of fire or electricity, according to Bloomberg.

Gates says all that change will leave society with a lot of decisions and options in the future, "because you’ll just be so much more productive."

Read more about how AI is affecting nearly every company in tech right now.

SEE ALSO: There's a 'submarine trend' in the tech world, and it's affecting nearly every company you know

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NOW WATCH: Microsoft President Brad Smith says the US shouldn't get 'too isolationist'

• Woebot is a free therapy chatbot that launched as a stand-alone iOS app on Thursday.
• Alison Darcy, a clinical psychologist at Stanford University, created it.
• Woebot uses one of the best-researched approaches to treating depression, cognitive-behavioral therapy, to deliver scripted responses to users.
• It's part of a growing trend of incorporating smartphone apps into therapy.

The message I couldn't ignore appeared around 6 p.m. I was on the bus. Instinctively, I cupped a hand around my phone and stole a furtive glance at the newest blue bubble on the screen.

"Hey Erin, you ready to check in?" someone — or something — asked.

The message was from Woebot, an artificially intelligent chatbot designed to help people cope with feelings of depression and anxiety that launched as a stand-alone iOS app on Thursday. It was my latest jaunt into the new and mostly uncharted territory of digital mental-health care.

Alison Darcy, the clinical psychologist at Stanford University who created Woebot, based the tool on a type of treatment called cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT, a heavily researched clinical approach to depression that encourages people to examine how they react to challenging situations.

Woebot isn't a replacement for an in-person therapist, Darcy says, nor will it help you find one. Instead, the tool is part of a widening array of approaches to mental health. But it's fundamentally different from any other form of therapy.

"The Woebot experience doesn't map onto what we know to be a human-to-computer relationship, and it doesn't map onto what we know to be a human-to-human relationship either," Darcy told Business Insider. "It seems to be something in the middle."

The uniqueness of Woebot could prove to be its biggest strength — or cause its downfall. But as roughly one in five Americans struggle with mental illness or psychiatric disease, experts agree it's time for something new.

An app that tells you when you're being too hard on yourself

Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide, and it can kill. But scientists know surprisingly little about it, and treatments haven't changed much in more than six decades.

We do know that talking about it, especially with a licensed therapist or a psychologist, seems to help. But therapy is often expensive, inconvenient, or hard to approach. Of the roughly 20% of Americans who have a mental illness, close to two-thirds are estimated to have gone at least a year without treatment.

"We have this idea that if you're suffering you need to talk to someone, and many of us insist on that," Darcy said. "But insisting that that's the only way actually alienates a lot of people for whom that's not possible."

Unlike traditional therapy, Woebot can be accessed anywhere, anytime— provided the user has a smartphone. And it's free.

Once you log in with your first name, you're set up. Woebot — a cute, animated robot — then asks you questions about yourself, such as how you're feeling or what your energy is like at that moment.

The artificial intelligence behind the app is programmed to provide scripted responses to users based on the principles of CBT.

At times, chatting with Woebot can feel like a conversation. But most of the time, it feels like a fun game where each interaction provides a small kernel of wisdom.

Over the week I used the app, Woebot's responses grew a bit predictable, but I still enjoyed using it. I could see why the app would be helpful for many people who have anxiety or depression — especially those new to therapy.

Woebot's lessons make sense over text

Several psychologists not involved with Woebot told Business Insider that CBT lends itself to a chatbot setting.

A recent review of studies, published in the journal World Psychiatry, that compared people who received the treatment online with those who received it in person found that the two settings were equally effective.

One reason for this, Darcy says, is that CBT focuses on the present as opposed to the past. Instead of talking to Woebot about your relationship with a parent, you might chat about a recent conflict at work or an argument with a friend.

"A premise of CBT is it's not the things that happen to us — it's how we react to them," Darcy said.

Woebot uses that methodology to identify when someone is engaging in "negative self-talk," which could involve feelings of guilt, shame, or low self-esteem. These types of thoughts stem from a distorted approach to events and relationships, Darcy said.

If a friend forgot about your birthday, you might write a message to Woebot saying "No one ever remembers me" or "I don't have any real friends." Woebot would probably tell you that you're engaging in a type of negative self-talk called all-or-nothing thinking, which is a distortion of reality. You do have friends, and people do remember you — one of them simply forgot your birthday.

"CBT skills are skills everyone can use,"Nancy Liu, an assistant clinical professor of clinical psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, told Business Insider.

'The data blew us away'

Before launching Woebot, Darcy and her team tested an early version of the tool on 70 college students who had reported symptoms of depression.

The results of that study, published in April in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, Mental Health, were promising. The students were split into two groups — one was assigned to chat with Woebot over two weeks, while the other was directed to read an e-book about depression.

Unlike the students in the e-book group, those using Woebot said they saw a significant reduction in their depressive symptoms. They also reported chatting with it almost daily, even though they weren't required to spend a certain amount of time with it.

"The data blew us away," Darcy told Business Insider in October, after Woebot launched exclusively on Facebook Messenger over the summer. "We were like, this is it."

But Darcy is quick to point out that Woebot is not meant to replace traditional therapy.

"What we haven't done a good job of in [therapy] is give people an array of options — what about the people who aren't ready to talk to another person?" Darcy said. "This is part of the idea of meeting people where they're at."

Digital therapy is booming

Realistically, meeting people where they are today means meeting them on their phones.

"The nice thing about something like Woebot is it's there on your phone while you're out there living your life," Liu said.

Consistent access is one of the biggest advantages of the tool. It can be easily reached 24/7 with the tap of an icon, unlike a therapist on a 9-5 schedule.

I once chatted with Woebot late at night was when I was feeling panicky — a time when I wouldn't have dared call or text my regular therapist for fear of bothering her. In that moment, when random worried thoughts were playing a mean game of tag in my mind, Woebot provided a bit of perspective and space.

The program is not the only one of its kind. Other Silicon Valley-style approaches to addressing depression include apps that replace the traditional psychiatry office with texting, as well as chatrooms where you can discuss your problems anonymously and services that enable employers to give staff members access to therapists and counselors online.

One such digital mental-healthcare service, X2AI, is powered by artificial intelligence and available around the clock, similar to Woebot. But instead of providing scripted responses, X2AI's tool, named Tess, acts as a sort of liaison between therapists and patients.

"Normally, a therapist will see five patients per day and spend the rest of their time on administrative work," Michiel Rauws, the cofounder and CEO of X2AI, told Business Insider. "What we allow them to do is look after 50 patients per day, because while they're chatting with their patients, Tess is chatting with their other patients."

If a person tends to have panic attacks on Sunday nights, Tess might reach out proactively via text to see how they're doing, then report the outcome to the person's therapist, Rauws said.

Like Woebot, the service isn't meant to replace traditional therapy, but to supplement it. The way Darcy sees it, the more new tools like this there are, the better.

Uncharted waters

It's not yet clear whether Woebot will make any noticeable, long-term difference in users' mental health.

In academia, researchers study potential ways to help people with mental illness for years before offering a safe and tested treatment. Silicon Valley tends to get the technology to a large group of people quickly, then see whether it helped.

"There's a real divide between the very in-depth analyses of academia, where it's very slow and it's hard to figure out how to scale up, versus the startup world — where a lot of these ventures are being produced — which is rapid iteration, and that's their business model,"Matthew Hirschtritt, a resident psychiatrist at the University of California at San Francisco, told Business Insider.

"That makes a lot of sense: putting it out and seeing if it works, and if it doesn't, try something new," he said. "But it's hard to fit that alongside the academic setting, where you do these rigorous analyses on small groups and then slowly get larger."

But the untested nature of mental-health apps is not the only risk users face.

'We wanted to be completely anonymous'

As the landscape of digital therapy grows, users may be increasingly concerned about privacy.

When Woebot launched on Facebook Messenger in June, it garnered several thousand users from around the world. But many reported to the company that they weren't comfortable sharing intimate data over Facebook's platform, which has faced privacy issues before.

So Woebot has moved away from Facebook and launched as a stand-alone app that only requires a first name to sign up; Darcy described the app as anonymous.

Giving feedback on the app is also anonymous, she said — even over email, as email addresses aren't linked to user profiles. Users can also ask Woebot to delete their account history, wiping all conversations.

"From our company perspective, we have very little data on anybody," Darcy said. "We sort of cut ourselves off from that. Even when people email us, we're like, 'We don't know who you are!' That was a really clear decision from the outset. We wanted to be completely anonymous."

But in the world of mental health, total anonymity can be a double-edged sword.

In the fall of 2016, a therapist who had been employed by Talkspace, an app that connects people to licensed therapists over text message, accused the company of endangering public safety by keeping the contact information of a potentially dangerous patient anonymous.

Talkspace subsequently rewrote its confidentiality policy to say that if a therapist believes a patient is a danger to themselves or others, they should ask the patient for their contact information.

If a Woebot user's words indicate they may have suicidal or potentially harmful thoughts, the app will flag it and go into what Darcy calls crisis mode.

In that case, Woebot will respond with a message explaining what triggered crisis mode and why the situation is beyond the scope of what the app is equipped to handle, Darcy said. Then Woebot will send a list of resources, like emergency phone numbers and a link to Tec-Tec, one of the only apps that have been found to help reduce suicidal thinking and self-harm.

That approach to emergencies is fairly standard for emerging mental-health apps, but it's much less comprehensive than treatment with an in-person therapist. If a patient threatens violence against themselves or others, a provider is legally obligated to break confidentiality and intervene, which can involve reporting them to the authorities or, in extreme cases, institutionalizing them.

"With situations like child abuse, you can't just say, 'Here, call this line,'" Liu said. "In a clinical setting, that would be unacceptable."

Because Woebot is not a replacement for traditional therapy, it will inevitably fall short for many people. But the app is also likely to help some others — probably tech-savvy people who are new to therapy, or those in remote areas with no access to traditional therapy, or those who are already in therapy but need some additional help.

"If anything, it could be preventive for some people," Liu said. "I don't see any overt negative effects of someone exploring and learning more."

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DON'T MISS: Why psychedelics like magic mushrooms kill the ego and fundamentally transform the brain

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NOW WATCH: A psychiatrist reveals a practical definition of happiness

• Discord has shut down a chat group on its service that was being used to share pornographic videos that had been edited using an artificial intelligence technology to include the images of female celebrities without their consent.
• Dozens of people were active on the channel, which Discord said violated its rules on revenge porn.
• People who have doctored videos using the AI technology are also sharing them on Reddit.

Online chat service Discord has shut down a user-created chat group that was being used to share pornographic videos that had been doctored using artificial intelligence technology to include the images of female celebrities without their consent.

The company closed down the group shortly after Business Insider reached out to Discord about it. Discord took it offline because the chat group violated its rules against non-consensual pornography — otherwise known as revenge porn, a company representative said in a statement.

"Non-consensual pornography warrants an instant shut down on the servers whenever we identify it, as well as permanent ban on the users," the representative said. "We have investigated these servers and shut them down immediately."

Discord lets users create their own communities or "servers" around certain subjects. Originally intended as a tool for gamers to communicate, it is now used more broadly, with more than 14 million daily users it says, who send more than 300 million daily messages.

The chat group was called "deepfakes", and it included several channels in which users could communicate. One was reserved for general discussions, another for sharing pictures that could be used to train the AI technology, and yet another for sharing the doctored videos. About 150 Discord users were logged into the deepfakes server earlier on Friday.

The users who created the chat group did attempt to set some ground rules for it. The rules stated that the videos couldn't be doctored to include images of "amateurs;" instead, only images of celebrities and public figures were allowed. And the rules barred images or videos of children.

"It goes without saying that you should respect each other," the rules added. "Be polite, avoid excessive swearing, and speak English at all times."

Over the last few months, growing numbers of people have been using an AI technology called FakeApp to virtually insert images of celebrities and other people into videos in which they didn't originally appear, as first reported by Motherboard in December 2017. People who are interested in the technology or who have already edited videos using it have been congregating on Discord and Reddit to exchange notes on how to use FakeApp and share their efforts. (A Reddit spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.)

Although the technology can be used for a variety of purposes, to date it's largely been used to place the images of famous women into adult videos without their consent.

As of publication, a Reddit community dedicated to sharing the clips remained online, and users were discussing the closure of the Discord channel. Some had been banned from all servers across the service, they said. 

"The celeb faceswap gifs and videos seem to be slowly disappearing from this [subreddit], and now the discord is gone... I’m worried that the best fap fuel may be about to be buried," one user wrote.

"Of course this has more potential than that, but come on. The porn is clearly the best part."

SEE ALSO: AI and CGI will transform information warfare, boost hoaxes, and escalate revenge porn

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• People are using cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology to splice actor Nicolas Cage's face into a wide assortment movies and TV shows, creating surreal mash-up clips.
• The same technology has also been used recently to insert the images of female celebrities into pornographic videos without their consent.
• As the technology improves, it could lead to new forms of art, but it could also be used to attempt to blackmail people or to create fake news stories.

The future is here — and it looks like Nicolas Cage.

Some online users are taking a new kind of artificial intelligence technology and using it to insert the hammy actor into films and TV shows he didn't actually star in — basically into anything and everything they can imagine, from classic James Bond films to scenes from "Game of Thrones."

Reddit users began posting about and running with the idea on Thursday after one wondered how long it would be before the AI technology, which has already been put to more unscrupulous uses, was used to create a "full Nic Cage movie."

"That's actually a very very good idea," another Reddit user responded.

While humorous, the clips point to the growing sophistication of the technology — and its potential uses, both good and bad.

The name's Cage, Nicolas Cage

You can now find an assortment of Nick Cage-enhanced clips on the online forum site. In one, Cage becomes James Bond, replacing Sean Connery in the vintage Bond movie "Dr. No."

In another, the actor is transformed into the dour-faced Stannis Baratheon from "Game of Thrones," in place of actor Stephen Dillane.

In yet another, Cage replaces Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in a pivotal scene from "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

And in a particularly meta video, the fake-Cage appears alongside the real Cage on an episode of Saturday Night Live, replacing actor Andy Sandberg — who was already impersonating the real Cage.

What could be the pièce de résistance, however, is still just an idea: Some Reddit users are discussing recreating fantasy epic "Lord of the Rings" with Cage playing every single character.

(Business Insider isn't linking to the Reddit community where these clips are being shared, because they are intermixed with videos that are objectionable or pose ethical concerns.)

The technology behind the videos is also being used in more nefarious ways

To create their Cage-enhanced videos, Redditors are using a freely available app called FakeApp. They feed it photos of Cage and the video into which they want him inserted. The app uses AI to digitally overlay his face on the video.

Due to variations in face shape, lighting, movement, and the like, some results are more realistic than others — as you can see above. But generally, the more images the app has to work with, the better the results.

But why Nicolas Cage? The actor is famous for his over-the-top performances and has become a meme of sorts in recent years in some corners of the internet. The deliberate incongruity of putting his image in unlikely places offers obvious opportunities for subversive humor.

Nick Cage isn't the first celebrity to get the FakeApp treatment. It's been used on many different ones to place them in videos they didn't actually appear in, often creating highly realistic mash-ups, as Motherboard first reported last month.

It's also been frequently used in much more disturbing ways than having Nick Cage turn into James Bond. In many cases, people have used to FakeApp to insert images of female celebrities into pornographic videos without their consent.

Indeed, in the Reddit community being used to share FakeApp clips, the overwhelming majority of videos being posted are these pornographic ones — not Nicolas Cage videos or other surreal experiments. These explicit videos are akin to "revenge porn" and have to the potential to be humiliating for their unwitting subjects.

Technology such as FakeApp has lots of potential — for good and bad

These videos — both the good and the bad — can be thought of as initial, rudimentary experiments with the technology. But they offer hints of what may come.

On the positive side, experts have predicted that technology such as FakeApp could lead to exciting new forms of art and contribute to the internet's long-established "remix culture." Indeed, it could be used to create whole new genres of media — and lots of new legal conundrums, Francis Tseng, the copublisher of New Inquiry, told Business Insider last summer.

"There could be a lot of interesting [intellectual property] cases if amateur filmmakers start synthesizing films using the likenesses of celebrities and start profiting off that," Teng said. "I can imagine a whole culture of bootleg films produced in this way."

On the flip side, as the technology improves, it will likely be used in more dangerous and antisocial ways. For example, it has the potential to turbo-charge fake news. When paired with technology that can synthesize real people's voices, apps such as FakeApp could make it extremely difficult for ordinary people to distinguish what's real from what's fake.

And such technology could well be used to harass and blackmail people, putting them — virtually — in compromising situations. 

The technology could "lift cyberbullying to a whole new level," Justin Thies, who helped develop Face2face, an earlier experiment in the field, told Business Insider.

At its worst, technology such as FakeApp could undermine the very concept of truth — and all the Nicolas Cages in the world won't be able to save us.

SEE ALSO: AI and CGI will transform information warfare, boost hoaxes, and escalate revenge porn

NOW READ: CGI and AI are going to turbocharge 'fake news' and make it far harder to tell what's real

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Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide, and it can kill. Yet scientists know surprisingly little about why it happens and how best to treat it. 

We do know that talking seems to help — especially under the guidance of a licensed mental health professional. But therapy is expensive, inconvenient, and often hard to approach. A recent estimate suggests that of the roughly one in five Americans who have a mental illness, close to two-thirds have gone at least a year without treatment.

Several Silicon Valley-style approaches to the problem have emerged: There are apps that replace the traditional psychiatry office with texting, and chat rooms where you can discuss your problems anonymously online.

The newest of these tech-based treatments is Woebot, an artificially intelligent chatbot (and recently launched app) that uses the principles of cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT — one of the most heavily researched clinical approaches to treating depression.

I spent two weeks using the tool. Here's how it went.

SEE ALSO: A Stanford researcher is pioneering a dramatic shift in how we treat depression — and you can try her new tool right now

The first message appeared around 6 p.m., while I was on the bus. I cupped a hand around my phone and stole a furtive glance at the gray bubble on the screen.

Woebot, which is designed to help people cope with feelings of depression and anxiety, launched as a stand-alone iOS app earlier this month.

Trying it out was my latest jaunt into the new and mostly uncharted territory of digital mental-health care.

Alison Darcy, a clinical psychologist at Stanford University, created Woebot based on cognitive-behavioral therapy, which encourages people to examine how they react to challenging situations.

Woebot isn't a replacement for an in-person therapist, Darcy says, nor will it help you find one.

Instead, the tool is part of a widening array of approaches to mental health. It's fundamentally different from any other form of therapy.

In one of my first interactions with Woebot, I told it about a time I had felt nervous about not being good or smart enough.

Woebot pointed out that I was engaging in a common practice called distorted thinking.

Then it had me re-write the thought in terms that would better reflect reality. In reality, I felt "not good enough" because I was anxious about a presentation I was giving the next day.

• Nvidia is sliding after two Wall Street firms took shots at the company.
• Goldman Sachs and Citron Research both announced a pullback on their optimism while maintaining a good overall outlook.
• Watch Nvidia trade in real time here.

Nvidia's short-term future is looking bleak.

The stock is down 1.52% to $236.84 after Goldman Sachs removed Nvidia from its conviction list, and Citron said the stock is about to drop about 15% to $200.

The two firms are both concerned about how red-hot Nvidia shares have been recently. Shares have been on a meteoric tear over the last year, gaining 104.31%, as revenues grew just 11%. In 2018, stock has posted a 16.74% gain, which Citron thinks is too much.

"Is Nvidia really worth $36 billion more than it was New Years Eve with $15k BTC?"Citron asked on Twitter. Nvidia has gotten a boost from cryptocurrency miners buying huge numbers of graphics cards to speed up their rigs, especially as the price of bitcoin hit its high of nearly $20,000 in December. Prices have come crashing down to just under $9,000, which could mean demand from miners could wane.

Citron and Goldman both fear the boost Nvidia has seen from cryptocurrency mining is unsustainable and unreliable as a way to grow sales. Goldman said it could lead to volatile earnings as Wall Street struggles to find concrete ways to predict the demand of the crypto market.

For context, during its recent earnings call, AMD's leadership said crypto mining added about $300 million in revenue, or about 5-6%, in 2017. Nvidia is set to report its earnings, and its boost from crypto mining, on February 8.

Crypto isn't the only worry for Nvidia, though.

The company's data center business was just starting when Goldman added the stock to its conviction list in late 2016. Since then, it's exploded as artificial intelligence and cloud computing have become the hottest new trend in enterprise computing. The sector is now better understood, which means more players are starting to nip at the heels of Nvidia's dominance, according to Citron.

Citron said that Nvidia used to be the only player in AI and autonomous driving computing, but is facing stiff competition in both categories going into 2018.

While both Goldman and Citron criticize the company and predict a more difficult 2018, the firms agree that Nvidia is still at the top of its game. Goldman maintained its buy rating on the company, and Citron said it still loves the company's CEO, Nesen Huang. 2018 may just be a slower year for the company.

Nvidia is up 16.74% this year.

Read more about AMD's recent earnings report here. 

SEE ALSO: AMD's crypto boost could actually be sustainable

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