I am a poet and artist, and I make Twitter bots. The term "bot" encompasses many different kinds of software agents, from conversation simulators like Eliza, to programs that write stories about sports events without human intervention, to automatically created social media accounts that spam hashtags. The bots I make have an artistic and literary bent: for example, I made @everyword -- which tweeted every word in the English language in alphabetical order over the course of seven years -- and more recently @the_ephemerides, which tweets computer-generated poetry juxtaposed with NASA imagery. I'm part of a community of bot-making artists (loosely known as #botALLY) who are taking the canvas of social media and covering it with computer-generated writing and other kinds of generative art. As part of Sam Woolley's provocateur-in-residence workshop at Data & Society, I was asked to write a provocation regarding automated agents and bots from my perspective as a poet and artist.

WASHINGTON-- Some Americans could see a lot more drones flying around their communities as the result of a Trump administration test program to increase government and commercial use of the unmanned aircraft. President Donald Trump gave the go-ahead Wednesday, signing a directive intended to increase the number and complexity of drone flights. The presidential memo would allow exemptions from current safety rules so communities could move ahead with testing of drone operations. States, communities and tribes selected to participate would devise their own trial programs in partnership with government and industry drone users. The administration anticipates approving at least five applications, but there is no limit on the number of communities that can join.

President Trump and Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao announced the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration Pilot Program today -- an initiative aimed at exploring expanded use of drones. While the Obama administration began allowing some drone activity to take place in US airspace, a fair amount of restrictions were still applicable. This new program, however, will allow companies and local governments to use drones in ways that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) currently doesn't allow. That includes "beyond-visual-line-of-sight flights, nighttime operations, and flights over people," as White House advisor Michael Kratsios said today. "This program supports the President's commitment to foster technological innovation that will be a catalyst for ideas that have the potential to change our day-to-day lives. Drones are proving to be especially valuable in emergency situations, including assessing damage from natural disasters such as the recent hurricanes and the wildfires in California," Secretary Chao said in a statement.

Americans could see a lot more drones flying around their communities as the result of a Trump administration test program to increase government and commercial use of the unmanned aircraft. President Trump gave the go-ahead Wednesday, signing a directive intended to increase the number and complexity of drone flights. The presidential memo would allow exemptions from current safety rules so communities could move ahead with testing of drone operations. States, communities and Native American tribes selected to participate would devise their own trial programs in partnership with government and industry drone users. The administration anticipates approving at least five applications, but there is no limit on the number of communities that can join.

Mark Johnson wants to beat the United States Department of Agriculture at its own game: predicting yields of America's crops. The USDA puts boots on the ground, deploying hundreds of workers to survey thousands of farms a month ahead of the October corn harvest, America's biggest crop. Johnson's startup, Descartes Labs, has just 20 employees, and they never leave the office in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Instead, Descartes relies on 4 petabytes of satellite imaging data and a machine learning algorithm to figure out how healthy the corn crop is from space. Corn yield prediction is big business in the US. Billions of dollars are at stake along the ag supply chain each year as corn starts to come out of the ground in August.

Hiring someone who turns out to be a bad fit can be costly: Unhappy employees cost the U.S. economy between $450 billion and $550 billion in lost productivity each year, according to research firm Gallup. And replacing a full-time worker can cost up to twice the employee's salary. While working on a project at Harvard Law School, Angela Antony found herself immersed in statistics like those. "If you look across the economy, about 46 percent of hires leave within 18 months. That's despite all the time, resources, and billions of dollars spent trying to effectively hire," Antony says.

You thought it would never come, but the end of the year is almost upon us, and with it the latest Call of Duty release from Activision. Now's your chance to catch the game at a discount before it rolls out: Today, Newegg's selling Call of Duty: WWII for $50. Here are the caveats: This is for the disc-based version of the PC game, and it's one of those "see price in cart" deals, so you won't see the price on Newegg's listings. The game is set to release on November 3, and Newegg says the disc will ship "after" this date. That means you probably won't be playing on day one, but you're saving 10 bucks.

The Federal Aviation Administration would review each program. The agency would grant waivers if necessary -- to safety rules that now restrict drone operations. Examples include prohibitions on flights over people, nighttime flights and flights beyond the line of sight of the drone operator.

The world is moving so fast that tomorrow seems like yesterday. Nowhere are the changes coming faster than in the science of artificial intelligence. Applications that sounded like science fiction only a decade ago are now part of our daily lives. We encounter AI applications multiple times every day. "Learning algorithms" greet us on our digital devices, influence what we buy and guide the news we watch and read–and sometimes even write the articles. Soon driverless cars and trucks will flood our streets and highways.

WASHINGTON/TAIPEI – New security measures including stricter passenger screening take effect on Thursday on all U.S.-bound flights to comply with government requirements designed to avoid an in-cabin ban on laptops, airlines said. Airlines contacted by Reuters said the new measures could include short security interviews with passengers at check-in or the boarding gate, sparking concerns over flight delays and extended processing time. They will affect 325,000 airline passengers on about 2,000 commercial flights arriving daily in the United States, on 180 airlines from 280 airports in 105 countries. The United States announced the new rules in June to end its restrictions on carry-on electronic devices on planes coming from 10 airports in eight countries in the Middle East and North Africa in response to unspecified security threats. Those restrictions were lifted in July, but the Trump administration said it could reimpose measures on a case by case basis if airlines and airports did not boost security.