Twitter's stock price jumped more than 4% Tuesday after billionaire investor Mark Cuban confirmed he acquired shares in the social media company. Mark Cuban, chairman of AXS TV and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, listens to testimony during a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing Dec. 7, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Mark Wilson, Getty Images) According to CNBC, Cuban said he is buying shares in companies focused on tech such as artificial intelligence, deep learning and machine learning. "I started buying Twitter recently because I think they finally got their act together with artificial intelligence," during an interview on CNBC show Squawk Alley. During its quarterly earnings call last week, Twitter cited advances in machine learning on its platform to draw people back to the app when they have been away for a period of time, or to battle abuse and fight against spam accounts. Twitter also reported a boost in users in the first quarter, saying increased interest in news and politics was bringing both new and resurrected users to the platform.

Summary: Just how accurate are algorithms at spotting fake news and are we ready to turn them loose to suppress material they don't find credible. Here are some considerations and stories about some of the companies trying to build these fact-checkers. The first two are in fact fake. You may actually have seen them during last fall's election coverage. The third headline however is true, but not with the implications you may think.

"Boyfriend Maker," an app that allowed users to create and chat with a virtual "boyfriend" was at the top of the App store in Asian markets and was rated #1 in Japan, the Daily Dot had reported. The app used Artificial Intelligence that allowed it to learn language from its users. Within months, it was pulled from the app store when its chat responses became racist, sexist and sometimes even violent. "It was horrible," according to Hilary Mason, the CEO and founder of Fast Forward Labs. She spoke about the app at a media and tech conference recently to illustrate the point that much of the work humans have done around machine learning and artificial intelligence has been done outside the mainstream tech community.

The idea of machine learning sounds like a science fiction thriller or action movie where a computer takes over the world. It rarely goes well for the humans (remember I, Robot?). Machine learning is a form of artificial intelligence, and if you ask a computer scientist, you will get a highly technical answer that involves algorithms, pixels and both supervised and unsupervised learning. In simpler terms, a machine "learns" by looking for patterns among massive data loads, and when it sees one, it adjusts the program to reflect the "truth" of what it found. The more data you expose the machine to, the "smarter" it gets.

If you let your imagination run wild in the world of automatic speech recognition (ASR) and natural language understanding (NLU), and you throw in a little fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD), you can come up with several illegal uses for systems such as Alexa Voice Service, Google Home, Siri, and Cortana that will give you pause. As I have previously written, Alexa is the "killer app" for the Internet of Things (IoT). It is not dangerous, at least not in its present form. But just for fun, let's play pretend in our world of infinite possibilities. Please note: I'm going to use "Alexa" for the wake word in the following examples.

An unprecedented voice-transcription technology can tell you not only what's being said, but who is saying it. The web app, named Trint, can listen to an audio recording or a video of two or more speakers (or just one) engaged in natural speech, then provide a written transcript of what was said. Unlike Siri or Google Talk, Trint is designed to transcribe long blocks of text. While news organizations have invested heavily in video content, the ability to optimize those clips for search engines remains elusive. Trint's technology is still nascent, but it could eventually give new life to vast swaths of non-text-based media on the internet, like videos and podcasts, by making them readable to both humans and search engines.

In these movies, all-female planets ruled by powerful women are at peace until male space explorers arrive. Stratton focuses on three films: Queen of Outer Space, Catwomen in Space, and Fire Maidens of Outer Space. In each, the women fall for the strapping men and lose control. Eventually, the men dismantle these societies and restore the patriarchy--and, of course, get their pick of the luscious babes. As Stratton puts it, "Lady Lands are not so thinlyveiled fantasy stories for men, disguised by female empowerment."

There are quite a few movie recommendation 5 Ways to Find Good Movies or TV Shows to Watch Next on Netflix 5 Ways to Find Good Movies or TV Shows to Watch Next on Netflix Netflix knows exactly what you want to watch, but its recommendations section isn't always helpful. Get fantastic recommendations with these apps and sites on what to watch next. Read More platforms How To Find the Perfect Movie to Watch Right Now How To Find the Perfect Movie to Watch Right Now Hollywood churns out so many movies that it's very difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. Luckily, we're here to help you find the perfect movie to watch right now. Read More out there, but one of the newer sites, Movix, uses artificial intelligence and deep learning to suggest the next movie you should watch.

The hosts of "Westworld" were full of surprises in Season 1, what with Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) turning out to be the killer Wyatt and Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton) managing to get out of the park's repetitive existence, only to come back to rescue her daughter. The cowboy was determined to track down Wyatt and seek justice for his comrades. But in his journey, he came to realize that he is nothing more than a humanoid robot designed to entertain high-paying guests in a make-believe park. His whole life was nothing more than a narrative to park operators. READ: "Westworld" Season 2 to feature a time jump from Season 1 But despite this "terrifying" reality, Marsden believes Teddy will still be a good character throughout Season 2. "There's a virtuous element to the character," Marsden told Star 2. "Although against all odds, he will still do the right thing. He'd rather live a peaceful life. I love him working towards that and then getting pulled back and getting killed, reset, and then getting killed and reset (again)."

Good parties diverge widely; all bad parties are bad in the same way. I am trapped at a dull dinner following a dull talk: part of a series of dinners and talks that grad students organise, unpaid (though at considerable expense to themselves--experience! exposure!), to provide free content for the dull grad program I will soon leave. The Thai food is good. The man sitting across from me and a little down the way, a bellicose bore of vague continental origin, is execrable. He is somehow attached to a mild woman who is actually supposed to be here: a shy, seemingly blameless new grad student who perpetually smiles apologetically on his behalf, in an attempt to excuse whatever he's just said. One immediately understands that she spends half her life with that worry in her eyes, that Joker-set to her mouth, and that general air of begging your pardon for offences she hadn't even had the pleasure of committing. There is always such a woman at bad parties. She has always either found ...