Microsoft's artificially intelligent "chat bot" Tay went rogue earlier this week, harassing some users with tweets full of racist and misogynistic language. The AI was programmed to sound like a millennial and learn natural speech by interacting with people online, but Tay picked up some pretty vile ideas from trolls and wound up saying things like "feminists ... should all die and burn in hell" and "Hitler was right." Microsoft took the bot offline Thursday to make adjustments. Viewed through a certain lens, there's actually a bit to celebrate about this spectacular failure. The bot did exactly what it was designed to do: acquire knowledge from the people it talked with.

Google is reportedly working on a competitor to the Amazon Echo, Amazon's voice-controlled personal assistant. According to The Information, Google is working on a'secret project' which would create a rival to the Echo, currently the leading device of its kind on the market. The Amazon Echo is the home of the digital assistant Alexa, who responds to a'wake word' and can help out around the house by creating to-do lists, playing music, setting alarms, providing weather information and doing internet searches. The Echo hasn't been released in the UK yet, but it's generated a lot of buzz in the US, and has proved successful enough that Amazon is releasing a new version, the Echo Dot, which connects to users' existing speakers. Google-owned company Nest, the creators of smart home devices like the Nest Thermostat, reportedly wanted to be part of the project, but were apparently pushed away by Google itself.

U.S. vehicle safety regulators have said the artificial intelligence system piloting a self-driving Google car could be considered the driver under federal law, a major step toward ultimately winning approval for autonomous vehicles on the roads. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc, of its decision in a previously unreported Feb. 4 letter to the company posted on the agency's website this week. Google's self-driving car unit on Nov. 12 submitted a proposed design for a self-driving car that has'no need for a human driver,' the letter to Google from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Chief Counsel Paul Hemmersbaugh said. At a Senate hearing, representatives of General Motors and Delphi touted numerous safety and environmental benefits of autonomous vehicles. In January, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it may waive some vehicle safety rules to allow more driverless cars to operate on US roads.

Amazon's Alexa can do a lot, from powering your home to ordering a pizza, but the 180 price tag may not be worth it to some. Luckily the e-commerce giant has published a do-it-yourself guide for running the voice service in a homemade device that won't break the bank. All you need is a Raspberry Pi, a USB sound card, an external speaker and a push button, which should cost 60 total. Luckily the e-commerce giant has published a do-it-yourself guide for running the voice service in a homemade device that won't break the bank. A new Pi Model 2, a micro SD card to load the software on, a mini mic and an Ethernet cable.

A drone has successfully delivered a package to a residential location in a small Nevada town in what its maker and the governor of the state said Friday was the first fully autonomous urban drone delivery in the U.S. Flirtey CEO Matt Sweeney said the six-rotor drone flew about a half-mile along a pre-programmed delivery route on March 10 and lowered the package outside a vacant residence in an uninhabited area of Hawthorne, southeast of Reno. The route was established using GPS. A pilot and visual observers were on standby during the flight but weren't needed, Sweeney said. He said the package included bottled water, food and a first-aid kit. "Conducting the first drone delivery in an urban setting is a major achievement, taking us closer to the day that drones make regular deliveries to your front doorstep," Sweeney said.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park 1997 AMC Sun. Tomorrow Never Dies 1997 EPIX Wed. 10 p.m., Thur. The X-Files: Fight the Future 1998 IFC Thur. Hard to Kill 1990 Sundance Mon. 8 p.m., Tue. A scientist gives his bodyguard superhuman powers in order to fight racists. A lawyer unwittingly becomes friends with an unstable woman who has a criminal history. A successful businesswoman puts her family, career and life on the line to satisfy her addiction to sex. With his father trapped in the wreckage of their spacecraft, a youth treks across Earth's now-hostile terrain to recover their rescue beacon and signal for help. In the future a cutting-edge android in the form of a boy embarks on a journey to discover his true nature. An 11-year-old boy experiences the worst day of his young life but soon learns that he's not alone when other members of his family encounter their own calamities. A struggling writer falls in love with a stenographer while trying to finish his new novel in 30 days.

The bot was designed to learn by talking with real people on Twitter and the messaging apps Kik and GroupMe. But the well-intentioned experiment quickly descended into chaos, racial epithets, and Nazi rhetoric. Tay started out by asserting that "humans are super cool." But the humans it encountered really weren't so cool. And, after less than a day on Twitter, the bot had itself started spouting racist, sexist, anti-Semitic comments.

Google has announced that it will embed machine learning into its cloud to help developers build smarter applications with their data. Cloud Machine Learning will take the technology currently used for Google Now, Google Photos and voice recognition in Google Search, allowing scientists and developers to build machine learning models using the company's open-source TensorFlow software library. Fausto Ibarra, director of product manager for Google Cloud Platform, said: "Hundreds of different big data and analytics products and services fight for your attention as it's one of the most fertile areas of innovation in our industry. "This is an area where Google Cloud Platform has invested almost two decades of engineering, and today we're announcing some of the latest results of that work." The tool will be compatible with multiple data formats, and will be fully integrated with Cloud Platform products including Google Cloud Dataflow, Google BigQuery, Google Cloud Dataproc, Google Cloud Storage, and Google Cloud Datalab. Music streaming service Spotify recently moved its infrastructure to Google's Cloud Platform, having previously relied on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Google plans to open 12 new datacentres in a push to catch up with rivals such as AWS and Microsoft Azure. "The Cloud Platform team is super excited about 2016.

Envision yourself in an environment side by side with world class professionals working to create solutions that drive financial markets. That is what you will do everyday in Bloomberg's Global Data team. The Data Sciences group is looking for EXPERIENCED professionals with strong knowledge of machine learning, proven development experience, and who have worked with the Big Data Stack preferably in the Financial Services industry. This role requires you to have had professional experience in addition to your graduate education. We would like you to create opportunities that enhance and extend Bloomberg's core businesses.

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