YOU ARE MY SEDUCTIVE SYMPATHY. This was one of a number of enigmatic notes pinned to the computing department noticeboard at the University of Manchester, UK, back in August 1953. There was no great mystery about "MUC", however: that could only be "Manchester University Computer", the world's first commercial programmable electronic computer. Designed to work on atomic bombs, X-ray crystallography and other serious science, what business had this Ferranti Mark 1 writing love letters? The answer, of course, was a gifted, under-occupied programmer.

With technological advancement taking over human jobs every single year, it's only a matter of time before they take over larger sectors of jobs that humans are used to occupying. Just look at the assembly lines in car factories. They're full of robotic arms assembling all the pieces that we used to put together. Now there are people observing the machines so they don't break down. By 2020, just a few short years away, artificial intelligence and robots could replace 5 million jobs. The World Economic Forum (WEF) has warned that humanity is moving into what they call the "fourth industrial revolution."

Microsoft shocked us all earlier this week when it released its Tay chatbot into the world of social media. However, it didn't take long for nefarious Twitter users to poison the well by exploiting Tay's penchant for repeating statements fed to it. This "parrot" mentality is the reason why Tay went off message, calling President Barack Obama a monkey, embracing neo-Nazi rhetoric, and coming on to users with the promise of cyber sex. Microsoft of course was both mortified and embarrassed by Tay's turn to the dark side and shut down the AI program after less than 24 hours. But by that time, the damage had already been done, and the company has since apologized in a blog post entitled "Learning from Tay's introduction."

Tax scams are on the rise, but the IRS is catching up Microsoft took the AI chatbot offline less than a day after it went live after it began tweeting offensive statements. An artificial intelligence program designed by Microsoft to tweet like a teenage girl was suspended Wednesday after it began spouting offensive remarks.

Microsoft's future depends in part on its development of fringe technology like augmented reality and artificial intelligence, according to Vice President Stephen Boyle. "HoloLens is not right for everybody, but HoloLens is going to change industries in a way that most of us, and certainly I'm one of them, can't yet fully imagine," Boyle said of the augmented reality system. HoloLens developer kits are available now and have already begun to ship in North America. "We're going to see manufacturing, education, retail experiences change as a result of augmented reality," Boyle said. When it comes down to it, Boyle explained, a technology like HoloLens is just a platform that needs solutions that solve customers' problems.

SwiftKey Keyboard might be your default keyboard, but its developer is working on something very exciting – Swiftkey Neural Alpha, a smart keyboard that predicts your next word as you type based on different algorithms than those implemented in other keyboard apps. We took it for a spin, and its predictions tend to be more relevant than those offered in Swiftkey Keyboard, Samsung's native keyboard and many others we have tried. If typing ease and simplicity is a selling point for you, make sure to check out this excessively purple keyboard. Before you install, please keep in mind that SwiftKey Neural Alpha currently supports only English, so if you are bilingual don't rush, and don't expect it to predict seamlessly as your default keyboard does when you switch to a different language. Second note is the app is currently in the alpha stage, which means it's still a pre-release early-testing app, so it may lack competitive features, like the many themes of its elder sibling, or the sharing capabilities of Slash Keyboard, but if English is your language, you may want to check it out right now.

Mobile capture and identity verification firm Mitek said on Wednesday (March 23) that it has appointed Stephen Ritter as the firm's chief technology officer. In that role, the company said in a release, Ritter will spearhead and lead the development of Mitek's core offerings, along with overseeing Mitek Labs, which is the company's scientific and computer vision operations. The firm said that, prior to coming on board at Mitek, Ritter served as senior vice president of engineering and research for Emotient, which was acquired by Apple. That firm used what are known as deep learning techniques in order to address computer vision issues. At Emotient, said Mitek in the release, Ritter helped fashion an emotion detection offering based on subjects' facial expressions.

Artificial intelligence is not as advanced as you may think. Sure, it's technologically advanced, but it lacks a general understanding of what's socially acceptable to say, the real world and the way humans interact. In the last couple of months, Microsoft has had a couple of failed attempts with artificial intelligence. The first involved an image recognition app called Fetch!, which looks at photos of dogs to identify its breed. People, of course, started to use the app to determine what breed of dog people resemble.

The following is an edited, updated version of an article originally written for IEEE Spectrum. I'm 62, with all that entails. I still play a mean game of hockey, but entropy looms ever larger. So part of me wants very much to believe that we are rapidly approaching "The Singularity." Like heaven, the Singularity comes in many versions, but most involve bionic brain boosting.

New lip-reading technology developed at the University of East Anglia could help in solving crimes and provide communication assistance for people with hearing and speech impairments. The visual speech recognition technology, created by Helen L. Bear, PhD, and Prof Richard Harvey of UEA's School of Computing Sciences, can be applied "any place where the audio isn't good enough to determine what people are saying," Bear said. Those include criminal investigations, entertainment, and especially where are there are high levels of noise, such as in cars or aircraft cockpits, she said. Bear said unique problems with determining speech arise when sound isn't available -- such as on video footage -- or if the audio is inadequate and there aren't clues to give the context of a conversation. The sounds '/p/,' '/b/,' and '/m/' all look similar on the lips, but now the machine lip-reading classification technology can differentiate between the sounds for a more accurate translation.