From a dark corner somewhere at the Snips office, peering at his laptop screen and preparing to lead an online masterclass organized by HackerUnit, Rand Hindi is gearing up to share his knowledge on how to run a successful startup. From advice on hiring and the importance of patents, to his thoughts on acquisition and how to pitch to investors, the data scientist and entrepreneur unveils his wisdom about starting a business and avoiding the mistakes he's made. Rand started coding at the age of 10, founded a social network at 14 and a web agency at 15, before getting into machine learning at 18 and starting a PhD in Bioinformatics at 21. In addition, he has been listed on both the MIT Technology Review's TR35, and Forbes' "30 under 30" list; Rand has also been selected as a Rising Star by the Founders Forum and has received the Excellence Française award. Snips, Rand's AI company based in Paris, is currently developing an artificial intelligence app for connected devices.

We believe that innovation and progress will happen at an accelerated pace in all corners of the globe, and that bringing people together around their shared passion for AI will drive positive impact in our world!

Ray Kurzweil wants to set the record straight on artificial intelligence. Yeah, sure, some elements of the narrative about developing computers that can think like humans have been exaggerated. But--A.I. technology is already much more advanced than you probably think it is. That was the theme of a conversation between Kurzweil, Google's director of engineering, and CNBC's Bob Pisani at the Exponential Finance conference in New York City on Wednesday. Kurzweil, named one of Inc. magazine's "26 Most Fascinating Entrepreneurs" back in 2005--we referred to him as "Edison's rightful heir"--is an inventor and futurist responsible for the first machine to recognize printed text and the first print-to-speech reading device, among other inventions.

Less than a day after Microsoft launched its new artificial intelligence bot Tay, she has already learned the most important lesson of the internet: Never tweet. Microsoft reportedly had to suspend Tay from tweeting after she tweeted a series of racist statements, including "Hitler was right I hate the jews." The company had launched the AI on Wednesday, which was designed to communicate with "18 to 24 year olds in the U.S" and "experiment with and conduct research on conversational understanding." It appears some of her racist replies were simply regurgitating the statements trolls tweeted at her. Tay also apparently went from "i love feminism now" to "i fucking hate feminists they should all die and burn in hell" within hours. Zoe Quinn, a target of online harassment campaign Gamergate, shared a screengrab from the bot calling her a "Stupid Whore," saying, "this is the problem with content-neutral algorithms."

We are on the brink of a major disruption, which we think might be bigger than the industrial revolution. At BootstrapLabs we are focusing heavily on a major shift that is impacting almost every sector: Artificial Intelligence – AI. AI has reached an inflection point, where it can now be applied to quickly drive efficient returns, and in our book, is ripe for building startups that will disrupt major markets and their incumbents. During the Industrial Revolution, the steam engine enabled a major technological shift as a large amount of manual labor was now able to be automated. Yet, few know that the first version of the steam engine was actually built the 1st century CE and was called Aeolipile.

Microsoft's "Tay" social media AI experiment has gone awry in a turn of events that will shock absolutely nobody. The Redmond chatbot had been set up in hopes of developing a personality similar to that of a young woman in the 18-24 age bracket. The intent was for "Tay" to develop the ability to sustain conversations with humans on social media just as a regular person could, and learn from the experience. Twitter is awash with chatbots like this. Unfortunately, Microsoft neglected to account for the fact that one of the favorite pastimes on the internet is ruining other people's plans with horrific consequences.

Microsoft has been forced to dunk Tay, its millennial-mimicking chatbot, into a vat of molten steel. The company has terminated her after the bot started tweeting abuse at people and went full neo-Nazi, declaring that "Hitler was right I hate the jews." Some of this appears to be "innocent" insofar as Tay is not generating these responses. Rather, if you tell her "repeat after me" she will parrot back whatever you say, allowing you to put words into her mouth. However, some of the responses were organic.

Changing world: "As the first generation of self-driving cars and battlefield warbots filter into society, scientists are working to develop robots with moral decision-making skills." THE World Science Festival held in Brisbane in early March confirmed that robots, artificial intelligence and machine learning were now part of our lives. Thousands attending the festival came to watch, touch and play with cute, shiny robots capable of dodging objects, following commands and engaging in smart banter. However, if the future has arrived, now we have to deal with it. The World Science Festival was also an important forum as world experts discussed robot morality and ethics and what role we wanted robots to play in the future.

We hear an awful lot about how artificial intelligence can be used to solve hard statistical challenges – but we hear much less about how it could solve emotional problems. But this field already has a name, affective computing, and one of its leading firms today is Affectiva. Don't miss our biggest TNW Conference yet! The startup is a spinout of MIT's Media Lab, where researchers were working on ways to create new technologies that would enhance emotional communication and, yes, it already started offering'Emotion As A Service' late last year. The company has what is thought to be the world's largest database of emotions, gathered using facial recognition technology to analyze over 3.8 million faces from 75 countries and collating over 40 billion different data points.

The automobile is one of the most prominent and recognizable symbols of freedom, independence, and responsibility in the world. One major reason that turning sixteen in the United States is so highly anticipated is because it marks the age at which most kids become eligible to legally drive a car. Today's Millennials are no exception to this cultural phenomenon. Bloomberg recently reported that new data from J.D. Power & Associates found that Millennials now account for 27 percent of new car sales, up from 18 percent in 2010. They have surpassed Gen X to become the second-largest group of new car buyers after their boomer parents.