Twitter hopes machine learning can save it from oblivion

Twitter's latest earnings were an unmitigated disaster. There was a huge revenue miss, coupled with a weak outlook that freaked out investors, who drove the stock down more than 12 percent. But part-time CEO Jack Dorsey insists that all is not lost. And to rally the troops and convince investors to give him more time, he tried his best yesterday to highlight the ways he believes the company's investments in machine learning offer reasons for optimism. "As I look into 2017 and we look at what we can do, I just think the superpower we really provide the world is we can break news and get information to people faster than any other service in the world," Dorsey said on an earnings call with analysts.