AI Weekly: Smart systems sometimes fail in unexpected ways

One of the most important things I have learned while reporting on AI is that systems built on machine learning may be able to beat humans, or approximate their results, but they can often fail in ways that humans never would, and with unintended consequences. Consider the tale of a Redditor who asked earlier this week whether the Google Home had an internal temperature sensor. He was feeling a bit chilly at home and asked the assistant "What's the temperature inside?" He figured that the system would figure out the temperature from his Nest thermostat and report that back to him. Instead, the Google Assistant went and fetched the weather report for Side, a resort town in Turkey.