Can we use AI to predict social unrest? Scienceline

In 2016, a Microsoft chatbot went on racist, misogynistic Twitter rants. Later that same year, Facebook had to shut down two AI robots that had started communicating with each other in a new, unfamiliar language. And then in 2017, viewers nervously watched Google's deep learning machine system's stick figure teach itself how to walk, fumbling its way through the digital course onscreen and throwing its hands and legs up in the air to leap to the finish line. As intriguing as they can be, some of artificial intelligence's efforts at mimicking human behavior leave us feeling slightly sketched out. Now, a group of researchers from the University of Oxford, Boston University and University of Agder in Norway is working on AI that goes a little deeper than an animated paper clip.