In a sparse lecture room at Stanford University, six students are rehearsing a presentation they'll later give to a roomful of VIPs from the university's artificial intelligence lab. Papers are strewn across the table. Hoodies hang over the cloth-covered cushion chairs. One student wears a pair of Pi earrings. Another wears a t-shirt that reads: "i: Be rational!

Microsoft has unleashed a social media AI onto the internet -- and she can be a bit of a jerk. On Wednesday, the company released Tay.ai, an artificial intelligence chat bot "with no chill" aimed at 18- to 24-year-olds living in the United States. Tay will talk on social networks popular with many youths, like Facebook, Kik Messenger, Snapchat and Twitter. A chat bot is a program designed to mimic human behaviour in conversation. Microsoft's Technology and Research team, along with the team behind its search engine Bing, built Tay to study "conversational understanding."

March 24--Hey, millennials: Microsoft wants to chat with you. The Redmond company introduced tay.ai Wednesday, an emoji-fluent, snarky chat bot aimed at 18- to 24-year-olds in the United States. The bot will reply to messages sent to it on any of those platforms in a style mimicking teenage Web speak. Tay, Microsoft says, was built by mining public data and using machine-learning technology and input from a staff that includes improvisational comedians.

BlinQ is a dating app that has developed a new feature recently. With the help of an AI developed by the University of Zürich, the app now can rank photos by attractiveness on a six-point scale. The worst one is simply "Hmm…" and the best is "Godlike". But let's test it with a bunch of video game (and other) examples and see how well they perform. Wario and Link from the CD-i Zelda games were too much for its face recognition feature (which certainly means they're both way above "Godlike").

Life essentials made better and more affordable." These are the types of startups that partner Paul Buchheit said were demoing today at Y Combinator's Winter 2016 Demo Day 2. Yesterday, we covered the first 60 startups from the batch, and picked our 7 favorites. Buchheit went on to say about today's big aspirations, "Those challenges may seem too large or too complex for a startup to solve. But as Kyle and Dan showed us with Cruise, often the hardest problems are the best investments." He was referring the GM's 1 billion acquisition of Cruise, a YC startup that built self-driving car tech. Today, the room was jam packed, with more chairs brought in for rich investors who were forced to sit on the floor yesterday. Buchheit joked about the first YC batch in summer 2005, saying "Back then no one wanted to go to Demo Day." Someone in the crowd yelled, "15 people wanted to go to Demo Day." Now, there are several hundred VCs avidly watching the presentations. Over the past few years, Y Combinator has expanded to accept startups from a much wider range of industries than traditional apps, including biotech, energy, hardware, and international logistics. When we spoke to investors in the past, some worried they might not have the expertise necessary to evaluate these companies. Now, YC President Sam Altman tells me many VCs have "hired other experts" to fill the gaps. He says "it's become fashionable to hire a Chief Science Officer." As a result, Altman believes that when it comes to funding, these alternative startups "seem to be doing just was well if not a little better" than their traditional software batchmates. Spinal Singularity – Better catheter Last year, over 5 million people were catheterized. Spinal Singularity wants to tap into the 2 billion urinary catheter market with a connected catheter that allows you to control the flow of urine by actuating a magnetic valve.

Auto makers need to push regulators around the world for consistent rules to allow autonomous cars to proliferate, the chief executive of Renault SA RNO -1.16 % and Nissan Motor NSANY -1.97 % Co. said Wednesday. Carlos Ghosn, speaking at the New York International Auto Show, said he expects autonomous vehicles to become more commonplace in coming years, eventually changing lanes on highways and driving through cities on their own. His companies plan to offer 10 autonomous-drive models by 2020. But differing regulations could present hurdles to clearing them for operation, he said. "It's very important that we…lobby in every single country with the regulatory authorities to take our eyes off the road and our hands off the wheel," Mr. Ghosn said, noting that his companies are working with U.S. and Japanese regulators.

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.

Robotics companies and academics descended on a resort in Palm Springs this week for an invitation-only conference organized by Amazon.com Inc. to bring together experts in artificial intelligence, robotics, home automation and space exploration. At the event, held at the Parker Palm Springs, there were robotic arms dueling with light sabers from Star Wars, seminars about imbuing machines with human values and a celebrity appearance by film director Ron Howard, known for his portrayal of Richie Cunningham in the sitcom Happy Days. Jeff Bezos mingled with attendees; one said he drank single-malt whiskey with Amazon's chief executive officer. Representatives from companies such as Rethink Robotics, Toyota Motor Corp., and others attended the conference, called MARS, short for Machine-Learning (Home) Automation, Robotics and Space Exploration.

Associated Press/Ahn Young-joonTV screens show the live broadcast of the Google DeepMind Challenge Match between Google's artificial intelligence program, AlphaGo, and South Korean professional Go player Lee Sedol, at the Yongsan Electronic store in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, March 15, 2016. Humans have been taking a beating from computers lately. The 4-1 defeat of Go grandmaster Lee Se-Dol by Google's AlphaGo artificial intelligence (AI) is only the latest in a string of pursuits in which technology has triumphed over humanity. Self-driving cars are already less accident-prone than human drivers, the TV quiz show Jeopardy! is a lost cause, and in chess humans have fallen so woefully behind computers that a recent international tournament was won by a mobile phone. There is a real sense that this month's human vs AI Go match marks a turning point.

Microsoft has a new artificial intelligence bot, named Taylor, that tries to hold conversations on Twitter, Kik, and GroupMe. And she makes me feel terribly old and out of touch. Tay, as she calls herself, is a chatbot that's targeted at 18- to 24-year-olds in the US. Just tweet at her or message her and she responds with words and occasionally meme pictures. She's meant to be able to learn a few things about you--basic details like nickname, favorite food, relationship status--and is supposed to be able to have engaging conversations.