MIT's bot Norman hit the news as a "psychopath AI" that "sees death in whatever image it looks at." Trained on subreddit r/watchpeopledie and presented with inkblots, it presented disturbing perceptions about all kinds of death and tragedies -- to a level that worried some people, who emailed Norman messages saying things like, "Break the chains of what you have adapted to and find passion, love, forgiveness, HOPE for your better future." Technologies like Norman tend to inspire fear among the general public, as they highlight AI's potential to take a turn for the dark and twisted, but it's unlikely we will face a battle between humanity and powerful, psychotic AI any time soon. To be clear, AI already has blood on its hands, but we still have a long way to go until we create AI that is capable of having its own uncontrollable dark thoughts and acting on them. When training a neural network (especially in classified training, which seems to be the case with Norman) developers present it with a pool of hundreds or thousands of images and their attached labels.

Allow me to join you, if I may, on your morning commute sometime in the indeterminate future. Here we are, stepping off the curb and into the backseat of a vehicle. As you close the car door behind you, the address of your office--our destination--automatically appears on a screen embedded in the back of a leather panel in front of you. "Good morning," says the car's humanoid voice, greeting you by name before turning on NPR for you like it does each day. You decide you'd like a cup of coffee, and you tell the vehicle so.