At this moment, there are computers using artificial intelligence to make decisions about the best courses of medical treatment, the quickest routes to take on a road trip, and the chess moves most likely to win a game. There's even a Chinese supercomputer that can perform 33,860 trillion calculations per second, leading experts to speculate that one day, AI will be able to predict the stock market even better than the top finance professionals. As we come to terms with the fact that machines are essentially guaranteed to surpass human computation-based abilities, many people take comfort in the fact that we still have the advantage when it comes to "soft skills." Soft skills include things like communication and interpersonal skills. For AI engineers, however, soft skills are simply the next frontier.

Artificial intelligence is proving invaluable to thousands of businesses around the world, playing a role in everything from cars to medical diagnoses. But that doesn't mean AI is the best choice for everything. It needs to be advanced enough to do the intended job without a hitch. Inspirobot is a web-based AI that's supposed to create them for you. But because I'm a sucker for the scientific method, I of course had to try Inspirobot myself to see what I'd get.

A couple years ago, Bob Bly asked, "Can a Computer Write Better Copy Than You?" Maybe it can and maybe it can't, but the AI InspiroBot can definitely write a weirder motivational poster than you! InspiroBot is the AI antidote to all those "Keep Calm and Carry On" spoofs. The origins of InspiroBot are a bit of a mystery, but it's clearly not trying very hard to pass a Turing test. In fact, the bot's viral brilliance is in precisely the awkward juxtapositions its algorithm accidentally creates. I got this nugget from InspiroBot five minutes before writing this post.