Vimarsh Karbhari(VK): What are the top three books about AI/ML/DS have you liked the most? What books have had the most impact in your career? VK: What tool/tools (software/hardware/habit) that you have as a Data Scientist has the most impact on your work? Github because it allows all of my code to be in one place and allows me to share it with my team members (along with use some of their code in my work). It also allows version control, code reviews, and a backup for my code.

Tribune Publishing, a storied icon of American journalism, recently renamed itself Tronc and released a video to show off a new "content optimization platform," that Malcolm CasSelle, Tronc's chief technology officer, claims will be "the key to making our content really valuable to the broadest possible audience" through the use of machine learning. As a marketing ploy the move clearly failed. Instead of debuting a new, tech-savvy firm that would, in the words of chief digital officer Anne Vasquez, be like "having a tech startup culture meet a legacy corporate culture," it came off as buzzword-laden and naive. The internet positively erupted with derision. Yet what I find even more disturbing than the style is the substance.

In our recent article about artificially intelligent (AI) robot writers, we talked about how media content is starting to be automatically generated using scripted methods that let you produce lots of content very easily. Here at Nanalyze, we love to write about technology in a way that is relevant to investors, straight forward, and doesn't pander to anyone. We typically don't cite authors on our articles because we believe the message is more important than the messenger (don't shoot the messenger and all that). We also believe that someday in our lifetimes, the occupation of being a "writer" is going the way of the dodo because artificial intelligence (AI) will do a better job than human authors. At that point, you could either make up fake names for your authors or what will most likely happen is we'll have different AI sages that are watched over by a human editor but that publish under a single brand name.

The rise of artificial intelligence and automation in journalism has been front and center in the news lately, from Narrative Science co-founder Kris Hammond's prediction that "a machine will win a Pulitzer one day" to Facebook's decision to automate its Trending Topics feed. Algorithms seem certain to play a growing role in the production and curation of news, but it remains unclear what exactly this trend will mean for journalism -- or for the human journalists who currently produce it. Celebrants argue that algorithms will simply take over journalism's most menial tasks, freeing up human journalists to tackle more advanced work. Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait, for example, called automation "crucial to the future of journalism," and New York magazine writer Kevin Roose described the introduction of automated reporting as "the best thing to happen to journalists in a long time." However, skeptics fear that robots may end up replacing journalists instead of helping them.

Online publisher Defy Media, which attracts millions of young adults and teenagers to such goofy information, announced last week that it picked up 70 million from investors. And it's planning to spend most of that on increasing content production, and for the first time, advertising itself. "As the success grew over 2016, people got more and more bullish on the business and we got the outcome we wanted," Defy Media President Keith Richman said about the funding, led by Wellington Management Co. The New York City start-up, which has a significant base in Los Angeles, publishes articles and videos through online brands including Smosh and Clevver. Licensing videos to streaming apps from companies such as Verizon and Comcast brings in the rest of the cash.

Like many of his bits, it became a viral phenomenon, clocking in at nearly six million views on YouTube. At around the ten-minute mark, Oliver took his verbal bat to the knees of Tronc, the new name for Tribune Publishing Company, and its parody-worthy promotional video, in which a robotic spokeswoman describes the journalistic benefits of artificial intelligence, as a string section swells underneath. Tronc is not the only company to enthusiastically embrace the term "artificial intelligence." A.I. is hot, and every company worth its stock price is talking about how this magical potion will change everything. Even Macy's recently announced that it was testing an I.B.M. artificial-intelligence tool in ten of its department stores, in order to bring back customers who are abandoning traditional retail in favor of online shopping. Much like "the cloud," "big data," and "machine learning" before it, the term "artificial intelligence" has been hijacked by marketers and advertising copywriters.

By Alissa Quart, author of "The Republic of Outsiders" and "Branded", is the editor for the nonprofit Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Precariousness is not just a working-class thing. In recent interviews, dozens of academics and schoolteachers, administrators, librarians, journalists and even coders have told me they too are falling prey to an unstable new America. I've started to think of this just-scraping-by group as the Middle Precariat. The word Precariat was popularized five or so years ago to describe a rapidly expanding working class with unstable, low-paid jobs.

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives. The machines have all the answer. The question is how long they will still need humans. I want you to spend 30 minutes of your day composing an employee motivation video that includes the maximum number of nightmare scenarios and buzzwordy cliches. If any of them bite, we here at Technically Incorrect want to see if it beats the quite body-shivering, bloviatory effort of Tronc.

The zany AI angle, pushed heavily by Tronc's new billionaire biotech benefactor Patrick Soon-Shiong, is just one recent twist in the saga at the once-storied newspaper chain. Since USA Today owner and rival Gannett made a hostile bid for Tribune/Tronc last month, Chairman Michael Ferro has done everything to keep the company from changing hands. On CNBC today, Ferro outlined some of his plans to revitalize the company, whose share price has dropped by nearly half over the last couple years. It involves using vaguely described machine learning technology to produce lots of video. "There's all these really new, fun features we're going to be able to do with artificial intelligence and content to make videos faster," Ferro told interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin.

These days, I feel as lucky as an EPA official emerging unscathed from a road trip through Logan County in a car plastered with "Hillary" stickers simply to continue having a job as a newspaper reporter. There are not a lot of employment opportunities for the 21st Century's equivalent of the town crier, especially if, like me, you are old, technology challenged and live in a state with an economy that's escaped do-not-resuscitate orders only because its Legislature can't agree on the wording. While Career Cast's 2016 Jobs Rated Report listed newspaper reporter as the worst job in America for the third consecutive year, thanks mainly to a -9 percent projected growth rate, high on-the-job stress and low pay, I still enjoy coming to work. It's a job that's rarely boring, always challenging, and puts me in contact with a cast of characters in an array of settings I would never encounter had I pursued the only other marketable skill I developed during my life -- hay baling. I'm also lucky to be working for a company that still considers its main purpose to be publishing a newspaper, albeit one with video, interactive and online components, and not, as the company formerly known as Tribune Publishing described itself in a press release last week, a "content curation and monetization company focused on creating and distributing premium, verified content across all channels."