Brian Gongol
Judge puts the brakes on the Hard Rock Sioux City
Get this robot some self-awareness!
An automated telemarketing system interacts with its targets via a limited range of prerecorded scripts. Mayhem ensues when reporters get involved. For now, it's just annoying. But once it becomes cheap enough to fire decent artificial intelligence (good enough to pass a basic Turing test) at mass audiences...well, that may be when people start abandoning their cell phones.
Depending too heavily on Facebook is going to be Upworthy's undoing
Facebook is starting to get the hint that many users are tired of being bombarded with clickbait everywhere in their news feeds. Upworthy and the Huffington Post are by far the most notorious transgressors. So if Facebook gets smart and throttles them back, times could get tough for the clickbaiters. Incidentally, a word to the wise: Make sure you're breaking out of the echo chamber once in a while. If everyone's sharing the same things, then we're really not testing new ideas.
What you should know about graphic design
Even if you're just an occasional client
Get the humans out of the cockpit
We should eagerly welcome the day when humans are no longer in moment-by-moment control of planes, trains, and automobiles. Autopilot isn't killing people -- human error is.
