Microsoft came up with the great idea of creating an artificial intelligence bot on Twitter, in the image of a teenage girl named Tay, and making her capable of learning through interactions with real people online. Within a few hours, she was a racist, a sexist and a Holocaust denier, and she was spewing all this with gusto, humor and abandon. Microsoft had to take her down before she started winning delegates for the presidential nomination.
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Microsoft tried to make some adjustments to Tay and put her back online, but she quickly started boasting about smoking drugs in front of the police. It could get worse. Tay reportedly now wants to hang out with Siri.
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A new matchmaking service aims to help couples find love through body odor. People who sign up are asked to wear the same T-shirt for three days, without bathing, and then mail it in. The shirts are cut into swaths and sent out to potential mates, who choose the one they find least offensive. The one drawback is that anyone eager to participate in this project probably isn’t someone you’d like to spend your life with.
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A warning to women: If a dirty T-shirt is the foundation for your marriage, don’t be surprised when your husband puts tokens of affection on the bedroom floor, rather than in the clothes hamper.
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Really, though, if foul odors made people fall in love, Americans would be much more excited about the upcoming election.
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A voter initiative in California would require all state lawmakers to wear the names of their top 10 political donors whenever conducting official business. This is because the nation apparently is better off with super-wealthy politicians who can finance their own campaigns.
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A better idea would be to have them wear the top 10 insults they have thrown at their political opponents.
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Two astronomers At Columbia University want to point laser beams into space to trick distant aliens into thinking there is no planet here, thus avoiding an eventual attack from armies looking to subjugate humans and exploit earth’s natural resources. This sounds expensive. A better idea would be to build a wall in space and make the aliens pay for it.
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Of course, we sent Voyager 1 rocketing into space 40 years ago in hopes of inviting people here. That’s the bad news. The good news is the ship includes a recording of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.” Once they get hooked on rock ‘n roll, the aliens themselves will be doomed.