AI learns from Google Books, and TubeChat combats loneliness

This time around, Cathi Bond talks about a Google AI project. The AI was trained on 11,000 genre fiction novels in order to chat more naturally. Cool, but the hitch is that some authors are ticked off that their fiction is being used as training data, and they're not being compensated (via The Guardian) Meanwhile, Nora Young mentions the Tube Chat project, where London commuters were urged to talk to strangers on the Tube. A lot of hilarious riffing on Londoners' famous reserve followed (via CityLab).