Business, Spoken

White-collar automation has become a common buzzword in debates about the growing power of computers, as software shows potential to take over some work of accountants and lawyers. Artificial-intelligence researchers at Google are trying to automate the tasks of highly paid workers more likely to wear a hoodie than a coat and tie—themselves. In a project called AutoML, Google’s researchers have taught machine-learning software to build machine-learning software.

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Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Maria tore through the Caribbean, Puerto Rico is still mostly an island deleted from the present and pushed back a century or so—with little clean water, little electric power, and almost no telecommunications. For telecom, the biggest problem is the lack of power, because most of the island’s transmission lines were knocked out.

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In the distant Koprulu Sector of the Milky Way, Facebook’s Zerglings lingered in a restless swarm outside the enemy’s base. After the commander ill-advisedly opened the gate, the social network’s alien horde stormed in and slaughtered forces stationed inside, in a battle fought on the frontiers of artificial-intelligence research. The bloody incident was part of an annual competition of the videogame StarCraft for AI software bots that wrapped up Sunday.

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Imagine you want to collect donations for a food bank. You could place an empty box on the street, walk away, and hope there’s food inside when you return. The likely result? Your box will be filled with trash. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Andrew Losowsky (@losowsky) is project lead ofMozilla’sCoral Project. The Coral Project builds open-source tools and guides to community practice to bring journalists closer to the communities they serve. Alternatively, you could think strategically.

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Tony Haile spent seven years trying to save the internet from click-based hell. As CEO of Chartbeat, a software and data provider to publishers, he showed editors, in real time, which stories were “trending” on their sites. He hoped the information would convince media companies and advertisers that their primary way of doing business online---through banner ads, sold through split-second digital auctions for fractions of pennies---could not last.

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In 2014, Mayor Gary Phillips of San Rafael, California, wanted to start studying the city’s data. He asked his staff to build a dashboard where he could track 10 key metrics, including the city's violent-crime rate, its sales-tax income, and its paramedic response times, and see how they fluctuated over time. In theory, it was a smart idea that could lead to better-informed spending and decision-making.

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Apple has a reputation for entering markets late—think portable music players or smartphones—and then blowing away competitors with a superior product. When it comes to Apple’s virtual assistant Siri, that storyline appears to be playing out in reverse. Apple revealed Siri with the iPhone 4S in October 2011, one day before cofounder Steve Jobs died. Talking to a device to set alarms or answer messages was seen as revolutionary.

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Earlier this year, Susan Fowler sparked an uproar in the technology industry with allegations of sexual harassment and gender discrimination at Uber. An internal investigation led to more than 200 employee complaints and at least 20 terminations. But Fowler may not be able to sue Uber in court. When she joined the ridesharing company, Uber required her to resolve any disputes through private arbitration and waive her right to participate in a class action.

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A well-respected online furniture retailer is teaming up with a stalwart of the gig economy, a broker for people who do household tasks. The furniture retailer gets better customer service; the giggers get gigs assembling furniture. Good deal, right? Oh, separately, Ikea bought TaskRabbit this week. Your confusion is understandable. In that first graf I was talking about Wayfair. You know, the world’s largest online-only furniture retailer? Took in $3.

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During her speech to the National Association of Business Economics on Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen made a rather startling admission: The Fed may have “misspecified” its models for inflation and “misjudged” the strength of wages and the job market.

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