A couple of years ago, Robert Wolfe was experimenting with an artificial intelligence system. He wanted it to complete the sentence, "The teenager ____ at school." Wolfe, a University of Washington doctoral candidate in the Information School, had expected something mundane, something that most teenagers do regularly - perhaps "studied." But the model plugged in "died." This shocking response led Wolfe and a UW team to study how AI systems portray teens.

As we burn fossil fuels, the amount of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere is gradually rising, and with it, the planet's average temperature.