You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place

by Janelle Shane

A project called Quicksilver automatically creates draft Wikipedia articles about female scientists (who have been noticeably underrepresented on Wikipedia), saving volunteer editors time. People who need to write audio transcripts or translate text use the (admittedly buggy) machine learning versions as a starting point for their own translations. Musicians can employ music-generating algorithms, using them to put together a piece of original music to exactly fit a commercial slot for which the music doesn’t have to be exceptional, just inexpensive. In many cases, the human role is to be an editor. And there are some jobs for which it’s even preferable not to use humans. People are more likely to open up about their emotions or disclose potentially stigmatizing information if they think they’re talking to a robot as opposed to a human.10,11