Approaching the singularity (not in a good way)

Lauren Coffey reports:

A team of researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Pennsylvania have created AI tools to help admissions officers by analyzing students’ application essays.

The tools help admissions officers identify seven key traits in essays, including teamwork, perseverance, intrinsic motivation and willingness to help others. The researchers published their study in October . . .

The endgame is clear. Students use the computer to write the essays, then the university uses the computer to evaluate the essays. No need for any human in the loop.

Same thing with internet advertising. The AI writes the ad and conducts the bidding to put the ad online. The ad is then read by various bots so that the company that sells the ad gets to say they have traffic. We human users fight through the muck to find actual content.

I guess this will happen with movies too. The AI writes the movies, which are then streamed, and then it’s watched by bots who review them and other bots who use them as raw material for the new movies they write. Again, no human needed.

This came up when Jessica and I wanted to get our play Recursion performed at Neurips. At first the organizers were very supportive, but then they said no because “the play itself is not written or performed by AI.” You can’t fight the system!