6 days Ago
Do you care that a person wrote this? If the same column were spat out by a machine, would you read it differently? Would you read it at all? I'm not sure. Opinion bug Opinion We are nearing a time when algorithms can tell a story. Maybe even a good story; why not, since it's scraped from every other story ever written? So expect even more thrilling thrillers.
Steamier romances. Funnier comedies. Who'll care they were composed in .
002 seconds by a computer? The important thing is there is no author to pay. Still. AI doesn't replace a person, yet.
Not to me anyway. I've had several unexpected human encounters in the anonymous electronic churn of online commerce and am grateful for them. First, I had some post-wedding business to take care of.
My mother wanted to give a gift to my younger son and his new bride, and since she no longer navigates the online world, I volunteered to do it. On their wedding website, I selected a set of lovely coasters and was directed to someplace called Scully & Scully. I took my father's credit card and made the purchase.
Lovely embroidered pink elephant coasters. No new household is complete without them. A day went by.
The phone rang. "Scully & Scully" calling. The person on the line pointed out the address where the gift was to be shipped — our home, since the happy couple was honeymooning in Mexico — and the address on the credit card didn't match.
A security issue. I tried to explain — it..
. Neil Steinberg.
