The Ghost in the Machine Shouldn’t Be AI

Once upon a time in the 18th century, a fantastic chess-playing machine known as the Mechanical Turk was exhibited around the world, stunning audiences with its ability to beat skilled players and heads of state like Napoleon Bonaparte. Years later it transpired that the machine’s extraordinary feats were only possible because a human was hiding inside the machine, making all the moves.

Today, a similar phenomenon goes on behind the scenes in developing artificial intelligence: Humans label much of the data used to train AI models and they often babysit those models in the wild too, meaning our modern-day machinery isn’t as fully automated as we think. Yet now comes a twist in the tale: AI systems can produce content that is so humanlike, some of those behind-the-scenes humans are training new AI with old AI.