Skip navigation
Welcome to the Era of the AI Coworker
Article

Welcome to the Era of the AI Coworker

Backchannel, 2017

Read offline

auto-generated audio
auto-generated audio

Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Eye Opening
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

Artificial intelligence (AI) is encroaching upon the jobs of knowledge workers and people in creative industries. However, as Miranda Katz explains in Wired magazine’s Backchannel blog, the marriage between AI and knowledge professionals has so far been mostly happy: AI performs the mundane tasks (without getting tired or asking for a raise), while knowledge workers get to focus on the more interesting aspects of their jobs. But will the honeymoon last? getAbstract recommends checking whether AI can help make your job more productive and rewarding.

Summary

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are changing the jobs of knowledge workers – so far mostly for the better. Google has perfected its translation tool to such a degree that someone with little training in the field would find it hard to distinguish the machine’s prose from that of a human. By working with an AI-generated first draft of a translation, professional translators can process about four to five times as many words per day than they could at the dawn of the 21st century. Since machine translations need editing, translators remain in high demand. Besides, translating highly...

About the Author

Miranda Katz is an associate editor at Backchannel.