As unsexy as it sounds, computers do need babysitters. This was evident ten years ago and it’s still evident if you have present day experience with using computers to try and automate “human intelligent tasks”. Improvements are happening in a slow and steady march but it’ll take some dramatic innovations to create step changes.
Trading stocks, targeting ads, steering political campaigns, arranging dates, besting people on “Jeopardy” and even choosing bra sizes: computer algorithms are doing all this work and more.
But increasingly, behind the curtain there is a decidedly retro helper — a human being.
via Computer Algorithms Rely Increasingly on Human Helpers – NYTimes.com.
