We've all been trained by decades of science fiction to think of artificial intelligence as a threat to our working futures. The idea is: If an AI robot can do a job as well as a human — cheaper and with less interpersonal unruliness — who needs the human?
The technology news site CNET tried to answer that question, quietly, even secretly. For months, the site employed an AI engine to write articles for its CNET Money personal finance page. The articles covered such topics as "What is compound interest?" and "What happens when you bounce a check?"
At first glance and to financial novices, the articles seemed cogent and informative. CNET continued the practice until early this month, when it was outed by the website Futurism.
