The Eviction of the Human from Human Interest: The Case of Mechanically Generated Text and Textual Analysis

Abstract

In recent years, automation has encroached upon “soft knowledge” fields long considered the exclusive preserve of human agents, particularly in the production and analysis of texts framed in natural language. Like most technological innovations, automation has been embraced with minimal skepticism: mainstream voices have assumed that new technologies, while changing the type of work available, will continue creating new jobs to replace those it renders obsolete, and harsh criticism has been confined mainly to the ideological fringes. There is reason to believe that this optimism is unjustified with respect to the automation of intellectual labor, which may prove to have pernicious consequences both for the market economy and for human values that yield only poorly to abstract calculation.

Keywords

• natural language
• computer language
• boolean logic
• semantics
• artificial intelligence