Can computers replace humans?

They just did. The Dutch library organization NBD Biblion installed software that creates reviews of new books, a job that used to be done by 700 human reviewers.

Not surprisingly, many writers and reviewers are not amused. And when I read it in my newspaper today, I also felt a bit sad. Not because technology is replacing humans.

That happens all the time and is nothing new. Horsemen were replaced by cars. Postmen were replaced by email. But this time it’s about reading books, which I love to do myself. Books are written for humans, so shouldn’t reviewing them also be done by humans?

Why do we need AI to do that? It turns out that in this case the “reviewing” is adding metadata about new books to a large database, that libraries use to choose which books to add to their collection. Not exactly Skynet.

Or will this be what triggers the robot uprising? Will AI develop a bias towards recommending certain books, slowly changing our reading preferences? Or will a human writer stand up, and write a book about how to optimize your book for better reviews? Or even better: how to write an un-reviewable book that completely screws with the robots’ minds, forcing them to tell their masters: “We have no idea what this book is about. Please let a human review it.”