How bad AI marketing led humans to take on robots' jobs

This article is part of Demystifying AI, a series of posts that (try to) disambiguate the jargon and myths surrounding AI. The Wall Street Journal recently ran a piece that detailed how companies that provide email-based services scan the inboxes of millions of Gmail users. Their service agreements make it clear that they require access to your email so that their artificial intelligence algorithms can provide you with smart features such as price comparisons, automated calendar scheduling and more. What they don't tell you is that in some cases, their employees read your emails too, because their AI just can't perform as promised and it needs humans to fill the gap where it falls short. One of the companies presented in the Wall Street Journal article uses AI to add a "smart reply" feature to your email, which can make a big difference if you're managing your account from a mobile device.