The Week in Data: 'Nip nops' and 'unalive': gaming the AI filters

This week, in a neatly self-referential story, an algorithm has been developed to help workers ascertain if their jobs are at risk of automation by… an algorithm. Researchers compared robotic and human abilities to identify the most at-risk jobs (meat packers and slaughterers are high risk; astronomers and neurologists are low risk) and also used the comparison to work out which lower-risk jobs people could safely and easily jump to. In other AI-defying news, people are using'algospeak' – language that will not be picked up by AI content moderation systems – to ensure their (sometimes dubious, sometimes legit) content remains live and uncensored. Examples include using'unalive' instead of'dead' and the corn emoji instead of'porn'. As well as screening out properly dodgy content, moderation algorithms have been found to censor already marginalised groups, demonetising and down-ranking posts that include words such as'gay', and'racist'.