Can a Machine Learn to Write for The New Yorker?

I glanced down at my left thumb, still resting on the Tab key. Had my computer become my co-writer? That's one small step forward for artificial intelligence, but was it also one step backward for my own? The skin prickled on the back of my neck, an involuntary reaction to what roboticists call the "uncanny valley"--the space between flesh and blood and a too-human machine. For several days, I had been trying to ignore the suggestions made by Smart Compose, a feature that Google introduced, in May, 2018, to the one and a half billion people who use Gmail--roughly a fifth of the human population.