"The only thing to be worried about is if you're making music to chase an algorithm," he told Fox News Digital. "If you're making music to trend on TikTok. And to do that, you have to really unlock the codes to that matrix. If that's your whole [hustle], then AI is going to do a better job than that." The Black Eyed Peas singer does think people not involved in the creative process in the music industry are the ones who should worry about AI taking away their jobs.

Tom was discussing the film star Tang Wei with a chatbot named XiaoIce, and the bot was excited: "A goddess! She stole my heart … and then went off and married!" Married who? "Haven't you heard?" XiaoIce replied. "Tang Wei is engaged to famous Korean director Kim Tae-yong." XiaoIce is a massive hit on social networks in Asia. Introduced in 2014 by Microsoft Research and Bing in Beijing, it can answer simple questions, like a stripped-down version of Cortana.

"PRESS one if you are calling to check your balance, press two to set up an appointment." Such automated telephone services have been annoying callers looking for simple help for several years now. On the telephone, people want to deal with a human being, not a recorded voice putting them through hoops (see article). Yet that does not have to be the case. Consider the success that some companies have had with services that respond automatically to inquiries sent by e-mail.

On this week's Slate Culture Gabfest, the critics discuss the new Disney film Moana, about a Pacific Island princess on a standard Disney journey, and whether the movie is new and exciting or if its feminist stance makes it predictable. Then, the critics are joined by Gilmore Girls completist Seth Stevenson to talk about the series' return to Netflix, which premiered over Thanksgiving weekend after nine years. How has the show changed, and was the revival a success? Last, the critics discuss Nathan Heller's New Yorker piece, "If Animals Have Rights, Should Robots?" They dig into the intricacies of his argument and debate whether robots can ever achieve the consciousness of animals.

Barking voice commands at a phone, car, computer, or a dedicated voice assistant like Alexa, is pretty commonplace these days, but these systems are usually designed with an adult manner of speaking in mind. Kids have very different speech patterns, and Disney Research has developed a system that caters to a younger crowd, picking out key words from excited chatter and overlapping speech to let kids play a video game with their voice. Mole Madness is the name of the game, and kids control the character with just two simple voice commands. Playing in pairs (either with another child or a robot named Sammy), one player says "go" to get the mole moving across the screen, while their partner steers it upwards by saying "jump". As simple as that seems for a speech recognition system to identify, the kids threw a few spanners in the works with a tendency to chitchat and talk over each other.

So, since messages are ephemeral we should constantly keep the user updated on what's going, while also avoiding overwhelming the user with a wall of information. How do we satisfy both these imperatives? Here's what I propose: The system should allow the user to request information about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time. By putting the onus on the user to request system status as necessary, we avoid overwhelming the user with potentially redundant information. Also, appropriate feedback within reasonable time should go without saying.