We diagnose and briefly discuss the dearth of the author: a condition that arises when AI-based creativity support tools for writing allow users to produce large amounts of text without making a commensurate number of creative decisions, resulting in output that is sparse in expressive intent. We argue that the dearth of the author helps to explain a number of recurring difficulties and anxieties around AI-based writing support tools, but that it also suggests an ambitious new goal for AI-based CSTs.

Robot with violin is followed by cloned businessmen. For decades, scientists and tech visionaries have envisioned a day when computers become so powerful that they become smarter than the human race. There is no shortage of science fiction stories and movies about robot uprisings. We are very far from that scary scenario, but at the same time artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer sci-fi. Many applications of AI abound today in business, and it is even being used in creative professions.

Core music-making skills don't have a shelf life – if you could write, record and produce a great track in the past, those abilities are just as valid now as they ever were. Those skills might still need a little updating though. Music technology – both in terms of how we make it, and how we listen – is changing all the time, and it's always worth keeping up with the latest developments. When we talk about'intelligent' or'smart' plugins, we're generally using these as catch-all terms for a variety of technologies involving some combination of forensic audio analysis, artificial intelligence and machine learning. These are all terms that crop up in plugin promotional materials with increasing regularity.

Robot with violin is followed by cloned businessmen. For decades, scientists and tech visionaries have envisioned a day when computers become so powerful that they become smarter than the human race. There is no shortage of science fiction stories and movies about robot uprisings. We are very far from that scary scenario, but at the same time artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer sci-fi. Many applications of AI abound today in business, and it is even being used in creative professions.

For as long as we can remember, creative decision-making has been largely subjective. In the past decade, however, the subjectivity of creativity has begun to change. More than ever, decisions within major companies and even the arts have been straying out of the realm of subjectivity and into the realm of objectivity and data. When a record label signs a new artist, it wants to see Spotify data signaling this artist's fanbase is trending up and to the right. When a car manufacturer hires an advertising agency and asks for creative campaign ideas, it wants those ideas to be backed up by data that signals emerging demand.

Here are a couple of ironic mistakes that marketers make: they put too much trust in careful iteration, and they put too much trust in'human creativity.' Here's the cruel irony of A/B testing content: it creates a data-driven rationale for making creative decisions, but does so on terribly narrow and unhelpful data – your own! Using AI and machine learning approaches to understand audiences from their interactions with third party content, brands can think creatively and strategically about the right way to insert their brand into content they know is actually demanded by the audience. When they recognize that data can be used to make better creative decisions, and that better creative decisions can drive awareness and loyalty, then it's not purely about using data to drive transactions or to force people to watch your content: and that's progress.

Professional stylists do the job for them and the personal shopping service ships the new clothes to their door. That combo is behind the success at Stitch Fix, a San Francisco-based online subscription and shopping service founded in 2011. "I think it's the single most salient aspect of our company," said Eric Colson, chief algorithms officer at Stitch Fix. "Our business is getting relevant things into the hands of our customers. This is the one thing we're going to be best in the world at. We couldn't do this with machines alone. We couldn't do this with humans alone. We're just trying to get them to combine their powers."

Here are a couple of ironic mistakes that marketers make: they put too much trust in careful iteration, and they put too much trust in'human creativity.' Marketers assume that the ability to A/B test content makes them scientists, edging closer to a deep truth about their audiences. They assume that the process of analysing audience reactions to the brand's owned content will give them an in-depth picture of that audience: that they can A/B test their way to a meaningful relationship. This is a mistake; because you can only learn more about the hypothesis your experiment is designed to test. If your experiment is designed to test only within the narrow parameters of your product, category or competitors, then you are really testing only a very limited micropart of that audience's interests. For example, if you are Oral B and your content talks about toothbrushes, those people can only ever really give you feedback based on content about toothbrushes, which is a very narrow picture of who Oral B truly is.

"We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us." - John Culkin (based on Marshall McLuhan's ideas) Something big is happening in design and engineering. For all of human history, we have created tools that help us do what we want to do -- faster, better, cheaper. But we have always had to direct those tools; tell them exactly what to do for us to achieve our goals. This hasn't changed from the time of stone tools (which we had to wield with our hands) to modern digital design tools (which we wield with the click of the mouse).

Professional stylists do the job for them and the personal shopping service ships the new clothes to their door. That combo is behind the success at Stitch Fix, a San Francisco-based online subscription and shopping service founded in 2011. "I think it's the single most salient aspect of our company," said Eric Colson, chief algorithms officer at Stitch Fix. "Our business is getting relevant things into the hands of our customers. This is the one thing we're going to be best in the world at. We couldn't do this with machines alone. We couldn't do this with humans alone. We're just trying to get them to combine their powers."