New York Magazine - USA (2019-11-11)

20 newyork| november11–24, 2019

DuVernay Will Be Our Spielberg

APPRECIATING the singularity of Spielberg,

Hitchcock said that the then-young director

was “the first one of us who doesn’t see the pro-

scenium arch.” DuVernay feels just as singular:

the future of auteur filmmaking both demo-

graphically and technologically, using her pro-

digious social-media and real-world network-

ing skills to unify facets of her talent, interests,

and public image and using her fame, industry

clout, and social-media reach to raise up artists

whohaveyet toachieveherlevelofsuccess.

—MATT ZOLLER SEITZ

Travis Will Be Our Kanye

LIKE KANYE, Travis Scott has an ear for what’s

popping in hip-hop and the wherewithal to

ingratiate himself to whoever’s making it pop.

Like Drake, he has great respect for the format-

ting of classic albums and a knack for a hum-

mable hook. Like Future, he sounds at ease in a

lurid party scene. Travis’s ascent in this decade—

he hasn’t plateaued yet—has been a feat of mix-

ing, matching, and borrowing threads until a

personal style developed in the blends. He’ll be

a force in the ’20s if he can write more personal

lyrics ... and also if he can’t. —CRAIG JENKINS

We’ll Read and Write Like Robots

IN WHATEVER other ways robots might outper-

form humans, surely writing is one thing that

separates us from machines? Or so we thought.

On the other hand, we already read AI-generated

text with some frequency in the emails we receive

from people using Google’s Smart Reply and

Smart Compose functions, for example. And just

as we read text from robots, we write text for

robots frequently, too, anytime we construct a

search query that seems oddly phrased in human

languages but gets us exactly the result we’re look-

ing for. And we increasingly encounter text with

a simultaneous robot and human audience:

tweets meant to engage an audience but also surf

the Twitter-sorting algorithm, say, or SEO-spam-

farm articles that both communicatetohumans

the answers to their queries and communicateto

robots that an article should be rankedhighlyin

search results.

This sort of writing—think of the strangeand

stilted language in the pages that comeupwhen

you Google something like “how to tiea tie”—rep-

resents a kind of bot-human pidgin, asimplified

language meant to be used betweentwogroups

that don’t speak the same native language.It’dbe

nice to think that as robots become betterat writ-

ing like us, and understanding us, we’llreturnto

FEB 06

Emma and
Zoe, high-
school seniors
and both
17, prep for
the ACT.

IN 202 , WE’LL P

BE 27. LIFE

WILL BE LIT.

EMMA: We met in preschool. But I

don’t remember feeling like, Oh my

God, best friend forever, until probably

like end of elementary school.

ZOE: Last year, you had this big

junior history paper that’s, like, super-

hard, and you had a really hard teacher

as well, and I remember you being like,

“This class is really hard.” But your

teacher specifically said that your paper

was the best, and I feel like, in the

future, you’re going to do something

that’s political but also writing. When

we go on college tours, you say, like,

“International relations”?

E: I could see you being a lawyer

because ... when you talk about

politics, it’s like the way you say it

sounds like you could be in the

courtroom. I picture you having such

a good life at 27. I feel like you’re

going to have either a career or the

beginning to a career or like maybe be

in law school. I think you’re going to

be very financially stable, first of all.

Z: I think you’re going to just be

very settled and happy with what

you’re doing, and you’ll be happy

with, like, your friends and with your

boyfriend or whatever. Like, I’m not

sure financially ... but regardless,

you’re gonna figure out a way to be

happy with the situation and make it

the best and end up, like, actually

loving it.

E: I feel like you’re gonna have just

the funniest boyfriend ever.

Z: They have to be, like, weird.

E: I feel like we’ve both realized

that we need weird men in our lives.

Z: If you tell me a guy is weird, I’m

like, Yes, that hits the spot.

FEB 14

OpenAI claims

its news-

writing AI is

too dangerous

to publicly

release.

FEB 10

Travis Scott

performs at

theGrammys

one week

after perform-

ingat the

Super Bowl.

FEB 07

Ava DuVernay

guest edits

Time’s

“Optimism”

issue.

PHOTOGRAPH: ZOONAR GMBH/ALAMY (DRONE)