Future Tense Fiction: Welcome to the A.I. Haunted House

On this month’s episode of Future Tense Fiction, host Maddie Stone talks to Janelle Shane about her short story “The Skeleton Crew.”
The House of A.I. is a next-level haunted house: In it, a suite of advanced A.I.s read visitors’ facial expressions to generate perfectly tailored scares. Or at least, that’s what the marketing materials want you to believe. It turns out, the house is actually operated by a group of underpaid gig workers, tasked with posing as spooky A.I.s as they guide visitors through the mansion. When two gunmen sneak into the house in search of a famous rock artist who’s there visiting, things go south quickly—and everyone ends up really grateful for the humans behind the house’s spooky machines.
After the story, Maddie and Janelle discuss why the human workers behind A.I. are so often invisibilized—and why you should be suspicious when a company oversells its tech.
Guests: Janelle Shane is a research scientist. She writes about A.I. on her blog, aiweirdness.com, and she’s also the author of You Look Like a Thing and I Love You.
Story read by Kat Bohn
Podcast production by Tiara Darnell
You can skip all the ads in Future Tense Fiction by joining Slate Plus. Sign up now at slate.com/plus for just $15 for your first three months.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this month’s episode of Future Tense Fiction, host Maddie Stone talks to Janelle Shane about her short story “The Skeleton Crew.”

The House of A.I. is a next-level haunted house: In it, a suite of advanced A.I.s read visitors’ facial expressions to generate perfectly tailored scares. Or at least, that’s what the marketing materials want you to believe. It turns out, the house is actually operated by a group of underpaid gig workers, tasked with posing as spooky A.I.s as they guide visitors through the mansion. When two gunmen sneak into the house in search of a famous rock artist who’s there visiting, things go south quickly—and everyone ends up really grateful for the humans behind the house’s spooky machines.

After the story, Maddie and Janelle discuss why the human workers behind A.I. are so often invisibilized—and why you should be suspicious when a company oversells its tech.

Guests: Janelle Shane is a research scientist. She writes about A.I. on her blog, aiweirdness.com, and she’s also the author of You Look Like a Thing and I Love You.

Story read by Kat Bohn

Podcast production by Tiara Darnell

You can skip all the ads in Future Tense Fiction by joining Slate Plus. Sign up now at slate.com/plus for just $15 for your first three months.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices