Replacing Yourself with a Very Small Shell Script

Hilary Mason was tired of sending the same email over and over again, so she created a program to write and send them for her. In this 2012 talk, the data scientist, formerly Chief Scientist at bitly, tells the story of building it.

She offended some people along the way, but having refined it, she notes that you can never be sure whether she or her “personal Skynet” is replying to your mail. It is a light-hearted look at automation, data and the line between human and machine responses.