Alexandra Alter, in the lede for her profile of Marissa Mayer’s new AI startup Dazzle for The New York Times (gift link):

Late last year, Marissa Mayer was struggling with what felt like an impossible task.

Her daughter Marielle was turning 10, and Marielle’s teacher wanted three bullet points summarizing what made her special. Mayer — the former chief executive of Yahoo and a pioneer at Google, where she was the first female engineer — likes cracking a hard problem. But she felt overwhelmed by the range and complexity of potential answers.

So Mayer asked her personal A.I. assistant, Dazzle. Within a few seconds, Dazzle delivered an answer.

“It came back and was like, your daughter is empathetic, creative and an animal lover,” Mayer said. She thought it was perfect.

That anecdote is brutal. It makes it seem like Mayer has lost her mind. She’s getting roasted for it on social media. I suspected (and hoped) there was more to the story. There was.…