In Robot Writers and the Digital Age Samantha Goldberg discusses some very interesting developments in AI and basic storytelling.
Some people will be intimidated by this:
The ability of software robots to write at such scale while still personalizing the content is what makes these companies’ technology so powerful.
In short, the computers can do, in some cases, what humans can’t.
For example, Automated Insights worked with Major League Baseball last year to create Real-time Insights for MLB, a new platform producing a live feed of insights during every game and using the MLB’s 120 years of stats to insert historical facts and make predictions for each play.
Hammond said the software is “writing stories in spaces where no one is writing stories.”
Matt McFarland, deputy high school sports editor for the Washington Post, agrees there’s an opportunity for automated content creation software to help in areas too hard for humans to cover.
“In cases like little league and high school sporting events, I definitely see value in using a computer software because bottom line is it can be unrealistic and just impossible for a media company to go out and cover certain things,” McFarland said.
But could this software actually take jobs away from human reporters?
McFarland said while he sees the software replacing some jobs, he doesn’t think it will substitute for the work of the journalists who can bring quality and in-depth reporting to their articles.
And there are certain things that computers still can’t do with the written word, he said.
But some people will be very intrigued by the ramifications.
How do you feel about it?
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