This column is being written by a human being.
An honest-to God, flesh and blood, living and
breathing member of the human race who formulates the words in his brain, then
lets them spill off his fingertips onto a computer keyboard sometimes with
mixed results.
I mention this because sometime in the not too distant
future, what you read --- on your Twitter account, Facebook page, in your daily
newspaper --- will have been written not on a computer but by a computer.
This is not the
stuff of science fiction. It’s already
taking place. Don’t be surprised if you
see a byline soon that says “I. Robot.”
To underscore how rapidly the media/communications business
is evolving, consider this recent job posting that caused more than a little
shock and awe in social media circles.
“…Content
Agency is seeking a dedicated individual to join our SmartContent product team
as a Content Specialist, to develop and support our news content harvesting
robots and classification and management systems… We maintain and enhance a
mission-critical data ingestion system that gathers and distributes
market-moving, ground-breaking content every day in support of (our) content
platforms and enterprise feeds.
“…Work with our team of content specialists and
ontologists to craft customized information solutions for our hundreds of
clients worldwide. Day to day responsibilities include designing and deploying
specialized content harvesting robots, creating and enhancing tools to
facilitate data collection, and expanding and refining our industry-leading
news ontology.”
A computer science degree would be preferred but the
company is also open to people who have studied English or journalism. Although
in truth, this person won’t be working for a newspaper but a news curation
service.
This posting makes two things clear: (1) Someone had better integrate an editing
component into this system so the word “content” doesn’t appear eight times in
two paragraphs. And (2) lose the phrase “news content harvesting robots” which sounds
like a giant Pac Man hunting down and devouring hapless reporters.
What it means is that news gathering and distribution will be unlike anything we've ever seen. Included in the Brave New World will be stories untouched by human hands.
For example:
A company
originated by two electrical engineering and computer science professors at
Northwestern University automatically generates sports stories using commonly
available information such as box scores and play-by-plays.
Along with the text is an appropriate headline and a
photo of what the program deems as the most important player in the game.
It’s not a stretch to see this same principal being
applied to police and court news, election and political stories, government and
agency reporting.
You won’t get much in the way of context, analysis and
interviews. And deftly written articles
will be rare.
Instead you will be informed, educated and entertained by
stories that convey all the insight and readability of a 140-character Tweet.
The Associated Press is already using an automated
system to produce quarterly earning stories for its business clients. The AP now
publishes 3,000 such stories every quarter — and that number is poised to grow.
James Kotecki is a spokesman for a company called
Automated Insights, whose Wordsmith platform generates millions of articles per
week. Their partners include Allstate,
Comcast, and Yahoo, whose fantasy football reports are automated.
Kotecki estimates the company's system can produce
2,000 articles per second if need be.
Kris Hammond who works for a firm called Narrative
Science suggests, with an edge of mischief, that a computer will win a Pulitzer
prize within five years, and that 90% of journalism will be written by computer
by 2030.
I can hear the nation’s newspaper executives lick
their chops as they envision a business with little or no overhead. Just build
robots to replace reporters.
All of this puts me square in the middle of the tracks
as a giant locomotive called “Progress” speeds toward me.
But before I get run over, I hope someone will develop
an algorithm that will collect the works of journalists who actually write
their own stories so we can be reminded of what we could lose.
Robert Rector is a veteran of 50 years in
print journalism. He has worked at the San Francisco Examiner, Los Angeles
Herald Examiner, Valley News, Los Angeles Times and Pasadena Star-News. His
columns can be found at Robert-Rector@Blogspot.Com.
Follow him on Twitter at @robertrector1.
