Increasingly, what you’re reading—from sports news to poetry—has been written by a computer. Shelley Podolny, a director at H5 and a writer on issues related to electronic information, writes in The New York Times, “…these days, a shocking amount of what we’re reading is created not by humans, but by computer algorithms.” And if you think you can distinguish human writing from algorithmic writing, try this quiz.
Writes Podolny, “The sheer volume and complexity of the Big Data we generate, too much for mere mortals to tackle, calls for artificial rather than human intelligence to derive meaning from it all.”
Statistics-rich domains like finance and sports are particularly amenable to robot writing, she writes. The Associated Press announced last June that the majority of its U.S. corporate earnings stories would eventually be produced using automation. The AP uses technology from Automated Insights, recently acquired by Vista Equity Partners.
Fortunately, Lou Ferrara, an AP managing editor, still sees a need for humans. “If anything, we are doubling down on the journalism we will do around earnings reports and business coverage,” he said at the time of the announcement. The humans, he added, will focus on what the numbers mean.
Podolny suggests we might reflect on whether—with computer-generated content—we are giving up more than we’re getting. “Then again,” she concludes, “who has time to think about that when there’s so much information to absorb every day?”
