90% of news written by algorhythm by mid-2020s

Well, it’s quite logical. In this digital era, people demand so much content that humans can not satisfy this need anymore. That is the reason why “automated narrative generation” is becoming normal in the world of journalism. It relieves the (human) journalists from the writing process by using some algorithms. Give the algorithms some data, let’s say sports statistics, and a match report is written within a couple of seconds.

The interesting part is, these algorithms are so smart that they can create stories like a human being wrote them, even changing tone of voice or adapting to a specific target group. Have a look at these two sports reports*:

“Things looked bleak for the Angels when they trailed by two runs in the ninth inning, but Los Angeles recovered thanks to a key single from Vladimir Guerrero to pull out a 7-6 victory over the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park on Sunday.”

“The University of Michigan baseball team used a four-run fifth inning to salvage the final game in its three-game weekend series with Iowa, winning 7-5 on Saturday afternoon (April 24) at the Wilpon Baseball Complex, home of historic Ray Fisher Stadium.”

Can you tell the difference? Well, according to a study by Karlstad University in Sweden, when presented with sports stories not unlike these, study respondents couldn’t tell the difference either. NY Times created a little test for you if you can see the difference between human or computer generated content.

Algorithms generating news stories is not a new concept, but the speed at which this is being implemented is tremendous. Especially in the sports, finance and merchandising industries, algorithm software can easily make up stories due to the high amount of data that is available in these industries.

Associated Press already produces 3.000 financial reports per quarter using algorithm software. Forbes has partnered up with similar tools as well, and The Los Angeles Times was able to report a 4.7 magnitude earthquake that hit Southern California, just moments after the event by using Quakebot.

We can state that robo-journalism will free humans to do more reporting and less data processing. Even books are written by algorithms. Have a look at the books of Philip M. Parker, because his patented algorithmic system has generated more than a million books.

The question is: will journalists become unnecessary for a lot of ‘simple’ tasks and lose their job, or will algorithms only help them in doing their job? We speak to robots on the customer service phone, without noticing it is not a human being. Home appliances can communicate with us and cars are able to drive themselves. What does ‘human’ still mean nowadays?

The Future of Life Institute states “Technology has given life the opportunity to flourish like never before… or to self-destruct.” Well, in essence it outlines the concerns we have. Algorithms are part of this as well. Ok, journalistic algorithms are not self-destructing our world, however it is just an example of the big impact on the work we are doing, and this is just the beginning..

*This article is inspired on an article by Shelley Podolny in the NY Times. The sports examples come directly from this article.

* Illustration: Mark Allen Miller