Via Nexus 404
by J Angelo Racoma
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Automatic content generators are the scourge of most legitimate writers and publishers, especially if these take some original content, spin it around and generate a mashup of different content but obviously based on something else. An app made by computer science and journalism experts involves artificial intelligence that writes like a human, though.

Developers at the Northwestern University’s Intelligent Information Laboratory have come up with a program called Narrative Science, which composes articles and reports based on data, facts, and styles plugged in. The application is worth more than 10 years’ work by Kris Hammond and Larry Birnbaum who are both professors of journalism and computer science at the university.
Artificial vs Human Intelligence
Currently being used by 20 companies, an example of work done by Narrative Science include post-game reports for collegiate athletics events and articles for medical journals, in which the software can compose an entire, unique article in about 60 seconds or so. What’s striking is that even language experts say you won’t know the difference between the software and an actual human, in terms of style, tone and usage. The developers have recently received $6 million in venture capital, which is indicative that the technology has potential in business and revenue-generating applications.
AI today is increasingly becoming sophisticated in terms of understanding and generating language. AI has gone a long way from spewing out pre-encoded responses from a list of sentences and words in reaction to keywords. Narrative Science can actually compose paragraphs using a human-like voice. The question here is whether the technology will undermine traditional journalism. Will AI simply assist humans in doing research and delivering content? Or, will AI eventually replace human beings in reporting the news, generating editorials and even communicating with other people?
What Does it Mean for Journalism and the Writing Profession?
Perhaps the main indicator here will be cost. Narrative Science charges about $10 each 500-word article, which is not really far from how human copy writers might charge for content. Once this technology becomes popular with newspapers and other publications, will this mean writers and journalists — tech bloggers included — need to find a new career? It seems it’s not just the manufacturing industry that’s prone to being replaced by machines. Maybe we can just input a few keywords like iPhone, iOS, Jailbreak, Touchscreen, Apple and the like, and the Narrative Science app will be able to create an entirely new rumor about the upcoming iPhone 5, for instance!
The potential is great, although the possibility for abuse is also there. Think of spammers and scammers using the software to create more appealing emails that recipients are more likely to act on. Still, with tools like these, it’s only up for us humans to up the ante in terms of quality.
And yes, in case you’re wondering, a real human did write this post.
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Personal comments:
One book to read about this: "Exemplaire de démonstration" by Philippe Vasset