Can robots replace reporters?
Imagine a world where robots have replaced live journalists—science fiction, right? Think again: a group of sports journalists in the U.S. recently found that sometimes the machine beats man.
The “robot journalist” in question is a software program developed by Narrative Science that processes data fed into it and spits out a news story.
Recently, a group of sports writers decided to test out the program after running across a particularly bad story written by a real journalist. The result? The computer program wrote a better story.
As an editor, would you be willing to use “robot journalists” for your newspaper—for example, when churning out press releases?
As a journalist, do you think you’re in any danger of being replaced by a robot? Why or why not?
Photo by John Greenaway, used with a CC-license
Art is not the same thing as Science
Journalism is an art, not science. Sure, a machine or an algorithm can be coded to do things in a certain way, but unless it has some true intelligence and a taste for artistic senses, it always possess only the qualities of a MACHINE. Which are pretty much redundant. It's not the 99% of the time of recycled material that matters. It's that 1% of innovation sparks that come and totally flip a story around.
Unless machines think like people, they will always be machines. And people will always have the POTENTIAL of turning out better output.
pretty interesting !
I am involved in the field of ROBOTICS since 7 years but, seriously had not thought about this scope and aspect. Simply liked this news ! wow
-- bhuwan pokharel, Nepal
robots cannot replace reporters?
No, no way robots cannot replace reporter
it depends ...
In some cases robot journalists can be very positive, especially when very accurate information needs to be posted. However this is not new and constantly computers are in charge of organizing and writing some basic articles basically with an informative purpose.
It would have no sense to include robot journalists in TV and radio programs as it would corrupt the essence of live journalism; the interaction with the audience
I don't think it undermines a journalist's work and robot journalists could help to create a positive impact in some cases and regain lost confidence in other areas of journalism.
why not
OK so you were going for polemics but I don't see why they couldn't be used to publish police reports and council meeting votes and sports. You don't need the plain info more than anything else
no
Seriously? They might be able to replace some things (like company earnings reports or sports scores) but they will never be able to fact check or provide much background....
don't tell publishers!
Seriously, if they thought they could replace people w/ computers they would. But it might free up the "real" journalists (if there are any left?) to do some honest reporting instead of just excerpting press releases...
Post new comment