Often disparagingly referred to as ‘churnalism,’ some of the larger media organisationsincluding the L.A. Times and Associated Presshave now turned to robots to take the grind out of formulaic dispatches.
The L.A. Times uses the algorithms in its in-house software — called Quakebot – to produce reports on local earthquakes, using data provided by the US Geological Survey.
The reports typically hit the newspaper’s website within three minutes of the tremor being recorded.
For data-rich stories such as finance stories, sports stories and breaking news where dry facts need to be collated and sent out quickly, robo-journalists are becoming increasingly common.
Narrative Science, a Chicago company set up in 2010 to commercialize technology developed at Northwestern University that crunches data into a narrative, markets its Quill software to television stations and to financial houses that generate earnings statements.
“A lot of people felt threatened by what we were doing, and we got a lot of coverage,” Narrative Science CEO Stuart Frankel told MIT Technology Review. “It led to a lot of inquiries from all different industries and to the evolution to a different business.”
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“The idea that humans will always have a unique ability beyond the reach of non-conscious algorithms is just wishful thinking. It is based on the traditional assumption that intelligence and consciousness are inextricably linked to one another. For millions of years of evolution, this may have been true. But no longer,” says Harari.
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