With mankind developing innovative ways to augment machine, what will happen to human journalists if robots are introduced as writers. The debate gathered steam after The Associated Press announced in mid 2014 that it would use technology from Automated Insights to automate corporate earnings stories.
Read more: Day one and Day two at SXSW Interactive 2015
AP managing editor Lou Ferrara and Automated Insights CEO Robbie Allen joined in at the second day of SXSW 2015 to share their thoughts on - “When Robots Write The News, What Will Humans Do?” Listed below are some of the insights curated from Twitter.
Automated Insights Wordsmith
[email protected] has proprietary platform called #Wordsmith, which turns databases into structured stories. They work with @AP #newsrobots #SXSW
— Charo Henriquez (@charohenriquez) March 15, 2022
AI takes raw data that describes raw earnings announcements. System studies, contextualizes content and writes a story. #newsrobots
— Mick Côté (@MickCote) March 15, 2022
The system doesn’t know how to write a news report, it can analyze data and spit it out. Not contextualize impact #newsrobots — Mick Côté (@MickCote) March 15, 2022
[email protected] says @AInsights slowly developing learning capacities and natural language generation. Now that sounds scary to me #newsrobots — Mick Côté (@MickCote) March 15, 2022
Benefits of #newsrobots
[email protected] says automated processes freed up approx. 20% of journos’ time and hasn’t eliminated jobs. #newsrobots — Mick Côté (@MickCote) March 15, 2022
The purpose of #newsrobots isn’t to take journo jobs, but to free up time to do richer work. @AP estimates it freed up 20% of time. #SXSW — Charo Henriquez (@charohenriquez) March 15, 2022
[email protected] built structured stories around earning reports variables. Went from 300 manual stories to 3,000 automated. #newsrobots#SXSW — Charo Henriquez (@charohenriquez) March 15, 2022
“The goal has never been to eliminate jobs,” says @louferrara. Wanted to free up staff time to do stories not doing before. #newsrobots — Andy Riga, Montreal (@andyriga) March 15, 2022
Challenges with human journalists
Most mistakes, according to @RobbieAllen from @AInsights, were in human-written blurbs in the original studied content. #newsrobots — Mick Côté (@MickCote) March 15, 2022
As former business reporter, I wrote my share of earnings reports. Can attest to fact they make you want to poke your eyes out #newsrobots
— Andy Riga, Montreal (@andyriga) March 15, 2022
Future with #newsrobots at Associated Press
Associated Press has automated stories about quarterly company earnings. Next, it’s going to automate sports game reports. #newsrobots
— Andy Riga, Montreal (@andyriga) March 15, 2022
Data visualization, elections may be on tap to be automated. AP’s @louferrara #SXSW #newsrobots http://t.co/9ftMabbR7e — Chandra Hosek (@ChandraHosek) March 15, 2022
Electoral results are structured data. Not far fetched that templates could be written and algorithms fill the blanks #newsrobots #SXSW — Charo Henriquez (@charohenriquez) March 15, 2022
#newsrobots #sxsw @LouFerrara governments & corporations benefitt from tech, it’s critical in newsroom to exploit human skills. — Mary Allison (@MWorthAllison) March 15, 2022
Rate of innovation around AI will continue to evolve. Journalists are necessary to investigate, analyze and contextualize. #newsrobots #SXSW — Charo Henriquez (@charohenriquez) March 15, 2022
Personalization of content will also evolve with AI. Take users preferences and boil it down to a recap. Eliminate noise. #newsrobots #SXSW — Charo Henriquez (@charohenriquez) March 15, 2022
An example of this type of personalization are @Yahoo fantasy sports stories, powered by @AInsights. #newsrobots #SXSW — Charo Henriquez (@charohenriquez) March 15, 2022
The future of news is that you’ll receive an automated, personalised news story as it breaks #newsrobots #SXSW — Anna Cook (@Anna_Cook) March 15, 2022
[email protected] is now sorting out what is automated, what isn’t. In video the bar is much higher, much more challenging to produce. #newsrobots #SXSW — Charo Henriquez (@charohenriquez) March 15, 2022
Rise of the Automated Editor
Part of the role of @AP‘s automation editor is managing tagging, metadata, structured data and streamlining the operation. #newsrobots #SXSW — Charo Henriquez (@charohenriquez) March 15, 2022
Journalists in overseas markets for AP are asking for the automated editor, says @LouFerrara. #newsrobots — Mick Côté (@MickCote) March 15, 2022
Drawing the line and being transparent
Transparency is key. Readers should know that the content was machine generated. Disclose! #newsrobots #SXSW — Charo Henriquez (@charohenriquez) March 15, 2022
AP is being transparent about the automation to be sure readers are aware. The data feed/AP’s investment in @AInsights disclosed #newsrobots — Mick Côté (@MickCote) March 15, 2022
Social streams don’t necessarily provide structured data so it would be harder to automate stories from them due to bias. #newsrobots #SXSW
— Charo Henriquez (@charohenriquez) March 15, 2022
