I love all things tech and I love
writing. This program (or app or algorithm) stokes both of my
passions. Robots are now writing mainstream media articles. Three
minutes after one of the earthquakes hit Southern California a few
weeks ago, an article was ready for publication, before reporters
were awake or aware of the happenings.
The author was quakebot, a program created two years ago, that
reacts to input from devices that report seismic activity. It is
called a 'bot', because it reacts to outside stimulus without human
intervention. The algorithm adds text to fill in between the 'facts'
to create a readable story, suitable for publishing. In this case,
it extracted the relevant data from the US Geological Service
report, plugged it into a pre-written template, and sent it for
publication in the LA Times.
Here is the actual article created: "A shallow magnitude 4.7
earthquake was reported Monday morning five miles from Westwood,
California, according to the US Geological Survey. The temblor
occurred at 6:25 a.m. Pacific time at a depth of 5.0 miles.
According to the USGS, the epicenter was six miles from Beverly
Hills, California, seven miles from Universal City, California,
seven miles from Santa Monica, California and 348 miles from
Sacramento, California. In the past ten days, there have been no
earthquakes magnitude 3.0 and greater centered nearby. This
information comes from the USGS Earthquake Notification Service and
this post was created by an algorithm written by the author."
There are many other examples of 'bot' reporters and one company
even has some that scan entire books and publish indexes of words,
by topic, and sells the results, in the form of books, on Amazon. Wow,
honest reporting without humans twisting the story to fit the
politics. There is hope.