Algorithm-Generated Articles Won't Kill the Journalism Star 29
theodp writes: The AP's announcement that software will write the majority of its earnings reports, argues The Atlantic's Joe Pinsker, doesn't foretell the end of journalism — such reports hardly require humans anyway. Pinsker writes, "While, yes, it's true that algorithms can cram stories about vastly different subjects into the same uncanny monotone — they can cover Little League like Major League Baseball, and World of Warcraft raids like firefights in Iraq — they're really just another handy attempt at sifting through an onslaught of data. Automated Insights' success goes hand-in-hand with the rise of Big Data, and it makes sense that the company's algorithms currently do best when dealing in number-based topics like sports and stocks." So, any chance that Madden-like (video) generated play-by-play technology could one day be applied to live sporting events?
yeah no kidding (Score:2, Insightful)
journalism killed the journalism star
Journalism died a long time ago (Score:1)
All that's left are propagandists.
Re: (Score:3)
Indeed. If they automatize things, we will at least have consistent low quality...
Re:Journalism died a long time ago (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed. If they automatize things, we will at least have consistent low quality...
Actually I think the use of algorithms to write articles is great, I'm currently working on an anti-article algorithm that extracts just the facts from algorithm-generated articles and turns them into tweets. So instead of having to plough through a long slew of pseudo-intelligent analysis, all you get are the essential sound bytes: "Cat explodes; canary charged by police", that sort of thing. Pretty soon it'll be bigger than Facebook.
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Haha (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe not journalists but perhaps slashdot editors?
I keed, I keed.
Kind of.
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Slashdot has always been community-driven, and will be for as long as it lasts. That means the community needs a few carefully edited articles every day.
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Maybe not journalists but perhaps Dice editors?
FTFY
Re: Haha (Score:2)
This does explain Slate, though.
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Many adults can't even handle that, so it's not surprising, really.
We're in the age of the feuilleton (Score:2)
When you hold money above all else, this is what results.
On a less depressing note, I heard about this cool game involving glass beads being developed somewhere in Germany.
Madden-like generated play-by-play technology (Score:3)
So, any chance that Madden-like (video) generated play-by-play technology ......
No chance at all. The software is already too intelligent for that, and not nearly bloated enough.
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No chance at all. The software is already too intelligent for that, and not nearly bloated enough.
Surely it would be a simple matter of causing it to comment on its observations, rather than conclusions.
Earnings reports are in XML now. (Score:5, Interesting)
The SEC started requring companies to file their earnings reports in the Extensible Business Reporting Language a few years ago. At first, it was only for big companies; now it's everybody. The SEC displays this info in a standard format on line. Here are the latest earnings for DICE Holdings [sec.gov], Slashdot's parent. Here's the raw XML behind that data. [sec.gov] Turning that into verbiage isn't that hard.
I've been doing this for years at Downside.com, extracting the raw data from the human-readable text. This is now obsolete, but it's still running. Here's the same DICE financial statement as processed by Downside. [downside.com] That's Perl code that's been running for 15 years now. When it started, nobody was doing that. Now that everybody in finance has that data, it's probably time to retire Downside's old extraction engine.
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Here's the raw XML behind that data. Turning that into verbiage isn't that hard.
Not hard, but does it actually make sense to do so? Serious question, since I don't read the reports in question, but if they're so standardized it would seem like it would be easier for everyone involved to just stick with a tabular format of some sort, rather than trying to translate it into a "written" report.
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It would seem like it would be easier for everyone involved to just stick with a tabular format of some sort.
Everyone who deals with financial statements professionally does that.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
What a shame (Score:2)
The AP's announcement that software will write the majority of its earnings reports, argues The Atlantic's Joe Pinsker, doesn't foretell the end of journalism
What a shame.
Is the algorithm called... (Score:2)
Garbage In Gospel Out (Score:2)