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Replaced by a Robot
I sometimes get asked what I am going to do when I am replaced by a robot. On
other occasions, I get emails from people hoping I get replaced by a robot.
Those in the second group typically accuse me of not knowing what it is like
to not have a job.
Actually, I do know what it is like to be without a job for an extended
period because I was jobless for several years between 2001 and 2004.
I started this blog hoping someone would hire me as writer. The Motley
Fool had an opening for a writer and turned me down for the position.
With the exception of the bit about the Fool position that I wanted
and needed, I have written about this before on several occasions, most
recently on January 30, 2015, in Financial Blogger Profile of "Mish" on Equities.Com.
McJournalism Coming Up
With that journalism backdrop, please consider You’ll
be Sorry When the Robot Journalists Take Over by Irish Times writer
Jennifer O’Connell.
If you consume much of your daily news diet online, you’re
probably already acquainted with the work of “robot journalists”, you just
don’t know it yet.
AP relies on a content generation package called Wordsmith to produce some of
its quarterly-earnings business stories and will soon be using it for sports
coverage too. You’ve never heard of Wordsmith but you’re probably familiar
with its work: it produced 300 million stories last year and is aiming for
one billion this year. A rival company, Narrative Science, provides content
to Forbes, Fortune and others.
“We sort of flip the traditional content creation model on its head,” Robbie
Allen, creator of Wordsmith told the New York Times. “Instead of one story
with a million page views, we’ll have a million stories with one page view
each.”
The cheerleaders for this new technology – who includes some journalists (New
York magazine declared that “the stories that today’s robots can write are,
frankly, the kinds of stories that humans hate writing anyway”) – claim that
it will free journalists up to do more meaningful pieces, while algorithms
churn out rewrites of press releases, mine longer texts for insights, or
produce entirely personalised packages of content tailored for individuals.
That’s nonsense. As always, “freeing people up” invariably means “liberating
them of their jobs”. But leaving aside the prospect of fewer people in
employment, the notion that algorithms may end up taking over even the
quotidian aspects of content production is depressing, and not just for
journalists.
This isn’t just another whine from a journalist on the state of this troubled
industry. Well, maybe it is. Journalists in every organisation are already
under pressure to produce more for less. I was recently offered a freelance
job writing content for a US-based website. Each piece would have taken most of
a day and some travel to research, and a couple of hours to write. The pay
was $50 per piece, expenses included.
As a news consumer, you may not care whether the copy you read was produced
by a robot in 0.01 of a second, or by a human in half a day (for $50), if it
tells you what you need to know. You may not care that the humans in my
industry are being replaced by robots – although yours could be next. But in
the end, it’s you, the reader, who will suffer. Algorithms may be good at
crunching numbers and putting them in some kind of context, but journalists
are good at noticing things no one else has. They’re good at asking annoying
questions. They’re nosy and persistent and willing to challenge authority to
dig out a story. They’re good at provoking irritation, devastation, laughter
or controversy.
Wildly efficient robot journalists may offer hope to an industry beset by
falling advertising rates and disappearing readers. The world will have fewer
human journalists as a result, which may not be altogether a bad thing. But
the question is: does it really need a billion more pieces of McJournalism?
Will Anyone Be Sorry?
Jennifer O’Connell says "You’ll be Sorry When the Robot Journalists
Take Over".
I wonder how many will even notice.
More importantly, those who would notice are likely not paying much
precedence to mainstream media anyway.
Except for Hollywood scandals, murders, and other meaningless but sensational
stories, national news needs to be condensed down to 30 second soundbites.
Can most stories be generated by a robot?
The sad truth is "probably" for the simple reason most want to be
spoon fed garbage.
O’Connell says journalists are "good at asking annoying questions.
They’re nosy and persistent and willing to challenge authority to dig out a
story. They’re good at provoking irritation, devastation, laughter or
controversy."
That's true as well.
So who will survive?
- The Robots
- The very best at provoking irritation, devastation,
laughter, controversy, and asking annoying questions.
Until robots can do number two in a thought-provoking, educational, and
random manner that encompasses minority and anti-establishment views,
alternative journalism will survive.
Media parrots, however, will be replaced by robots. No one will be sorry
because no one will notice.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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