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In Case You Wondered, a Real Human Wrote This Column

nytimes.com

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Re: In Case You Wondered, a Real Human Wrote This Column

#11

Post by sjs »

I suppose this may do for articles that just deliver some facts. However the kind of stuff I enjoy reading doesn't just barf up some facts in the form of sentences, it provides insight into what the implications of those facts may be and also draws from the past to better put things in context.

That's not to say their technology couldn't be improved to search the web and see what past events are relevant, but providing good insights about the implications of the facts will be a whole lot tougher. I don't think journalists need to be shaking in their boots unless they only deliver the quality and depth of results that this algorithm delivers.

Re: In Case You Wondered, a Real Human Wrote This Column

#12

Post by notahacker »

kiba wrote: post #6

These technological advances made me shudder about the potential job loss of the future even though the previous technological advances created new jobs. Sure, there's no way that my profession and the great majority of jobs on the internet would be possible if we rely on human switchboard operators rather than relying on automation. That doesn't mean it will be true for the next advances in technology, does it?

If the cost of producing even the sort of dry, statistics-heavy content the program presently excels at was a primary factor then we'd have outsourced it to India or the Philippines by now. You'd certainly pay less than $10 for an article like this: http://www.builderonline.com/local-housing-data/new-england/...

I'm willing to believe the underlying machine learning technology is very clever, but I'm also willing to believe a specialised toy script could produce similar results, even if you had to hard code the minimum winning margin for a "rout".

As for the Freakonomics comparison, they seem to have missed the appeal of Levitt: that his ability to posit a plausible causal relationship between two apparently unrelated variables. Any idiot can summarise "remarkable findings" based on spurious correlations.

Re: In Case You Wondered, a Real Human Wrote This Column

#13

Post by 6ren »

I love seeing these examples of product development: begin with a very specific niche at the edge (not tackling the mainstream head-on) and "target non-consumption" - that way, you have no competition; and it's not a zero-sum game where you beat someone, but creating value that never existed before. This is possible not because it's good, but because it's cheap (and good enough):

> primarily a low-cost tool ... for local youth sports .... and financial results of local public companies ... “Mostly, we’re doing things that are not being done otherwise,”

Then, once you have some customers - any customers! - you improve it, bit by bit. It doesn't need to be perfect in the first place; it doesn't need to be perfect in the end. It just needs to be good enough to be useful.

> [customer] worked with Narrative Science for months to fine-tune the software

As for the technology itself, we're not told anything of its details, just what it can do. This is a marketing article, not a tech report. It would be interesting to see the models they use for stories, and whether they use grammars for the overall structure. These are very narrow domains, which are the easiest to start with: you could enumerate all the standard cliches, understand when they apply, and tweak the model. That's where the journalist expert domain knowledge of the two founders would come in handy. BTW: "easiest" is only relative - it would still be very difficult (almost impossible), and kudos to these guys for actually doing it - and even better, making an actual business out of it.

It reads like a 50's Asimov story - the future is finally arriving.

But a Pulitzer in 5 years is absurd, either cynical puff or visionary bravado. Theoretically possible, I think, maybe in 50 years - the figure I've long given for strong AI. ;-)

Re: In Case You Wondered, a Real Human Wrote This Column

#14

Post by zalthor »

levy wrote: post #10

My worry here is computers will learn to write articles specific to every individual. The computer will know what other articles we liked and what we didn't like and just try to write to what we want to read. This will make it even less likely we'll hear an opposing view to our own, if the computers are giving us what we want to read.

We don't need computers to do this, people do it already. Most "news" channels spew out such a monotonous train of thought, that it makes me wonder if switching to a news channel these days is even worth it. For now, I am able to get my news and information online from a variety of sources that offer me interesting views on both sides. Even if one day all of this is content produced by machines, I think its the individual's responsibility to make sure that he/she gets information from both sides.

Re: In Case You Wondered, a Real Human Wrote This Column

#16

Post by arethuza »

dr_ wrote: post #4
thalecress wrote: post #2

I'm skeptical of the claim that a program could win a Pulitzer. How does it decide what to write about, who to interview, and what questions to ask? Reporting a day at the races or the markets is easy because we know which kinds of data are relevant and we have them available.

It's not inconceivable that, as AI advances, at some point there with be algorithms that figure out the questions you have posed.

True, it's not inconceivable, but arguably having a system that is an effective investigative journalist is AI-Complete:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI-complete

Re: In Case You Wondered, a Real Human Wrote This Column

#19

Post by jellicle »

What this article doesn't tell you is that the human who wrote it works for Narrative Science.

For those who don't know, if you see a story in your local paper, and it doesn't involve a car crash, crime, weather, or sports, it was probably placed there by a PR representative. Most of the things you read are not the result of random reporters deciding to cover X or Y, but a paid, concerted effort to place story X or Y in the paper by providing the paper with a fully pre-digested story to perhaps rewrite, or perhaps not.

The words "narrative science" appear 14 times in that story, including such clunkers as "To generate story “angles,” explains Mr. Hammond of Narrative Science...." when Mr. Hammond has already been introduced earlier in the story. It even includes pricing: hey readers, this is not only cool and will win the Pulitzer Prize, but it's cheap too! No mention of competitors... It reads like an ad because it is an ad.

This story was provided, probably almost word for word, by a PR person to the NYT reporter.

I'm not sure if computer-generated text will be better or worse than the media system we have now.

Re: In Case You Wondered, a Real Human Wrote This Column

#20

Post by jawns »

Here's a description of my venture into this territory, in which I generated formulaic lottery result briefs:

"I wrote this article with one mouse click"

http://coding.pressbin.com/60/I-wrote-this-article-with-one-...

I can't imagine the sort of code base that would be needed to make these stories not seem formulaic.

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