Google is funding the creation of software that writes local news stories

Post by notyourwork » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 8:45 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #51

Don't most reporters start out with obscure/niche stories so they can hone their writing styles on relatively "unimportant" or filler pieces? If machines do all of that work, how do reporters develop the experience to be able to write an organized, in-depth important story?

Post by speeq » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 9:01 PM UTC

Post by anigbrowl » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 9:09 PM UTC

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #63

brudgers wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, neither was worth reading and since the machine generated version was shorter it was less not worth reading than the longer one...but the longer one contained the logical possibility of being worth reading whereas the machine written one was as good as it could possibly be. Or to put it another way, while it was not worth the human effort to write the story, it wasn't worth the CPU cycles to write the machine…

> The story was not worth writing or publishing or reading Of course, these are the wrong metrics. The correct metrics are: ad impressions vs. cost to generate content.

Post by downandout » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 9:23 PM UTC

Post by Simon_says » Sat, Jul 08, 2017, 9:27 PM UTC

harperlee wrote: post #53

Simon_says wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel differently. I think there's a place for information that people would like to read as prose but the economics don't make sense to pay someone to write it. I feel like this is an advance that's increasing the wealth of the world because we're going to get more text while spending fewer man-hours on it. And it's just going to get better over time. It's obvious now when something was written by a bot, but I doub…

> Giving such text a human name as the author is indefensible. Why is it indefensible in your opinion? I think it is only fair that if I have a job of writing some output based on some inputs, and I define a process to do that that can be automated, the end product is still my labor, and I can sign it.