AI journalism: possibilities, limitations, and outcomes
Microsoft made waves this May when it launched that it may lay off larger than 50 journalists and editors from its workforce. Many of these staff have been involved throughout the info curation course of, deciding on hand-picked content material materials that may run on the Microsoft News and MSN web pages. But their positions gained’t go unfilled for prolonged: Microsoft is anticipated to change them not with new hires, nonetheless with AI software program program that will decide trending and attention-grabbing articles, principally performing their outdated job carry out.
But curation is just one exercise that AI “journalists” can now accomplish. Kristian Hammond, a laptop science professor and co-founder of the data storytelling agency Narrative Science, predicted in 2012 that in 15 years, larger than 90 per cent of tales articles could be written by a laptop. With 7 years to go until the deadline, nonetheless, we’re nonetheless very far off from this forecast—however moreover rather a lot nearer than we was, as we’ll deal with beneath.
The good news for human journalists is that there’s nonetheless very rather a lot a necessity for his or her corporations when writing articles like this one. But with machines now capable of doing additional duties than ever (and additional superior ones), we face quite a lot of vital questions: what’s …