Here's the title which guarantees a podium finish in this class of Genius in Journalism and that's before reading one more word: And the Pulitzer goes to… a computer
And the sub-heading moves the article to the win: Computer-generated copy is already used in sports and business reporting – will machines soon master great storytelling?
Maybe those teasers encouraged you to read the article ... but probably not. In general, it's another genuflection in the approximate direction of Artificial Intelligence.
Note: always use capital letters for Artificial Intelligence and always say the words using appropriately reverential tones.
The level of intelligence of any kind required for sports reporting is not exactly that high as there isn't usually a circumstance such as a giant mutant earthworm rising out of the ground to eat the pitcher in a baseball game. Since most sporting events can be reduced to the statistics which are retained about them, programming a report on those statistics isn't likely to attract the attention of the Nobel Prize committee any time soon.
In times gone by, great wizards compiled such reports after taking them to the Oracle of SAS as, even today, there probably is nothing more powerful for analyzing statistics. Now some hip hop hamster hipster can do a poofier version of the same thing ... but it's still just a statistical report and is no more a sign of Artificial Intelligence than turning on a television and Fox News is displayed.
The larger question is whether machines will master storytelling but there may be part of the answer already in Jessica Valenti as there's a good chance she's a simulacrum, no real woman could possibly be that boring.
Note: she's the journo equivalent of a Taylor Swift song (i.e. vacuous, self-absorbed, boring).
Storytelling is one of the great arts of humanity as much of our history as thinking creatures has been passed from generation to generation in exactly that way. Hardly any of our history is in writing as we have existed as self-aware beings for about forty thousand years. Only two thousand of those show much of anything for a written history and it's only in recent centuries that the printed word had any significance for the majority of humans.
Computers will be able to tell stories one of these days as anything can be programmed if enough people or monkeys with typewriters focus on writing it but the question isn't of the computer's ability to do it but rather why would anyone consider it a desirable thing.
There is a lot more thinking on the line of Artificial Intelligence as possibly the seminal example of the consequences of such thinking was presented in 1966 in "Colossus" by D.J. Jones which ultimately became the movie, "The Forbin Project," in 1970. That thinking has been gestating for some days as I watched the movie again a few days back and have been integrating various other things. Perhaps later today I'll complete that article and do expect it to be even less laudatory than this one regarding the potentials in Artificial Intelligence.
And the sub-heading moves the article to the win: Computer-generated copy is already used in sports and business reporting – will machines soon master great storytelling?
Maybe those teasers encouraged you to read the article ... but probably not. In general, it's another genuflection in the approximate direction of Artificial Intelligence.
Note: always use capital letters for Artificial Intelligence and always say the words using appropriately reverential tones.
The level of intelligence of any kind required for sports reporting is not exactly that high as there isn't usually a circumstance such as a giant mutant earthworm rising out of the ground to eat the pitcher in a baseball game. Since most sporting events can be reduced to the statistics which are retained about them, programming a report on those statistics isn't likely to attract the attention of the Nobel Prize committee any time soon.
In times gone by, great wizards compiled such reports after taking them to the Oracle of SAS as, even today, there probably is nothing more powerful for analyzing statistics. Now some hip hop hamster hipster can do a poofier version of the same thing ... but it's still just a statistical report and is no more a sign of Artificial Intelligence than turning on a television and Fox News is displayed.
The larger question is whether machines will master storytelling but there may be part of the answer already in Jessica Valenti as there's a good chance she's a simulacrum, no real woman could possibly be that boring.
Note: she's the journo equivalent of a Taylor Swift song (i.e. vacuous, self-absorbed, boring).
Storytelling is one of the great arts of humanity as much of our history as thinking creatures has been passed from generation to generation in exactly that way. Hardly any of our history is in writing as we have existed as self-aware beings for about forty thousand years. Only two thousand of those show much of anything for a written history and it's only in recent centuries that the printed word had any significance for the majority of humans.
Computers will be able to tell stories one of these days as anything can be programmed if enough people or monkeys with typewriters focus on writing it but the question isn't of the computer's ability to do it but rather why would anyone consider it a desirable thing.
There is a lot more thinking on the line of Artificial Intelligence as possibly the seminal example of the consequences of such thinking was presented in 1966 in "Colossus" by D.J. Jones which ultimately became the movie, "The Forbin Project," in 1970. That thinking has been gestating for some days as I watched the movie again a few days back and have been integrating various other things. Perhaps later today I'll complete that article and do expect it to be even less laudatory than this one regarding the potentials in Artificial Intelligence.
No comments:
Post a Comment