According to this opinion piece in the Farmington Independent, computer programs are attempting to take over dull newspaper article writing for topics such as local sports, financial news, and restaurant reviews.
From the article:
The machines are branching out, though. They’ve started generating stories about restaurants.To be fair, that’s another situation where “stepped to the dish” is a useful turn of phrase. Other sports terms are, of course, less useful. Particularly useless for restaurant-reviewing robots: “We’re gonna shock the world!” and, particularly, “It’s gut-check time.”
“Grand slam” could be useful, but only in the very specific situations when the computer is reviewing a Denny’s.
[...]
Besides, there will always be things I can do that no robot can replicate. I bet I take better pictures than a computer, which can really only photograph the cubicle walls around it.
How many different articles do you think are worthy of being written automatically by a computer? Do you think that the majority of stuff that the local weeklies put out could be replaced? With most newspaper articles sticking to the facts and interjecting random quotes from those who are interviewed, do you think that it would be possible to do more automation in this area? What about opinion pieces, like restaurant reviews? Could I be out of a “job” and relegated to the back page now that a computer could do my job?
What would make you switch to a robot generated restaurant review over one written by a human? Would it be the pictures as mentioned in the article or would it be that there’s simply no way for a computer to understand the finer points of food? Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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May 11th, 2012 at 7:18 am
Robot has been writing my blog for like 3 years. Works great except for the occasional homicidal rampage. Oh, and my Skynet bill is getting kinda big.
May 11th, 2012 at 8:25 am
This is a much bigger topic than restaurant reviews. Who the fuck is in charge of any of the news of late? What with the grammatical errors on the front pages of what you would have thought were respectable news powerhouses, the breaking news that invariably hits Twitter that half the time is not even true, but by the time you hear it is not true, it is already all over the “regular” news because they don’t want to be left in the dust.
Example from this week: Sometime in the past week or so a six year old kid completed an unassisted triple play in his six year old baseball game. It sounds sort of neat but when you watch it, it is basically a pop fly and the kids on second and third (because they are six) don’t really know that they are supposed to stay at their base. The kid catches the ball (a nice feat in itself, but hardly newsworthy), steps on third since the kid on third is halfway home and then the kid on second runs right into him for the third out. Cute? Sure. Worthy of a YouTube post? Maybe for grandma and grampa to watch.
So Wednesday an idiot Yahoo! “reporter” person posts the video and reminds us that it has only happened 15 times in Major League Baseball. What?!? This is a six year old that literally had a triple play walked into him on a pop fly ball and he is comparing this to the majors? Such terrible journalism.
This morning, the Fox9 News is talking it up and playing it as if it was the greatest play in baseball history. This, somehow is now national news. Shit, half of their news nowadays is a fucking YouTube clip that the rest of the internet saw 3 days ago.
So yeah, I am totally in favor of a robot writing a restaurant review. Beats the hell out of 90% of those out there calling themselves a reporter…present blogger excluded of course.
May 11th, 2012 at 9:25 am
Robot reviews, excellent. We have perfect confidence in us ability for write good story. The reviewer simple go for eat and it is 100% and so best for the reader. Happiness is from the beginning.
For example, last week we have climb down stairs to Savage on your right side from Burnsville Country Road 42. And I have arrive when I walk the horizontal way because there is a Dairy Queen on your right when to the strip maul.
It is Thai as for the first Spice place, as spice is for the Thai food. Those are the two that cannot be separated even if it cuts it. Some staff speak English and enjoy talking with them but others are not so lucky. You can enjoy talking with them friendly! We give you great reception, we will service you long time with happiness, Spice.
You are kidney requested to place eyes on our article. If there are error, sorry for your incontinence.
May 11th, 2012 at 9:55 am
Bill, the link requires a payment of $2.95 or a $4.95 a month “press pass” in order to read it.
The Farmington Independent is pay walled?
What a joke!
May 11th, 2012 at 9:58 am
Wow. It wasn’t the other day when I wrote the post. My bad. Bastards.
May 11th, 2012 at 10:01 am
Perfect.
May 11th, 2012 at 10:21 am
The Independent isn’t paywalled, but articles go into a paid archive after two weeks. If anybody really wants to see it, I suspect we could make the column available.
May 11th, 2012 at 11:49 am
Computer based reports have been around for at least three decades. One company sold a computer system that would generate professional radiologist reports. The doc would “mark” a form similar to those computer scoring answer sheets then scan the form into the computer. Moments later a professional report would be generated.
This “robo” software has come along ways from its inception. A newspaper can eliminate staff including food critics by sending the janitor out for a free meal and all he has to do is mark a form. After the form has been scanned and moments later………………”wala” a professionally written food critics report with superb sentence structure and food adjective descriptions.
May 11th, 2012 at 12:54 pm
@Nathan, I suggest that you should. So we can read it the full context of what Bill was quoting.
Thanks
May 11th, 2012 at 1:22 pm
So do these publications intentionally introduce horrendous grammar, sentence structure, and spelling to make them seem human?
May 11th, 2012 at 3:14 pm
If anyone would like to see the column, it’s now been removed from the archive. http://www.farmingtonindependent.com/event/article/id/19982/