Will the Robots replace Journalists?

Three minutes after the earthquake California on March 17, 2014, the Los Angeles Times reported that news on its website. A short article that appeared normal. The only thing that is strange is the last sentence: "Post is compiled by the algorithms written by the author." That's mean, the article was written by a robot.

Although robotic reporter could be writing the article but has not been able to write the 2,000 words feature, for example, but from the beginning of the study, it is known that the article which was made by robot is pretty good.

The LA Times posted its earthquake story within three minutes, journalist Ken Schwencke said. (Picture from: http://www.bbc.com/)

From a study published in Journalism Practice, a group of readers surveyed are not able to distinguish whether a sports article written by humans or robots. Articles are created automatically by the robot also proved informative and trustworthy, although a bit tedious.

Now, after the robot is able to handle basic reporting, whether editing will be the next step?

In a related discussion of automatic writing, Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia Journalism School, United States, Larry Birnbaum, co-founder of Narrative Science estimates that there will be a system that is able to perform editorial judgment.

The robot will be able to decide whether a news worthy to be written, how the story should be written, and the reader which is targeted for the news.

"I want to make news writing algorithms. I understand that there will be a choice between simplicity and completeness of the content, or between speed and analysis., But this is something I want to make," said Birnbaum. *** [EKA | FROM VARIOUS SOURCES | NEWSCIENTIST | BBC]

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