Journalists: Welcome Your New Colleague Artificial Intelligence

January 12, 2020

Life is going to become more interesting for journalists. I use the word in its broadest possible sense. That includes the DarkCyber team, gentle reader. Who needs humans when smart software is available.

“AI-Written Articles Are Copyright-Protected, Rules Chinese Court” explains that software can create content. Then that content is protected by copyright laws.

DarkCyber noted this statement:

According to state media outlet China News Service (CNS), a court in Shenzhen this month ruled in favor of Tencent, which claimed that work created by its Dreamwriter robot had been copied by a local financial news company. The Shenzhen Nanshan District People’s Court ruled that, in copying the Dreamwriter article, Shanghai Yingxun Technology Company had infringed Tencent’s copyright. Dreamwriter is an automated writing system created by Tencent and based on the company’s own algorithms.

Presumably software can ingest factoids, apply algorithms, and output new, fresh, and original information. No hanging out at the Consumer Electronic Show looking for solid information at real technology event. Imagine the value of creating “real” news without having to pay humans. No hotel, airplane, taxi, or meal expenses.

Special content can be produced on an industrialized scale like Double Happiness ping pong balls.

Upsides for journalists include:

Opportunities to explore new careers in fast food, blogging, and elder care
Time to study with coal miners learning to code
Mental space to implement entrepreneurial ideas like elderberry products designed for those who suffer from certain allergic responses.

Downsides, but only a few, of course, are:

No or reduced income
Loss of remaining self respect
Weight loss due to items one and two in this downside list
No need to have lunch with these content generators.

One question: What’s a nation state able to do with content robots?

Stephen E Arnold, January 12, 2020

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under AI, Government, News

Comments

Comments are closed.

Search the site
Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive

Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.