media maven / By Marcy Burstiner

Bring on the Robots

(June 2, 2011)  Could a robot write this column?

That’s the question that popped into my head when a colleague forwarded me a story on National Public Radio about a company called Narrative Science that developed software that can take data and spit out news stories. In one case, NPR reported, the robot wrote a terrific story about a college baseball game, while a live person who covered the game for a sports site called Deadspin buried the fact that the pitcher pitched a perfect game.

When I first became a reporter, I found it frustrating that my employers seemed happiest when I produced stories I considered robotic. Any idiot could go to a city council meeting, or a fire, or a car accident and report what happened. I didn’t need a master’s degree for that. The publisher never seemed to appreciate the stories that took more thought and energy and creativity, although those were the stories that seemed to resonate most with my readers.

The scary thing for most journalists is that given the standard facts that go into any news story, a robot could churn out the who, what, where, and when of a story. But it’s the how and why that gets tricky.

Much of our local media seems to reflect robotic reporting. Reporters take facts spat out by some public information officer at city hall or the police department or university. But it turns out that a robot can do that just as well, or better. A robot knows the rules of grammar. So where does that leave the journalists of tomorrow? Out of jobs?

Here’s the thing. Every new development in journalism makes me more excited about the field. I say let the robots do the robotic reporting. I never wanted to do those stories anyhow. But I doubt a robot could find news that hasn’t been released. It couldn’t fight public officials when they claim that documents are part of the public record. You wouldn’t catch it saying to a public relations manager or mayor: “C’mon now, you expect me to believe that garbage?’” Can a robot go to three different people who each have three different accounts of the same event and figure out what actually happened? Facts are one thing. Truth is quite different. What happens when the facts as released aren’t true?

Forget that. Can a robot go to a chili cook-off and describe the difference in taste between Joe Smith’s rabbit-and-kidney bean chili and Helen Taylor’s with venison and pinto beans?

A number of scientists in Silicon Valley are hard at work developing artificial intelligence systems now that can do more than process facts. They are working on computers that understand humor. They now write programs that teach computers how to recognize puns and master the timing of jokes to develop jokes with punchlines. Apparently it is all math. But just as there is a difference between being able to process facts and figure out the truth of a situation, there is a difference between being able to come up with a joke and being just plain funny. Some of the funniest things in the world are unexplainable, like a rubber chicken or an arrow through Steve Martin’s head or a pie in a face.

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