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> How computers wrote Hmmm... Googling: "elected as the MP for" "was created using some automation", reveals very little variation. We're not exactly talking A

by hanoz 7y ago

> How computers wrote Hmmm... Googling: "elected as the MP for" "was created using some automation", reveals very little variation. We're not exactly talking AI powered journalism here. More mail merge than ML. Next week: How computers wrote your last electricity bill.

johnnycab 7y ago
No 'real' AI/ML journalism is claimed in the article; the meat and potatoes of the article are provided by Mr. Robert McKenzie, editor of BBC News Labs. It is probably best to direct your vitriol towards the right source. "None of the stories have any quotations in, none of them have any analysis of what happened or what the significance is. It is purely a written version of what has happened based on the data. So that's quite a big downside in terms of quality of journalism." However, Mr McKenzie said the BBC was still in the "very early stages of understanding what audiences want from the technology". https://twitter.com/nicerbloke https://twitter.com/nicerbloke
- hanoz 7y ago
  It's hardly vitriol. I just thought that the headline and opening paragraphs ("a news story for every constituency... all written by a computer", "the BBC's biggest test of machine-generated journalism so far", "Each of nearly 700 articles... was checked by a human editor") did hint at an AI element and more variety of composition in the articles than I found there to be.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    The only person who put "I" in it was you.
- treebeard901 7y ago
  > "None of the stories have any quotations in, none of them have any analysis of what happened or what the significance is. It is purely a written version of what has happened based on the data. So that's quite a big downside in terms of quality of journalism." With the way news works today, are we sure this is really a downside?
blowski 7y ago
I imagine the BBC is not attempting to boast, merely being transparent. It probably says more about us, that the moment we see "machine-generated" we assume it will have an AI component.

by hanoz 7y ago

johnnycab 7y ago

No 'real' AI/ML journalism is claimed in the article; the meat and potatoes of the article are provided by Mr. Robert McKenzie, editor of BBC News Labs. It is probably best to direct your vitriol towards the right source. "None of the stories have any quotations in, none of them have any analysis of what happened or what the significance is. It is purely a written version of what has happened based on the data. So that's quite a big downside in terms of quality of journalism." However, Mr McKenzie said the BBC was still in the "very early stages of understanding what audiences want from the technology". https://twitter.com/nicerbloke https://twitter.com/nicerbloke

hanoz 7y ago
It's hardly vitriol. I just thought that the headline and opening paragraphs ("a news story for every constituency... all written by a computer", "the BBC's biggest test of machine-generated journalism so far", "Each of nearly 700 articles... was checked by a human editor") did hint at an AI element and more variety of composition in the articles than I found there to be.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  The only person who put "I" in it was you.
treebeard901 7y ago
> "None of the stories have any quotations in, none of them have any analysis of what happened or what the significance is. It is purely a written version of what has happened based on the data. So that's quite a big downside in terms of quality of journalism." With the way news works today, are we sure this is really a downside?

blowski 7y ago

I imagine the BBC is not attempting to boast, merely being transparent. It probably says more about us, that the moment we see "machine-generated" we assume it will have an AI component.