Computerized Writers
I recently read a Wired magazine article that discussed how the reporting of local sports is starting to change. Accounts of school sports, little league games, etc. are being outsourced, not to India or anywhere you can find on a map. These stories are increasingly being written by computers.
All the virtual journalist requires are box scores, and using preset phrases and verbage, it can extrapolate an account of the game. Those baseball stat lovers may not have been so far off base after all. You can’t pass up how well a program like this runs, when it turns football games into a touchdown. And get set to love what a good match this program is for tennis scores.
The point of all these bad puns is that computers are really good at running routine tasks. But they can’t creatively express abstract concepts such as irony. Though I suspect IBM’s Watson (the machine that beat Jeopardy champions) could make a good run at it. What they can do is take routine facts and turn them into routine articles, something that humans probably found little joy in doing themselves.
We increasingly see ways that computers continue to take over more and more of what were once human chores. Mindless chores, often thankless chores. The problem is that often they were also paid chores.
In theory (and I’m sure it’s been done) a computer program could take an assortment of inputs (a 30 year old woman, a despondent police officer, a lost dog) and using an established formula, turn out a passable romance or mystery story. Many genre after all have very well-defined patterns that are ideally suited for this sort of purpose. And from what I’ve seen, humans will buy it up.
Where does that leave me, as a writer? It doesn’t change a thing, because I’m still seeking to find what differentiates me from the average writer, be it human or cybernetic. What special quality can I bring to the creative process that is unique? It means I can’t simply churn out mindless drivel that any computer program can.
But that has always been my goal as an artist. To be the best I can be.