奥运黑科技 之 机器人写稿

20160826ou 今日话题：奥运会期间很多新闻都是机器人写的，你看出来了吗？ ： ） LW: Now China, at the Rio Olympics, put in a very good showing, came third. One of the more interesting innovations that came out of there was the creation of a sport news bot. These things are kind of ubiquitous now, they’re kind of everywhere. I think the AP did one in 2009, if I’m not mistaken, so it’s something that’s everywhere around. The actual news that it tweets out – is it something that you can actually understand or enjoy? LK: You know what, it’s clean, it’s clear and it’s clinical. I read one report in Chinese, one report in English. It has all the things that a piece of legitimate journalism should contain, and I think it’s pretty good. NL: But it’s the basic facts of the story, right? LK: Yeah, it has the bones, but not the blood and flesh, if I can say that. I think there are a lot of things in journalism that cannot be done without real people involved. For example, how are you going to design the agenda? I don’t think a robot can actually achieve that. Do you think a robot can replace our job? LW: The interesting thing is that they have, kind of, experimented with news bots for broadcasting, and generally speaking, it’s been pretty awful. NL: I think it’s also the reader, or the listener, or the viewer’s expectations when they are consuming what it has produced. So when you’re reading a story produced by a robot, most people, when scrolling through the news, don’t immediately read the journalist’s name, probably you read a bit of the story first. You probably wouldn’t realize it was written by a robot, so you wouldn’t think anything of it, and then when you do realize it was written by a robot, you’re pleasantly surprised by how good it was. Whereas if you’re watching TV, and suddenly there’s a robot talking to you, immediately you’d think ‘What is this? Why am I watching this? It’s a bit strange’, so you approach it with a different kind of mindset. LW: I would say there are certain genres of news which this would do particularly well with. There are things, especially, I think the AP uses theirs for business reports. You know how these companies come out with, goodness, they come out with maybe 300 a day. You see those reports, and for the journalist who has to sit there and actually write out those stories, you know, 300 stories! All different companies, and you can only get through so many. It’s the journalistic equivalent of back-breaking work. LK: The thing is, I think there’s always a creative element in every industry that cannot be replaced by a robot.