We’re doomed.
To those poor misguided souls who share my profession, I offer this advice: Run! Run hard and run fast and run far, and whatever you do - don’t look back.
The robots aren’t coming… they’re already here.
An article in Sunday’s Daily Herald (that’s Snohomish County’s Online News Source, by the way) told of a new service from Thomson Financial that issues articles generated by computer software, using templates and a “rich” thesaurus.
Quoting from the article:
Two types of stories are currently being produced.
After a company issues its quarterly earnings report, a human types in the raw data, and the computer compares the information with analyst forecasts compiled by Thomson Financial's First Call service. Software then produces a story stating whether earnings exceeded or fell short of expectations.
Software also monitors minute changes in analysts' outlooks on various companies and can generate articles based on company or industry trends, Meagher said.
All is not lost fellow scribes. Apparently after the news items are published, humans — that’s us — can expand on them with phone calls and additional analysis. Presumably the phone calls will be placed by humans to other humans. (Please no comments from the predictive dialer crowd.)
All I can say is “biddi… biddi… biddi…”
