Pulitzer Prize Winning Cyborg?

By: Jeff Fleming

NPR recently ran the headline, “‘Robot journalist’ out-writes human sports reporter.” A bit misleading, as the human sports writer in question was an untrained journalist, not a professional sports reporter, and the story was a PR piece distributed by the losing team. Nonetheless, the scenario raises some interesting challenges and opportunities for publishers.

 

The story reported the result of a college baseball game in which University of Virginia player Will Roberts pitched a perfect game against George Washington University. A dream story for sports writers, especially since the last perfectly pitched NCAA game was in 2002. Instead of a powerful headline and celebrated lead, the writer buried the accomplishment in the second-to-last paragraph.

 

Because the major focus of the story was neglected, it was widely assumed to be machine generated. After all, a human being couldn’t possibly miss the value of a no-hitter, right?

 

Enter Narrative Science, creators of software that “generates news stories and headlines — at scale and without human authoring or editing.” The Big Ten Network’s website regularly runs the company’s byline for baseball and softball stories.

 

With the confidence of a World Series pitcher, the team at Narrative Science set out to prove their technology could produce a better story than the human challenger. They gathered the original facts and games statistics, fed them into the system, and viola, the outcome was a success. Both headline and lead identified the importance of a no hitter — Robots 1, Humans 0.

 

Below is the technology-generated text:

 

“Tuesday was a great day for W. Roberts, as the junior pitcher threw a perfect game to carry Virginia to a 2-0 victory over George Washington at Davenport Field.

 

Twenty-seven Colonials came to the plate and the Virginia pitcher vanquished them all, pitching a perfect game. He struck out 10 batters while recording his momentous feat. Roberts got Ryan Thomas to ground out for the final out of the game.

 

Tom Gately came up short on the rubber for the Colonials, recording a loss. He went three innings, walked two, struck out one, and allowed two runs.

 

The Cavaliers went up for good in the fourth, scoring two runs on a fielder’s choice and a balk.”

 

Not a bad story from a robot, and definitely usable. Editors compiling a sports round-up section would probably prefer this computer-generated story over an anemic human-generated press release any day.

 

What’s disconcerting to writers is that Narrative Science is expanding beyond sports stories. The technology can be applied to a broad range of content categories, and the company is branching into new areas every day.

 

I certainly hope Narrative Science’s contributions to the newsroom are limited to round-ups, financial reports, and real estate analyses. I can’t imagine “robots” writing the colorful, entertaining sports headlines that only humans can write and only humans can enjoy:

 

• “Cleveland’s Colon has emerged smelling like a rose”
• “Ruler can’t measure Johnson’s impact”
• “Yankees’ Wang hit hard by Rangers”

 

Long live sports writer’s tongue-in-cheek references to the male anatomy. — JF