Replacing Sports Bloggers With an Algorithm

tesmar tips a report up at TechCrunch that begins "Here come the robo sports journalists. While people in the media biz worry about content mills like Demand Media and Associated Content spitting out endless SEO-targeted articles written by low-paid Internet writers, at least those articles are still written by humans. We may no longer need the humans, at least for data-driven stories. A startup in North Carolina, StatSheet, today is launching a remarkable network of 345 sports sites, one dedicated to each Division 1 college basketball team in the US. For instance, there is a site for the Michigan State Spartans, North Carolina Tar Heels, and Ohio Buckeyes. Every story on each site was written by a robot, or to put it more precisely, by StatSheet's content algorithms. 'The posts are completely auto-generated,' says founder Robbie Allen. 'The only human involvement is with creating the algorithms that generate the posts.'"

Comments

Close, but still not pratical

[kevinNCSU]

I tried reading the first article on the Tar Heels, and as much as I hate reading anything about the Tar Heels the sentences just don't flow together. It's disjointed and mentally uncomfortable to read. I can't imagine anyone using it as an actual replacement for even semi well-written content.

Re:Close, but still not pratical

[John Hasler]

I can't imagine anyone using it as an actual replacement for even semi well-written content.

They aren't. They're using it as a replacement for the output of sportswriters.

Re:Close, but still not pratical

[WrongSizeGlass]

Hard to read? Disjointed? Mentally uncomfortable? Sounds like it could fit right in here on /. ;-)

Re:Close, but still not pratical

[St.Creed]

Hard to read? Disjointed? Mentally uncomfortable? Sounds like it could fit right in here on /. ;-)

A clever attempt, RoboWrongSizeGlass, but not clever enough! Trying to point the finger at humans while sneaking in another templated contribution! Haha! Your plans will never work! :P

Re:Close, but still not pratical

[mysidia]

It doesn't have to fool humans (unfortunately). It just has to fool Googlebot

Re:Close, but still not pratical

[St.Creed]

I can't imagine anyone using it as an actual replacement for even semi well-written content.

It's a bit uncomfortable to read in spots, but way above the quality of most blogs and nothing you can actually point out as an error. So if they manage not to swamp the sites in ads, and provide good statistics as well, I can't see why they couldn't get a rather large take of the advertising action - large in proportion to the manhours invested in writing articles, that is. It could be very lucrative and if it is - well, say goodbye to a lot of reporters who aren't the primetime writers but just pad out the papers: they're going to be automated away or at best, write the templates for the robowriters.

Re:Close, but still not pratical

[JustinOpinion]

You joke, but I think this pretty much nails it. There's a lot of content out there that is just a bunch of numbers wrapped up in some formulaic sentences. The results of sports games is an obvious example. Analyses of political campaigns might also be amenable. Perhaps even presenting the results from surveys or scientific studies.

The important thing here is that this isn't replacing deep, insightful thoughts and analysis, which still has to be done by a human. If you want a reasoned opinion that pulls together the statistics, external factors (e.g. a player's mind-set or personal life), and adds in some humor, then you're going to want a skilled human doing the writing. But if your interest is more along the lines of "Who won, by how much, and what were the main things that led to them winning (e.g. was it strong offense or good defense)?" then auto-generated content is fine. In fact, as with all aspects of automation, the point is to free up humans from doing the boring, silly tasks, so that they can concentrate on the more important tasks.

After reading some of the auto-generated articles (Michigan State Spartans, North Carolina Tar Heels, and Ohio Buckeyes) I must say I'm quite impressed with how good the content is. Obviously it won't be winning any prizes, but I can't say that it's any worse than human-generated summaries of matches. It goes through the details, throwing in some contextual commentary (e.g. "the underdogs") obviously based on a nice database of stats. What's even better is that the articles also present some of the stats themselves, allowing the reader to skip the writeup and focus on the numbers/graphs if they prefer.

So, frankly, I see this as a good thing. It's a waste of human talent (even mechanical-turk caliber talent) to write a bunch of formulaic summaries when a computer can clearly do a decent job. This lets the humans focus on tasks that are more difficult to automated.

Re:Close, but still not pratical

[houghi]

Perhaps even presenting the results from surveys or scientific studies.

Or interviews with actors about their latest movie, where they are telling how great it was working with X and Y. Or about any PR stuff going out into the world.

If they are just formula's around numbers, just give us the numbers. No need for all the fluff around it.

It says more about the lousy writing people are used to then the quality of a new Lisa script.

Not bad...

[Jazz-Masta]

I've read a couple articles and they are no worse than the SEO-targeted content written by freelancers odesk for $2/hr (and english as a second or third language).

Seems as though the "algorithm" is quite elaborate - taking into account odds of winning as well. Lines such as "The [team] was not supposed to win this game, but made it happen" and combined player statistics "Coming off a poorly put together team last year, this year, the [team] looks to have greater talent."

It reminds me of how someone in Junior high would write. Impressive. Similar to MIT's paper generator: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/paper.html

PHP + MySQL + Mad Libs for Sports.

Re:This post....

[gandhi_2]

What makes you say this post was written by a robot?

Help reading

[tocs]

Now I just need to find a robot to read all these sports blogs to free up time for things I want to do.

xkcd

[Jazzbunny]

Mission. Fucking. Accomplished.

Re:This post....

[bunratty]

Please tell me more about this post was written by a robot.

Re:This post....

[WrongSizeGlass]

Please tell me more about this post was written by a robot.

If I am correct, you are having trouble believing about this post was written by a robot? I do apologize for the inconvenience. Is there anything else I can do for you today? Thank you for calling Dell technical support.

Re:This post....

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you enjoy your inability to avoid making puns?

tiny issue

[sribe]

Can you copyright the output of an algorithm? Seriously, copyright requires a creative element...

Re:tiny issue

[maxwell demon]

Tell that to a phone book or other assemblage of facts.

I tried, but the phone book wouldn't listen to me.

Re:tiny issue

[slashqwerty]

Tell that to a phone book or other assemblage of facts.

Perhaps you're confused about the outcome of Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co. Phone books and other collections of facts may not be copyrighted because they lack creativity. Hence the question:

Can you copyright the output of an algorithm? Seriously, copyright requires a creative element...

While sribe focuses on the creative element one must also ask who the copyright would go to. The constitution grants congress the power

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To my understanding this has always been interpreted to mean authors have rights to their writings and inventors have rights to their discoveries.

Re:Sentences don't lead into one another

[pipatron]

You mean like BBC News? I just clicked on the first UK article I found to give an example: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-11751079

Re:fans

[John Hasler]

That wouldn't get rid of them. Better to keep them occupied with a cheap diversion (which also keeps the athletes busy). Do you really want the jocks and their fans wandering around looking for something to do?