Cyborg Author: Not Another Conspiracy Theory!

By: Kathleen Pickering

I can enjoy a good conspiracy theory, just like any other paranoid earth-dweller. Today, however, I discovered that an author’s worst nightmare has come to life: A Robot Writer.

thumbnail[3]The conspiracy? They say this new cyborg writer, just born in late 2010, was developed to turn statistics and sports writing into entertaining information, but I just know there is a Dr. Frankenstein out there building my double in robot form. I am seriously thinking about taking my writing arm underground before they invade the matrix and find me through my computer!

The company? Narrative Science, out of Chicago. (I hate to say their name out loud for fear they’ll hear me and discover my hide-out! After this point we shall call them, They who shall not be named. Or, for short: TWSNBN)

The reason for my dismay? The damned cyborg is good! It’s writing was put up in a contest against a rookie sports writer and won. Here was the robot’s take on a ball game:

“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.”

See? I’d have to give ol’ Robo an A+. Not good! I visited TWSNBN’s website. This is what their creator says:

We tell the story behind the data. Our technology identifies trends and angles within large data sources and automatically creates compelling copy. We can build upon stories, providing deeper context around particular subjects over time. Every story is generated entirely from scratch and is always unique.

Sorry. That sounds like fiction writing to me. I just know they’re planning on hunting us authors down, will carve out our brains and make body doubles of all of us.

Beware, my author friends. Articles already written about TWSNBN state that their Cyborg’s talents will make some writing by humans obsolete. I can just hear my editor now: “Um, Kathleen, you know we just love you, um, but, we have to let you go. I’d like you to meet your replacement:

thumbnail[4] Kataborga Pickerbot. No hard feelings. Really.”

We’re doomed, I tell you! Sigh . . . and to think, I just got started in the writing world. Talk about bad timing!

14 thoughts on “Cyborg Author: Not Another Conspiracy Theory!

  1. I’d give the developers an A for their effort, but young Cybie a C, because it’s average.

    The lead is weak. Great? What newspaper editor of old would let that flabby adjective in there? Is this the kind of writing legendary sports journalist Red Smith had in mind when he said, “Writing is easy. You sit at your typewriter and open a vein”?

    Vanquished is archaic, especially in a simple reporting piece.

    He struck out 10 batters while recording his momentous feat is confusing. It gives the impression of two things happening at once. A pitcher doesn’t do the “recording.” But even if you nuance it to mean that, it makes the sentence redundant.

    He uses the phrase “perfect game” twice, in successive paragraphs. Definitely redundant

    Tom Gately came up short on the rubber for the Colonials, recording a loss. Redundant.

    I think Cybie needs a good dose of William Zinsser and the tutelage of a great editor before his copy can be called “compelling.” It might someday be “adequate” for a simple sports story, but not for a column.

    Three of the sentences are structurally repetitive. Two clauses separated by a comma. There’s an old adage from the newspaper game: “The period is greatest writing tool known to man. Use it.”

    Especially use it in that last sentence. You can’t have a fielder’s choice and a balk happen at the same time. Cybie may not have meant that, but he has to be clearer in the phrasing.

    And why didn’t Cybie get down to the field for a comment from the pitcher? Or his manager? In a story like this, the 2d or 3d graph needs a quote.

    So color me skeptical about a cyborgian takeover of the fiction racket. Of course, if the audience keeps dumbing down and Cybie gets a little upgrade, they may meet in some vast, dry reading desert and get along “great”.

  2. We need a cyber assassin from the future to show up, funded by the last remaining employed human authors, and kill the team over at Narrative Sciences.

  3. I can see it. Technician twirls a wheel of plot points in a program and comes up with a plot. Program inserts dialogue and the appropriate emotions and responses. Yikes, how very awful this would be.

    Let’s hope it’s at least a hundred years away.
    Debbie Andrews

  4. Taylor—I hear there’s a training camp being established as we speak. . .

    Joe!!! Hilarious!!!

    Deb- Hey, “Data” on Star Trek seems like a nice guy. I’d bet he could write a good sci fi novel!

  5. Until robots can explain things like, why Al Davis is such a sleazeball, how Miami miraculously managed to stay under the salary cap when it secured the evil empire, and what night lights at Wrigley and the curse of goat have to do with each other, I think sports writers don’t have much to worry about.

  6. Hey….what’s this wire sticking out the back of my head…I’m going to pull it….bidowwwwwww …

    System Unexpected Failure
    Brain Stem Chip Debug
    Error Code 16543
    Interface: E0 00 4A 26 A3 10 00 1E
    OS Linux Kernel 2.6.38-8-generic
    Ubuntu 11.04

    Auto Reboot

    Whoa!

    That was weird. Now I’ve got this tingly feeling behind my eyes

    Feeling oddly creative, fresh and open minded.

    Except that I have an unfamiliar aversion microwave ovens and magnetic fields.

  7. But can even a computer understand the complications of money when it comes to sports? I mean, judge the players all you want, but are they really thinking that they need to win one, lose one, win one, lose one, to keep the money flowing in from the tie-breaker?

  8. Basil. . . are you okay? Did they almost get you? I’ll bet Cyber-man saved the day by dismantling your programming and disappeared before you realized what happened. Oh, and your interface code looks suspiciously like my bank account number. How did you do that?

    Heather, money and sports, another entire conspiracy theory!

    Fletch, careful with the sportswriting facts. TWSNBN are listening! You could be next!!

  9. We’d better establish an underground colony now where writers can go to write real stories on real paper before we all become obsolete. What was that movie with the people hiding out who’d memorized texts so that books wouldn’t be forgotten?

  10. Nancy, that would be Fahrenheit 451. (Sorry, I have a compulsion to answer questions.)

    If Basil has been converted to a cyborg, then none of us are safe…

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