In a world where robots take over the fourth estate . . .

Sound like the opening of a bad sci-fi film trailer? It may be more realistic than you think. National Public Radio reported Sunday: “‘Robot Journalist’ Out-Writes Human Sports Reporter.”

Sports

“A while back, All Things Considered brought you the story of a breakthrough technology: the robot journalist,” the story begins. The robot journalist is called Stats Monkey, and the original story is here.

Okay, so it’s not really a robot. It’s actually a software program. You feed it data, it processes that data, and it spits out a news story putting those numbers you gave it into context — just like you’d see in your local newspaper.

In the beginning, it was used exclusively for sports stories and a lot of people were skeptical — namely, real-life sports journalists.

“I always imagine kind of the robot you imagined in the third grade with the boxy body and the antennae arms, standing in front of a keyboard,” says Emma Carmichael, a writer for the sports website Deadspin.

She and her colleagues at Deadspin took a few digs at the idea, and this spring, when they came across a particularly bad account of a baseball game on the college sports website GWSports.com they assumed it was machine generated.

But it wasn’t. It was written by a real reporter — a sports reporter who failed to recognize that throwing a no-hitter is a notable achievement, and buried this fact toward the end of the article. Stats Monkey did not make the same mistake.

“We actually got hold of the information director of the school, we got the raw material, the numbers around the story,” said Kris Hammond, Chief Technology Officer of Narrative Science. “And we fed it to our system, which wrote the story, where the headline and the lead were focused on the fact that it was a no-hitter. Because how could you write a baseball story and not notice that it was a no hitter? I mean what kind of writer or machine would you be?”

Now, admittedly, this story is really more about poor sports reporting by humans than it is about good reporting by robots. But it got me thinking about all the ways robots have invaded the news business, what might happen in the future, and what it says about us as a society.

Weather

It used to be that when you tuned into NOAA weather radio, WXJ71, you heard a human voice. He would tell you the weather stats of the day, the forecast, and any severe weather warnings. When you tune into the same station today, you hear a synthesized voice that sounds only slightly better than the computerized voice in the movie War Games. (You remember that one: “Greetings, Professor Falcon.”)

What you’re hearing is something called a Console Replacement System, or CRS, a “personal computer-based broadcasting console … that automatically translates and schedules written National Weather Service forecasts and warnings into synthesized-voice broadcasts over NOAA Weather Radio.” It uses “text-to-speech voice synthesis” using a product made by Digital Equipment Corporation (or DEC) called “DECtalk.”

The big selling point for the system was efficiency and greater safety. “Automation dramatically speeds up the broadcast of warnings during multiple severe weather events — and faster communication can potentially save lives.” [emphasis added] Weather service offices today “operate up to 13 NOAA Weather Radio transmitters,” covering a large geographic area, “and the NOAA Weather Radio system continues to grow while staffing levels stay the same.”

Staffing levels may be staying the same now, but the automated voice came on the scene in the 1990s — the same time the National Weather Service started closing local offices and consolidating their operations into approximately 120 regional offices nationwide. It was called the National Weather Service Modernization and Restructuring Program, and it aimed to reduce staffing levels by 21 percent.

You see, the National Weather Service is federally funded, so modernization and staff reductions — a somewhat euphemistic way of describing, in part, the replacement of humans with computerized voices — were part of the government’s efforts to control spending.

News

Public radio is going through some of the same problems. As Congress looks to reduce public funding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, I find myself wondering how long it will be before I turn on WCBU some morning and hear this:

That’s a computerized voice from a Scottish company called CereProc. They’re probably most famous for creating a computerized version of film critic Roger Ebert’s voice. But they’ve actually created several voices — with different regional accents and inflections — that sound much more natural than the weather radio voice. I chose “Sarah” (they give names to each of their synthesized voices) for the above example because it sounded like a typical public radio voice. And I liked the accent.

But all break-through technology has unintended consequences. This same creation that helps medical patients recover their voices could also be used to replace real reporters in the future. While they probably won’t create an automated voice that sounds just like, say, Denise Molina or Shaun Newell, they might very well choose a synthesized voice with a friendly, midwestern accent to read the news on the air.

News stations haven’t started using automated voices yet, but let’s face it, given the current state of media consolidation and profit maximization, it’s just a matter of time. Automated voice message systems and “robo-calls” are already commonplace, slowly desensitizing us to fake voices every day. Plus, computerized text-to-speech programs are improving all the time.

When synthesized voices finally do take over the news, we probably won’t even notice.

Print, Radio, TV

Perhaps the most diabolical implication of all this is how these technologies can work together. You could put the facts of a story into Stats Monkey, which creates news copy, which could then be vocalized by a synthesized voice. The only thing left is creating a visualization that can automate television news as well.

The obvious solution: computer animation.

That’s right. Avatars replace anchors. Most other TV functions can or have been automated. Camera operators, technical directors, lighting technicians, audio engineers — they’re an endangered species in some newsrooms, extinct in others. Nevertheless, station owners are still looking for ways to cut costs. Even here in Peoria, local reporters and anchors are concerned about their jobs being outsourced to Indiana, although the head honchos claim they have no such intention. But maybe avatars explain how Granite Broadcasting could exercise “jurisdictional flexibility” and still have the news production remain local. No contracts, no sets, no — it would be a dream come true for any out-of-town media conglomerate.

The human touch

I don’t really expect avatars to replace Mac and Mike anytime soon. But I won’t be surprised if it happens, either. The abandonment of human interaction in our communication continues to grow.

When I was in grade school, my teacher would send home notes to parents with the students. Now parents get a robo-call from the school with a computerized voice telling us when the next PTO meeting will be. Just about every large business has adopted some form of recorded or automated voice to answer their company phones and keep human interaction to a minimum. Grocery stores and libraries have adopted do-it-yourself checkout systems, allowing patrons to avoid human contact. While the public balks at physical patdowns by human airport security personnel, they’re more than willing to have their clothes completely (if virtually) removed. Automated teller machines have eliminated the need to see your banker for routine deposits and withdrawals. And then there are blogs… and Farmville.

In light of all this, I don’t think it will take much for the public to accept fake voices and avatar anchors in news broadcasts. The groundwork has already been laid. The philosophic and economic rationales have been established. It’s a natural extension of what already exists in our media today.

The bigger question is, why do we value human interaction so little?