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Subject:Re: Please tell me this is an April Fool's gag From:Ad absurdum per aspera <JTCHEW -at- LBL -dot- GOV> Date:Thu, 31 Mar 1994 19:23:38 GMT
> Snide comments about sports writing aside, this seems
> to push the bounds of automation tools. Have any of you
> seen such a thing?
Wouldn't be that hard to do, though it'd be hard enough to
have to be sold for a lot more than $100, unless somebody spun
off the core software from some other AI project. Heck, some
of the sports reporting I've seen is indistinguishable from
the output of Racter, or, in the worst cases, Parry. :)
Seriously, I'm not one to make snide remarks about sports-
writing, unless of course it'd get a laugh, in which case
I'd probably make snide remarks about Mother Teresa.
Sometimes I think the most clever writers and most insightful
thinkers on many newspapers are interviewing 22-year-old
millionaires in the locker room, leaving the second string to
cover City Hall.
Ironically, the reason the sports page is so well known for
playful and creative writing is that "straight" reporting of
unextraordinary ballgames, which is most of them, gets to be
like punching rivets on the assembly line. Hence the
plausibility of a software package to do the job, though
perhaps in an unspired fashion.
Joe
"The pallid pimp of the dead-line/The enervate of the pen" -Robert Service
On bit.listserv.techwr-l, Eric J. Ray <ejray -at- okway -dot- okstate -dot- edu> wrote...
Hi!
I just saw this in EDUPAGE, a general news list I get,
and I am surprised, to put it mildly. The copy reads:
SOFTWARE REPLACES SPORTSWRITERS
A $100 software program called Sportswriter is capable
of churning out reasonably good sports copy by
intelligently stringing together words between facts.
Some 80 small newspapers in the Midwest have purchased
the program and are using it to cover high school
sports events. (Wall Street Journal 3/29/94 A1)
Snide comments about sports writing aside, this seems
to push the bounds of automation tools. Have any of you
seen such a thing?
We all know that we couldn't be replaced with a $100
program called TECHWRITER, but I could see some
companies looking into this type of thing.
Comments?
Eric
ejray -at- okway -dot- okstate -dot- edu
