Writers
Creativity may be a defining characteristic of humans but robots have already demonstrated that they can also do passable creative work.
In 2015, NPR reporter Scott Horsly and an AI program famously raced in writing a piece on Denny’s quarterly results. The experienced reporter managed to write his piece in seven minutes, but the AI beat him to it and completed the task in two minutes. Granted, Horsly’s story was better, but the AI still managed to render things in a clear and readable manner.
In 2016, a writing bot named Heliograf was developed by the Washington Post to cover news and updates about the Rio Olympics. Heliograf’s efficiency got the bot promoted to full-time “writer” of hundreds of articles about the local elections in 2016.
Robots might not be able to be fully creative anytime soon, but some argue that the presence of bots such as Heliograf will help writers and journalists focus on more important topics. “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration,” Thomas Edison once said. What if robots could eliminate some of that perspiration, creating more room for inspiration?
