Will robots replace journalists?
- An article on Spring Festival travel rush was written by a robot.
- Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily published this article.
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Technology is changing the world, and robots and artificial intelligence (AI) is threatening to replace manual work in various sectors of employment. Work that requires creativity is considered to be safe since AI and robots are not yet developed enough to perform creative work.
Recently, this notion fell apart when a Chinese newspaper published a story written by a robot. This article on Spring Festival travel rush had 300 characters and was published by Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily, a daily tabloid newspaper.
The robot that wrote this piece is named, Xion Nan, who took just a second to write this article. According to Wan Xiaojun, the professor at Peking University, leading a team of experts to study and develop this new type of robot, claimed that Xion Nan is capable of writing short as well as long stories.
Also, he claimed that as compared staff reporters, this robot has stronger data analysis skills and of course, faster in writing stories. However, as of now, the robot has not been developed enough for a face-to-face interview, can’t response to follow-up questions, and unable to work on news angle from conversation and interviews.
Therefore, these advanced robots will not be replacing the reporters completely anytime soon.
