Snagging AI Writing Expertise, On-The-Cheap
Start-ups in AI-generated writing and similar AI technologies are often willing to offer their services for free – or nearly free – for the opportunity to test-drive their solutions at news outlets, according to Francesco Marconi.
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He’s a longtime player in AI-generated news and helped spearhead AI implementations at The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press.
“New (AI) companies are often eager to have established newsrooms test their technology or implement their research,” Marconi observes in his new book, “Newsmakers: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Journalism.”
“This can lead to mutually beneficial collaboration — based on knowledge sharing — rather than a significant monetary exchange,” he adds.
The potential benefits from such partnerships are considered so substantial to the Associated Press, the news wire service has created a job position exclusively dedicated to fostering AI / newsroom partnerships.
It’s “a role responsible for sourcing opportunities for collaborations with universities, start-ups and other media organizations,” Marconi observes.
Insights into AI in the newsroom abound in Marconi’s new book .
Essentially, the tome offers an in-depth, detailed, on-the-ground look at how AI is transforming the industry — from a major player helping orchestrate that change.
In other AI-generated writing news:
*Besting AI: A Human Translator Beats the Machines: Despite projections that AI will decimate most translation jobs during the next few years, human translator Ellie Leonard is bucking the trend.
“Ms. Leonard’s clients — some of whom have tried automated transcription services — say she brings context, background knowledge and a genuine interest in the subjects to her work,” observes New York Times writer Steve Lohr.
“She looks up people’s names, place names and acronyms to get them right,” Lohr adds. “Accents, cross talk and background noise do not result in gibberish in her transcripts — as they often do for software transcribers.”
So for now, Ms. Leonard is doing just fine, thank you.
Even so, the prognosis looks bleak for most human translators long term, according to writer Siri Hedreen.
He’s found that ‘routine cognitive’ jobs like translation are most at risk of disappearing due to automation.
Essentially, such jobs are characterized by formula-driven writing tasks, which can easily be subsumed by AI-generated writing software, according to Hedreen.
Bottom line: more than 500,000 translation jobs are at risk of disappearing in three to five years, according to Ofer Shoshan, CEO, One Hour Translation.
“We should not sugarcoat this,” Shoshan says. “There will be an impact. The way to deal with it is to first understand and accept the fact it is coming.”
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