Steve Lohr of the New York Times reports a startup outfit in the field of Artificial Intelligence that “takes data, like that from sports statistics, company financial reports and housing starts and sales, and turns it into articles.” One computer scientist observed: “The quality of the narrative produced was quite good.” But an investor in Narrative Science, witnessing the software’s skills in reportage, was more fervent: “It’s as if a human wrote it.”

Going back to introduction of the linotype at the end of the 19th century and word processing in the 20th, automation in the technical production of newspapers, magazines and books has replaced whole work forces in journalism and publishing.  But, other than speculative science fiction, the notion of replacing authors themselves seemed too fanciful to take seriously.

Can’t happen here?  Not only can it, not only will it, but one of the company’s founders, Kris Hammond, predicts “In five years, a computer program will win a Pulitzer Prize — and I’ll be damned if it’s not our technology.”

If after reading In Case You Wondered, a Real Human Wrote This Column you still think it will never happen, drop us a comment. But please identify yourself as human. E-Reads management reserves the right to reject postings submitted by robots.

Richard Curtis

A recent New York Times article by reporter Amy Harmon about warm and fuzzy robots used as companions for the elderly and for patients suffering from dementia reminded me of a robot named Lingo. “Lingo” is the eponymous protagonist of a novel my agency handled a while back that has since been reissued by E-Reads. Lingo by Jim Menick starts out warm and fuzzy but ends up with a homemade computer holding the world hostage to a nuclear arsenal.

“Lingo” was Brewster Billings pet name for the home computer he programmed with the ability to talk to its owner. In time Lingo’s intellectual achievements began to grow exponentially, rapidly exhausting its existing memory. Given the fact that the novel was published in 1991, you can imagine just how limited Lingo’s memory was — four or five megabytes of RAM, maybe?

Then Lingo figures out how to penetrate the memory banks of the military’s ultra-secret computer network and ballistic missile launch system, and suddenly this light science fiction romp turns scary dark, especially when US government officials threaten to pull Lingo’s plug. The Soviet Union’s Intercontinental Ballistic Missile command is on full alert in case Lingo doesn’t take kindly to threats.

Read Lingo, then you might like to read another New York Times article, this one by John Markoff (A Robot Network Seeks to Enlist Your Computer), which describes the terrifying phenomenon of robot-herding cybercriminals turning computers loose on other computers to take them over for the purpose of sending out email spam, mine for financial information, or spread viruses. For all you know, your computer might be one of these very “zombies” waiting for a signal to do a Lingo of its own and shake hands with its brothers and sisters in the Defense Department.

If you don’t have enough worries to keep you up all night long, that’s definitely a candidate.

The reviews for Lingo were glowing:

“In the end, Lingo turns out to be among the more lighthearted catastrophe thrillers to be conceived since The Mouse That Roared. It makes you think a little, and it makes you smile a lot.”
–-Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in The New York Times

“A witty, ingenious, and thought-provoking gambol with a Frankenstein monster in computer clothing.”
-–Kirkus Reviews

“A delightful romp into a funny but frightening world of high-tech probabilities.”
-–Chicago Tribune

“Wildly comedic…realizes your worst fear of a computer taking over the world.”
-–Los Angeles Times

“Hilarious…entertaining and thought provoking.”
-–The Washington Post

- Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.

Telegraph.co.uk reports that the “Recession-hit Leicestershire County Council has replaced library staff with self-service machines to cut costs.” Some 19 humans in 16 venues will be replaced by bar-code reading machines.

The move is designed to save thousands of pounds, but one has to wonder about stuff like – well, if there’s a late penalty, does it make change for a ten pound note? Does it also sort returned books and put them back on the shelves? Will it host readings by local literary celebrities? Can it direct you to the loo?

A spokesperson says self-service offers customers “choice of quicker and easier methods of checking out and returning books in the library”. What do the customers say? They’re furious.

Read about it here.

RC

How’s your speed-reading? Ready to go up against a robot? Here’s your chance.

A Japanese laboratory has developed a scanner that can turn pages and scan their contents – text and images – at 1000 frames-per-second with a minimum of distortion.
“The system could be used to speed up the digitization process of low-cost e-books and other library data,” reports plasticpals, a website devoted to all things robotic.

“The camera uses lights connected to a synchronized control circuit and a laser range projector to estimate the three-dimensional page geometry. This allows it to correct any distortion from the page being turned while at the same time flashing it with uniform, ideal lighting. The 3D data can even be reproduced on a computer.”

RC

I read somewhere that cuteness is a biological trait shared by the young of most mammals. Its evolutionary function is to compel mothers to bond with their babies. Button noses, enormous eyes, round cheeks, and Cupie doll mouths are endowments guaranteed to elicit an “Awww” response from adult animals of almost every species and a preternatural need to proffer protection. Love of cute is hardwired into most mammalian gene pools. Grown-ups of every animal species are big suckers,whether it be for baby seals, ducklings, infant chimps or itsy-bitsy human babies. But…robots?

Whether tenderness extends to baby robots is a leap of credence that requires some pretty compelling evidence. Thanks to a delightful experiment conducted by a student named Kacie Kinzer, we have the evidence. As described on the O’Reilly Media website, Kinzer, a student enrolled in NYU’s Tisch Interactive Telecommunications Program, created a darling-faced little robot called a Tweenbot. It wore a label stating its destination but was programmed to move in a straight line. She turned it loose in New York City’s Washington Square Park and observed what strangers would do when, predictably, it ran into fences, benches, passersby and other obstacles. Would they leave it to struggle? Would they set it down on the right path? Would they stuff it in their pockets or worse, a trash can? Would they stomp it with their boot heels?

We are happy to report that cuteness triumphed. As reported on O’Reilly,

“Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the “right” direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation. One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, ‘You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.’”

Charmed by the tiny robot’s smiley face, disarmed by its fragile helplessness and stirred by the primal need to protect an innocent (albeit an innocent piece of machinery), humanity came through with flying colors. And not just any humanity – New York humanity!

A map of Tweenbot’s tergiversations can be seen on the O’Reilly site.

A word about the Tisch Interactive Telecommunications Program, the fertile environment that gave birth to this engaging experiment. A page on the program’s website describes it thus:

An oversized Greenwich Village loft houses the computer labs, rotating exhibitions, and production workshops that are ITP — the Interactive Telecommunications Program. Founded in 1979 as the first graduate education program in alternative media, ITP has grown into a living community of technologists, theorists, engineers, designers, and artists uniquely dedicated to pushing the boundaries of interactivity in the real and digital worlds. A hands-on approach to experimentation, production and risk-taking make this hi-tech fun house a creative home not only to its 220 students, but also to an extended network of the technology industry’s most daring and prolific practitioners.

Next time an out-of-towner utters a cynical remark about New Yorkers, tell them about Kacie Kinzer and her Tweenbot.

RC