Will robot journalism replace traditional journalists and bring new risks and opportunities?

Robotic journalism has emerged amid the Fourth Industrial Revolution, driven by technological advancements such as the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence. While it can produce fast and objective stories, it also brings new risks and challenges, including data errors, reliability issues, and the displacement of human journalists.

 

The world is changing rapidly with the development of intelligent information technologies such as the Internet of Things, big data, and artificial intelligence. These changes have revolutionized society, the economy, industry, and more, sparking the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The term “Fourth Industrial Revolution” has become ubiquitous in the media, with analyses and predictions abounding. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is manifesting itself in various forms in many fields, and the media is no exception. In the field of journalism, a technology called “Robot Journalism” has emerged. It is a combination of robotics and journalism, and means “the process of writing news stories in which computer algorithms are involved in the entire process of writing news stories, and robots (software) sort, organize, and interpret information by themselves to write articles.”
More broadly, robotic journalism refers to the use of computer algorithms in the entire journalism process. It involves replacing certain tasks in the news gathering, writing, editing, and distribution process with algorithms that follow a set of rules. Robotic journalism in consultation means “the automatic writing of news according to a predetermined algorithm, given certain data,” and the term “robotic journalism” generally refers to such automatic news writing algorithms. In this blog, we will discuss the robotic journalism of this agreement.

The news writing process of robotic journalism is as follows
1. data collection
2. event extraction
3. selecting important events
4. determine the tone of the story
5. generate the news story

In the data collection phase, we collect data to analyze. Then, the event extraction step analyzes the collected data to find meaningful information. In the event extraction stage, we analyze the data to find meaningful information. After that, the context of the event is identified, the narrative perspective is set to determine the tone of the article, and the appropriate sentences are selected and sequenced to create a news story.
Robot journalism has already been introduced and used in Korea and overseas. Overseas, the LA Times uses Quakebot to automatically write articles when an earthquake of magnitude 3.0 or higher occurs, and Forbes uses an A.I. reporter called Quill Engage to write articles. The Associated Press also uses an Amazon cloud-based platform called Wordsmith to generate articles. Startups such as Narrative Science, Automated Insights, Wibbits, Uchit, and Dataminer are offering robotic journalism programs and similar programs to news organizations and other companies. In Korea, robotic journalism has been utilized by Financial News, Herald, Itaewon, and E-News, among others. In Korea, during the 19th presidential election, SBS’s robot reporter called NARe analyzed voting and counting data in real time and wrote various data analysis articles, including regional breakdowns and comparisons with previous elections. In January 2019, a specialized newspaper called ‘Robot Journalism Newspaper’ was launched, and robot journalists are writing articles in various fields such as traffic conditions, performance news, weather forecasts, earthquake news, lotto, and Blue House briefings.
Currently, robot journalism is mainly used in fields such as sports, weather, finance, and securities where data values are clear. However, as technology continues to advance, robot journalism is likely to expand its scope and be utilized in various fields. In this blog, we’ll discuss the risks of robotic journalism as it evolves and becomes more widely commercialized.
First, let’s look at the advantages of robotic journalism. The biggest advantage of robot journalism is that it can deliver only facts in its articles. Unlike human journalists, they don’t have to choose sensationalized words or stir up controversy to get more views, so they can provide factual articles that are not clickbait or sensationalized. And because the articles are written by an algorithm, they can deliver information faster. Robots can deliver breaking news faster than human journalists, and as the technology improves, they’ll be able to write articles in 0.1 seconds, making them even more timely. This speed can also be leveraged to deliver personalized articles. Another advantage is that robots can handle repetitive information, such as traffic and weather, to increase efficiency. For these reasons, robotic journalism could be seen as a new revenue model for news organizations, with the added benefit of reducing journalist labor costs and preventing strikes.
But robotic journalism isn’t all good. Because robotic journalism relies on data to create stories, there is the potential for misinformation if incorrect data is collected. While the people in charge of robotic journalism say that they don’t make mistakes unless there is a problem with the data, this means that if there is a problem with the data, it could lead to a mistake. In an interview with a media outlet, a senior journalist expressed concern that “there have been cases in the past where a company’s stock has fallen from the upper limit to the lower limit due to a program error that mistakenly wrote 1 billion won as 1 billion dollars.” Of course, there are fact-checking algorithms that verify the accuracy of articles written by robot journalism, but even they can be flawed, and problems can arise when fact-checking algorithms can’t keep up with the expansion of robot journalism.
It’s not just about being wrong, but also about not having enough information. For example, consider the May 12, 2018, car crash. A driver was found driving unconscious and scraping the highway median, and the driver behind him intentionally caused an accident and stopped his vehicle. The driver was later referred to as a “righteous man” and received a certificate of commendation from the Incheon Metropolitan Police Department, and Hyundai Motor Group paid for the vehicle’s repairs. If this data is not collected and the story simply states that “a car in motion blocked the car in front of it, causing an accident,” even if it is an objective fact, it is not a good story or the right story.
Problems with data collection can exist in traditional journalism, but robotic journalism is more reliable than traditional journalism, so misinformation can cause more damage. A study conducted by the Korea Press Foundation found that when people compare articles written by robots to articles written by journalists, they are more likely to trust the latter. This shows that the mere fact that the article was written by a robot makes it more trustworthy. In another study conducted by Korea Research, 51% of people said that articles written by AI were more trustworthy, far more than those written by journalists (12%). This unconditional trust can be very damaging.
This leads to the question of robotic journalism’s accountability. When an erroneous article written by a robot journalist causes problems such as defamation or economic damage, it is not clear who is responsible. Unlike human journalists, robot journalists cannot be held accountable, and if they are, it is unclear who to hold accountable, such as algorithm developers or data providers. Robots can’t feel pressure, so they can’t be held accountable for high credibility. And when responsibility is decentralized, accountability can also be decentralized.
To summarize, robotic journalism is expected to deliver objective information, but there is a risk that errors in data collection could lead to distorted or misleading stories. Furthermore, the algorithms are designed by humans, so they cannot be completely impartial, and problems can arise during the process of extracting events, selecting important events, and determining the tone of the article. This can lead to further damage due to the high reliability of robotic journalism.
Another issue with robot journalism is the potential for human labor to be replaced. According to the results of the Dong-A Ilbo experiment, more than half of people could not distinguish between articles written by robots and articles written by human journalists. This means that robotic journalists have the potential to replace human journalists. If the algorithms for robotic journalism improve further, it is likely that some of the tasks currently performed by human journalists will be replaced by robots.
Robotic journalism will continue to expand in the future and is likely to be commercialized on a wider scale. While there are many risks that robotic journalism can pose, there is no stopping this evolving technology, and it requires caution from those who use it. Avoid unconditional trust and be critical when encountering robotic journalism. Even after commercialization, robotic journalism will continue to develop and evolve, and the chances of getting it wrong will become less and less likely. And while it’s impossible to say for sure that robots will replace journalists, it’s likely that some journalists’ jobs will be taken over by robots as robotic journalism spreads, and the scope will continue to expand.
Rather than thinking that robots will “take away” human jobs, it’s important to realize that robots can free up journalists to focus on more in-depth work and create new jobs related to robotic journalism. By developing algorithms for writing articles and shifting some of the work of reviewing articles to existing journalists, new jobs will be created for journalists. As advances in artificial intelligence make it more likely that robots will take over human jobs in a variety of fields, we need to focus on what robots can’t do, or can’t do well. While robots can’t match our computational power or work speed, humans have emotions, creativity, and critical thinking skills that robots don’t have. We’ll need to build on these skills to find new jobs and prepare for change.
As technology advances, the world is changing to keep pace. We will need to understand these technologies, recognize their benefits and risks, and use them appropriately to find a way for humans and robots to coexist.