The Nobel Prize in Literature 2025

A.I.

Yeah… this could happen! Now in 2016, some companies are using robots to feed us with news! Major media companies are turning to Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create and publish new articles for the public.

If you think that article writing is not worthy of a Nobel Prize, you are probably right. I was only exaggerating. But it is certainly worth a Pulitzer Prize! In fact some major media companies such as the Fox Group or the Associated Press are using automated writing to create new articles for their readers.

Think about this, the exact moment when you are exposed to the first online article informing you about an earthquake, or even the short message you receive on your smartphone just a few minutes after it, is most likely going to be produced without any direct human intervention. This is possible because (in a simple way) Artificial Intelligence connects servers with seismographs, translates and selects information to finally generate the news. Crazy! No? Ok… Another evidence of Artificial Intelligence in our press can be seen in a total different area. When you read articles about corporate earnings, these news pieces are the result of programs that follow thousands of companies and then automatically produce stories about their earnings reports.

You can be right… This entire paragraph on how AI helps you to be updated about natural disasters or the evolution of the earnings of some companies seems interesting but for sure not so “sexy”. But if you are a sports lovers, you will find what I am about to tell you very peculiar!

Do you know that some media companies are using AI to write articles about sports? It is true! Currently it concerns only a few minor leagues, but an organization like the Associated Press is actually using a software to write automatic articles about sports! It allows them to follow tens of thousands of games, analyze an enormous quantity of data concerning the players, teams and matches, select the most relevant ones, and… Boom! You have a sports article fully written by a machine.

Do you think this is the future? News regarding major leagues will be written by robots? Should sports journalists be worried? I think so… But who really knows?

Finally, as you all know (well you should!) we have the USA Presidential election! Who is going to win? Let’s wait. But this is not the main question. The main question is….what if Mrs. Clinton’s or Mr. Trump’s winning speech was written by a machine? The idea that the message of the future leader of the USA; a message that is shared by the press to millions of citizens, is the result of a robot’s work is so chilling! Well it is possible! It is not likely to happen… but an algorithm created by Valentin Kassarnig, who works at the MIT, allows us to generate great automatic speeches! He just made the life of our politicians much easier with this invention!

But do you think we will trust a robot to decide what to say? Probably not… I don’t know if those speeches will always be better that the ones written by humans, but I will at least give them a chance.