Financial Times reporter Aline van Duyn noted in a story in Friday’s paper that at business news wire service Thomson Financial, computers are actually writing some of the stories.
Van Duyn wrote, “The computers work so fast that an earnings story can be released within 0.3 seconds of the company making results public.
“By using previous results in Thomson’s database, the computer stories say whether a company has done better or worse than expected.
“‘This is not about cost but about delivering information to our customers at a speed at which they can make an almost immediate trading decision,’ said Matthew Burkley, senior vice-president of strategy at Thomson Financial.
“‘This means we can free up reporters so they have more time to think.’
“Mr Burkley said the computer-generated stories had not made any mistakes. But he said they were very standardised. ‘We might try and write a few more adjectives into the program,’ he said.”
Read more here. Is anyone feeling slightly threatened?
