Monkey on a Typewriter Beats Man

There is this theory that if you let a monkey randomly hit on the keys of a typewriter for an infinite amount of time, you’d eventually get all the best literary works in the world.

The thought experiment, called the Infinite Monkey Theorem, first proposed by French mathematician Emile Borel in 1913, is a reality now.

Philip Parker has such a monkey.

It’s not likely that you have heard of this man, but Parker has published close to one million books.

Sounds humanly impossible?

It is. But his “monkey” helped.

For ten years, Parker’s side obsession grew into a monstrous project spanning more than 100,000 books on Amazon, and more than 700,000 works for his company.

Parker is not exactly an author, but does it matter?

Parker used a patented algorithm he created to churn out whole books in 20 minutes tops across multiple genres.

Yes, move aside, mere human. The “monkey” is now taking over the human writer, and there has never been a more opportune time.

Last month, the Associated Press (AP) said it will use Automated Insights, an artificial intelligence content provider to write as many as 4,400 earnings reports a quarter.

This is more than 10 times the capacity of its reporting staff.

Automated Insights’ wordsmith product is even able to ‘write’ humour, and sarcasm.

In 2013, wordsmith generated 300 million articles. That number is projected to hit 1 billion this year.

Even though AP said the move is not a cost cutting strategy, nor will it let go of staff, it is conspicuously an investor in Automated Insights, a solid indication of its believe and support for automated content creation moving forward.

But why now and not before?

As global traditional media turnover continues its downward slide, and with the digital arena becoming increasingly competitively, fewer journalists can now be supported.

But why is this more efficient?

Take financial news or company earnings announcements. These are publicly available data-driven facts. Every media outlet uses that very same data to write materially similar facts.

The fact that they are similar is of no surprise — these are facts, no?

So here is the thing – do you want 100 journalists to churn out 100 similar articles about facts? Probably not, and definitely not when the media industry is undergoing a shift and cost becomes a bigger issue.

If renting the algorithm is cheaper than 100 journalists, why not?

The time will come when data and news will have nothing in between them except an algorithm.

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There was this story about how the Americans destroyed the Iraqi air force, and ended up selling them their own fighter jets after they conquered their land.

This is precisely how technology players such as Google and Facebook, who produce exactly zero content, hold an almost monopoly on the distribution of online content, conquered traditional media, and are now selling their victims tools to keep them alive.

Pretty sadistic.

I’m human, by the way.