A.I. Writing Machines

Can today machines write just like humans? Its 2017 and apparently they can. And a lot faster!

Nicolas Ibarra
Jul 25, 2017 · 3 min read
They read and write faster and probably never lose focus.

Research time for me lately. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been learning about the gig-economy and creating my profiles for each platform — UpWork, Fiverr, Freelancer, etc — . One of the greatest insights I get from this time doing research is that literally every minute you spend on the internet can be somehow put to generate profit for you. Time is indeed money!.

Although I have expertise in diverse areas such as graphic design, music, audiovisuals, web development and some other stuff, I wanted to try my professional background. Political Science that is. So I offered, as a “gig”, my skills in research — reading lots of academic papers, understanding theoretical frameworks, saving and organizing citations, plotting graphs, etc — condensed in a final product to be published as an academic essay or research paper. That’s the gig I’m offering.

While doing research on my competitors — experienced authors, essayist, journalists, other social scientists — I came to find Automated Insights, an american company specializing in Natural Language Generation Platform. In case you’re not familiar with some of the terms, basically they developed a software called WordSmith that translate large (and dull) datasets, into verbal insights.

They scan through the database and write a report using the language we humans use everyday.

Many big companies such as Amazon, AccuWeather, Cisco, Zappier, Associated Press among others are using Automated Insights technology to report on their data, helping them to extract valuable information from the huge lakes of data, and all written as if a human was behind the desk. Is this who I’m competing with when advertising myself as a researcher or analyst?. Just thinking of the futures makes me a little anxious.

Data Science: The sexiest (and short spanned) profession of the 21st Century

For the last couple of years there’s been a hype over the profession of Data Scientist. The explosion of data in the last decade — a product of smartphones, tablets and social networks — , brought the need of analysts and experts in the field of information and mathematics. Several commentariats argued that Data Science is the sexiest profession of the 21st Century (I’m still having trouble seeing the sexy part in sitting in an office doing math and graph analytics). But hey, they say money is the ultimate aphrodisiac so, not inaccurate to call Data Science sexy.

Nevertheless, the advancement in Machine Learning, Deep Learning and AI, has increasingly put Data Science as a “not so sure” route to follow for many. Specially considering that some people at Google are working to automate predictive data analytics, in a effort to bring artificial intelligence to the masses.

I’m sure every time a new technology emerges, new activities come with it for humans to do as well. We will not become immediately obsolete. But still, I find it a bit worrying that the fast pace of technological development leaves us in an ambiguous state when considering what “skill” can we really learn and master.

Every time a see a new advancement in artificial intelligence, it becomes clearer that there is practically no activity in which a machine cannot work it better, faster, stronger. Even the arts.


For the moment I will keep enjoying my learning experience with data science, web development, music, writing and exercising. Although at moments it may seem a bit pointless.

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