When Robert Redford borrows a (virtual) page from George Lucas, and digitally remasters All the President’s Men, substituting Hal Holbrook with a robot — until “Deep Throat” becomes a mobile refrigerator with an LCD display and the computerized voice of Siri, when we reach the point where a reporter can trust his nonhuman source about corruption at the highest levels of government, and when that R2 unit beeps and flashes verifiable information about the Nixon White House, then I will schedule an appointment to meet this droid in some subterranean parking garage.
Short of that, the only stories the disciples of Woodward and Bernstein will write will be the ones that data can write for itself: Sport scores, weather reports, arrests, accidents and traffic forecasts.
Even IBM Watson cannot intuit the credibility of a whistleblower, the veracity of a political adviser with a bout of conscience, or the disgruntled employee with a cause.
Until we make that leap, and cross that cinematic chasm, from droids to replicants — unless we transition from MOTHER to a more benign version of ASH — the only stories AI will write or furnish will be those numbing articles about numbers.
Take a number, ladies and gentlemen, so you can wait (and wait, and wait) for that day to come.
