The next Picasso is a robot

Robots aren’t just infiltrating music—they’re writing too. Companies such as Narrative Science have created algorithms turn data into stories. The advantage of these algorithms is speed—they can summarize a football game before the play clock reaches zero. The L.A. Times’ Quakebot can compose an informational article as an earthquake occurs. The Associated Press, Yahoo, Comcast, and Allstate use a platform developed by Automated Insights to turn financial data into news stories at a rate of 2,000 articles per second (and at a cost of roughly $10 for 500 words).

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Granted, these stories are all data-driven and lack literary flair, so human journalists still own deep reporting and analysis—for now. Narrative Sciences predicts that work written by its program will earn a Pulitzer Prize any day now, and that computers will control 90 percent of journalism in roughly 15 years. If you’re dubious about robo-journalism, check out this quiz by the New York Times to see if you can distinguish between human and robot writing.

You might be thinking that these examples don’t really count as robots creating art. Humans wrote all of these programs and humans control the robot musicians. Robots can’t demonstrate artistry because the art doesn’t actually come from them, right? Maybe not.

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