
Robo-journalism: How a computer describes a sports match - SimplyUseless
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34204052
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ClintEhrlich
The last few years, the ability of software to generate convincing natural-
language prose has become more and more impressive. I first recognized the
technology in my life when there was an earthquake last year and the LA Times'
website instantly posted a bare bones computer-generated article, far faster
than any human could type.

At the time, I was not particularly impressed. It seemed like the software had
been working from a prewritten template into which it plugged in details like
the location, timing, and intensity of the quake.

The program in this article is more sophisticated, because it looks for
patterns in the data in order to determine which facts should be included in
the article. But it sounds like most of the pattern-matching involves simple,
prewritten, domain-specific rules. Some person had to make a list of as many
basketball concepts as possible and then write functions for identifying them
in the box-score. The result is cool, but the program doesn't demonstrate that
much more intelligence than the Derrida generator.

What would be _really_ cool is if someone figured out how to automate the
creation of the robo-journalist's conceptual ontology. I don't think that
would be an AI-complete problem, as long as the corpus was limited enough.

For sports, articles about baseball games would probably be the easiest place
to start, because there are so many games, each of which involve a
predictable, linear, number-oriented narrative.

~~~
schoen
It seems like quite a broad range of "exceptions" can also occur in the
baseball game. For example, one side can protest the umpire's actions, or a
player can be injured (the nature and consequences of the injury should be
described -- the linked article gives an example of this!), or the game can be
suspended as a result of weather or a natural disaster, or something else can
interfere with the continuation of the game (like fans running onto the field,
or a brawl).

Also, some very unusual events within the ordinary course of the game (like
going into many, many extra innings) might call for a description of how
people reacted to the situation. (And some sports journalism would try to
describe players' presumed intent in doing something unusual, like a sacrifice
play, or the manager's motivations for making a substitution.)

