[Market Economy Guide] The Los Angeles Times’ Robot Reporter

As Artificial Intelligence Advances, the Human Domain Will Be Upgraded

…Even if Some Jobs Disappear, Better Jobs Will Emerge

In March 2014, the Los Angeles Times published a breaking news report on an earthquake written by a robot journalist. Of course, this did not mean a humanoid robot modeled after a human being was tapping away at a keyboard. The Los Angeles Times’ robot journalist was not a physically moving robot, but a computer program.

A Robot Journalist Appears

This automated program, called “Quakebot,” gathers and analyzes data on the internet according to a set algorithm, and searches for newsworthy stories within it. It then decides the angle from which to write the article, arranges the collected information, and writes the story in natural language used by humans.

So far, robot journalists have been limited to writing articles in sports, weather, and finance. But the shockwaves caused by the arrival of robot journalists among actual human reporters already seem quite significant. The Wall Street Journal even ranked newspaper reporter 4th on its list of the “10 professions in decline in the future,” after postman, farmer, and meter reader.

Humans are competing with machines. What will be the outcome of this competition in the future? And what if these are not simple machines, but machines equipped with artificial intelligence technology? In terms of physical strength, machines surpassed humans long ago. Now, even in work requiring fairly complex and logical thinking, machines may come to outperform humans.

The case of Garry Kasparov, the Russian-born world chess champion, losing a chess match to IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue is highly symbolic. At the time, it caused a tremendous stir as an instance of a human losing to a machine in a game that uses intelligence. It almost seemed as though, just like in science fiction films, legions of machines armed with artificial intelligence would soon dominate humanity.

What is less well known, however, is that in the many chess matches that followed, the strongest player was neither human nor computer. Interestingly, the best performance came when humans and computers formed a team together. In other words, mixed teams of humans and computers performed better than teams made up only of humans or only of computers.

In the age of automation and mechanization, the way to succeed is not to confront machines, but to cooperate with them. Computers lack creativity and intuition. In areas not set in advance, their problem-solving ability is weak. Tasks that call for empathy and inspiration, or that require problem-solving and critical thinking, are fields beyond the reach of machines. Humans, however, can display uniquely human creativity in areas where computers fall short.

When the Automobile Appeared

Think about when automobiles first appeared on the roads. Did everyone in the world welcome the arrival of the automobile? Of course, most people probably did. But coachmen driving horse-drawn carriages or rickshaw pullers may have thought differently. They may have worried that this strange and noisy machine would harm their jobs. Unfortunately, that prediction became reality. Yet humanity will never return to a world without automobiles.

Even so, automation and mechanization have almost always made humanity happier. Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, neatly summarized the significance of automation in human history when he said: “Have dishwashers replacing washing dishes by hand, washing machines replacing hand laundry, and vacuum cleaners replacing cleaning by hand made humanity unhappy? I think the loss of these jobs has always been welcomed. Robots in many forms have reduced the toil of labor.”

Automated machines do not so much eliminate human jobs as change the structure of jobs. And they reorganize that structure toward higher value-added work. By shifting focus away from simple tasks and toward creative work, they improve the quality of work itself. When machines replace humans in simple labor, humans can focus on what machines cannot do. When machines take over certain tasks, humans create new desires for labor. These new desires create new industries and new employment.

The Human Domain Will Not Shrink

A human reporter who hands over routine informational articles to a robot journalist can now invest labor in observing the world more carefully and writing deeper feature stories. When automobiles appeared, rickshaw pullers initially became unemployed, but they soon realized that a better job—that of driver—had been created. Entrepreneurs, too, have been able to focus more on their essential task of “creative destruction.” This is because sophisticated software handles complex tax, logistics, and other work, significantly reducing the burden of entrepreneurs’ tasks.

Even as advanced technology continues to develop at ever higher levels, the human domain will not shrink. Rather, the unique abilities humans possess will shine even more brightly. Since 1997, countless supercomputers surpassing Deep Blue have been developed, yet the professional standing of mathematicians has only grown firmer. That is because mathematics is a discipline that requires a high degree of imagination beyond mechanical calculation, and only humans can truly understand its depth.

Going forward, we must focus even more on the areas machines cannot replace. With uniquely human curiosity and creativity, we must continuously create new things. That is the path to avoiding obsolescence in a future age where machines and humans coexist.

■ Please remember

Even as advanced technology continues to develop at ever higher levels, the human domain will not shrink. Rather, the unique abilities humans possess will shine even more brightly. Since 1997, countless supercomputers surpassing Deep Blue have been developed, yet the professional standing of mathematicians has only grown firmer.

Sung-no Choi, President, Center for Free Enterprise (CFE)

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Original title: [시장경제 길라잡이] 'LA타임스'의 기사 쓰는 로봇 기자

Author: Sung-no Choi

Date: 2020-05-11

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=column&pn=8&idx=22620