Despite all the troubling possibilities, Diakopoulos predicts a thriving future for machine algorithms. A useful book for...
Can machines take over the job of human reporters? Increasingly, they’re doing just that.
Machines are already hard at work putting together the morning paper or news broadcast, writes Diakopoulos, the director of Northwestern’s Computational Journalism Lab. At the Associated Press, for example, “every fiscal quarter automated writing algorithms dutifully churn out thousands of corporate earnings articles.” Such articles were the stuff of drudge work once assigned to cub reporters, but now machines can parse corporate reports, extract the required information, and put it into readable form. By the author’s account, this is a positive development; it allows news organizations to publish quickly, and it gives seasoned human journalists the raw material to dig in and do data-rich interpretive work. Just so, he notes, at least a quarter of all Bloomberg News reports are done by computers in whole or part. Algorithms, he writes, “are suffusing the entire news production chain.” Sometimes they weigh whether one headline is more effective (and clickworthy) than another, and other times they data mine to support investigative reporting, sorting through vast bodies of material to dig out the ones that are truly relevant to a case and, of particular interest, “claim-spotting” with computational tools as an aid to fact-checking. Diakopoulos counsels that this algorithmic wealth will be put to work in situations that are subsidiary to human journalism. Though one wonders whether the bosses might not like machines that can replace human editors, the author argues that these modern machines belong in the realm of telephones, cameras, and other technological adjuncts to journalism that have come along in the past, for the work of reporting and writing is really itself the realm of human creativity. “Rare is the algorithm that can surprise and delight in entirely unanticipated ways,” he writes—rare, but not entirely out of the question, for which reason he urges news organizations to get busy developing “their own competitive strains of algorithms and AI for knowledge production.”
Despite all the troubling possibilities, Diakopoulos predicts a thriving future for machine algorithms. A useful book for newsrooms and journalism students.Pub Date: June 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-674-97698-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
