AI systems may blow weathermen away

Weather forecasters could find themselves pushed out of a job by an artificial intelligence system designed to write clearer, less ambiguous reports. Computer scientists at the University of Aberdeen, UK, were asked to generate an "artificial weatherperson" by operators of offshore oil rigs, who wanted more clarity in their forecasts. The vocabulary used by different forecasters can be vague and highly variable, says Ehud Reiter, who led the Aberdeen team. While this is simply an irritation to most of us, it can be a big headache for the offshore oil industry, where unexpected bad weather can damage equipment and threaten safety. When Reiter and his team compared past weather bulletins with the raw forecast data on which they were based, they found a striking variability in the choice of words used by different forecasters.