Meet Bertie, Heliograf And Cyborg, The New Journalists On The Block

An article in The New York Times, "The rise of the robot reporter", discusses the new machine learning tools such as Forbes' Content Management System called Bertie, The Washington Post's Heliograf, Bloomberg's Cyborg, and others used by Reuters, the Associated Press and The Guardian for a range of tasks in their newsrooms, providing further insight into how robots are taking over a growing number of jobs. As the article points out, a number of media, notably those with a financial focus, now use algorithms to analyze data such as quarterly earnings reports and that can then be used to chart their progress over time, detect anomalies, as well as writing up stories. Machine learning can now be put to a growing number of uses in a newsroom. I have seen journalists use powerful analytical tools to analyze graphs, write and document their articles, adding information from different sources, as well as identifying information that may come from suspicious sources. It is hardly surprising that Bloomberg and Reuters now compete to provide real time financial information with the same hedge funds that were previously their clients but that now have access to the same means and resources.