Editor's Letter: Will artificial intelligence put journalists out of work?

This has long been a staple of my collection of QTWTAIN – Questions To Which The Answer Is No. Originally the question took the form of headlines such as, "Will robots replace human journalists?" A few years ago, the questions became more insistent as some news organisations experimented with automating sports results or market reporting. The answer was still always "No". Most journalism is a form of conversation. While it is possible to imagine weather reporting or traffic updates being handled by software, writing news stories or comment articles is a form of Turing test that computers are still a long way from passing.