MILES O'BRIEN: In many ways the TV news business is the same as it's always been...
DIRECTOR: Fade up music and camera 2...
O'BRIEN: High pressure, brutal competition. These undergrads at Ithaca College are learning
the ropes the way that I did a generation ago.
OBRIEN: But the times they are a changing. So, of course, is the news biz -- and these
reporters and anchors-to-be may find their competition isn't even human.
VIRTUAL NEWSCASTER: Welcome to McCormick studios. In today's science news, the 2009 hurricane
season heats up...
OBRIEN: This is a virtual newscast and it's part of a project called News at Seven -- developed
at the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
The story selection, the words, the graphic background -- even the expressions of the
animated newscasters -- or avatars -- are all determined by computer.
O'BRIEN: With help from the National Science Foundation, Kristian Hammond is developing
artificial intelligence that, in some ways, can think like a journalist.
KRISTIAN HAMMOND: We can do it for everyone in the entire world and we can do it for organizations.
And so someone who, some organization that can't afford a studio and performers and writers
can actually build a News at Seven piece in a matter of moments and do it cheaply and,
uh, quite truthfully, uh, do it easily.
O'BRIEN: Hammond's work is looking beyond virtual newscasts. He's also created a program
that generates opinion ...
HAMMOND: The movie review dynamic and that dynamic comes from literally us watching shows
like Siskel and Roeper where we saw, uh, two people interacting.
O'BRIEN: Computer science grad student Nathan Nichols generates the review by having the
computer scan the 'net for images, clips, and information about the movie "Watchman."
Seconds later, two virtual reviewers are going at it.
VIRTUAL REVIEW #1: The music is perfect, especially the opening montage set to Bob Dylan's "The
Times They Are A Changin'".
VIRTUAL REVIEWER #2: No, they've made the most reverent adaptation of a graphic novel
ever.
HAMMOND: So we might get a sentence from a blog, we might get a sentence from a review,
we might get a sentence from Twitter, but then the system knows how to stitch them together.
O'BRIEN: The movie reviews generated here are already on line at Zap2it.com. But other
News at Seven projects are not, at least not yet. Like the one Hammond is working on with
grad student, Patrick McNally. They're attempting to program humor into the computer, and they're
doing it by developing the lab's own comic strip.
HAMMOND: People are almost annoyed and creeped out by the notion that we're trying to make
a machine be funny. But we're trying to make a machine be funny by understanding human
beings and how they're funny, why they're funny, how that works.
O'BRIEN: Where Hammond goes next no sports writer would ever want to go. He's about to
have the system write up a Wildcats ball game recap.
HAMMOND: Starting with the numerical data having to do with the game, the box score,
the play-by-play. We just push one button and the system generates what its understanding
of what the most important plays were and most important players. Then we push the right
button again and it uses that information to write the entire story.
HAMMOND: Northwestern held off a late comeback bid by Georgetown to defeat the Hoyas 5 to
3 Friday. And I've got to tell you, people who write sports stories are made anxious
by it.
O'BRIEN: Hammond believes the more computers are able to understand human behavior, the
easier it will be for us to interact with them.
HAMMOND: And the very nature of our work is to understand people and to map that understanding
onto the machine.
O'BRIEN: But wait a minute. Surely, there will always be a role for real life, flesh
and blood, TV news guys like me. These sons and daughters of Max Headroom won't be the
TV news stars of tomorrow, right?
VIRTUAL NEWSCASTER #1: Don't be so sure my carbon-based, air-sucking friend.
VIRTUAL NEWSCASTER #2: We silicon stars work cheap, get up earlier, stay later, don't demand
a fat clothing allowance, and never, ever, have a bad hair day.
O'BRIEN: Uh oh. Maybe it's time for me to circulate my resume in Second Life. For Science
Nation, I'm Miles O'Brien.