A grand slam for the "human touch" in writing
By Lily Gordon
A few years ago, NPR held a contest between one of its top reporters and a computer program that generates news stories. Both contestants were tasked with writing a short radio piece on Denny's latest earnings report. The computer completed the story in two minutes. The reporter took seven minutes. Both stories were grammatically correct, featured the right information and were ready to be aired. The key difference? The version generated by a human reporter had style. It had subtle Denny's references. You could sense a playful nudge or two tucked into what was otherwise a standard finance story.
But despite this apparent win for human writers, the computer still completed the story much faster than the human and, on top of that, the program was capable of generating thousands of other stories in that two minute timeframe simultaneously. With that in mind, it's hard to ignore the big question: will human writers, namely public relations practitioners, eventually be outsourced by AI-enabled programs?
From the NPR case, just taking facts and sticking them together in a logical order clearly isn't enough to remain relevant as an employee in the communications space. PR professionals will need to continue to demonstrate the unique combination of critical thinking and experience that AI doesn't (yet) possess. One might go so far as to call it a "human touch." In the human generated piece, the reporter had obviously gone to Denny's before or was at least familiar with the restaurant's menu. Once a computer program can combine original puns and references with appropriate information, then we'll need to take a fresh (perhaps terrified) look at the role of humans as writers. Before that day, however, PR professionals will continue to rely on that "human touch," a bird's eye view of strategy and a handle on the AI tools available today that can enhance their writing to remain relevant in their field.
From the Hemingway App, which can help TV news producers quickly edit out superfluous language in a script, to Grammarly, which can act as a general proofreader, there are many highly evolved programs (often for free) that help improve human generated writing. To learn a little more about these tools, I asked two professors of public relations to weigh in on the topic.
A few years ago, NPR held a contest between one of its top reporters and a computer program that generates news stories. Both contestants were tasked with writing a short radio piece on Denny's latest earnings report. The computer completed the story in two minutes. The reporter took seven minutes. Both stories were grammatically correct, featured the right information and were ready to be aired. The key difference? The version generated by a human reporter had style. It had subtle Denny's references. You could sense a playful nudge or two tucked into what was otherwise a standard finance story.
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| Photo Joits via Flickr 2009 |
But despite this apparent win for human writers, the computer still completed the story much faster than the human and, on top of that, the program was capable of generating thousands of other stories in that two minute timeframe simultaneously. With that in mind, it's hard to ignore the big question: will human writers, namely public relations practitioners, eventually be outsourced by AI-enabled programs?
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Story #1 was created by AI and Story #2 was written by a journalist. // Photo Automated Insights and Quoctrung Bui/NPR
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From the NPR case, just taking facts and sticking them together in a logical order clearly isn't enough to remain relevant as an employee in the communications space. PR professionals will need to continue to demonstrate the unique combination of critical thinking and experience that AI doesn't (yet) possess. One might go so far as to call it a "human touch." In the human generated piece, the reporter had obviously gone to Denny's before or was at least familiar with the restaurant's menu. Once a computer program can combine original puns and references with appropriate information, then we'll need to take a fresh (perhaps terrified) look at the role of humans as writers. Before that day, however, PR professionals will continue to rely on that "human touch," a bird's eye view of strategy and a handle on the AI tools available today that can enhance their writing to remain relevant in their field.
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| Photo Grammarly 2017 |
From the Hemingway App, which can help TV news producers quickly edit out superfluous language in a script, to Grammarly, which can act as a general proofreader, there are many highly evolved programs (often for free) that help improve human generated writing. To learn a little more about these tools, I asked two professors of public relations to weigh in on the topic.
Tiffany Gallicano, Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, said, "Tools such as Grammarly and Microsoft Word Editor are helpful, and I recommend them; however, you have to be smarter than the tools to judge the suggestions made by these tools. The free version of Grammarly insists on the Oxford comma and all sorts of things that are not AP style. Also, it's common for smart tools to miss the classically humiliating 'pubic relations' error (something everyone should just fix in autocorrect) among other errors, such as using 'lead' instead of 'led' for the past tense. The bottom line is that they help but should not be trusted to catch everything, and their suggestions are not always the meaning you are trying to convey or AP style."
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| Photo Hemingway App 2017 |
Margy Parker, instructor at the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication and owner of Margy Parker & Associates LLC, said, "Every writer needs an editor; the second set of eyes with knowledge of grammar, punctuation and effective writing. That’s difficult when working alone, without the benefit of paid editors or good proofreaders. I use Grammarly to be my editor since I’m often working without that second pair of eyes. It helps me write press releases, newsletters, social media posts, emails, web copy, memos, brochure copy, ad copy and correcting others’ writing. What Grammarly catches can be ignored, like using serial commas or not, or when it points out over-use of a word. It’s great for picking up on passive voice, unnecessary phrases or words, capitalization, too many spaces, spelling errors, need for hyphenation and on, and on. It doesn’t pick up verb tense errors — so I have to be sharp about that. For now Grammarly is my editor and makes my job easier."
In the end, the good news is that companies still need human writers. The bad news is that human writers need to highlight their creative and strategic gifts whenever possible to remain relevant. The takeaway is that PR professionals today need to be familiar with the tools available to polish their writing while dodging any traps such tools could create.
As a final thought, I'll leave you with an entertaining example of AI trying to fill the shoes of humans, this time writing a screenplay. Click here for the full story and analysis behind this experiment. In short, researchers fed a program a bunch of science fiction screenplays to see if the program could generate a compelling piece on its own. Did it succeed? Well, let's just say the researchers are still ironing out the program, specifically when it comes to logic and the corniness filter.
In the end, the good news is that companies still need human writers. The bad news is that human writers need to highlight their creative and strategic gifts whenever possible to remain relevant. The takeaway is that PR professionals today need to be familiar with the tools available to polish their writing while dodging any traps such tools could create.
As a final thought, I'll leave you with an entertaining example of AI trying to fill the shoes of humans, this time writing a screenplay. Click here for the full story and analysis behind this experiment. In short, researchers fed a program a bunch of science fiction screenplays to see if the program could generate a compelling piece on its own. Did it succeed? Well, let's just say the researchers are still ironing out the program, specifically when it comes to logic and the corniness filter.