The Future Belongs To Morons

Artificial intelligence isn't going to replace journalism unless computers are the only audience

Like everyone else on earth, I’ve been bombarded by corporate media stories insisting that Artificial Intelligence (AI) would soon render journalists and media companies obsolete. This struck me as pure propaganda — of a particular dumb and aggressive kind — but I wanted to see for myself just how serious my new competition happened to be.

A friend directed me to a new AI business called Byword — a company that promises to generate “high quality AI-written articles at scale.” The AI engine asked me to enter some keywords, and promised to give me a complete article in one minute.

How could I resist the future? What could this almighty computer brain not explain to us? Perhaps now I would finally have answers to the greatest mysteries — like ancient aliens, or Michelle’s Obama’s gender, or the horse hair used in Frank Luntz’s toupees.

My mind reeled. I could ask our new AI overlord anything. What was the ultimate mystery of mysteries?

I took a deep breath and typed in four words: “explain Brian Stelter’s career.”

Sixty seconds later, the following article appeared — which is reproduced here in its entirety without alteration.