CIA invests in robot writers

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Obama administration may be shifting control of the country's drone program from the Central Intelligence Agency to the Pentagon, but robots can still find jobs at Langley - as writers, apparently.

The CIA's venture capital wing, In-Q-Tel, has invested an unknown amount in a company called Narrative Science, which codes software capable of turning massive data sets into easy-to-read written prose, Mashable reported citing All Things D.

Chicago-based Narrative Science got its start by turning baseball box scores into readable accounts of games — not unlike a piece you might see in your local newspaper's sports pages.

Naturally, Narrative Science raised many questions about the impact on journalism: Will we still need writers to pen rote accounts of the day's events if robots can do the job just fine? Should more journalists move away from the "here's what happened" to the "here's why it matters"? And so on.

Despite its immediate impact in the journalism world, Narrative Science finds most of its clients in the financial services, marketing and research fields. The CIA fits into the latter category — the agency collects mounds of raw data, and its researchers would most likely appreciate an automated hand in turning all those figures into readable, actionable reports for agents and higher-ups.

"Narrative Science’s artificial intelligence platform analyzes data and communicates this information in a way that is easy to read and understand," said Steve Bowsher, Managing Partner at IQT, in a press release. "We believe these advanced analytic capabilities can be of great value to our customers in the Intelligence Community."