The beginning of the end

I just saw this story about how automated news stories are becoming closer to reality than fiction. In previous years people talked about computers writing the news, but there were always people laughing and feeling safe in their writers' jobs because "how could a computer replace a human"?

Now it is becoming a possibility, as you can read in this story. Of course these are just sports statistics from low level games, but it starts here and ends somewhere with the Financial Times generating its content by computer.

The Los Angeles Times is famous for outsourcing their reporting to India, a clear slap in the face of its readers. If their city isn't seen as important enough to have journalists on the streets, then why are they bothering to read it?

There is this video that you can watch, which was made in 2003 (I think) then updated in 2005 when their predictions actually came true.