A Robot Stole My Pulitzer!

A Robot Stole My Pulitzer!

If there is one unambiguous trend in how the Internet is developing today, it's the drive toward the personalization of our online experience. Everything we click, read, search, and watch online is increasingly the result of some delicate optimization effort, whereby our previous clicks, searches, "likes," purchases, and interactions determine what appears in our browsers and apps.

Until recently, many Internet critics have feared that such personalization of the Internet may usher in a world in which we see only articles that reflect our existent interests and never venture outside of our comfort zones. Social media, with its never-ending flurry of links and mini-debates, have made some of these concerns obsolete. But the rise of "automated journalism" may eventually present a new and different challenge, one that the excellent discovery mechanisms of social media cannot solve yet: What if we click on the same link that, in theory, leads to the same article but end up reading very different texts?

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot