A passage in Al Gore’s new book, pointed out to me by Julio Ottino, caught my eye and got me thinking.

In discussing the automation of work, the former Vice President* writes:

And robosourcing is beginning to have an impact on journalism. Narrative Science, a robot reporting company founded by two directors of Northwestern University’s Intelligent Information Laboratory, is now producing articles for newspapers and magazines with algorithms that analyze statistical data from sporting events, financial reports, and government studies. One of the cofounders, Kristian Hammond, who is also a professor at the Medill School of Journalism, told me that the business is expanding rapidly into many new fields of journalism. The CEO, Stuart Frankel, said the few human writers who work for the company have become “meta-journalists” who design the templates, frames, and angles into which the algorithm inserts the data.

Are we all destined to become meta-journalists, meta-physicians, and meta-teachers? And is this a good thing, a bad thing, or more likely, just a thing?

(*Disclosure: I worked for him for a few years in the 1990s, but had no involvement with this book.)