Can a robot replace Man to process news? At least that's what Microsoft thinks. The firm has just dismissed 77 journalists in the United Kingdom and the United States who were in charge of sorting articles from around the world to offer Internet users reliable and relevant information on the home page of the msn.com site.
"Artificial intelligence stole my work"
"I spent my time reading articles on how automation and artificial intelligence were going to take our jobs, and now I'm there, artificial intelligence stole my work," reacted to one of the Guardians concerned, who will be asked to stay at home for next month.
"We regularly evaluate our activity, this can lead to increased investment in certain branches, and from time to time, redeployment to others" said a spokesperson for Microsoft, who also hastened to specify that this decision was not "related to the current pandemic" of the coronavirus.
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Fallible robots
The IT giant is not the first to favor artificial intelligence over humans, since Google has set up a similar system for its Google news portal. If most of the time, things are going well, there have been a few misses with the highlighting of articles from dubious news sites, or even outright fake news, when they are not violent content or sexual that were selected by the machines.
Quirks that obviously do not scare Microsoft, unlike journalists who must follow (again for a month) strict rules in the selection of articles to highlight. As the specialized site Numerama points out , their role is "not to fill up but to offer interesting, appropriate and varied content, to cover information and current affairs in a global manner".
Towards layoffs in other media?
But it's not the only problem with artificial intelligence. Basing their "work" in particular on the number of clicks and popularity, the algorithms are less able to "highlight a small media which would offer an enriching article, rather than running in loop with behemoths of the sector", continues Numerama . Bad news for small titles that sometimes struggle to survive in a sector in crisis. From there to say that these robots could therefore put many other journalists out of work, there is only one step.