Speaking for myself, “the creativity only humans can generate” is not much of a premium when it comes to cataloging either species or towns. Sounds like a task well worth automating.
Swedish man and his prolific bot are responsible for 8.5% of all pop songs.
given the topics, this is probably BETTER than humans. It will be more consistent, and whatever flaws are discovered can be fixed comprehensively with another bot.
Human generated raw data would be much harder to work with.
I would suspect these bot-generated articles will lead to GREATER human creativity on these web pages. The boring, routine data (population, relation to other species) is already in place, so the humans can use knowledge, judgement, and, yes, creativity to enhance individual articles that interest them.
Personally, I would love to know the Fair Use analysis behind the decision to use a WSJ hedcut as the photo to accompany the BB post.
AN interesting point. It comes directly from the linked WSJ article, but are images from articles considered “excerpting”?
Yep. This stuff has already been cataloged, and quite well. We humans can now focus on other things! Why do we need to duplicate something that’s already been done? And if people on Wikipedia aren’t happy with how it turns out, then they can always edit it. This is a great way to get the information on to Wikipedia and allow for more creative edits. I don’t think this is a bad thing at all.
There’s no Fair Use exception for “excerpting,” per se. You are generally allowed to quote for the purposes of review, commentary, and for news purposes, but there are very few bright-line rules and much depends on the specific facts (you generally can’t quote/excerpt an entire work when reviewing it, for example).
Here, I’m just not sure that the use of the hedcut actually fits into the Fair Use framework that well, and the only real thing I got from seeing it was that the link almost certainly pointed to the WSJ.
Well that and the link text that said “Wall Street Journal profile” 
You only see that if you click through the front page, though, whereas the hedcut is visible from there.
Ahh, that I wouldn’t know - haven’t visited the BB homepage in years. I just get all my Boing from the RSS feeds, where all the content is displayed (it’s so much more convenient!).
Looking at the BB homepage now… Yeah, that’s why I don’t go to the homepage anymore. Yikes.
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