TOEICの模擬問題をロボットが作成する日

TOEICはフォーマットが決まっているから、とはよく言われる話です。それならアルゴリズムで問題を自動作成できる日はすぐそこにきているかもしれません。APが決算報告の記事作成をロボットに本格的に任せるようになったというニュースがありました。以下の記事を読んでみてください。

Apple tops Street 1Q forecasts
Apple posts 1Q profit, results beat Wall Street forecasts
Associated Press
January 27, 2015 4:39 PM

CUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) _ Apple Inc. (AAPL) on Tuesday reported fiscal first-quarter net income of $18.02 billion.
The Cupertino, California-based company said it had profit of $3.06 per share.

The results surpassed Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of $2.60 per share.

The maker of iPhones, iPads and other products posted revenue of $74.6 billion in the period, also exceeding Street forecasts. Analysts expected $67.38 billion, according to Zacks.

（中略）

This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on AAPL at http://www.zacks.com/ap/AAPL

いや本当にわからないものです。昨年の夏のワシントンポストのクイズをやってみるとロボットの書く記事がどれだか本当にわからないです。

Robot vs. man -- can you tell the difference?
The Associated Press has started running stories on earning reports produced by an algorithm. Take this quiz and see if you can guess which ones were written by humans and which ones by a machine. Below are fragments of news stories published by the AP.
BY MARIANA MARCALETTI July 24, 2014

決算報告の数値報告の部分は機械で、分析記事は人間がといった役割分担になるようです。自動化するとスピードと量が格段に差が出ています。

AP's 'robot journalists' are writing their own stories now
By Ross Miller on January 29, 2015 11:55 am

Philana Patterson, an assistant business editor at the AP tasked with implementing the system, tells us there was some skepticism from the staff at first. "I wouldn't expect a good journalist to not be skeptical," she said. Patterson tells us that when the program first began in July, every automated story had a human touch, with errors logged and sent to Automated Insights to make the necessary tweaks. Full automation began in October, when stories "went out to the wire without human intervention." Both the AP and Automated Insights tell us that no jobs have been lost due to the new service. We're also told the automated system is now logging in fewer errors than the human-produced equivalents from years past.

Before this program was implemented, the AP estimates it was doing quarterly earnings coverage for about 300 companies. Now it automates 3,000 such reports each quarter. Of those, 120 will have an added human touch, either by updating the original story or doing a separate follow-up piece. One such company is Apple; as Patterson notes, that automated Apple story freed up reporter Brandon Bailey to focus on this angled, more nuanced report contextualizing the company's earnings along with quotes from Apple executives. Others include Google, Coca-Cola, and American Airlines. 180 more are monitored to see if a follow-up is needed.

このアルゴリズムを作成した会社ではケーススタディとして紹介しています。

Case Study
The Associated Press Leaps Forward
AP can now produce 4,400 quarterly earnings stories - a nearly 15-fold increase over its manual efforts.

Vergeの記事最後はちゃかして終わっています（笑）

So no, computers are not taking journalists' jobs — not yet, at any rate. Instead, they're freeing up writers to think more critically about the bigger picture. "One of the things we really wanted reporters to be able to do was when earnings came out to not have to focus on the initial numbers," said Patterson. "That's the goal, to write smarter pieces and more interesting stories."

This story was generated by a Homo sapiens who really wanted to use this Shutterstock photo as the lead image:

もちろんこれは報告する内容が決まっている決算報告だからこそここまでの質が可能になったのでしょう。でも決算報告でここまでできるのですから、TOEICの問題だったら朝飯前ではないかという気がします。使用語彙の縛りなんかもプログラムならキッチリ守ってくれそうですし。。。韓国との差が思わぬ形で埋まる日も近いかもしれません。