Can you tell a story describing a chair?
2025
Im Interview geht Larry Birnbaum der Frage nach, was unsere Erzählungen strukturell ausmacht und ob es auch unter Computern Analoges gibt. – Larry Birnbaum ist Professor an der Northwestern University und hat dort am Intelligent Information Laboratory Stats Monkey entwickelt, eine Software, die u.a. in der Lage ist, in einer Viertelsekunde sportjournalistische Artikel zu verfassen, die von denen professioneller Sportreporter nicht mehr zu unterscheiden sind. Auf der Seite Big Ten Network, die die von Birnbaum entwickelte Software benutzt, ist kein einziger Artikel von einem Menschen verfasst. Birnbaum selbst hat für viele Fachzeitschriften zum Thema Erzähl-Wissenschaft geschrieben. Gemeinsam mit Stuart Frankel und Kris Hammond gründete er das Unternehmen Narrative Science, dessen Software auf Datenbasis kurze journalistische Texte verfasst.
Larry Birnbaum teaches Computer Science and Journalism at Northwestern University, where he is a founding member of the Knight News Innovation Laboratory. He is also a cofounder and Chief Scientific Advisor of Narrative Science, which builds software to automatically generate narratives from data, based on technology originally developed at Northwestern. These stories—which include sports stories, financial stories, and stories based on proprietary data—are virtually indistinguishable from those written by human beings. (Examples can be found at bigtennetwork.com and forbes.com.) Larry received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science, both from Yale University, and joined the Northwestern faculty in 1989. He has authored or co-authored more than 130 papers, and has previously served as Chair of Computer Science at Northwestern. His current research focuses on innovative artificial intelligence technology for media and journalism.
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