EDIT: Robot authors

Robots can write books and have been for several years, according to an article in BBC Tuesday.

Unbeknownst to most people, a professor at Insead Business School, Philip Parker has “created software that has generated over 200,000 books, on as varied topics as 60 milligram containers of fromage frais to a Romanian crossword guide,” according to the BBC article.

Using a “write by numbers approach,” the books write themselves in less than an hour, according to the BBC article.

In the last decade people have joked that robots will eventually replace humans. With many blue-collar jobs being overrun by machines nowadays, this concern is becoming more and more real.

While book-writing robots are concerning (writing was always considered a creative task that could not be replicated by machines), it is unrealistic to think that robots will ever generate the next award-winning novel.

Some aspects of writing are formulaic. For instance, books usually contain a conflict, a protagonist and one or several antagonists. However, there is a certain creative process that goes on in the minds of authors that does not seem like something robots can recreate.

For instance, some of our most beloved authors have created languages of their own. In Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling uses make-believe terms that a robot that relies on formulas and patterns would probably never generate on its own.

Additionally, books that are produced in under an hour probably lack the detail that most human-generated novels contain.

That being said, it’s important that authors do not shut themselves off to this new technology but continue to grow with it. Perhaps it will assist them in speeding up their writing process or even inspire content for their next award-winning novel.

Looking forward, it will be interesting to see whether more robot-driven books are produced or whether this technology falls by the wayside.