This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Talk About
Aug
27
2015
As I was listening to a pre-game interview on the radio recently, I was interested to hear all the questions coming from the reporter guy.
- So-and-so had a good game last time against this opponent. Talk about him.
- The team is 3 games behind the leader in this division. Talk about the importance of this game.
I’ve written about the issue of sports reporters and the use of “talk about” before.
Since I can’t beat them, however, I will join them. Rather than trying to get reporters to ask real questions, I now suggest replacing them with a robot. Simple natural-language AI that starts each statement with “Talk about” and then adds some keywords relevant to the team and the schedule and the players – that should be indistinguishable from the current situation.
Think of it as a reverse Turing test. If the audio clips are so meaningless/predictable/boring that they could be replaced by a computer and no one would notice, then why hire reporters to ask the questions?
Also, the answers the coaches/managers/players give can be just as bland:
- I thought everyone played well individually today, we just didn’t play as a team
- We had a good game plan, we just didn’t execute well
- I was glad to be able to do my part to help the team get the win today
- We had some trouble early, but everyone pulled together and it showed in the second half
If the AI is good enough, it could replace both sides of the interview and neither reporters nor sports figures would need to be bothered.
The only problem would be the audio itself – getting the computer to sound like the actual person. Maybe have the computer generate the scripts, hire a couple of voice actors and they can read the scripts and produce the interviews for the whole league in one batch.
I’ve also come to view pre-game and post-game interviews as the equivalent of comments sections of news sites: they’re going to have them, but I know they’re a waste of time so I avoid/ignore them.
But he denied it, saying, “I neither know nor understand what you are talking about.” And he went out onto the porch.
Mark 14:68
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 6:12 am and has been carefully placed in the Sports category.
September 15th, 2015 at 10:49 am
Talk about the process you used to write this post.