Narrative Science

Narrative Science
Private
Industry
Founded January 2010
Founder
  • Larry Birnbaum
  • Stuart Frankel
  • Kris Hammond
Headquarters Chicago, Illinois, United States
Products
  • Quill
  • Quill Engage
Website narrativescience.com

Narrative Science is a technology company based in Chicago, Illinois that invented Quill, an advanced natural language generation platform powered by artificial intelligence.

History

Narrative Science was founded in 2010 in Evanston, Illinois, after starting at Northwestern University as an academic project in the Intelligent Information Laboratory.[1] The first prototype of the company technology went by the project name StatsMonkey and was developed in the laboratory by Kris Hammond, Larry Birnbaum, Nick Allen and John Templon.[1] StatsMonkey automatically generated news stories on baseball game recaps from applicable baseball game data such as players, game score, and win probability.[2] Narrative Science licensed StatsMonkey and the related intellectual property from Northwestern and began commercial operations in early 2010.[3] Afterwards the company developed a new automated narrative generation platform called Quill, which analyzes structured data and automatically generates narratives.[4] Narrative Science has several investors, including SAP and In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the Central Intelligence Agency.[5] In 2014, the Chicago company raised another $10 million in equity financing, led by customer USAA, for a total of $32 million raised since the company’s inception. [6]

Products

Quill

Quill is an advanced natural language generation technology powered by artificial intelligence and delivered as a Software as a Service (SaaS).[7] Automated narrative generation systems take raw data, determine what the data means and then generate easy-to-understand descriptions and explanations in natural language.[8] Narrative Science's Chief Scientist Kris Hammond explains the platform’s process as simply “mining data for meaning and insight.”[7] The software uses specific sets of data to answer questions about the state of the world for its user.[4] To date, Quill can only write in English.[9] Customers include American Century Investments, MasterCard and the National Health Service of England.[10]

Quill Engage

In March 2014, Narrative Science launched Quill Engage, a free Google Analytics application that delivers “plain English,” narrative style reports for website owners.[11] The application analyzes historical data and trends from Google Analytics to create both weekly and monthly reports which are delivered in narrative form.[11] Quill Engage reports key metrics and performance indicators to users, such as content engagement, web traffic and sources, referrals, paid search, and audience segmentation.[12] The technology is powered by Narrative Science's Quill platform.[12]

Recognition

Gartner named Narrative Science as one of the “Cool Vendors in Smart Machines” in 2014.[13]

In 2013, the company was named to the Red Herring Top 100 for North America,[14] which highlights promising startups in Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

Narrative Science won a 2013 Edison Award for Innovative Services in Collaboration and Knowledge Management.[15]

Competitors

Competing companies in the Narrative Analytics industry include Automated Insights,[5] a firm based in Durham, North Carolina,[6] and Yseop, Inc, a European firm headquartered in Dallas, Texas.[6] Other similar companies in the area of natural language generation include Arria NLG[16] and Linguastat.

Criticism

The company received some early criticism from journalists speculating that Narrative Science was attempting to eliminate the jobs of writers, particularly in sports and finance.[17][18][19][20] Critics also argue that biases and assumptions in original data sets can lead to reinforced bias in the stories generated by natural language processors,[21] such as Narrative Science. Unlike traditional journalism, however, the computer-generated stories appear to be objective.[21] A CBS article compared artificially generated journalism in the financial sector to the property market bubble, as it leads to “everyone making investments in the same way for the same reasons”.[21] The article claimed that computer-generated narratives have the “potential to amplify biases and assumptions, but at far greater speed and on a far wider scale than anything written by humans.”[21]

An article from the Columbia Journalism School also criticized the limitations of “robo-journalism” software, as “it can’t assess the damage on the ground, can’t interview experts, and can’t discern the relative newsworthiness of various aspects of the story” and therefore, lacks a necessary human element.[22]

See also

External links

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Stats Monkey". Intelligent Information Laboratory. Northwestern University. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
  2. ↑ "Program Creates Computer-Generated Sports Stories". NPR. NPR. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
  3. ↑ Bachman, Justin. "Are Sportswriters Really Necessary?". Business Week. Business Week. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Woodie, Alex. "Your Big Data Will Read to you Now". Datanami. Tabor Publications. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Diakopoulos, Nicholas. "Automated Stories: Using Algorithms to Craft News Content". Tow Center for Digital Journalism. Columbia Journalism School. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Pletz, John. "Narrative Science gets $11.5 million to write next chapte". Crain's Chicago Business. Crain's. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Weissman, Cale. "Taking data analysis to a new plateau: Narrative Science raises $11.5M". PandoDaily. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
  8. ↑ Rossi, Ben. "How artificial intelligence will make humans smarter". InformationAge. Vitesse Media. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
  9. ↑ Carter, Jamie. "Could Robots be the Writers of the Future?". TechRadar. FutureUS. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
  10. ↑ "NHS Choices Selects Narrative Science to Assist with Delivery of Healthcare Information". BusinessWire. Berkshire Hathaway. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Gesenhues, Amy. "New Free Google Analytics App From Narrative Science Creates Reports In "Plain English"". Marketing Land. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Penn, David. "Narrative Science Launches Free App to Turn Data Into Readable Documents". The Finovate Group, Inc. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
  13. ↑ Austin, Tom; Linden, Alexander; Rozwell, Carol; Brant, Kenneth; Ghubril, Adib; Anurag, Gupta. "Cool Vendors in Smart Machines, 2014". Gartner. Gartner, Inc. Retrieved 17 June 2014.
  14. ↑ "2013 Top 100 North America: Winners". Red Herring. Red Herring, Inc. Retrieved 17 June 2014.
  15. ↑ "2013 Edison Award Winners". Edison Awards. Retrieved 17 June 2014.
  16. ↑ "Admission to Aim" (PDF). Arria. Arria. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
  17. ↑ Clark, Patrick. "Can an Algorithm Replace Stock Analysts?". Business Week. Business Week. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
  18. ↑ Levy, Steven. "Can an Algorithm Write a Better News Story Than a Human Reporter?". Wired. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
  19. ↑ Fassler, Joe. "Can the Computers at Narrative Science Replace Paid Writers?". The Atlantic. The Atlantic. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
  20. ↑ Hamburger, Ellis. "Robo-journalists are already writing the next generation of news stories". The Verge. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 21.3 Hefferman, Margaret. "The post was written by a human". CBS News. CBS. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
  22. ↑ Howard, Alexander. "The Art and Science of Data-Driven Journalism" (PDF). Tow Center for Digital Journalism. Columbia Journalism School. Retrieved 6 June 2014.