Last month, Michael Eisen blogged about an out-of-print book about flies that was being sold on Amazon.com for more than $23 million. What was first assumed to be a joke turned out to be the result of two computers basing their prices on the prices of the other book. Bookseller A had a computer set to charge roughly 120% of what Bookseller B was charging; Bookseller B was set to charge roughly 90 percent of what Bookseller A set as the price. The result was that each book would increase in price, prompting the other book to also go up, and so on.

Clearly, book sellers who want to base their price on what everyone else is charging don’t have time to monitor the competition for every book they have on the market, and usually this system works fine. Numbers+Computers (or robots) = Totally fine! (usually)

But what happens when robots start getting involved with words?

As it happens, my own field could be affected, as computers are set to input box scores and stat sheets and output sports stories.

In fact, StatSheet.com offers recaps for Division I men’s basketball games, based solely on box scores.

Here’s an excerpt from Purple For Life, the Stat Sheet page for UNI.

Fourth-seeded Northern Iowa was eliminated from tournament play with a 60-57 upset loss to fifth-seeded Creighton.

Northern Iowa closes out the regular season and conference tournament with a 19-13 overall record and a 10-9 record and fourth place regular season finish in the Missouri Valley.

Only a robot would call a five seed topping a four seed in a conference tournament an “upset.” Especially when it was by three points. And especially when that five seed posted an eight-point victory over the four seed just six days prior.

Of course, the robot also fails to go into the fact that the Creighton coach used to lead UNI, with the current UNI head coach as his assistant. Or that Creighton got 16 points and seven rebounds from the son of the Creighton coach, who had previously committed to play at UNI.

While the facts of the game can be found in the box score, the story can’t.

That’s not to say robots aren’t useful to sports writers and sports information directors.

Below the recap, Stat Sheet lists several game notes, including how often a team wins or loses when scoring x number of points, a team’s record in games decided by x or fewer points, etc. These are all things an SID can figure out, but it usually involves print outs, highlighters and strained eyes from trying to find some of these statistical patterns. Robots helping with the numbers can give humans more time to focus on the real stories. As long as we stick that that arrangement, robots won’t be taking over writers’ jobs any time soon.

But if they do take over, I for one welcome our new robot overlords.