Shades of man vs machine with new computer app

In some significant ways, Summly, a news app that is catching a lot of attention of tech geniuses and media veterans, is what “news” – North, East, West, South – is supposed to be.  Designed by a 17-year-old Londoner Nick D’Aloisio, while still at school, “Summly” makes use of an artificial intelligence algorithm with an ultimate goal of pulling in news articles from hundreds of sources on the Internet, and then extracting the key points and providing the user with a 400-character summary. In other words, when the concept of Summly reaches its full potential, people will be reading news summarised for them virtually by non-humans. 

Good news (no pun intended) for the traditional media people is that D’Aloisio is just getting started. Bad news for them is the same as the good news: He’s just getting started.

The idea to “aggregate” news articles is not new. Many journalists are functioning more or less as “aggregators”. However, to use an artificial intelligence algorithm instead of an editor or a group of editors is what journalists fear will become a workable norm that can threaten their career. But no matter how much journalists should be worried, the young man’s brainchild is already out there, waiting to be improved by the wisdom of the excited crowd and catch more attention still. Nobody knows for sure how news consumers will greet an upgraded version of Summly, which may challenge the concept of “loyalty” that is keeping many news organisations alive. Big changes, however, may be appearing on the horizon.

Free to download, Summly’s pocket-sized app summarises existing news stories and sews them into a fast, easy-to-browse window. The app offers a wide range of news in a simple, initiative, fast, clean and very well-designed style. Although the summaries are generated by algorithms, reviewers say they have a natural kind of flow to them. And critics who don’t like Summly that much simply need to bear in mind that the app just has taken its first few baby steps.

How a fully-developed Summly will help journalism evolve is an intriguing question. Summly will need conventional journalists to keep working, or the artificial intelligence algorithm will only be able to summarise hearsay or rumours which are abundant online. On the other hand, Summly could turn out to be very useful for traditional journalists, helping cut the time they spend on researching a subject. With Summly, “news” should be better and more balanced. Imagine, say, we can read a report on Thai politics that brings together key contents from all news sources without bias.

That Summly’s developer has only turned 17 means the app, brilliant as it already is, still carries plenty of unrealised potential. The teenager took a year off school to develop Summly. D’Aloisio started writing apps in 2008 when he was only 12, and reportedly raised the first round of $250,000 venture capital funding from Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka Shing’s Horizons Ventures three years later.

He wants to “dramatically improve the mobile news reading experience” with his free Summly app. It’s by no means wishful thinking. The appropriate question is, how much further can the app, or its concept, can go from being a news summary tool? Online content is mega-useful and if we know how to best utilise it, education will never be the same. Already, “free online university” is defying the conventional thinking about education. And efficient Google researchers can outperform traditional students taught by the best of professors.

Everyday we wake up with the question of how to catch up with the world. An improved version of Summly may provide parts of the answer. Nick D’Aloisio has been and probably remains an unfamiliar name, but the charm of today’s world is that an unknown man’s idea can change everything. In a world where many humans are probably feeling humbled by technology, the young man reminds us who are the real smart ones.