In Case You Wondered, a Real Human Wrote This Column

“WISCONSIN appears to be in the driver’s seat en route to a win, as it leads 51-10 after the third quarter. Wisconsin added to its lead when Russell Wilson found Jacob Pedersen for an eight-yard touchdown to make the score 44-3 … . ”

Those words began a news brief written within 60 seconds of the end of the third quarter of the Wisconsin-U.N.L.V. football game earlier this month. They may not seem like much — but they were written by a computer.

If this is just the beginning, I’m not sure how to feel about this. The fundamental issue isn’t that computers are replacing humans; the core of the problem is that some day, computers might become so advanced that we would not be able to distinguish the difference between contents created by humans and computers.

I find this unsettling because if computers can fully mimic the human emotions that compose our lives, then that means we are literally just a product of chemical reactions in our brain. We like to think we are so different from animals because we have this thing called “soul.” But if computers could replicate our behavior, then we might not be so special after all. What if everything we do—love, hate, marriage, divorce, sadness, happiness—can be reproduced by carefully calibrated calculations? What does that mean?

“In five years,” he says, “a computer program will win a Pulitzer Prize — and I’ll be damned if it’s not our technology.”