The men pictured above (l. to r.) are Kris Hammond, Larry Birnbaum, and Stuart Frankel of Narrative Science, and their hard work is a potential haymaker to the jaws of sports journalists everywhere. They are the evil geniuses responsible for a sportswriting machine profiled in yesterday’s New York Times. And I ain’t even mad.

Their computer program wrote a game brief within 60 seconds for a Big Ten website based on data, developed an algorithm (or whatever) for more human-like writing, and amazed some experts who don’t really know quality sports writing, but are experts nonetheless.

“I thought it was magic,” says Roger Lee, a general partner of Battery Ventures, which led a $6 million investment in the company earlier this year. “It’s as if a human wrote it.”

Experts in artificial intelligence and language are also impressed, if less enthralled. Oren Etzioni, a computer scientist at the University of Washington, says, “The quality of the narrative produced was quite good,” as if written by a human, if not an accomplished wordsmith.

On the bright side, that blockquote contains optimism from biased parties. An enthusiastic investor should marvel, and a high compliment from a scientist is cool, but can he write a 400-word gamer? The computer-powered story Steve Lohr used as an example in his lead is acceptable, but nothing truly remarkable. Now, if only Narrative Science’s supporters can convince the scientists to add more hyperbole to its prose.

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