(Credit: Humanrobo/wikipedia)

Can you tell the difference between a political speech written by a computer program and one written by a speechwriter? Valentin Kassarnig at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has written a computer program that writes political speeches on demand and it does a surprisingly good job.

I’ve written an article for Forbes about Kassarnig’s program and why a computer program that can write effective political speeches might be worrisome for some people. The article includes a short video from the Washington Post that gives you the opportunity to see if you can tell the difference after listening to a speech written by the program and one written by speechwriter.

I’ve started a new gig as a regular contributor to the Technology section at Forbes. The article about political speech writing by computers is my first piece for them. I’ll post brief descriptions and links to the Forbes articles every so often here rather than fill up The Info Monkey with frequent posts about the latest Forbes piece. If you are interested in seeing what I’m doing on Forbes in a more timely manner, please follow me at Forbes.