“Humans are no longer trusted as the central translators of all meaning, even when we observe the scientific method or pursue research supposedly free of ideology.” -Pflugfelder (117)
Even with major advances in technology trying to create reasoning within robots, it is hard to say at this time if nonhumans will ever have agency on their own. There will always be an element of human influence within their programming even if they are somehow able to recreate or procreate themselves. Automated writers have agency endowed upon them by their human creators. Human writers have agency as a collective, sharing constructed knowledge. Working together humans and nonhumans have a shared agency, one that will continue to progress through the evolution of both man and machine.
It is not my intention to discriminate against technology or machines, but rather to urge caution on what we ascribe agency to. Communication through human languages and symbolic actions are distinctly human. Certainly journalism is a different form of writing than rhetorical theory or poetry for that matter. But I think that with the development of new technologies in the future, researchers will ascribe techniques to automated writers in order to write articles that delve into more complex forms of writing. Taking humans out of the writing process completely is a scary idea. One thing we should not allow technology to take away from us is the very thing that makes us human: our language, our writing, the things that distinguish us from everything else in the world. Having the ability to be aware that our actions belong to us is the main factor of human agency.