Man vs. machine stories are an old standby in journalism.

Think back to John Henry racing a steam drill and forward to Garry Kasparov trying to outmaneuver IBM's Deep Blue in 1997 to the Onion tweaking the genre with its accountant battles Excel story.

But the latest twist on the meme takes it to the meta-level by raising the question: in the future, will you find your man vs. machine story relying on a human-edited source or from an algorithm?