G/O Media Incorporating AI-Generated Content
awfulannouncing.com
awfulannouncing.com
This is just the beginning of the unfolding of an enormous set of unexpected consequences of AI.
FYI,I have written extensively on other disruptions that are likely coming
"We had hoped technology would replace monotonous tasks while leaving us more time for creative exploration. Instead we are getting exactly the opposite. It is replacing what humans love to do. Previously it had been thought that creativity would be the area untouchable by machines. Ironically, it seems to currently be one of AI’s most successful areas."
from https://www.mindprison.cc/p/ai-and-the-end-to-all-things
I'm less pessimistic, simply because this content is trash. It's not just that it's inaccurate, it's also that it's uninteresting and repetitive. Who will consume it? If no one will consume it, who will host it, and for what purpose?
I also keep thinking: If ChatGPT (etc.) can write such content, and I'm interested in it, then why won't I just ask ChatGPT for the information directly rather than going to someone's bloated website?
Leveraging AI to make your business more productive is a short term temporary evolution. Longer term most businesses will have no purpose.
"Per the report, over 141 "blue chip" — or internationally recognized — brands are unknowingly supporting hundreds of low-effort AI content farms."
(That’s unrealistically cynical… I hope.)
Next, AI will become your child's closest companion and they will bond with it greater than to their own parents.
Authenticity is going to the make or break for this problem. However, I just haven't seen any promising solutions. Theoretically, there won't be solutions as the very intent of AI is to be human like in every way if achievable.
I recently tried a AI art detector while writing my latest - https://www.mindprison.cc/p/ai-art-challenges-meaning-in-a-w... - and found it to be abysmal. The false positives made it completely unusable.
I think platform holders saying "AI content is unwelcome here", and loudly kicking off violators is more than enough to send the required signal.
The goal is not to have 0% generated content, it's to brand yourself as _the_ source for thoughtful, human writing. Having an occasional article slip under the radar is fine.
There may be an appeal process, but the point is AI will make verification of authenticity painful.
My argument isn't "imperfect detection is fine".
I'm saying that _you don't need detection at all_.
Just make it very clear that AI content is unwelcome on your platform and loudly boot everyone who tries to "experiment" with your limits.
I mean, not to just be a jerk or trot out a tired cliche for the heck of it, the "internet" - particularly the web - has, IMO / IME, massively degraded in the past 5 - 7 years. And, unsurprisingly (given the nature of these sorts of processes, looked at either from a more "naive" statistical / distributional POV, or more mechanistically), the rate of degradation is swiftly / noticeably accelerating (i.e., d^2/dx^2 >> 0).
The flood of "AI" BS is just about the most apropos way to continue what's already in motion. A way that could hardly be more perfect - LLMs and the like can work 24/7/365 recursing infinitely until there's no information content left at all, just a "gray goo".
The dark hilarity of our "intelligence" is endlessly amusing to me (yet another stupid human).
The hill we're rolling down continually steepens and indeed is now very steep, but we're about to ignite a 1,000,000 ft-lb rocket booster with the engine nozzle pointed directly at the sky.
1) Garbage replaced with garbage is still garbage.
2) spam replaced with spam is still spam.
3) artisanal writing will always be higher quality and demand higher premiums, viewership, margins, and stickiness.
4) generative AI can be used by humans to craft reasonable boilerplate and edited by humans to add value and depth. Similarly calculators can produce mathematical results but they’re only interesting the context of a humans agency and synthesis. The use of generative AI for writing is more like using a code completer or calculator and at no stage removes a human - the AI must be prompted and guided, and as is shown in the article must be edited and post processed to be appealing. The machine covers only a small part of the exercise. Unless you’re making garbage or spam, in which case see (1),(2)
Unfortunately the high quality solution is to throw humans in the mix and have their brains absorb the shrapnel, and they can approve what others should look at. Like techmeme.com and drudgereport.com
The output of AI's is essentially lossy, so when you feed that back in as an autonomous loop you get the equivalent of a 100x re-saved jpeg, aka complete garbage.
AI's wont have any more useful data to gobble up.
AI becomes ubiquitous, and provides media, information, and general assistance and is trained exclusively on content from before AI was on the web. This freezes pop culture in what, the late 90's through the 2020's? What are the implications for that moving forward? Do we stagnate? Do we become so reliant on it that innovation is dying?
I find that idea interesting.
In the section "AI dominance, stagnation and human skill debt" which mentions the idea that we could break the cycle of learning new information and skill where there is nothing to fill that void.
But in hindsight, reusing the name of the SEO trash parent was a terrible decision.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/buzzfeednews/buzzfeed-n...
Exactly, and at the moment an LLM might still be cheaper than human writers. If you're going to publish hot air you might as well automate it.
In this same comment section we see the denial.
"The content it generates is trash" and "We can't distinguish the content generated by AI vs content generated by humans."
I think that tells us all we need to know. Instead of fighting the tide, rise with it.
There are ways that AI can be additive, rather than stir up so much ill-will & controversy.
Rolling Stone, for example, experimented with AI openly & creatively in a way that builds connections between the writers and readers: https://www.businessside.co/p/rolling-stone-experiments-with...
The answer is clear as daylight: this is for the shareholders. AI costs less than employee, we put employee money into our pockets instead, end of rationale.
The Capitalization of Everything is accelerating and it serves nothing but money.
Problem solved.
There is no polite way to describe it. I would call it dog shit, but at least dog shit has some potential as fertilizer.
Gizmodo also published their first AI story today,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36611668
And it's as insanely terrible as you'd imagine.
I am okay with the demise of the sort of outlets that they own from a quality perspective and the type of people I imagine frequent their assets in lieu of other outlets on average probably do not care. Most of what we read online that are "current events" or "news" are glorified press releases anyway, so what difference does it make how the information is generated? Feature stories and in-depth criticism is another matter, but I don't think that the sort of people in search for more substantial content are dependent on Gizmodo or Deadspin to get their fix today (I hope not, at least).
In short, I think decisions like this will be a good catalyst for adept, interested writers and publishers alike to forge better opportunities. The future of media has its promise in the dreadful decisions that corporations are making under the influence of late-stage capitalism. Isn't it a joy?
Might as well be AI.
So what is the difference when the bot content comes from a human, or from a AI?
I'm mostly kidding here - but I think it's revealing exactly how devoid of value modern media is that some think that AI can replace it. I pay for NYT and WSJ - but the rest all seem to be little more then flame-bait ideology bubbles these days.