Google opens up Bard to 230 countries but Canada is excluded | Hacker News Reader

Google opens up Bard to 230 countries but Canada is excluded

ctvnews.ca

14 pointsmthoms13 comments

At first this seems like a retaliatory move. But for Bard to be viable in Canada it would have to be trained (in part) using Canadian news sources.

It's going to be very difficult to argue Google shouldn't have to pay for that privilege. I wasn't a huge fan of the Government's new bill but once you throw in the AI training angle, things start to get really complicated.

Or alternatively Canada is one of the only countries where journalism will be protected and not systematically starved by the tech industry as it is elsewhere.

I hope you're right.

I hope I'm not. Only one country with a functioning press won't be enough. But if so, I hope Canada's press flourishes and provides a model for others to imitate.

A model in which journalism is funded by powerful foreign firms and the government? How can journalists speak truth to power if there's a risk (perceived or actual) that doing so would bite the hand that feeds?

If there's anyone who should /not/ be funding the press, it's these two groups. People just need to be convinced to actually pay for journalism.

Some of best, most objective reporting comes from the BBC, PBS, and NPR. (Though the latter two get far less government funding than they used to.)

I still haven't found a better source of investigative journalism than "Frontline".

Not government-funded but government-mandated, C-SPAN also deserves an honorable mention.

Those organizations can and have done some very good journalism. I'll be the first to admit that.

But is it a model we want from ALL news organizations? I'm okay with CBC [news] being government funded, flawed though it sometimes is. However if CTV, Global, NatPo, the Globe, etc. are all in the same boat, that can't be good for journalism or democracy. Diversity (in funding and ideology) is our strength.

Great way to attract media powerhouses to Canada and to create local industry

Canada's press is already largely government-funded. The US has the NY Times, the Washington Post, and many other news sites that have learned to adapt to the digital age. The main issue with the US is that it just had way too many local papers because classified ads used to print money pre-internet. The US now resembles more the UK, which had long ago moved to primarily national papers.

If by "adapt" you mean severely scaling back local coverage of municipalities, mass layoffs of journalists, and trending more toward clickbait than substantive investigative reporting, then yes, US and UK journalism is "adapting" just fine.

Hi AI startups, Canadian here!

Me and 40 million other beta testers would love to try out your Bard / OpenAI / etc. competitor. We've got a lovely sandbox for it to play in, complete with a freshly built moat.

Isn't this what Canada wanted?

Canada is composed of 40+ million people.

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