7 ms·

I'm not sure what's happened at the Guardian the last couple years. I guess my view of them was positive after the Snowden revelations. But esp since brexit the

by nvarsj 10y ago

I'm not sure what's happened at the Guardian the last couple years. I guess my view of them was positive after the Snowden revelations. But esp since brexit they have been producing a huge amount of rubbish, with link bait titles and outright lies or vastly exaggerated claims (so many of these - for example, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/dec/23/queen-gives-theresa-may-royal-seal-of-disapproval-over-brexit https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/dec/23/queen-gives-...). You really can't believe anything written on the Guardian anymore.

johansch 10y ago
I'm sure their core subscribers are really satisfied about their reporting. ;( News really is a hard nut to crack; how do you get people to pay for news reporting that "offend" them?
- johansch 10y ago
  Before anyone says public service: I would point to Sweden as a counter example. Swedish public radio/TV (modelled after the BBC - there's a license fee for owning a TV receiver) used to be relatively benign, although leftist-leaning. Still, they had solid, smart and honest people who did good reporting. It used to be a very prestigeous place to work for anyone, regardless of political leaning. And there really wasn't much more money to be made elsewhere unless you started your own company. The past decade has been depressing. As the Internet has killed the newspapers and quality reporting has ceased to pay well, our public TV has become a propaganda organ for low-paid activists. Somehow 99% of these people are leftist. Pretty much all of the younger journalists at our public TV and radio (SVT and SR) are going into their jobs out of a (again, 99% of the time leftist) political conviction. (Smarter and/or less idealistic people get a job in the private sector.) In recent years this created a dangerous scenario: a) You have real humans, living in an actual society. They observe their environment. They do notice the crimes their friends and neighbors are victims of. b) You have the public service media constantly stating/arguing for how everything is fine. Obviously this dissonance creates a massive (and justifiably deserved) mistrust in "media".
  - DaUR 10y ago
    This is why the only profession that I'll actually be excited to see replaced by AI is journalism. A few tens of thousands of people out of their (pretty low-paying) jobs, but journalism is so utterly crucial to democracy and societal stability that that could only be celebrated. AI-journalism would be much less expensive, so expect more non-profits delivering high-quality, unbiased journalism thanks to it. A media outlet is only as good as its most mediocre journalist. Open-sourcing and reproducible builds (articles) based on that source code would fix the trust issue.
    - vertex-four 10y ago
      AI can and does have significant bias, as long as it learns from sources influenced by humans with bias.[0] Additionally, you still need to be really careful to write in ways that avoid furthering existing human bias. [0] https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8026-a_story_of_discrimination_and_unfairness https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8026-a_story_of_discrimination_a...
      - DaUR 10y ago
        > AI can and does have significant bias, as long as it learns from sources influenced by humans with bias Sufficiently advanced AI would be aware of the bias of its data, much more than any human ever could. By the way, the IAT has very little credibility, and isn't based on the scientific method but thought up by sociologists. Ironic to use flawed human-made tools to call AI biased. The whole presentation is a joke: she uses a sample size of just a few Trump tweets, and then complains that the output would be biased (duh! sample size!); treated Tay AI tweets that were not written by Tay AI as proof of how "problematic" things can be (Tay could be made to repeat tweets made @ her verbatim, so many of these "problematic tweets" had nothing to do with its AI). She's also arguing that society needs to be reengineered by benevolent """scientists""" (social psychologists) and that people be bombarded with carefully-designed stereotypes to counter the stereotypes we've supposedly internalized. Disappointing to see this from a Princeton grad. > Additionally, you still need to be really careful to write in ways that avoid furthering existing human bias. Usually that involves not using emotionally-loaded "hand grenade words" that bypass peoples' rational minds, and using clickbait headlines written by malicious editors. AI could be made to avoid both.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

by nvarsj 10y ago

johansch 10y ago

I'm sure their core subscribers are really satisfied about their reporting. ;( News really is a hard nut to crack; how do you get people to pay for news reporting that "offend" them?

johansch 10y ago
Before anyone says public service: I would point to Sweden as a counter example. Swedish public radio/TV (modelled after the BBC - there's a license fee for owning a TV receiver) used to be relatively benign, although leftist-leaning. Still, they had solid, smart and honest people who did good reporting. It used to be a very prestigeous place to work for anyone, regardless of political leaning. And there really wasn't much more money to be made elsewhere unless you started your own company. The past decade has been depressing. As the Internet has killed the newspapers and quality reporting has ceased to pay well, our public TV has become a propaganda organ for low-paid activists. Somehow 99% of these people are leftist. Pretty much all of the younger journalists at our public TV and radio (SVT and SR) are going into their jobs out of a (again, 99% of the time leftist) political conviction. (Smarter and/or less idealistic people get a job in the private sector.) In recent years this created a dangerous scenario: a) You have real humans, living in an actual society. They observe their environment. They do notice the crimes their friends and neighbors are victims of. b) You have the public service media constantly stating/arguing for how everything is fine. Obviously this dissonance creates a massive (and justifiably deserved) mistrust in "media".
- DaUR 10y ago
  This is why the only profession that I'll actually be excited to see replaced by AI is journalism. A few tens of thousands of people out of their (pretty low-paying) jobs, but journalism is so utterly crucial to democracy and societal stability that that could only be celebrated. AI-journalism would be much less expensive, so expect more non-profits delivering high-quality, unbiased journalism thanks to it. A media outlet is only as good as its most mediocre journalist. Open-sourcing and reproducible builds (articles) based on that source code would fix the trust issue.
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    AI can and does have significant bias, as long as it learns from sources influenced by humans with bias.[0] Additionally, you still need to be really careful to write in ways that avoid furthering existing human bias. [0] https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8026-a_story_of_discrimination_and_unfairness https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8026-a_story_of_discrimination_a...
    - DaUR 10y ago
      > AI can and does have significant bias, as long as it learns from sources influenced by humans with bias Sufficiently advanced AI would be aware of the bias of its data, much more than any human ever could. By the way, the IAT has very little credibility, and isn't based on the scientific method but thought up by sociologists. Ironic to use flawed human-made tools to call AI biased. The whole presentation is a joke: she uses a sample size of just a few Trump tweets, and then complains that the output would be biased (duh! sample size!); treated Tay AI tweets that were not written by Tay AI as proof of how "problematic" things can be (Tay could be made to repeat tweets made @ her verbatim, so many of these "problematic tweets" had nothing to do with its AI). She's also arguing that society needs to be reengineered by benevolent """scientists""" (social psychologists) and that people be bombarded with carefully-designed stereotypes to counter the stereotypes we've supposedly internalized. Disappointing to see this from a Princeton grad. > Additionally, you still need to be really careful to write in ways that avoid furthering existing human bias. Usually that involves not using emotionally-loaded "hand grenade words" that bypass peoples' rational minds, and using clickbait headlines written by malicious editors. AI could be made to avoid both.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]