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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-pa

by 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.
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    > Sufficiently advanced AI would be aware of the bias of its data, much more than any human ever could. I am unconvinced that we've proven that - that seems like a hopeful wish. > 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. It also involves being very, very careful about presentation of data. "Black people in the US are convicted of more crimes" is a perfectly truthful statement - but it turns out that there's an awful lot of nuance to the reasons as to why, which rarely ever have anything to do with one's genetics. And yet there's a good many people who will take that statement as suggesting that black people are inherently significantly more likely to commit crimes, which isn't even close to what was actually said. Specific speech patterns and words also lead to bias. You can quite easily write two articles stating exactly the same set of facts with very little fluff, and still result in differently biased articles. Or, in other words, facts without reasons behind them tend to further bias, and it's only once you have reasons that you can actually start to suggest policy.
    - DaUR 10y ago
      You argued that AI was biased. Now you're arguing that AI is too truthful, and that AIs uttering the truth would feed into a small minority's preexisting bias. This just proves my point that AIs are already less biased than humans as is. You also seem to argue for blank slate dogma (that every group difference is caused by unfair government policy or societal "bias") and that provable facts must be silenced unless accompanied by their detailed etiology (which cannot be scientifically or factually verified, and therefore really just serves social purposes). I would argue that we should teach meditation in schools, every day, and that society should be more empathic and less judgmental. It should also be less afraid of truth, and less politically biased. I'm arguing that none of the problems you bring up would be a problem with sufficiently advanced AI. They would move us towards the truth, not away from it. Journalism's current credibility crisis stems solely from its attempts to be "socially useful" rather than truthful. I'm not sure why we should make AI copy us (again ironic since you're against AI taking on human biases).
johansch 10y ago
I'm cautiously optimistic, but I would like to understand a lot more about your vision. :) Journalism is pretty much about about selection of data. The opposite is.. well, like a data viewer for a repository of stats. How would having makefiles for articles help things? Wouldn't it just make it more efficient/cheaper for biased editors to create articles using cherry-picked data?
- DaUR 10y ago
  > Journalism is pretty much about about selection of data. The opposite is.. well, like a data viewer for a repository of stats. Humans aren't good at dealing with data, especially on complex on nuanced subjects, or on topics where the data they need may seem unrelated and get disregarded by impatient humans, or data that doesn't fit their political narratives. Both humans and AI rely on heuristics and have false-positives and false-negatives, but it's intuitive that AI would be much more accurate overall. > How would having makefiles for articles help things? Wouldn't it just make it more efficient/cheaper for biased editors to create articles using cherry-picked data? Yes, but it would make it cheaper for them to be fact-checked.

by DaUR 10y ago

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.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  > Sufficiently advanced AI would be aware of the bias of its data, much more than any human ever could. I am unconvinced that we've proven that - that seems like a hopeful wish. > 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. It also involves being very, very careful about presentation of data. "Black people in the US are convicted of more crimes" is a perfectly truthful statement - but it turns out that there's an awful lot of nuance to the reasons as to why, which rarely ever have anything to do with one's genetics. And yet there's a good many people who will take that statement as suggesting that black people are inherently significantly more likely to commit crimes, which isn't even close to what was actually said. Specific speech patterns and words also lead to bias. You can quite easily write two articles stating exactly the same set of facts with very little fluff, and still result in differently biased articles. Or, in other words, facts without reasons behind them tend to further bias, and it's only once you have reasons that you can actually start to suggest policy.
  - DaUR 10y ago
    You argued that AI was biased. Now you're arguing that AI is too truthful, and that AIs uttering the truth would feed into a small minority's preexisting bias. This just proves my point that AIs are already less biased than humans as is. You also seem to argue for blank slate dogma (that every group difference is caused by unfair government policy or societal "bias") and that provable facts must be silenced unless accompanied by their detailed etiology (which cannot be scientifically or factually verified, and therefore really just serves social purposes). I would argue that we should teach meditation in schools, every day, and that society should be more empathic and less judgmental. It should also be less afraid of truth, and less politically biased. I'm arguing that none of the problems you bring up would be a problem with sufficiently advanced AI. They would move us towards the truth, not away from it. Journalism's current credibility crisis stems solely from its attempts to be "socially useful" rather than truthful. I'm not sure why we should make AI copy us (again ironic since you're against AI taking on human biases).

johansch 10y ago

I'm cautiously optimistic, but I would like to understand a lot more about your vision. :) Journalism is pretty much about about selection of data. The opposite is.. well, like a data viewer for a repository of stats. How would having makefiles for articles help things? Wouldn't it just make it more efficient/cheaper for biased editors to create articles using cherry-picked data?

DaUR 10y ago
> Journalism is pretty much about about selection of data. The opposite is.. well, like a data viewer for a repository of stats. Humans aren't good at dealing with data, especially on complex on nuanced subjects, or on topics where the data they need may seem unrelated and get disregarded by impatient humans, or data that doesn't fit their political narratives. Both humans and AI rely on heuristics and have false-positives and false-negatives, but it's intuitive that AI would be much more accurate overall. > How would having makefiles for articles help things? Wouldn't it just make it more efficient/cheaper for biased editors to create articles using cherry-picked data? Yes, but it would make it cheaper for them to be fact-checked.