4 ms·

One overhyping bullshitting magazine complaining about overhyping bullshitting magazines. The pot is calling the kettle black.

by make3 9y ago

Karnickel 9y ago
> I'm pretty sure no one is seriously remotely claiming that machines understand text better than humans. Just some of the headlines: - http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/15/technology/reading-robot-alibaba-microsoft-stanford/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/15/technology/reading-robot-ali... "Computers are getting better than humans at reading" - http://fortune.com/2018/01/15/artificial-intelligence-ai-china-alibaba-reading-comprehension-stanford/ http://fortune.com/2018/01/15/artificial-intelligence-ai-chi... "Computer AI Can Now Read Better Than You Do" - https://gizmodo.com/ai-used-to-sell-you-more-stuff-can-now-read-better-than-1822117189 https://gizmodo.com/ai-used-to-sell-you-more-stuff-can-now-r... "The AI Used to Sell You More Stuff Can Now Read Better Than a Human"
- make3 9y ago
  I meant the scientists, not the tech journalists. Clearly tech "journalists" is a very loose term nowadays
  - nkoren 9y ago
    Yes, but the source article is clearly addressing the general public, not scientists. And it's doing a much better job of representing the state of technology than other sources that are addressed to the general public. So not sure what your complaint is.
    - make3 9y ago
      my complaint is that the verge is one of the journals the more guilty of overhyping ai stuff there is, that it's one of the hardest cases of the pot calling the kettle black I've seen
  - imh 9y ago
    Microsoft's own blogpost sure doesn't help (https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/microsoft-creates-ai-can-read-document-answer-questions-well-person/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/microsoft-creates-ai-can-read...) >Microsoft creates AI that can read a document and answer questions about it as well as a person
  - romaniv 9y ago
    Scientists often carefully construct tasks, evaluation criteria and even test sets to make AI seem better than humans or at least better than it really is.
mc32 9y ago
Even at the height of the 2000 bubble the Industry Standard, Business 2.0, Wired, etc., had some semblance to journalism. At most I could call them optimistic, but, at least, I fail to recall, them engaging in hedging, that is on the one hand have a writer extol some company or tech as virtue, then, the next page deride the same thing for being obviously of extremely dubious value, of not outright liability. This thing gets tedious and doesn't do journalism any favors. It's like they have no compass and simply blindly go for the most clicks no matter what.
- freehunter 9y ago
  Back then people were more willing to pay for news (newspapers and magazines), no one blocked ads, and people visited real websites where ads paid for the original content (rather than just skimming headlines on Reddit, Facebook, etc). What we're seeing today is journalism outfits that went out of business a long time ago and the remnants of the companies were acquired by a very different organization with very different goals. The problem is, this was done silently and no one ever acknowledged the transfer. It's partly the fault of the journalism outfits for buying into the clickbait stuff. It's partly the fault of aggregators (even including Hacker News). It's partly the fault of the readers/users for consuming their information in the laziest way possible. Everyone is to blame and the problem is surprisingly hard to solve, but what we can't do is point to articles like this and say "this is bad journalism", because it's not. It never was. Journalism went out of business a long time ago because no one will buy it.
  - slantyyz 9y ago
    >> Journalism went out of business a long time ago because no one will buy it. And the unfortunate outcome of that is infotainment and advertorials pretending to be news. Even worse is that more and more people take that stuff at face value.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    >Journalism went out of business a long time ago because no one will buy it. With some exceptions. And there's also good tech commentary from various people who get food put on their plate from other sources which admittedly creates at least the potential for greater biases that aren't obvious. Although bias-free has always been an aspiration that generally hasn't existed in its purest form in practice. And a lot of popular science has always been pretty shallow.

One overhyping bullshitting magazine complaining about overhyping bullshitting magazines. The pot is calling the kettle black.

by make3 9y ago

One overhyping bullshitting magazine complaining about overhyping bullshitting magazines. The pot is calling the kettle black.

Karnickel 9y ago

> I'm pretty sure no one is seriously remotely claiming that machines understand text better than humans. Just some of the headlines: - http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/15/technology/reading-robot-alibaba-microsoft-stanford/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/15/technology/reading-robot-ali... "Computers are getting better than humans at reading" - http://fortune.com/2018/01/15/artificial-intelligence-ai-china-alibaba-reading-comprehension-stanford/ http://fortune.com/2018/01/15/artificial-intelligence-ai-chi... "Computer AI Can Now Read Better Than You Do" - https://gizmodo.com/ai-used-to-sell-you-more-stuff-can-now-read-better-than-1822117189 https://gizmodo.com/ai-used-to-sell-you-more-stuff-can-now-r... "The AI Used to Sell You More Stuff Can Now Read Better Than a Human"

make3 9y ago
I meant the scientists, not the tech journalists. Clearly tech "journalists" is a very loose term nowadays
- nkoren 9y ago
  Yes, but the source article is clearly addressing the general public, not scientists. And it's doing a much better job of representing the state of technology than other sources that are addressed to the general public. So not sure what your complaint is.
  - make3 9y ago
    my complaint is that the verge is one of the journals the more guilty of overhyping ai stuff there is, that it's one of the hardest cases of the pot calling the kettle black I've seen
- imh 9y ago
  Microsoft's own blogpost sure doesn't help (https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/microsoft-creates-ai-can-read-document-answer-questions-well-person/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/microsoft-creates-ai-can-read...) >Microsoft creates AI that can read a document and answer questions about it as well as a person
- romaniv 9y ago
  Scientists often carefully construct tasks, evaluation criteria and even test sets to make AI seem better than humans or at least better than it really is.

mc32 9y ago

Even at the height of the 2000 bubble the Industry Standard, Business 2.0, Wired, etc., had some semblance to journalism. At most I could call them optimistic, but, at least, I fail to recall, them engaging in hedging, that is on the one hand have a writer extol some company or tech as virtue, then, the next page deride the same thing for being obviously of extremely dubious value, of not outright liability. This thing gets tedious and doesn't do journalism any favors. It's like they have no compass and simply blindly go for the most clicks no matter what.

freehunter 9y ago
Back then people were more willing to pay for news (newspapers and magazines), no one blocked ads, and people visited real websites where ads paid for the original content (rather than just skimming headlines on Reddit, Facebook, etc). What we're seeing today is journalism outfits that went out of business a long time ago and the remnants of the companies were acquired by a very different organization with very different goals. The problem is, this was done silently and no one ever acknowledged the transfer. It's partly the fault of the journalism outfits for buying into the clickbait stuff. It's partly the fault of aggregators (even including Hacker News). It's partly the fault of the readers/users for consuming their information in the laziest way possible. Everyone is to blame and the problem is surprisingly hard to solve, but what we can't do is point to articles like this and say "this is bad journalism", because it's not. It never was. Journalism went out of business a long time ago because no one will buy it.
- slantyyz 9y ago
  >> Journalism went out of business a long time ago because no one will buy it. And the unfortunate outcome of that is infotainment and advertorials pretending to be news. Even worse is that more and more people take that stuff at face value.
- ghaff 9y ago
  >Journalism went out of business a long time ago because no one will buy it. With some exceptions. And there's also good tech commentary from various people who get food put on their plate from other sources which admittedly creates at least the potential for greater biases that aren't obvious. Although bias-free has always been an aspiration that generally hasn't existed in its purest form in practice. And a lot of popular science has always been pretty shallow.