5 ms·
Microsoft retracts AI-written article advising tourists to visit a food bank
- retrac 3y agoOriginal article captured as images here: https://imgur.com/a/fg8mxgy https://imgur.com/a/fg8mxgy I don't usually surf with adblock disabled. Wow. Clickbait, clickbait, clickbait. And now it's just fake clickbait. There's absolutely nothing on that page, really. The whole thing exists to keep you staring at the page and engaged. But there is nothing even redeeming left that you're paying for with those ads, like a news story. You're being engaged for the ad revenue with nonsense that tells you to go slumming at the Ottawa Food Bank. The circle has been completed. Infinite consumption of human attention for zero benefit.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Michelangelo11 3y agoExactly. My only consolation is that, probably, many "readers" are going to be bots. Dead Internet Theory coming true.
- DoreenMichele 3y agoThe virtual zombie apocalypse has arrived.
- msla 3y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20230814223742/https://www.msn.com/en-gb/lifestyle/travel/headed-to-ottawa-here-s-what-you-shouldn-t-miss/ar-AA1faajY https://web.archive.org/web/20230814223742/https://www.msn.c...
- akomtu 3y agoMicrosoft is inventing porn or drugs, but for text: very engaging and very hollow.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gunapologist99 3y agoPublisher hires winged monkeys to compose thousands of articles from scraps of news clippings and acts surprised when bad ones surface.
- modzu 3y agois the verge article ai written too? it says the ms article also recommended a baseball game but it didnt, it recommended a hockey game. good god nobody knows what's real anymore
- StableAlkyne 3y agoThe Dead Internet Theory wasn't an observation: it was a prophecy
- shkkmo 3y agoHumans make mistakes too, but the kinds of mistakes tend to be different.
- pessimizer 3y agoYou can usually speculate concrete, material motives for what humans are saying, and within that context figure out what people are most likely to lie about, and/or pay little attention to the truth of. LLMs have no reason to be speaking; they speak because they were invoked. LLMs also have no special reason to lie; they lie for the same reasons they tell the truth.
- oldgradstudent 3y agoNot sure intelligence is involved in writing articles on The Verge, artificial or otherwise.
- lolinder 3y agoRelated: Microsoft AI suggests Ottawa food bank as a “cannot miss” tourist spot (107 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37171955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37171955
- Arch485 3y agoThis is disgusting. MS is essentially creating harmful, misinformative content, just to increase ad revenue. When will corporations stop being completely unchecked?
- klntsky 3y ago> harmful I don't think tourists would mind a free meal
- DoreenMichele 3y agoIf you can afford to be a tourist, getting a free meal from the food bank takes food away from locals in need who need a free meal far more than you do. Though food banks usually have an intake process and I imagine most of them would turn you down if you didn't lie and just honestly said "I'm a tourist looking for a free meal because there was this stupid AI-generated article recommending your food bank as a tourist hot spot."
- jenscow 3y agoit's popular with the locals
- smelendez 3y ago> After The Verge reported on the article and its highly inappropriate recommendation about “going into it on an empty stomach,” Microsoft senior director Jeff Jones told the publication, “This article has been removed and we are investigating how it made it through our review process.” That wasn’t a recommendation. It was text from the food bank’s site seeking donations, as in imagine how hard the challenges of everyday life would be without enough to eat.
- lolinder 3y agoNo it isn't, the AI altered the text, probably to make the style more similar to a travel article. Compare the original [0]: > People who come to us have families and jobs to keep with bills to pay. Life is challenging enough. Imagine facing it on an empty stomach. With the AI version [1]: > People who come to us have jobs and families to support, as well as expenses to pay. Life is already difficult enough. Consider going into it on an empty stomach. That the AI made it sound like it was written by the organization is just another one of its failings. [0] https://www.ottawafoodbank.ca/ https://www.ottawafoodbank.ca/ [1] https://archive.is/FGP9q https://archive.is/FGP9q
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Narciss 3y agoIt’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
- skepticATX 3y agoWhy is it "algorithmic techniques" when something goes wrong, but AGI, or at least AI, when it (seemingly) works well?
- megamix 3y agoSo technology is turning against us lol.
- rgovostes 3y agoYikes. The original story is easy to overlook because "LLM says something dumb" is not newsworthy. But Microsoft regurgitating vacuous, AI-generated "news articles" to billions of users is breathtakingly misanthropic. > Before its retraction, the article appeared on Microsoft Start, the company’s AI-aggregated news service that replaced Microsoft News in 2021.
- CaesarA 3y agoWow, good going Microsoft, for a company worth several billion dollar, you would think they had better quality control on their products.
- cshimmin 3y agoThey are literally worth a thousand times more than that... Cue Dr. Evil demanding "one MILLION dollars!!!"