3 ms·

So what is the author saying here? Seems to be: "journalist" reading other articles and writing their own derivative articles - good. Machine doing the same t

So what is the author saying here? Seems to be: "journalist" reading other articles and writing their own derivative articles - good. Machine doing the same thing - bad. The fact that so much of the news media produces no original reporting is the problem. The fact that they can easily be replaced by machines is a symptom.

kristopolous 3y ago
I've really only heard of quantity being rewarded in this sphere and not quality. It's often piecemeal work where a freelancer is writing articles and they get paid based on all the metrics that we hate. It's set up to be as close to lorem ipsum as possible. How would you radically transform the industry in a way that those polluters go away?
- krapp 3y ago
  You can't. "quantity over quality" is the most efficient path to maximum profit with minimum cost, thus the path capitalism will always optimize for, given no other incentives. Capitalism will capitalize, and AI looks as much like a magic money machine as any technology ever has. The only thing that will stop this behavior is if AI generated content is proven to be less profitable than human generated content, which is a possibility if quality drops low enough, or the capabilities of AI versus cost stop making financial sense. But that has to happen at scale, and it might require a collapse of the tech industry in general, because everything, everywhere will be integrated with AI at that point.
  - kristopolous 3y ago
    Right. I'm a not so pure anti capitalist; I see the tendencies of the system and I don't like the results. I strongly believe we can do better but it's complicated and hard. I've been working in startups, equity, fund raising ... I have a large portfolio and do lots of investing so my views are conflicted and complicated - the most profitable stuff we're making isn't great.
- rchaud 3y ago
  Some sort of micropayment system that can efficiently send small amounts of money on one-time basis without a recurring subscription or fees to Stripe/PP/other. No crypto obviously, that just adds more work to convert to usable cash. In Canada we can send money bank to bank via eTransfer, but there is a 50c flat fee for amounts <$100. There's no widget you can install on your site, you would need to ask people to login to your bank account or app and select the recipient manually. That level of friction would turn most people off.
  - kristopolous 3y ago
    That's a Ted Nelson system. Also Brave has it in BAT tokens, which violates your principle but anyways. I'm not saying that's not a solution just because it hasn't worked, just that the sauce is more subtle and harder to get right
gorbachev 3y ago
I've been often wondering how difficult would it be to build a browser plugin that detected the original source of all this recycled content, and then linked to it. I get so frustrated with articles that essentially summarize the content on the original source, even say that it was "first reported" by another publication, but then don't link to it! Even worse, the chain of recycled content is sometimes like half a dozen links deep. It's idiotic, and a complete disservice to your readers. I get that the competition for ad dollars is brutal, but wtf.
deepsquirrelnet 3y ago
It hasn’t even really been journalists for a while now. There’s been other tools, just not as advanced as the current ones. Maybe they require someone with basic reading and editing skills to do a once over before publishing. It’s not like LLMs are displacing any valuable jobs in this case. I want actual journalists to get paid to write novel stories, but this is really only a threat to industries that have been making a buck off of low effort republishing.

kristopolous 3y ago

I've really only heard of quantity being rewarded in this sphere and not quality. It's often piecemeal work where a freelancer is writing articles and they get paid based on all the metrics that we hate. It's set up to be as close to lorem ipsum as possible. How would you radically transform the industry in a way that those polluters go away?

krapp 3y ago
You can't. "quantity over quality" is the most efficient path to maximum profit with minimum cost, thus the path capitalism will always optimize for, given no other incentives. Capitalism will capitalize, and AI looks as much like a magic money machine as any technology ever has. The only thing that will stop this behavior is if AI generated content is proven to be less profitable than human generated content, which is a possibility if quality drops low enough, or the capabilities of AI versus cost stop making financial sense. But that has to happen at scale, and it might require a collapse of the tech industry in general, because everything, everywhere will be integrated with AI at that point.
- kristopolous 3y ago
  Right. I'm a not so pure anti capitalist; I see the tendencies of the system and I don't like the results. I strongly believe we can do better but it's complicated and hard. I've been working in startups, equity, fund raising ... I have a large portfolio and do lots of investing so my views are conflicted and complicated - the most profitable stuff we're making isn't great.
rchaud 3y ago
Some sort of micropayment system that can efficiently send small amounts of money on one-time basis without a recurring subscription or fees to Stripe/PP/other. No crypto obviously, that just adds more work to convert to usable cash. In Canada we can send money bank to bank via eTransfer, but there is a 50c flat fee for amounts <$100. There's no widget you can install on your site, you would need to ask people to login to your bank account or app and select the recipient manually. That level of friction would turn most people off.
- kristopolous 3y ago
  That's a Ted Nelson system. Also Brave has it in BAT tokens, which violates your principle but anyways. I'm not saying that's not a solution just because it hasn't worked, just that the sauce is more subtle and harder to get right

gorbachev 3y ago

I've been often wondering how difficult would it be to build a browser plugin that detected the original source of all this recycled content, and then linked to it. I get so frustrated with articles that essentially summarize the content on the original source, even say that it was "first reported" by another publication, but then don't link to it! Even worse, the chain of recycled content is sometimes like half a dozen links deep. It's idiotic, and a complete disservice to your readers. I get that the competition for ad dollars is brutal, but wtf.

deepsquirrelnet 3y ago

It hasn’t even really been journalists for a while now. There’s been other tools, just not as advanced as the current ones. Maybe they require someone with basic reading and editing skills to do a once over before publishing. It’s not like LLMs are displacing any valuable jobs in this case. I want actual journalists to get paid to write novel stories, but this is really only a threat to industries that have been making a buck off of low effort republishing.