3 ms·

Well, previously you needed an intern working maybe an hour (of they actually wrote good content, obviously more), that intern needs food, air conditioning / he

Well, previously you needed an intern working maybe an hour (of they actually wrote good content, obviously more), that intern needs food, air conditioning / heating, so I'm not sure which consumes less energy. Now you have it in a minute and for a predictable low fee.

jon-wood 2y ago
And that intern still needs good, and air conditioning/heating, but now can’t pay for them. Still, at least the share values are up a little.
karpatic 2y ago
The efficiency gains are undeniable, and AI can scale in ways that were unimaginable before. Less grunt work, more room for innovation—hopefully, we can reinvest that time and energy wisely.
croes 2y ago
Did they need an intern? Doesn't sound so. >web-based sports content companies have been automatically generating content articles for at least a decade
- acchow 2y ago
  It was template-based. The templates were written by humans. The computers filled in the blanks in the templates and combined templates together.
skipants 2y ago
That's not quite how it worked. There are basically two types of content when it comes to these sports recap articles. I'm also excluding opinions/editorials because those are completely different. 1. low profile, not-so-popular content. eg. A Canadian Football League preseason game between the Toronto Argonauts and BC Lions This was still generated using a template. No human intervention except maybe double-checking it before publishing it. This was before AI, too. Often it was there for SEO or just updating people via a headline 2. High profile content, eg. Jeremy Lin puts up 38 pts in a game This is often one of: - pre-written, especially if we expected to happen that day - withheld from publishing if there was auto-generated content but something crazy happened that game and then quickly re-written and released. Usually this would still at least be pre-written before the game ended and details that needed to wait for the game to end were filled in seconds before/after the game ended. There's just as much labour put into it now as before. AI is now generating the low profile template instead of the madlibs we did before. The value add is that it's probably a better read, so you actually get user engagement, and better SEO than before. And this same issue highlighted in the OP article would also happen without AI.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  > This was still generated using a template. No human intervention except maybe double-checking it before publishing it. This was before AI, too. Odd question but is that why the banal reporting on so many websites is such utter shit? Like in all dimensions, it gets facts wrong, it's usually rife with spelling and grammatical errors... when I spend too much time online I start feeling like the sole person on the planet who gives a shit about writing correctly.
  - skipants 2y ago
    Probably money in, money out. I think the content you're looking at _is_ underpaid interns. As another comment mention, sports data is actually very structured these days and its easy to automatically generate articles with it. Actual news, probably not so much.
  - input_sh 2y ago
    Low quality news sites usually have a target that they need to reach in the form of X articles per day. When you're in that position, at best you can spend a couple of hours on any individual story before you have to turn your attention to the next one. Good news take time and journalists often don't have that luxury.
rideontime 2y ago
The intern already exists and consumes those things, though.

jon-wood 2y ago

And that intern still needs good, and air conditioning/heating, but now can’t pay for them. Still, at least the share values are up a little.

karpatic 2y ago

The efficiency gains are undeniable, and AI can scale in ways that were unimaginable before. Less grunt work, more room for innovation—hopefully, we can reinvest that time and energy wisely.

croes 2y ago

Did they need an intern? Doesn't sound so. >web-based sports content companies have been automatically generating content articles for at least a decade

acchow 2y ago
It was template-based. The templates were written by humans. The computers filled in the blanks in the templates and combined templates together.

skipants 2y ago

That's not quite how it worked. There are basically two types of content when it comes to these sports recap articles. I'm also excluding opinions/editorials because those are completely different. 1. low profile, not-so-popular content. eg. A Canadian Football League preseason game between the Toronto Argonauts and BC Lions This was still generated using a template. No human intervention except maybe double-checking it before publishing it. This was before AI, too. Often it was there for SEO or just updating people via a headline 2. High profile content, eg. Jeremy Lin puts up 38 pts in a game This is often one of: - pre-written, especially if we expected to happen that day - withheld from publishing if there was auto-generated content but something crazy happened that game and then quickly re-written and released. Usually this would still at least be pre-written before the game ended and details that needed to wait for the game to end were filled in seconds before/after the game ended. There's just as much labour put into it now as before. AI is now generating the low profile template instead of the madlibs we did before. The value add is that it's probably a better read, so you actually get user engagement, and better SEO than before. And this same issue highlighted in the OP article would also happen without AI.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> This was still generated using a template. No human intervention except maybe double-checking it before publishing it. This was before AI, too. Odd question but is that why the banal reporting on so many websites is such utter shit? Like in all dimensions, it gets facts wrong, it's usually rife with spelling and grammatical errors... when I spend too much time online I start feeling like the sole person on the planet who gives a shit about writing correctly.
- skipants 2y ago
  Probably money in, money out. I think the content you're looking at _is_ underpaid interns. As another comment mention, sports data is actually very structured these days and its easy to automatically generate articles with it. Actual news, probably not so much.
- input_sh 2y ago
  Low quality news sites usually have a target that they need to reach in the form of X articles per day. When you're in that position, at best you can spend a couple of hours on any individual story before you have to turn your attention to the next one. Good news take time and journalists often don't have that luxury.

rideontime 2y ago

The intern already exists and consumes those things, though.