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The current title (“Pakistani newspaper mistakenly prints AI prompt with the article”) isn’t correct, it wasn’t the prompt that was printed, but trailing chatbo
by chrismorgan 1y ago
The current title (“Pakistani newspaper mistakenly prints AI prompt with the article”) isn’t correct, it wasn’t the prompt that was printed, but trailing chatbot fluff:
> If you want, I can also create an even snappier “front-page style” version with punchy one-line stats and a bold, infographic-ready layout—perfect for maximum reader impact. Do you want me to do that next?
The article in question is titled “Auto sales rev up in October” and is an exceedingly dry slab of statistic-laden prose, of the sort that LLMs love to err in (though there’s no indication of whether they have or not), and for which alternative (non-prose) presentations can be drastically better. Honestly, if the entire thing came from “here’s tabular data, select insights and churn out prose”… I can understand not wanting to do such drudgework.
- wg0 1y agoThank you, yes that's accurate and I am not sure if article itself is accurate. Don't think so it would have no incorrect stats. By "AI prompt" I mean "prompted by AI" Edit: Note about prompt's nature.
- nashashmi 1y agoIt might be better to mention “Dawn newspaper” instead of “Pakistani newspaper”.
- nomdep 1y agoOnly Pakistanis knew from where the Dawn newspaper is, so the current title is more informative
- rat9988 1y agoIt doesn't matter much in which country it is located actually. It also provides less information.
- wg0 1y agoNobody outside Pakistan knows Dawn even though it is the newspaper that was founded by Muhammad Ali Jinnah (considered founding father of the nation) and one of the largest and most prestigious as well.
- nashashmi 1y agoIt is like the NYT for the country. But the relevant detail here is the printing of the prompt in a nationally recognized newspaper. The brand, as local as it maybe, still provides more context than some random newspaper in a foreign country would. And I have ran into Dawn newspaper on google news frontpage several times, usually on entertainment stuff.
- layer8 1y agoThe AI is prompting the human here, so the title isn't strictly wrong. ;)
- dwringer 1y agoGemini has been doing this to me for the past few weeks at the end of basically every single response now, and it often seems to result in the subsequent responses getting off track and lower quality as all these extra tangets start polluting the context. Not to mention how distracting it is as it throws off the reply I was already halfway in the middle of composing by the time I read it.
- layer8 1y agoOccasionally I find it helpful, but it would be good to have the option to remove it from the context.
- drivers99 1y agoYou can if you script the request yourself, or you could have a front end that lets you cut out those paragraphs from the conversation. I only say that because yesterday I followed this guide: https://fly.io/blog/everyone-write-an-agent/ https://fly.io/blog/everyone-write-an-agent/ except I had to figure out how to do it with Gemini API instead. The context is always just (essentially) a list of strings (or "parts" anyway, doesn't have to be strings) that you pass back to the model so you can make the context whatever you like. It shouldn't be too hard to make a frontend that lets you edit the context, and fairly easy to mock up if you just put the request in a script that you add to.
- Razengan 1y agoI think AI should present those continuation prompts as dynamic buttons, like "Summarize", "Yes, explain more" etc. based on the AI's last message, like the NPC conversation dialogs in some RPGs
- xnorswap 1y ago
- kleene_op 1y agoI guess in the end the journalist didn't feel necessary to impact his readers with punchy one line stats and bold infographic-ready layouts, considering he opted for the first draft.
- michaelbuckbee 1y agoFor years, both the financial and sports news sides of things have generated increasingly templated "articles", this just feels like the latest iteration.
- reaperducer 1y agoLegitimate news organizations announce their use of A.I. I believe the New York Times weather page is automated, but that started before the current "A.I." hype wave. And I think the A.P. uses LLMs for some of its sports coverage.
- dredmorbius 1y agoThis dates back to at least the late 1990s for financial reports. A friend demoed such a system to me at that time. Much statistically-based news (finance, business reports, weather, sport, disasters, astronomical events) are heavily formulaic and can at least in large part or initial report be automated, which speeds information dissemination. Of course, it's also possible to distribute raw data tables, charts, or maps, which ... mainstream news organisations seem phenomenally averse to doing. Even "better" business-heavy publications (FT, Economist, Bloomberg, WSJ) do so quite sparingly. A few days ago I was looking at a Reuters report on a strategic chokepoint north of the Philippines which it and the US are looking toward to help contain possible Chinese naval operations. Lots of pictures of various equipment, landscapes, and people. Zero maps. Am disappoint.
- jrjeksjd8d 1y agoAt least in the case of Bloomberg they would like you to pay for that raw data. That's their bread and butter.
- dredmorbius 1y agoTrue. But there's the approach the Economist takes. For many decades, it's relied on a three-legged revenue model: subscriptions, advertising, and bespoke consulting and research through the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). My understanding is that revenues are split roughly evenly amongst these, and that they tend to even out cash-flow throughout economic cycles (advertising is famously pro-cyclical, subscriptions and analysis somewhat less so). To that extent, the graphs and maps the Economist actually does include in its articles (as well as many of its "special reports") are both teasers and loss-leader marketing for EIU services. I believe that many of the special reports arise out of EIU research. <https://www.eiu.com/n/ https://www.eiu.com/n/> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economist_Intelligence_Unit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economist_Intelligence_Unit>
- righthand 1y agoI think AI-Prompt is synonymous with the chat before an LLM prints the intended garbage.
- chrismorgan 1y agoThe prompt is the chat before it prints the intended garbage. This is the engagement bait the LLM appends after the intended garbage.
- abdullahkhalids 1y agoThe newspaper in question is Pakistan's English language "newspaper of record", which has wide readership. For some reason, they rarely ever add any graphs or tables to financial articles, which I have never understood. Their readership is all college educated. One time I read an Op-Ed, where the author wrote something like: If you go to this gov webpage, and take the data and put it on excel, and plot this thing vs that thing, you will see X trend. Why would they not just take the excel graph, clean it up and put it in their article?
- xhkkffbf 1y agoDo we know it was an AI? I realize that it rings with a sycophantic tone that the AIs love to use, but I've worked with some humans who speak the same way. AIs didn't invent brownnosing.
- lawlessone 1y ago>” and is an exceedingly dry slab of statistic-laden prose Thats the kinda thing i'd be worried AI would say make up a stat in, something really boring that most people aren't going to follow up on to verify.
- SoftTalker 1y ago> it wasn’t the prompt that was printed, but trailing chatbot fluff I've seen that sort of thing copy/pasted in several emails at work, usually ones that are announcing something on a staff email list. Sort of a givaway that the email isn't very important.