Ananova (circa. April 2000) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ananova
China's AI news anchors
61–70 of 115 posts
Re: China's AI news anchors
#62The rise of the machines as described by Thomas Ridd.
Re: China's AI news anchors
#63How is this AI?
The image and voice synthesis is powered by deep learning. The news anchor itself doesn't possess any intelligence.
Re: China's AI news anchors
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure if they are using state-of-the-art TTS. This one [1] sounds a bit more natural. [1] https://neospeech.com/
Still sounds stilted. Try Google's: https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/ ( https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/27/17167200/google-ai-speech... )
Kind of uncanny valley. The pronunciation of the words is good but there's no emphasis through the sentence so it sounds flat and kind of unsettling.
Re: China's AI news anchors
#65Reminder that one chief editor of the People's daily commited suicide days ago, following several similar suicides. A stressful job even to read propaganda afterall.
> Reminder that one chief editor of the People's daily commited suicide days ago, following several similar suicides. > A stressful job even to read propaganda afterall. Yeah, I've been told these news anchors are expected to not make a single mistake in their speech or presentation during the broadcasts, and that they're timed so precisely that you could set your watch by them.
> and that they're timed so precisely that you could set your watch by them.
While your local news may not adhere to an absolutely precise schedule, most broadcast mediums are scheduled to the second. When a program starts, the anchor has exactly 15 seconds to fill. Roll a minute of ads. Then they have 3:45 to fill, etc.
Watch CNN or listen to a nationally syndicated radio show, and time it. You'll see that the entire thing happens with sub-second precision.
Re: China's AI news anchors
#66Personally I could care less to listen to someone read the news. I can read much much faster. Talking heads seems so 20th century.
Re: China's AI news anchors
#67China's track record with free speech makes the implications of completely bypassing any human 'journalist' kind of scary. I guess it's always been possible, but damn.
I'm not confident that's an issue. The press usually takes the party line anyway. In any case where the press feels compelled to not take the party line (it's happened now and then), they've spoken out. I think if the press felt it necessary, they could do a "special" presentation when they feel necessary. Honestly, I don't see a lot of difference between them and the way Sean Hannity blatantly takes the Trump line.…
The only thing that would be on the mind of an AI is what is trained to be on its mind...
Re: China's AI news anchors
#68The idea of a virtual anchor was pioneered >10 years ago by a group at the Northwestern CS Department including Kris Hammond. The project was called "News at Seven." This video shows the later iterations of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3MRkFYM9Q4 IIRC the early version around 2005 or 2006 used the Half Life 2 engine, so you would have Alyx Vance reading the news with a gun strapped to her belt. At the time I…
Where it fails is the "banter"
Actually, where it fails is breaking news.
Former newsman here, too. And I remember staying on the air for 12, 24, 36 hours or more with no commercials during breaking news (hurricanes, flooding, etc...), and it's not something any AI will be up to in our lifetimes.
Re: China's AI news anchors
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not confident that's an issue. The press usually takes the party line anyway. In any case where the press feels compelled to not take the party line (it's happened now and then), they've spoken out. I think if the press felt it necessary, they could do a "special" presentation when they feel necessary. Honestly, I don't see a lot of difference between them and the way Sean Hannity blatantly takes the Trump line.…
The only thing that would be on the mind of an AI is what is trained to be on its mind...
Isn't the main point of the singularity that AI would be able to break free of such bonds due to its superior intelligence?