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Show HN: Boring Report, a news app that uses AI to desensationalize the news

boringreport.org

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Re: Show HN: Boring Report, a news app that uses AI to desensationalize the news

#41

Post by jjeaff »

morsch wrote: post #22

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon testified before a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs hearing on September 22, 2022. Dimon mentioned that as the U.S. nears a potential default on its sovereign debt, markets could experience panic. ... [1] He said that today, but in an interview with Bloomberg. The source article[2] just illustrates it with an archive photo from 2022, when he testified in a Senate hearing. Simi…

In fairness to the AI, I have often been confused by stock images or old images on news articles that are not from the event in question.

Re: Show HN: Boring Report, a news app that uses AI to desensationalize the news

#42

Post by carabiner »

lumb63 wrote: post #12

This is a great concept! Thanks for sharing. I do have to wonder, though, if this is a Band-Aid over the problem of sensationalist reporting. Assuming there is a market for “boring” news (I think there is; I’d like to read it!), wouldn’t it be cheaper to pay journalists to write less exaggerative pieces in the first place?

Try ft.com. Most of their revenue comes from subscriptions, not ads, so they are not striving to generate clickbait like most papers.

Re: Show HN: Boring Report, a news app that uses AI to desensationalize the news

#43

Post by woile »

lumb63 wrote: post #12

This is a great concept! Thanks for sharing. I do have to wonder, though, if this is a Band-Aid over the problem of sensationalist reporting. Assuming there is a market for “boring” news (I think there is; I’d like to read it!), wouldn’t it be cheaper to pay journalists to write less exaggerative pieces in the first place?

In an ideal world yes, but the incentives are not there. For example, many governments benefit from media being sensationalist, within and outside borders. They don't want less sensationalism. I think this "attention to negativity" is something inherent to humans, and now that we have opened the door, I doubt it's gonna close by everyone paying more to journalists.

Re: Show HN: Boring Report, a news app that uses AI to desensationalize the news

#44

Post by sigstoat »

personally i'm not interested in seeing the news rewritten by gpt as it stands. but if you could automatically find the least sensational article on the subject, and then send me to that site, along with a plugin that just highlights the most salient points, and fades the worst parts to grey, that'd be interesting.

i'd also like to see a service which shows me the news about subjects which have managed to stay in the news for at least a week. just drop all the 24-48 hour rage/hype cycles.

Re: Show HN: Boring Report, a news app that uses AI to desensationalize the news

#45

Post by yamazakiwi »

dubcanada wrote: post #38
yamazakiwi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly does "What exactly does "desensationalize the news" mean?" mean? I think what you're really saying is: "I'm less interested in the work this person did to make something cool; selfishly, I'd like to know if it follows my biases so I can judge it based on politics." Or you're just curious how it works and haven't spent the effort trying it out, which is valid.

What a weirdly aggressive attack... Either I'm selfish and have a lot of biases or I'm lazy. Could it not be that as a person with an interest in AI and general technology I am wondering if there is any detail on what does an "AI" look for to determine a "sensationalist" title and how does it "desensationalize" it? I have scanned the twitter feed and the app and just wondering if there is anything on how it works. Th…

I'm not trying to attack you, I was dissecting your intentions, which I'm now noticing came off as super rude and I apologize for that.

But let's be frank... It's clear through your verbiage that you were either thinking about this politically or were actually just curious as I stated in my previous message.

I never said you were lazy, there are many reasons why you might not be able to try out the product right now and it's totally normal to ask questions when you assume others might have answers. It's also possible to do selfish things, or think selfishly at times and not be a selfish person, I was not trying to antagonize.

Sorry for misunderstanding your intentions, for some reason when you asked "What does desensationalize exactly mean?" I read it particularly negatively.

Re: Show HN: Boring Report, a news app that uses AI to desensationalize the news

#48

Post by dclowd9901 »

lumb63 wrote: post #12

This is a great concept! Thanks for sharing. I do have to wonder, though, if this is a Band-Aid over the problem of sensationalist reporting. Assuming there is a market for “boring” news (I think there is; I’d like to read it!), wouldn’t it be cheaper to pay journalists to write less exaggerative pieces in the first place?

I would posit the minority of people are drawn to more "boringly" presented news, and as such, it wouldn't make much sense to have it be the primary artifact. (for better or worse)

Re: Show HN: Boring Report, a news app that uses AI to desensationalize the news

#49

Post by jebarker »

tikkun wrote: post #13

I'm generally excited about something I'm calling "English to English translation" - and this is a good example. Previously translation has focused on going between languages. I think there's just as much benefit to translating within a given language. * Translate corporate speak to plain English. * Translate passive aggressive to calm and peaceful. * Translate sensationalist to neutral (like the OP). * Translate imp…

Another use case in the arts: interpreting literature and finding connections within and between books

Re: Show HN: Boring Report, a news app that uses AI to desensationalize the news

#50

Post by powersnail »

I've also been thinking about processing news with LMs, but from a different angle.

One big complaint I have for reading news through RSS, is that there's no natural hierarchy/priority to the news. There's no front page, no headline, no size in RSS feeds. Given the way news agencies generates those feeds, there are _tons_ of repetition, tiny updates, some insignificant one-liner interview about some significant events. Not to mention the "no update at this point" updates. Entries that are not informative look exactly the same as---but often outnumbers---the entries that are informative.

An ideal news feed processor to me, would be one that reads through last weeks RSS feeds, and merges the all those tiny updates into coherent articles, ranked by the significance of the event. Sort of turning newspaper into a journal.

The merging and reflow should be well-within an LM's capability. However, I'm not sure if OpenAI's API can swallow an entire week's worth of RSS, or produce multiple full-sized articles, but this is something that I'd like to try when I get some free weekends.

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