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

boringreport.org

231–240 of 348 posts

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

#231
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is precisely the type of editorial affordance I would expect the AI to strip. This is just another way for media organizations to distort the news. I look forward to those enhancements

> This is just another way for media organizations to distort the news No, it's not. This is done because stories with images perform better, and obtaining images (& licenses) for photos of every event is not always possible.

Yes, it does distort the news.

If I read a story about a riot and the included picture is from a different but similar urban disaster scene that shows buildings on fire and windows broken I come away from the article with an internal expectation of the disaster scene including fire damage and broken glass -- but that isn't necessarily the case.

This happened constantly with the reporting around the BLM social unrest.

Articles sell better with additional sensationalism, but when the narrative being espoused doesn't conform to reality then it is a distortion, regardless of the motivating factor.

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

#232
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…

I've come around to there being legitimate usecases for this type of generative AI, but I don't think producing anything that's supposed to be "True" or "Correct" is one. I think the only useful usecases is for when you want to generate fiction.

I've come around to there being legitimate use cases for journalism, but I don't think producing anything that's supposed to be "True" or "Correct" is one.

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

#233

I need an alternative YouTube homepage that generate video suggestions without clickbait titles and thumbnails.

Use BlockTube to block any channel that uses clickbait thumbnails. That's what I do. I don't care if "but their content is calm and good", if they use clickbait thumbnails they lose all views from me forever. There's no shortage of channels on youtube that don't do that, so there's no reason to tolerate the ones who do.

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

#234

The title from Boring Report: > The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Performance on Switch Article's title: > Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom’s Performance On Switch Sounds Like A Minor Miracle I find the Boring Report summary to be much more informative that the article, it's like they trimmed away all the fat. The fact that the game runs at 20-30 FPS doesn't seem like a "minor miracle", by 2023 standards that's ba…

Disagree. If you understand that the switch hardware is very limiting, you understand that the game runs despite that, and you understand the usage of hyperbole to emphasize how bad the switch hardware is for 2023, the original title should make perfect sense. It's also more informative on what the article will contain since you can infer that it will specifically talk about the hardware and its limitations, whereas the shortened title makes it sound like a plain benchmark.

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

#235
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…

[dead]

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

#236

The title from Boring Report: > The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Performance on Switch Article's title: > Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom’s Performance On Switch Sounds Like A Minor Miracle I find the Boring Report summary to be much more informative that the article, it's like they trimmed away all the fat. The fact that the game runs at 20-30 FPS doesn't seem like a "minor miracle", by 2023 standards that's ba…

Disagree. If you understand that the switch hardware is very limiting, you understand that the game runs despite that, and you understand the usage of hyperbole to emphasize how bad the switch hardware is for 2023, the original title should make perfect sense. It's also more informative on what the article will contain since you can infer that it will specifically talk about the hardware and its limitations, whereas…

It's not that you're explicitly wrong, it's that you and the article are putting a very positive spin on what is objectively mediocre performance. I could just as easily put a negative spin on it, and suggest there's something wrong with the fact that the Switch can barely run modern games.

For the record, I own a Switch and I'm thinking about buying the new Zelda game... I just like facts more than spin.

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

#238
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come around to there being legitimate usecases for this type of generative AI, but I don't think producing anything that's supposed to be "True" or "Correct" is one. I think the only useful usecases is for when you want to generate fiction.

If you tell GPT-4 specifically to respond with proper jargon for the domain like that found in a textbook or journal it provides much much more useful replies. Silly that prompt engineering is what's required but at least for my purposes wherein I fact check it's output it's right nearly all the time and I've learned a great deal.

It doesn't mean it's less biased. All of these styles are exploited as a form of rhetoric. Many people simply take information written in a textbook style as authoritative.

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

#240
post #154
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False metadata for rich media is a damned tough problem to target. Putting aside any actually truthful captions, how do I know that "image of X" is actually an image of X? Reading some of the Bellingcat investigations, and time spent, doesn't bode well. I guess you could TinEye and index/hash the entire web's worth of rich media, then spot discrepancies (listed as X here, but Y there), but that seems horrendous in co…

>>seems horrendous in compute/bandwidth/storage terms Yes, but the usefulness of being able to automate that identification in near-real-time to debunk the firehose of falsehoods we get from everywhere would be astronomical Anyone reading would have a huge edge in both being more accurately grounded in reality and being able to identify the biggest/hottest disinformation streams

That's a different problem. An important problem to be sure; but different. It's the kind Reality Defender are trying to solve to the extent it's possible and I am afraid it's just a matter of time before we see the effects of this in some crisis point when we can least afford the time to make sense of the firehose of falsehoods (nice phrase btw).

https://realitydefender.com/

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