Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google tests A.I. tool that is able to write news articles

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 142 posts

Re: Google tests A.I. tool that is able to write news articles

#21

Post by AndrewKemendo »

skepticATX wrote: post #19
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #7

I’d love to hear somebody try to explain how this won’t negatively impact the labor market for journalists. My guess is that the argument will be that the “tools will simply help augment rather than replace the writer.” We know, however, that some small segment of implementations will actually in fact, cause someone to be fired or replaced, and things will get slightly worse for the consumer. An alternative explanati…

There isn’t enough information to make that call. If it’s perfect then sure, it’d impact things. Essentially what we know is that Google (with a financial incentive to make exaggerated claims) has demoed something to media execs (with little to no background required to critically evaluate these claims).

I’d agree with this, but…

I think it’s safe to say the intention of every party here seems to be aligned with the notable exclusion of an actual writer

Writers and journalists aren’t quoted in the article and I see no reference to them being included in the product pitch (article only discusses executives being given demos)

So in terms of incentive alignment, the person being impacted seems to be the least involved.

Re: Google tests A.I. tool that is able to write news articles

#22

Post by AndrewKemendo »

echelon wrote: post #8
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #7

I’d love to hear somebody try to explain how this won’t negatively impact the labor market for journalists. My guess is that the argument will be that the “tools will simply help augment rather than replace the writer.” We know, however, that some small segment of implementations will actually in fact, cause someone to be fired or replaced, and things will get slightly worse for the consumer. An alternative explanati…

How many humans do you want employed as butter churners? I imagine that the new AI-enabled jobs are going to have so much more autonomy and that we'll see a switch from capital intensive businesses employing lots of people (eg. Hollywood studios) to lots of tiny indie houses with fewer than a dozen folks, building exactly what they want with freedom.

> How many humans do you want employed as butter churners?

More than exist today probably.

We should not be regularly eliminating slightly less efficient processes that use human workers, for completely alienated processes that are worse, that use fewer workers.

Self checkout is a perfect example of this. It’s worse for everyone except for grocery store owners.

Re: Google tests A.I. tool that is able to write news articles

#23

Post by AndrewKemendo »

carlosjobim wrote: post #14
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #7

I’d love to hear somebody try to explain how this won’t negatively impact the labor market for journalists. My guess is that the argument will be that the “tools will simply help augment rather than replace the writer.” We know, however, that some small segment of implementations will actually in fact, cause someone to be fired or replaced, and things will get slightly worse for the consumer. An alternative explanati…

Real journalists investigate and discover facts and create new content: "news". But many people working as "journalists" just re-write what other people have reported. The first category can never be replaced by a machine, because the machine can only repeat material it has been fed, or make up lies. The second category should be replaced by machines. There's unlimited ventures for investigation for anybody who wants…

So then you just chose to respond with my final example:

“ An alternative explanation will be “well The writing wasn’t very good anyway, it was all a regurgitation of the same thing over and over anyways”, so “nothing of value has been lost.””

In fact something has been lost, which is a human being is now less able to feed themselves and their family and take a vacation and create something valuable.

The fact that you and others don’t care about that outcome is the problem.

Re: Google tests A.I. tool that is able to write news articles

#24

Post by davidguetta »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #7

I’d love to hear somebody try to explain how this won’t negatively impact the labor market for journalists. My guess is that the argument will be that the “tools will simply help augment rather than replace the writer.” We know, however, that some small segment of implementations will actually in fact, cause someone to be fired or replaced, and things will get slightly worse for the consumer. An alternative explanati…

That doesn't matter in the end.

1/ Technology has always disrupted labor market so I mean that's not even a question this will happen.

2/ It's not that sad: I've worked in journaism and the reality is that 80% of news article are already most of the time a sad copypasta of a single main source of info such as reuters / AFP in france. Most of journalism is already noise.

Maybe that will help recenter journalism on real investigative missions rather than this current low value state.

Re: Google tests A.I. tool that is able to write news articles

#25

Post by carlosjobim »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #23
carlosjobim wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real journalists investigate and discover facts and create new content: "news". But many people working as "journalists" just re-write what other people have reported. The first category can never be replaced by a machine, because the machine can only repeat material it has been fed, or make up lies. The second category should be replaced by machines. There's unlimited ventures for investigation for anybody who wants…

So then you just chose to respond with my final example: “ An alternative explanation will be “well The writing wasn’t very good anyway, it was all a regurgitation of the same thing over and over anyways”, so “nothing of value has been lost.”” In fact something has been lost, which is a human being is now less able to feed themselves and their family and take a vacation and create something valuable. The fact that yo…

If a person is a journalist, then that person has the capacity to conduct investigations, make interviews and such things that an AI can never do. If the person is only able to make re-writes, then he or she is not a journalist. If the AI is good at making rewrites, that will free up time for journalists to focus on making more quality reporting.

Re: Google tests A.I. tool that is able to write news articles

#26

Post by Brendinooo »

hotpotamus wrote: post #16
Brendinooo wrote: post #12

> The tool, known internally by the working title Genesis, can take in information — details of current events, for example — and generate news content, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the product. Doesn't this already exist in some form? I remember headlines from a few years ago about how stuff like wire reports about sports games could be generated from a box score.

The Simpsons called it the DJ 3000[0], complete with the executive threatening to replace people with it. It's not exactly a novel idea. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_VwP8yf5TI

Of course not, but I thought it was already more than just an idea.

Re: Google tests A.I. tool that is able to write news articles

#28

Post by tivert »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #7

I’d love to hear somebody try to explain how this won’t negatively impact the labor market for journalists. My guess is that the argument will be that the “tools will simply help augment rather than replace the writer.” We know, however, that some small segment of implementations will actually in fact, cause someone to be fired or replaced, and things will get slightly worse for the consumer. An alternative explanati…

> I’d love to hear somebody try to explain how this won’t negatively impact the labor market for journalists.

According to the OP: "[t]he tool...can take in information — details of current events, for example — and generate news content." IMHO, that's not really journalism at all, which I would define as gathering that information and deciding what bits are worthy of being reported (e.g. what's new and interesting vs what's already well-known and understood).

Honestly, this tool seems like another example of techies redefining the problem to what their program can do, instead of writing a tool to solve the problem. I would imagine that the "writing" part of a news article happens nearly automatically as a side effect of all the other activities a journalist has to do. Sort of like how the "writing a program" part of developing software will nearly automatically fall out of the task of writing a sufficiently precise specification. A tool that can translate such a specification into code is a nothingburger (despite its maker's inevitable hype about rendering software engineers obsolete), because that's not where the work is.

> I’d love to hear people saying hey maybe let’s not do this in order to maintain a human system run by humans for the benefit of humans and that includes paying humans for labor (when you could actually get equivalent labor from a machine) because it’s important to keep humans alive and creating communities and supporting each other.

I totally agree on this.

I might be fruitful to develop an AI tasked with hunting down and exterminating software engineers and tech executives who seek develop AI to replace human labor. /s

Re: Google tests A.I. tool that is able to write news articles

#29

Post by solardev »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #22
echelon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many humans do you want employed as butter churners? I imagine that the new AI-enabled jobs are going to have so much more autonomy and that we'll see a switch from capital intensive businesses employing lots of people (eg. Hollywood studios) to lots of tiny indie houses with fewer than a dozen folks, building exactly what they want with freedom.

> How many humans do you want employed as butter churners? More than exist today probably. We should not be regularly eliminating slightly less efficient processes that use human workers, for completely alienated processes that are worse, that use fewer workers. Self checkout is a perfect example of this. It’s worse for everyone except for grocery store owners.

As a shopper, self checkout is wonderful. It's so much faster and easier than waiting for a single cashier or two. Especially the ones with a scan gun, so you don't have to fight the stupid countertop scanner.

As for lost jobs, should we really be propping up unnecessary jobs that really don't do much except poorly substituting a machine? Whether it's checkout or journalism or coding or politics... if a computer can do it better, why not let it and free up the human for other things?

Technology leading to job losses and changes has been happening for a couple centuries now. It has real social impacts, but the answer can't just be "pretend it didn't happen and keep employing them". Maybe our economic and educational systems need to evolve to keep pace, rather than keeping people stuck in assembly line monotony just to keep them meaninglessly employed.

Re: Google tests A.I. tool that is able to write news articles

#30

Post by solardev »

carlosjobim wrote: post #25
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then you just chose to respond with my final example: “ An alternative explanation will be “well The writing wasn’t very good anyway, it was all a regurgitation of the same thing over and over anyways”, so “nothing of value has been lost.”” In fact something has been lost, which is a human being is now less able to feed themselves and their family and take a vacation and create something valuable. The fact that yo…

If a person is a journalist, then that person has the capacity to conduct investigations, make interviews and such things that an AI can never do. If the person is only able to make re-writes, then he or she is not a journalist. If the AI is good at making rewrites, that will free up time for journalists to focus on making more quality reporting.

We're probably not very far away from an AI being able to email and make calls and do those interviews. Or create a Zoom avatar for itself.

Is it going to produce Pulutzwr-winning articles right off the bat? Probably not. But I could easily see it replacing the more mundane everyday articles, especially when it's just regurgitating some press release or new study or product launch.

Post reply on HN