Google tests A.I. tool that is able to write news articles • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by paganel » Thu, Jul 20, 2023, 6:11 PM UTC

davidguetta wrote: post #24

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 rea…

Unfortunately local news doesn’t find its place in Reuters/AFP news dispatched, and so losing local news will basically mean an epistemic black hole when it comes to the stuff physically closest to us.

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

#52

Post by thehappypm » Thu, Jul 20, 2023, 6:14 PM UTC

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…

Journalism is a lot more than just turning press releases and such into articles. In fact, making it cheaper to churn those out will free up money for real journalism — investigations, interviews, analysis, opinions.

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

#53

Post by bastardoperator » Thu, Jul 20, 2023, 6:21 PM UTC

Good, this will cause media to rethink their relationship with Google.

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

#54

Post by esafak » Thu, Jul 20, 2023, 6:26 PM UTC

Alifatisk wrote: post #20

jononomo wrote: post #4

I suppose all a news writer has to do now is tell the AI what happened and then then the AI can tell everyone else what happened.

Is good quality journalism really that bad to invest in? These days I have to scroll through a lot of fillers in articles just to get into the real story.

So... have one AI to generate the article and another to condense it back to the summary it was created from :)

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

#55

Post by holoduke » Thu, Jul 20, 2023, 6:29 PM UTC

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…

Good journalism is also a formvof activism. Not sure if that exists in AI writers.

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

#56

Post by solardev » Thu, Jul 20, 2023, 6:31 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #41

solardev wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In years of using self checkout, I've required human assistance only a handful of times, maybe 3 or 4 minutes total over all the years. That's still a huge improvement over waiting for cashiers. Perhaps your experiences were different, but for me they are a godsend. That's not really the point though. About the jobs, yes, we are in agreement about the displacement. I'm saying we need better systems to deal with that…

>I'm saying we need better systems to deal with that displacement at the social/national level, not at the micro level of an individual job going away one at a time Why not both? You can decide whether you will support or boycott organizations and systems that actively pursue these things, while also lobbying and voting and building organizations that pursue mutual voluntary organization. Might mean you have to chang…

> Literally nobody suggested this in this thread, me or otherwise.

Sorry I wasn't clear! I can see how that looks like a strawman... what I meant is that I would like to see a more protectionist economy (by the government). Apologies for the unclear phrasing.

> I would challenge you to imagine some solutions that are neither capitalist nor governmental. If you can't think of anything beyond these two options then I suggest reading more about mutual-voluntary organization.

> Why not both? You can decide whether you will support or boycott organizations and systems that actively pursue these things, while also lobbying and voting and building organizations that pursue mutual voluntary organization. Might mean you have to change your lifestyle though and most people don't want to do that.

I do try to support community organizations of various forms (State Farm, REI, 501s, ESOPs, food co-ops, solidarity economies, church-charities for disaster relief and homelessness, etc.).

But I think there are some problems at scale that are uniquely suited for government-like entities with national policymaking reach, and technology-driven job displacement is one of them. I'm not enough of an anarchist to see a well-functioning government (which, to be clear, the USA does not have) as terribly different from other forms of democratic decision-making. Rather than having a bunch of small shadow governments parallel to the federal and state ones, I really wish we could transform those actual governments into something with more direct democracy, especially at the local levels. That may or may not happen in my lifetime, but I think that's a better long-term solution than a bunch of small scrappy NGOs and alt-societies popping in and out of existence, almost always with very limited reach and impact. Sometimes they feel more like performance theater than actual social forces. I think one can only witness so many Occupy-like uprisings before starting to seriously doubt their effectiveness.

I believe it takes a certain economy of scale that only government (and huge multinational corps) have access to, that's needed to be truly transformative. Some unions have reskilling programs, for example, but it's not really enough to save an entire profession/industry.

But... I would love to be proven wrong. Do you have any examples of non-governmental cooperative/democratic organizations that can effect large-scale socioeconomic change?

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

#57

Post by morkalork » Thu, Jul 20, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

I guess this is Google's way of telling media companies in Canada / Australia how they feel about link taxes. I wonder where they got their training data though..

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

#58

Post by slowmovintarget » Thu, Jul 20, 2023, 6:36 PM UTC

holoduke wrote: post #55

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…

Good journalism is also a formvof activism. Not sure if that exists in AI writers.

Which would sadly make AI writing more attractive to the C-suite rather than less. It would produce writing to match their current preference.

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

#59

Post by hef19898 » Thu, Jul 20, 2023, 6:37 PM UTC

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…

Well, those people who wrote the 234th article about a lionesse potentially on the loose in Berlin today will definitely have a hard competing with AI...

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

#60

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, Jul 20, 2023, 6:41 PM UTC

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…

As a journalist, I hate writing. I like hunting down facts and details, the actual writing part is miserable and boring. There's constant sweating over how much context to include so that the reader is well-informed vs the risk of burying the important stuff. I've never used an LLM to write anything, but I have seriously considered doing a dense infodump and telling it to ask me up to 5 contextual questions before spitting out a report.

Editing other people's stuff is even worse, because many writers aren't burdened by editorial concerns and don't bother to put in the effort to make their story coherent and interesting in the first draft. Also the money is terrible unless you are lucky enough to work in a corporate newsroom.