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ESPN AI recap of Alex Morgan’s final professional match fails to mention her

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Re: ESPN AI recap of Alex Morgan’s final professional match fails to mention her

#51

Post by fedeb95 »

skipants wrote: post #10

It's pretty funny to me that this is used as a hit-piece against AI generated content. Here's an open-secret for everyone: web-based sports content companies have been automatically generating content articles for at least a decade; way before LLMs became popular. It is and was mostly done for search ranking. The more seemingly applicable content, the better your SEO. This situation has probably happened several time…

to me it doesn't appear particularly against or in favour of. Seemingly, LLMs don't avoid completely some of the mistakes that were already being made. Just as with any technology, the questions should be: by how much the two errors differ? Does the cost justify this margin?

Re: ESPN AI recap of Alex Morgan’s final professional match fails to mention her

#52

Post by karaterobot »

> ESPN made a point to note that “each AI-generated recap will be reviewed by a human editor to ensure quality and accuracy.” It’s unclear if the human editor failed to notice Morgan’s absence or also decided it was not worth mentioning.

I don't believe they'll have a human editor ensure quality and accuracy. The whole point of having AI write your stories is to minimize the number of people they have to pay, so paying a trained professional to thoroughly review every story is probably off the table. They may compromise on the thoroughness of the reviews, or the expertise of the editor, or they may just not have a human in the loop for every story, but what they will not do is pay a professional editor to do their job the right way, this I can guarantee.

Re: ESPN AI recap of Alex Morgan’s final professional match fails to mention her

#53

Post by fedeb95 »

omgJustTest wrote: post #47
skipants wrote: post #10

It's pretty funny to me that this is used as a hit-piece against AI generated content. Here's an open-secret for everyone: web-based sports content companies have been automatically generating content articles for at least a decade; way before LLMs became popular. It is and was mostly done for search ranking. The more seemingly applicable content, the better your SEO. This situation has probably happened several time…

Well AI certainly didn't make it better in this case. The fact that it is profitable to make this generic sports-lingo-laced content is, on its own, pretty depressing.

the depression shouldn't arise from the generation, but from the consumption, for it is the latter that ultimately drives the former; that, in turn, can generate a reflection on what I myself consume.

Re: ESPN AI recap of Alex Morgan’s final professional match fails to mention her

#54

Post by [deleted] »

HelloMcFly wrote: post #46
sigmar wrote: post #44

If "this is the last game for Alex Morgan" wasn't included as any part of the input/prompt, how on earth could the AI summary have come up with this for inclusion in the game recap? If some teenage intern was given a table with the goals scored (player and minute mark), they would have written a similar article... but that's definitely not a good excuse for news orgs and sports sites to just use generative AI for eve…

I don't think the critique is "how stupid of the AI" but rather "this is one example of how AI content falls short" even when it is supposedly reviewed by a human as ESPN claims

[deleted]

Re: ESPN AI recap of Alex Morgan’s final professional match fails to mention her

#55

Post by tivert »

sigmar wrote: post #44

If "this is the last game for Alex Morgan" wasn't included as any part of the input/prompt, how on earth could the AI summary have come up with this for inclusion in the game recap? If some teenage intern was given a table with the goals scored (player and minute mark), they would have written a similar article... but that's definitely not a good excuse for news orgs and sports sites to just use generative AI for eve…

> If "this is the last game for Alex Morgan" wasn't included as any part of the input/prompt, how on earth could the AI summary have come up with this for inclusion in the game recap?

It couldn't, which is the problem. One of the big selling points of generative AI is to cut people out of the process of writing. If someone actually has to watch the game and describe what happened in the prompt, what's the point of the technology at all?

This is what an application of generative AI looks like: using low-quality input to generate something that looks like an article. This is our glorious future, brought to you by OpenAI.

Re: ESPN AI recap of Alex Morgan’s final professional match fails to mention her

#56

Post by batesy »

jetrink wrote: post #50

This match was broadcast by ESPN on both ESPN2 and ESPN+. In that case, they are presumably paying two knowledgeable commentators to talk about the match before, during, and after it happens, adding context and describing the important events. Are they not providing a transcript of that to the writerbot? That seems like real low-hanging fruit, especially since the commentary is already live captioned.

This is what I was thinking too... Still early days I guess lol

Re: ESPN AI recap of Alex Morgan’s final professional match fails to mention her

#57

Post by JAlexoid »

alt227 wrote: post #23
xhkkffbf wrote: post #8

I know we're supposed to be shaking our fist at these stupid AIs, but why should Morgan be mentioned? Did she score any goals? Did she get much playing time? I didn't watch the game myself, but it's entirely possible she did nothing notable on the field. So is the AI really mistaken?

Here, I'll give you the paragraph from the article which talks about your point, since you must have have missed it: "You could certainly make the case that everything in the recap is accurate from a factual perspective. However, the fact that it doesn’t include any information about Morgan and how important this night was for her, the NWSL, and U.S. women’s soccer speaks to how these kinds of services can’t replicat…

Most game recaps that I've read are no less dry, than the AI generated one.

The reviews that come after are typically the ones that cover broader impact. Reviews also include third party commentary and more insights from specialists.

The benefit of having a factual recap generated minutes after the game far supersede the value added by a few words from a low paid recap writer hours after the game.

Re: ESPN AI recap of Alex Morgan’s final professional match fails to mention her

#58

Post by segasaturn »

JAlexoid wrote: post #39
segasaturn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are very tired of the "move fast and break things" approach of the last decade and a half. Especially when the technology in question is being used to replace real jobs done by real people (in an already very tough job market). The only people benefiting from implimentations of AI like this are the CEOs and executives, who I wouldn't call "hackers" either.

There is definitely an argument for having a human proofread the article, but for all we know the recap could have been proofread by someone with as much understanding of soccer drama as the AI itself. These articles were mostly written by low paid writers, that already lack the interest in the field. Most of them lacked nuance of recaps, because of who was writing them. And who are we to say that some disinterested…

Well, we can risk of having a disinterested writer write a boring recap of a game, or we can guarantee that a disinterested LLM will write a boring recap of a game. The only difference is that it's cheaper for the CEOs to call an OpenAI API than pay a writer a salary. If corporations are going to try to justify adopting AI (and the mass layoffs that naturally comes with that), then the AI has to produce work that's not just as bad as the worst human output.

Re: ESPN AI recap of Alex Morgan’s final professional match fails to mention her

#59

Post by skipants »

fedeb95 wrote: post #53
omgJustTest wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well AI certainly didn't make it better in this case. The fact that it is profitable to make this generic sports-lingo-laced content is, on its own, pretty depressing.

the depression shouldn't arise from the generation, but from the consumption, for it is the latter that ultimately drives the former; that, in turn, can generate a reflection on what I myself consume.

I don't think people do actually consume it. In my experience this content was purely for SEO or maybe just a headline that people read quickly to keep up-to-date. The actual article content is rarely seen by a human.

Re: ESPN AI recap of Alex Morgan’s final professional match fails to mention her

#60

Post by holman »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #8

I know we're supposed to be shaking our fist at these stupid AIs, but why should Morgan be mentioned? Did she score any goals? Did she get much playing time? I didn't watch the game myself, but it's entirely possible she did nothing notable on the field. So is the AI really mistaken?

Yes. It’s probably one of the most-watched games in NWSL this season. People who don’t even watch NWSL watched this game.

I mean, hell, even if it were just another game I’d probably find it relevant to include that Alex subbed off in the 14th, because that’s really eye-raising. This is a total miss by AI that would have never gotten past a real editor.

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