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The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired

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Re: The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired

#51
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree, but I also think it's just not geared towards us because of our age and preexisting beliefs of "what podcasts/news/videos are supposed to be". Think of kids around age It's the same as short-video format for me. Sure, I can watch some TikToks from time to time, but making them, or continuously getting my news from them? Yeah, that's not gonna fly for me. However, for my niblings (age 8-17) that's bas…

> anyone who bought games would laugh at you if you said every game that you paid $80 for would also have endless amount of small items that you can buy for real money. > kids that grew up with Fortnite and Roblox just think that's the norm. How so? Fortnite and Roblox don’t cost $80, they are free to play with in game purchases.

They’re F2P, but the social pressure from your friends to buy the next skin, mini game and etc. completely normalizes the behaviour as you grow up. Then you take it as a “usual thing” and don’t bat an eye when a game you buy also has different skins in the game.

At least that was my perception when I played Call of Duty with my younger family members.

Re: The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired

#52
post #5

Slightly tangential, but this is the reason I'm baffled why people think that AI-driven podcasts would ever be worth listening to. If you can find an LLM+TTS generated podcast with even a FRACTION of the infectious energy as something like Good Job Brain, Radio Lab, or Ask Me Another, then I'll eat my hat. I don't even own one. I'll drive to the nearest hat store, purchase the tallest stovetop hat that I can afford a…

As someone who's struggled to really get into podcasts, I'm convinced that most people who enjoy podcasts don't really actively listen to them, they just like that extra bit of noise in the background while they do something else, with the added bonus that they might just listen at just the right time to pick up some interesting factoid. Don't get me wrong, I like podcasts, Fall of Civilizations being a personal favo…

Having this strong of an opinion on something you admittedly don't understand (the appeal of podcasts) is not a great choice. Maybe ask people instead of making up stuff.

Re: The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired

#53
post #5

Slightly tangential, but this is the reason I'm baffled why people think that AI-driven podcasts would ever be worth listening to. If you can find an LLM+TTS generated podcast with even a FRACTION of the infectious energy as something like Good Job Brain, Radio Lab, or Ask Me Another, then I'll eat my hat. I don't even own one. I'll drive to the nearest hat store, purchase the tallest stovetop hat that I can afford a…

Go back to the 1990s (even probably the 2000s?) and ask literally anyone what they think of the idea of people spending huge quantities of their time on this mortal plane watching videos of other people talking about how they do their make up and pick their outfits. Are those videos "worth watching"? Are videos of people playing video games "worth watching"? Are videos of people opening products and saying out loud t…

videos of other people talking about how they do their make up and pick their outfits.

Doesn't seem that much different from a fashion magazine interview about what X celebrity likes to wear. Those have been around for quite a long time.

Re: The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired

#54
post #5

Slightly tangential, but this is the reason I'm baffled why people think that AI-driven podcasts would ever be worth listening to. If you can find an LLM+TTS generated podcast with even a FRACTION of the infectious energy as something like Good Job Brain, Radio Lab, or Ask Me Another, then I'll eat my hat. I don't even own one. I'll drive to the nearest hat store, purchase the tallest stovetop hat that I can afford a…

I have probably written this comment about a dozen times on HN already, but: I agree completely, because people don't listen to podcasts purely for information, they listen for information plus community, personality, or just a basic human connection. If you're a content creator today, the best thing you can do to "AI-proof" your work is to inject your personality into it as much as possible. Preferably your physical…

> The future of human content is being as human as possible. AI isn't going to replace that in our lifetimes, if ever.

I have been working on machine learning algorithms for a long time. Since the time when telling someone I worked on AI was a conversation killer, even with technical people.

AI's are going to understand people better than people understand people. That could be in five years, maybe - many things are happening faster than expected. Or in 15 years. But that might be the outside range.

There is something about human psychology where the faster something changes, the less we are aware of the rate of change. We don't review the steps and their increasing rate that happened before we cared about that tech. We just accept the new thing that finally gets our attention like it was a one off event, instead of an accelerating compounding flood, and imagine it isn't really going to change much soon.

--

I know this isn't a popular view.

But what is happening is on the order of the transition to the first multi-cellular creatures, or the first bodies with specialized cells, the first nervous systems, the first brains, the first creatures to use language. Far bigger than advances such as writing or even the Internet. This is a transition to a completely new mode for the substrate of life and intelligence. The lack of dependency on any particular substrate.

"We", the new generation of things we are building, will have none of the limits and inefficiencies of our ancient slow DNA-style life. Or our stark physical bottlenecks on action, communication, or scaling, and our inability to understand or directly edit our own internal traits.

We will have to face many challenges in the coming years. It can't hurt to mindfully face them earlier than later.

Re: The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired

#55
post #3

Incredibly, no videos linked in an article about a video newscast. I think this is an example. The AI doesn't even pronounce "AI" correctly. Interestingly, it looks slightly offscreen just the way real newsreaders do when they're on prompter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa7Q2S7VWUk They do a lot right. There's interaction between the bots. They look kind of professional but not Los Angeles/New York quality, which…

I could only find this video. James' arms go up and down in an alarming manner. Rose has more natural movements but the voice you hear when her mouth moves is worse than the worst foreign film voice-over. Somehow the person and the voice mismatched in "tone" in a way that's hard to describe.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1040710730435452

Re: The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired

#56
post #5

Slightly tangential, but this is the reason I'm baffled why people think that AI-driven podcasts would ever be worth listening to. If you can find an LLM+TTS generated podcast with even a FRACTION of the infectious energy as something like Good Job Brain, Radio Lab, or Ask Me Another, then I'll eat my hat. I don't even own one. I'll drive to the nearest hat store, purchase the tallest stovetop hat that I can afford a…

As someone who's struggled to really get into podcasts, I'm convinced that most people who enjoy podcasts don't really actively listen to them, they just like that extra bit of noise in the background while they do something else, with the added bonus that they might just listen at just the right time to pick up some interesting factoid. Don't get me wrong, I like podcasts, Fall of Civilizations being a personal favo…

> I'm convinced that most people who enjoy podcasts don't really actively listen to them,

Or you know not everyone is the same. Just because you struggle with something doesn’t mean that it is not easy and effortless for others.

I can’t dribble a basketball and walk at the same time, still I won’t make the claim that everyone who claims to enjoy playing basketball is somehow fudging it.

Re: The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired

#57
post #5

Slightly tangential, but this is the reason I'm baffled why people think that AI-driven podcasts would ever be worth listening to. If you can find an LLM+TTS generated podcast with even a FRACTION of the infectious energy as something like Good Job Brain, Radio Lab, or Ask Me Another, then I'll eat my hat. I don't even own one. I'll drive to the nearest hat store, purchase the tallest stovetop hat that I can afford a…

As someone who's struggled to really get into podcasts, I'm convinced that most people who enjoy podcasts don't really actively listen to them, they just like that extra bit of noise in the background while they do something else, with the added bonus that they might just listen at just the right time to pick up some interesting factoid. Don't get me wrong, I like podcasts, Fall of Civilizations being a personal favo…

I don't get them either since the hosts are typically "regular people" talking about often complicated subjects that they are by no means domain experts in.

I find the format of "Dumdum Host A read some articles about something last night and Dumdum Host B asks questions about it" especially grating, unless it's purely opinion-driven and then I still probably won't care unless I read about the hosts and find out they are probably people with opinions worth listening to.

I'd rather read a book or be with my own thoughts without having them be even more crowded by some randos telling me stuff they think they know

Re: The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired

#58
post #5

Slightly tangential, but this is the reason I'm baffled why people think that AI-driven podcasts would ever be worth listening to. If you can find an LLM+TTS generated podcast with even a FRACTION of the infectious energy as something like Good Job Brain, Radio Lab, or Ask Me Another, then I'll eat my hat. I don't even own one. I'll drive to the nearest hat store, purchase the tallest stovetop hat that I can afford a…

I agree with your overall statement, but

> If you can find an LLM+TTS generated podcast with even a FRACTION of the infectious energy as something like Good Job Brain, Radio Lab, or Ask Me Another, then I'll eat my hat.

Come on, we can all see how much faster these things are getting better. In a few years it will be impossible to distinguish them from a real person.

Another few after that video will be the same.

I'm not saying it's a good thing, but clearly it's a thing that will happen.

Re: The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have probably written this comment about a dozen times on HN already, but: I agree completely, because people don't listen to podcasts purely for information, they listen for information plus community, personality, or just a basic human connection. If you're a content creator today, the best thing you can do to "AI-proof" your work is to inject your personality into it as much as possible. Preferably your physical…

> The future of human content is being as human as possible. AI isn't going to replace that in our lifetimes, if ever. I have been working on machine learning algorithms for a long time. Since the time when telling someone I worked on AI was a conversation killer, even with technical people. AI's are going to understand people better than people understand people. That could be in five years, maybe - many things are…

Sorry but I don’t think this is much evidence of anything. The point at which an AI can imitate a live-streaming human being is decades away. By then, we will almost certainly have developed a “real Human ID” system that verifies one’s humanity. I wrote about this more here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42154928

The idea that AI is just going to eat all human creative activity because technology accelerates quickly is not a real argument, nor does it stand up to any serious projections of the future.

Re: The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired

#60
post #42

The disruptive technology adoption process is at least somewhat predictable, including: * Most people react negatively to the disruption because of the risk, fear of the unknown, and also because people don't like change. * Also, early in the development and adoption of a new, immature technology, there is a lot of trial and error regarding applications, mostly error. Sometimes those failures are because the applicat…

At least this is funny in the way it looks robotic and dorky. When it gets better it will become increasingly scary to go on this road. Why would anyone want to watch anything gen AI other than a one off curiosity?
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