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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

#241

Post by zulban »

vunderba wrote: 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…

When TV was first introduced, the first broadcasts were people standing by a mic reading a radio script.

AI podcasts aren't going to be drop in replacements for exactly the length, frequency, personalities, topics, and style of current podcasts. Claiming that's a fault with AI podcasts just indicates a lack of imagination.

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

#242

Post by pbronez »

tomcam wrote: 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…

Thanks for the primary source. Concur the quality is poor. Google’s NotebookLM podcast summary is way more natural sounding.

The video was even worse than the audio. The lip sync was off. The girl looked like someone else’s mouth was mapped onto her face.

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

#243

Post by cowsandmilk »

tomcam wrote: 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…

The male host’s hands are literally on a loop, it is disturbing. And the female host had several nonsensical sentence fragments. The script isn’t even up to par with what you would see in a college news show.

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

#244

Post by swyx »

vunderba wrote: 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…

> If you can find an LLM+TTS generated podcast with even a FRACTION of the infectious energy

this is the wrong standard. there's a long tail of many many many many topics that a Radio Lab will never have the resources or critical mass or staff or turnaround time to cover. AI can serve the long tail like nothing you have ever seen. (because humans are expensive, and deservedly so, but our needs and wants are infinite)

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

#245

Post by ruined »

tartoran wrote: post #90
Spoom wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying human presenters.

Human presenters aren't too expensive and are quite flexible, are easily replaced and can make or break a show. Yeah, there's the novelty factor now but am not sure how long it'll take until GenAI on broadcasts will signal second rate, subpar knockoff.

>Human presenters aren't too expensive and are quite flexible, are easily replaced and can make or break a show.

well, if you owned 257 local media outlets across an area five thousand miles wide, you might have the experience and the insight to see it differently. you might identify an opportunity for innovative advancements in efficiency

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

#246

Post by jodrellblank »

petercooper wrote: post #155
WgaqPdNr7PGLGVW wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Give it time. Progress is fast. Why pick 2020 as your starting point? That is simply around the time the current set of techniques came about. We had generative art back in the late 90's - my screensaver has been generative art for over 20 years now. Obviously generative art has come a long way but people have been working on various approaches to it for at least 30 years.

From 2020 until now, we've gone from crude blurry or clearly generative artefacts to being able to create full professional illustrations based upon textual prompts. That is huge. Classic generative art techniques look like cave paintings compared to what the latest image generation models put out (and I'm not talking about "AI slop" type stuff that DALL-E does). Similarly, tools could fabricate podcasts years ago th…

> "being able to create full professional illustrations based upon textual prompts. That is huge. .. (and I'm not talking about "AI slop" type stuff that DALL-E does)"

Then what are you talking about, where can I get it?

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

#247

Post by quickthrowman »

mjr00 wrote: post #20
tokioyoyo wrote: post #11

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…

The younger generation loves short-form, to-the-point stuff. Which is the exact opposite of what the current crop of GenAI makes. In a tiktok video, every sentence, every word counts because there's a time limit. If people don't engage with your content in the first 3 seconds, it's worthless. The video linked in another post starts off with 15 seconds of complete fluff. You'd have better engagement if you have a guy…

Short form video content is absolutely terrible, every time I watch one I have an extremely strong urge to verify whatever I heard in the video, so I just avoid watching them altogether. I’m not sure how anything of value can be 45 seconds long with absolutely no context, outside of comedy.

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

#248

Post by desdenova »

portaouflop wrote: post #213
jerf wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Your essay must be at least X words" has always been an impediment to truly good writing skills, but now it's just worthless.

I never had that requirement outside the first years of school- where it’s more about writing practice than writing actual essays. After it was always “must be below X pages”

When I was a lazy kid, and there was a requirement to fill a number of lines/pages, I'd just write with bigger letters.

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

#249

Post by xtracto »

sourcepluck wrote: post #40
vunderba wrote: 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…

We used to have some "radio station" in shoutcast during the 90s. It was very local and geeky, but had a couple of listeners. It was kind of a podcast

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

#250

Post by fsndz »

vunderba wrote: 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…

same is true for AI music, AI art, AI articles to some extent. most communication is about human connection. you remove it and the communication becomes worthless. AI is great for communication that has less personal involvement like drafting short professional emails. that's also why all the AI agent craze seems problematic: https://medium.com/thoughts-on-machine-learning/langchains-s...
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