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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

#311

Post by godelski »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #11
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…

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…

  >  they'll take that as normal and won't blink twice if that becomes the de-facto standard in about 10 years.
This is in part my worry, but the other part is that there just won't be much other of an option. I can't be the only one that feels like a lot of information is just... shit. Yeah, there's still YouTube channels I find that are brilliant but they definitely are not fitting to the algorithm and it's clear they're "punished" for this. I think we can say the same about blogs and other places. It is just getting much harder to actually discover the gems.

The result of this is that I watch more and read garbage and have less joy. Maybe I'm just addicted to the routine, but I definitely consume less. I just think it is the problem when you try to make something for everyone; you just end up making things with no substance, no soul. As they say, diversity is the spice of life, and good god, could I go for some actual flavor.

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

#312

Post by avs733 »

datahack wrote: post #82

While I enjoyed the article, it’s just another in a line of the same article with different flavors and authors that all have the same fundamental error. The prevailing counterargument against AI consistently hinges on the present state of AI rather than the trajectory of its development: but what matters is not the capabilities of AI as they exist today, but the astonishing velocity at which those capabilities are e…

the prevailing argument in favor of investing in AI is its potential.

the prevailing argument against using AI is its current lack of potential.

Those things are inherently in tension, think of it as hiring a new employee straight out of undergrad. You are hiring them based largely on the employee they will become...with increasing expectations over time balanced against increasing variability in outcomes over time. However, if one year in that employee continues to suck at their current job, their long term potential doesn't really matter. Moreso, the long term potential is no longer credibly evidenced by the inability to progress at doing the current job.

This is an investment gone bad in the current state of things. It doesn't matter what might happen it matters what did. The investment was made based on the perception of astonishing velocity, and it seems that we may need to calibrate our spedometers.

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

#314

Post by skeeter2020 »

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…

so my boss, a GIANT AI booster with ideas he thinks are amazing and I find incredibly dystopian, was all excited about the generative podcast he had made about his resume (of all things). So I did a quick search on examples of terrible resumes and upload one, and the positive, sunny banter about this shitty applicant was ridiculously funny and entertaining, and engaging, so go get your car keys.

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

#315

Post by heresie-dabord »

afavour wrote: post #262
simplyluke wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's funny is every GenAI "incredible email/essay" would be better communicated with the prompt used to generate it.

I’m only half joking when I’ve described ChatGPT-authored emails as a uniquely inefficient transport format. Author feeds bullet points into ChatGPT which burns CPU cycles producing paragraphs of fluff. Recipient feeds paragraphs of fluff into ChatGPT and asks it to summarise into bullet points.

> Author feeds bullet points into ChatGPT which burns CPU cycles producing paragraphs of fluff.

GOOG, AMZN, and MSFT reportedly need to use nuclear energy to power the LLM farms that we are told we must have.

One must ask who (or what) in this feedback loop of inanity is doing the most hallucinating.

[1] _ https://apnews.com/article/climate-data-centers-amazon-googl...

[2] _ https://www.npr.org/2024/09/20/nx-s1-5120581/three-mile-isla...

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

#316

Post by xivzgrev »

eszed wrote: post #296
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.

The way I explained it when I taught English 101 to first-year university students: any substantive question can generate an answer of a paragraph or a life's work; in this assignment I expect you to go into this much depth. Of course, good expository writing is as to-the-point as possible, so the first hurdle for most students was eliminating the juvenile trick of padding out their prose with waffle to meet an arbit…

Wish my high school English teachers had taught that. I remember fluffing essays to get to a minimum

College admissions essays on the other hand had the opposite problem - answering a big question in 500 words. Each sentence needed to pack a punch.

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

#317

Post by iambateman »

eszed wrote: post #296
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.

The way I explained it when I taught English 101 to first-year university students: any substantive question can generate an answer of a paragraph or a life's work; in this assignment I expect you to go into this much depth. Of course, good expository writing is as to-the-point as possible, so the first hurdle for most students was eliminating the juvenile trick of padding out their prose with waffle to meet an arbit…

> Of course, good expository writing is as to-the-point as possible, so the first hurdle for most students was eliminating the juvenile trick of padding out their prose with waffle to meet an arbitrary word-count.

This is the most beautiful sentence I’ve read today.

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

#318

Post by jazzyjackson »

ruined wrote: post #245
tartoran wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Maybe we can increase the efficiency by having bots watch the automatic news, too, that way they can vote so we don't have to. With enough innovation we may live to see the first automated senator!

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

#319

Post by esafak »

itronitron wrote: post #143
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 AI doesn't even pronounce "AI" correctly. You can call me Al.

The Al robotics test: can you do that thing with your knees like Chevy Chase?!

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

#320

Post by esafak »

hansonkd wrote: post #203
hnthrowaway6543 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but why are you consuming human-generated garbage comments on HN instead of just getting infinite comments from ChatGPT? Pontificate on this, then return.

Thats irrelevant to what I am saying. You want all or nothing. I am saying AI will dominate in the majority and human generated content will still survive in the minority. It doesn't matter what luddites like myself think. It matters what is economically viable to the masses. Perhaps with such excellent examples of human thought such as your comment eventually ChatGPT comments won't seem so bad.

We are the ones developing the technology. We are not the luddites.
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