Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 402 posts

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

#341

Post by keiferski »

NemoNobody wrote: post #292
sourcepluck wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ahh, you e touched on a big problem with our society rn - nothing is worth doing. I've been really thinking about lawns lately and how much time men and women spend maintaining them, how much pride many of them have in such activity... lawns aren't real tho, it's just a personal park nobody ever uses that we all thought we wanted bc rich ppl had them. Front lawns especially, just for looks, nobody normal ever sits on…

I actually think there are mental benefits to cutting the lawn. There is something zen about slowly reducing the grass in an ordered manner.

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

#342

Post by iotiotiotiot »

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…

It amazes me how excited people are to see their livelihoods destroyed. I'm retired, but people designing AI in their 20's will be unemployed in a decade. Good luck dudes and dude-ettes, you're fucking yourselves.

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

#343

Post by FireBeyond »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #307
FireBeyond wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar on IG, which is why a lot of the photographers on my feed will post five or six images, "Which is your favorite, 1-6? Comment below!" because they get the engagement, synthetic or otherwise, of you clicking through each image, and then commenting.

I am curious to see this pattern in action. Can you share some @-usernames for these photographers?

shotwithfilm, thechrishau

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

#344

Post by lmm »

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…

> 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.

So like supermarket magazines in video form? I think people would get it.

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

#345

Post by ANewFormation »

jerf wrote: post #138
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.

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

One of my favorite Mark Twain quotes comes from one of his correspondences: 'My apologies for such a long letter, I hadn't the time to write a short one.'

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

#346

Post by mmooss »

tartoran wrote: post #60
mmooss wrote: 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?

I take it back then: AI turns out to be in the First they laugh at you stage.

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

#347

Post by skynet97 »

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.

Similarily, MSFT recently announced the upcoming ability to clone your voice for Teams meetings. Extrapolating, in a few months, there will be Teams meetings which are only frequented by avatars. At the end of the meeting, you get an email with the essential content. Weird times ahead.

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

#348

Post by lmm »

conartist6 wrote: post #334
CuriouslyC wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is already eating their way up the creative ladder, this is 100% irrefutable. Interns, junior artists, junior developers, etc are all losing jobs to AI now. The main problem for AI is it doesn't have a coherent creative direction or real output consistency. The second problem is that creativity thrives on novelty but AI likes to output common things. The first is solvable, probably within 5 years, and is going to…

How can you both think AI will do a soulless garbage job and that it will displace all the creative people who put their blood sweat and tears into doing art. If you think it can be 20 times easier to make a movie, then it seems to me that it would be 20 times less impactful to make a creative work, since the market should quickly react to creative success by making a ton of cheap knockoffs of your work until the dea…

> How can you both think AI will do a soulless garbage job and that it will displace all the creative people who put their blood sweat and tears into doing art.

They don't, that's why they're saying 20% of creative departments will remain. The part that will go is the part that's already soulless - making ads in the style of the current trendy drama series or what have you.

> If you think it can be 20 times easier to make a movie, then it seems to me that it would be 20 times less impactful to make a creative work, since the market should quickly react to creative success by making a ton of cheap knockoffs of your work until the dead horse is so thoroughly beaten that it's no longer even worth paying an AI to spit out cheap knock-offs

That seems pretty backwards, given Jevons paradox. The ease of writing knock-off fanfiction didn't mean people stopped writing novels. The average novel probably has a lot less impact now than in the past, but the big hits are bigger than ever.

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

#349

Post by keiferski »

jodrellblank wrote: post #240
keiferski wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it’s possible I’m wrong. But if we make any sort of projection based on current developments, it would certainly seem that live-streaming AI indistinguishable from a human being is vastly beyond the capabilities of anything out today, and given current expenses and development times, seems to be at least a few decades in the future. To me that is an optimistic assumption, especially assuming that live prese…

You imply that the technological development will stop, but that's not what happened to flying cars - they do and could exist. Since the 1930s the technology didn't stop developing - aircraft went jet powered, supersonic, to the edge of space, huge, light, heavy, more efficient, more affordable, safer; cars went faster, more reliable, safer, more efficient, bigger, smaller, more capable, self driving; fuel got more p…

I didn't mean to imply that, but that's my fault for just quickly using it as an example.

I do think there will be some slowdown of the technological development, but I think the situation will be similar to flying cars: regulations, social behavior, etc. will prevent AI from simply devouring everything. Specifically, I expect there to be a system which verifies humanity, and thus popular content will ultimately end up being verified-as-real content.

More on that in this other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42154928

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

#350

Post by richardw »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #322
richardw wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but most of the current generation of AI hype are a limited number of algorithms and approaches, mixed and matched in different ways, with other features bolted on to try and corral them into behaving as we hope. it is much more realistic to expect that we are in the period of diminishing returns as far as investing in these approaches than it is to believe we'll continue to see earth-shattering growth. 100% agree,…

In 100 years the air may not be breathable, much less have enough CO2 carrying capacity for silicon based AGI

So I’d lose the bet? I’m not sure I’d be any worse off than those winning it!
Post reply on HN