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

An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

theshamblog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 670 posts

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#361

Post by lokar »

phyzome wrote: post #320
anthonj wrote: post #236

I have very strong, probably controversial, feeling on arstechnica, but I believe the acquisition from Condé Nast has been a tragedy. Ars writers used to be actual experts, sometimes even phd level, on technical fields. And they used to write fantastical and very informative articles. Who is left now? There are still a couple of good writers from the old guard and the occasional good new one, but the website is flood…

It gets pretty bad at times. Here's one of the most mindlessly uncritical pieces I've seen, which seems to be a press release from Volkswagen: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/03/volkswagen-unveils-sedr... Look at the image captions gushing about the "roomy interior" of a vehicle that doesn't even exist! I actually wrote in to say how disappointed I was in this ad/press release material, and the response was "That w…

I'm willing to believe it was not an ad.

They are just lazy / understaffed. It's hard to make $ in journalism. A longstanding and popular way to cut corners is to let the industry you cover do most of the work for you. You just re-package press releases. You have plausible content for a fraction of the effort / cost.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#362

Post by dotancohen »

throawayonthe wrote: post #353
dotancohen wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be for the technology and science sections. But the politics section is clearly pushing an agenda with regard to the current US administration - even though it is an agenda many people online might agree with. That section is not global, it is US-centric, and it heavily favours the popular side of the issue.

i don't think these are as contradictory as you make them out to be

I'm not pointing out a contradiction. I am pointing out that this site - which otherwise seems great - it heavily promoting the popular-online side of a very controversial subject.

It looks like they know how to grow an audience at the expense of discourse, because those adherent to the popular-online side will heavily attack all publications that discuss the other side. Recognising this, it is hard to seriously consider their impartiality in other fields. It's very much the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.

"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."

-Michael Crichton

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#363

Post by crims0n »

beej71 wrote: post #352
crims0n wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got tired of reading about Trump and Elon.

I'm also trying to understand. The agenda is to publish about Trump and Elon? Is that correct?

The agenda is to highlight when Trump and Elon blunder but ignore neutral or positive stories. Go to the front page right now and look at the articles, I see four mentioning Trump that are negatively charged. That isn't to say any one article is untrue, but hard to miss the curated pattern

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#364

Post by lokar »

dotancohen wrote: post #347
rfc2324 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://theconversation.com/us/who-we-are is one of my favorites. Global academics writing about their research when something happens in the world or when they are published in a journal.

That may be for the technology and science sections. But the politics section is clearly pushing an agenda with regard to the current US administration - even though it is an agenda many people online might agree with. That section is not global, it is US-centric, and it heavily favours the popular side of the issue.

You prefer a "both sides" style of political coverage?

At what point in the slide to authoritarianism should that stop? Where is the line?

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#365

Post by dylan604 »

lokar wrote: post #361
phyzome wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets pretty bad at times. Here's one of the most mindlessly uncritical pieces I've seen, which seems to be a press release from Volkswagen: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/03/volkswagen-unveils-sedr... Look at the image captions gushing about the "roomy interior" of a vehicle that doesn't even exist! I actually wrote in to say how disappointed I was in this ad/press release material, and the response was "That w…

I'm willing to believe it was not an ad. They are just lazy / understaffed. It's hard to make $ in journalism. A longstanding and popular way to cut corners is to let the industry you cover do most of the work for you. You just re-package press releases. You have plausible content for a fraction of the effort / cost.

Unfortunately, government is like that were most bills are written by lobbyists and barely if at all modified by the actual congress critter sponsoring it.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#366

Post by division_by_0 »

morkalork wrote: post #342
boothby wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I look forward to a day when the internet is so uniformly fraudulent that we can set it aside and return to the physical plane.

Well, I can tell you I've been reading a lot more books now. Ones published before the 2020s, or if recent, written by authors who were well established before then.

Physical books are amazing technology.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#367

Post by Lerc »

DonHopkins wrote: post #260
tempestn wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing their point. The question you're replying to is, how do we know that this made up content is a hallucination. Ie., as opposed to being made up by a human. I think it's fairly obvious via Occam's Razor, but still, they're not claiming the quotes could be legit.

[dead]

You seem to be quite certain that I had not read the article, yet I distinctly remember doing do.

By what proceess do you imagine I arrived at the conclusion that the article suggested that published quotes were LLM hallucinations when that was not mentioned in the article title?

You accuse me of performative skepticism, yet all I think is that it is better to have evidence over assumptions, and it is better to ask if that evidence exists.

It seems a much better approach than making false accusations based upon your own vibes, I don't think Scott Shambaugh went to that level though.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#368

Post by dylan604 »

phyzome wrote: post #320
anthonj wrote: post #236

I have very strong, probably controversial, feeling on arstechnica, but I believe the acquisition from Condé Nast has been a tragedy. Ars writers used to be actual experts, sometimes even phd level, on technical fields. And they used to write fantastical and very informative articles. Who is left now? There are still a couple of good writers from the old guard and the occasional good new one, but the website is flood…

It gets pretty bad at times. Here's one of the most mindlessly uncritical pieces I've seen, which seems to be a press release from Volkswagen: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/03/volkswagen-unveils-sedr... Look at the image captions gushing about the "roomy interior" of a vehicle that doesn't even exist! I actually wrote in to say how disappointed I was in this ad/press release material, and the response was "That w…

"I'm a professional shopper, and here's what I say you should buy" because someone sent me a free version of it or just straight copy to use in my listicle.

It is sad that this is what journalism has come to. It is even sadder that it works.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#369

Post by somenameforme »

anthonj wrote: post #236

I have very strong, probably controversial, feeling on arstechnica, but I believe the acquisition from Condé Nast has been a tragedy. Ars writers used to be actual experts, sometimes even phd level, on technical fields. And they used to write fantastical and very informative articles. Who is left now? There are still a couple of good writers from the old guard and the occasional good new one, but the website is flood…

They are basically the embodiment of the fact that sites and organizations don't matter, but individuals do. I think the overwhelming majority of everything on Ars is garbage. But on the other hand they also run Eric Berger's space column [1] which is certainly one of the best ones out there. So don't ignore those names on tops of articles. If you find something informative, well sourced, and so on - there's a good chance most their other writing is of a similar standard.

[1] - https://arstechnica.com/author/ericberger/

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#370

Post by dylan604 »

lokar wrote: post #364
dotancohen wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be for the technology and science sections. But the politics section is clearly pushing an agenda with regard to the current US administration - even though it is an agenda many people online might agree with. That section is not global, it is US-centric, and it heavily favours the popular side of the issue.

You prefer a "both sides" style of political coverage? At what point in the slide to authoritarianism should that stop? Where is the line?

Or the other side of at what point into ending capitalism in favor of socialism should that stop?

Yes, I enjoy "both sides" coverage when it's done in earnest. What passes for that today is two people representing the extremes of either spectrum looking for gotcha moments as an "owning" moment. We haven't seen a good "both sides" in decades

Post reply on HN