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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

#271

Post by karaterobot »

This has the feeling of smugly declaring victory too early. The objection to AI in journalism has to be something other than that the technology is janky. Because it will improve. The people selling this AI product to news stations are counting on that. Assume that it will one day do a human presenter's job as well as they do, at a fraction of the cost. The argument against this use of AI technology needs to be able to survive after that happens, so the argument has to be based on something that won't change any time soon, like ethics, or morality, or even epistemology. Something like that. I'm telling you, don't just rely on AI being this bad forever, or you'll lose the argument in the long run.

It doesn't help that the value of the news has been so thoroughly diminished by the news industry itself already. The trend lines of AI performance going up, and trust in journalism going down, are going to cross sooner than you think, and that's the point at which James and Rose will be back to stay.

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

#272

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#273

Post by NemoNobody »

vunderba wrote: post #137
93po wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is confusing. We've never had a ChatGPT-like innovation before to compare to. Yes, there have been AI hype cycles for decades, but the difference is that we now have permanent invaluable and society-changing tools out of the current AI cycle, combined with hundreds of billions of dollars being thrown at it in a level of investment we've never seen before. Unless you're on the bleeding edge of AI research yoursel…

I don't agree with this. There's a big difference between something that benefits productivity versus something that benefits humanity. I think a good test for if it genuinely has changed society is if all gen AI were to disappear overnight. I would argue that nothing would really fundamentally change. Contrast that with the sudden disappearance of the internet, or the combustion engine.

Work doesn't benefit humanity, work is the chains that keep us living the same day over and over til we die.

Your idea of benefit to humanity clearly doesn't involve the end of work, mine does.

AI can end work for most of us but that has to be what we want, can't be limiting it all the time bc of stupid reasons and expect it to have all the answers as if it weren't limited, that's silly.

If AI disappeared tonight so too would the future where nobody works in a call center or doing data entry or making button graphics to client exact specifications for a website nobody will ever see.

This is the Old World we live in rn - I don't want it to stay.

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

#274

Post by NemoNobody »

snapcaster wrote: post #165
vunderba wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with this. There's a big difference between something that benefits productivity versus something that benefits humanity. I think a good test for if it genuinely has changed society is if all gen AI were to disappear overnight. I would argue that nothing would really fundamentally change. Contrast that with the sudden disappearance of the internet, or the combustion engine.

It will take time though, if the internet had completely disappeared in the mid 90s nothing would have fundamentally changed

Wow. Just the fact that the Internet existed at the library was enough for me to know I could know anything as a child - once we got that Internet in 95 and Win 95 PC, everything changed for me. I was quite natural to the online world by Win 98.

MY entire worldview and daily life habits would have changed.

You must be older than me.

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

#275

Post by NemoNobody »

lolinder wrote: post #224
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 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 evolving. No, the prevailing counter argument is that the prevailing argument in favor of AI taking over everything assumes that the acceleration will re…

Moore's law is still going as far I'm aware - there may have been clarification of sorts recently but that's kept up exponentially rather well despite everyone knowing that it can't do that.

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

#276

Post by HDThoreaun »

lolinder wrote: post #224
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 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 evolving. No, the prevailing counter argument is that the prevailing argument in favor of AI taking over everything assumes that the acceleration will re…

AI hypists come to the conclusion that general intelligence is inevitable because they know the brain exists and are materialists. Anyone who checks those two boxes will come to the conclusion that an artificial brain is possible and therefore AGI is as well. With the amount of money being spent then its only a matter of when

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

#277

Post by QuadmasterXLII »

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”

I eventually flipped from moaning about word count minimums to whining about conference page limits but it took a long, long time- well into grad school. The change came when I finally had something to say.

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

#278

Post by NemoNobody »

nitwit005 wrote: post #194
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…

What is your time horizon? We're already at a date where people were saying these jobs would be gone. The people most optimistic about the trajectory of this technology were clearly wrong. If you tell me AI newscasters will be fully functional in 10 or 15 years, I'll believe it. But that far in the future, I'd also believe news will be totally transformed due to some other technology we aren't thinking about yet.

Who gives a shit about AI newscasters?

AI allows us to see everything we track the data of rn - and see in a useful way and in real time. It also allows all the tedious and repetitive tasks done by everyone, no longer needs to be done by anyone - creating a static webpage or graphics for a mobile app, a mobile app, or game development - a of those are the easiest to do they ever have been.

AI isn't for millennials or even Gen z - it's for Alpha, they will be the first to truly understand what AI is and to use it as it will be used forever after. Til they adopt it, none of this really matters.

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

#279

Post by richardw »

bangaroo wrote: post #133
richardw wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things can both be true. I keep arguing both sides because: 1 Unless you’re aware of near term limits you think AI is going to the stars next year. 2 Architectures change. The only thing that doesn’t change is that we generally push on, temporarily limits are usually overcome and there’s a lot riding on this. It’s not a smart move to bet against progress over the medium term. This is also where the real benefits…

point 2 is the thing that i think is most important to point out: "architectures change" sure, that's a fact. let me apply this to other fields: "there could be a battery breakthrough that gives electric cars a 2,000 mile range." "researchers could discover a new way to build nanorobots that attacks cancer directly and effectively cures all versions of it." "we could invent a new sort of aviation engine that is 1,000…

Another reply, different thought. I’d be keen to see what eg Carmack is up to. Someone outside of the usual suspects. There is a fashion to everything and right now LLM’s are a distraction on an S curve. The map is not the territory and language is a map.

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

#280

Post by CaptainFever »

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?

> Why would anyone want to watch anything gen AI other than a one off curiosity?

Case in point. We've heard this statement so many times. Just substitute "gen AI" for "the Internet", "video games", "radio", etc...

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1c75mic/...

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