Live data from Hacker News

Anthropic's AI-generated blog dies an early death

techcrunch.com

31–40 of 71 posts

Re: Anthropic's AI-generated blog dies an early death

#31
post #8
post #5

AI generated web content has got to be one of the most counterproductive things to use AI on. If I wanted an AI summary of a topic or answer to a question, a chatbot of choice can easily provide that for you. There’s no need for yet another piece of blogspam that isn’t introducing new information into the world. That content is already available inside the AI model. At some point, we’ll get so oversaturated with fake…

This is pretty reductive. Many people want to pump some new thoughts they had into an AI to generate something tolerable to post on their blog. The writing isn't the point; the thoughts are. But they can't just post 200 words of bullet points (or don't feel like they can, anyway). So the AI is an assistant which takes their thoughts and makes them look acceptable for publication.

It’s ridiculous to expect people to read something you couldn’t even be bothered to write.

If you just want to get the information out then just post the bullet points, what do you care?

If you want to be recognized as a writer, then write.

Re: Anthropic's AI-generated blog dies an early death

#32
post #2

It's fascinating how creative these large AI companies are at finding ways to burn through VC funding. Hire a team of developers/content writers/editors, tune your models, set up a blog and build an entire infrastructure to publish articles to it, market it, and then...shut it all down in a week. And this is a company burning through multiple billions of dollars every quarter just to keep the lights on.

The joys of wealth transfer from the poor and the middle class workers to the asset owning class via inflation and the Cantillion Effect [1]. 1- https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/the-cantillion-effect

I've always thought of these VC fueled expeditions to nowhere as the opposite. Wealth transfer from the owning class to the middle class seeing as a lot of these ventures crash and burn with nothing to show for it.

Except for the founders/early employees who get a modest (sometimes excessive) paycheck.

Re: Anthropic's AI-generated blog dies an early death

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The joys of wealth transfer from the poor and the middle class workers to the asset owning class via inflation and the Cantillion Effect [1]. 1- https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/the-cantillion-effect

I've always thought of these VC fueled expeditions to nowhere as the opposite. Wealth transfer from the owning class to the middle class seeing as a lot of these ventures crash and burn with nothing to show for it. Except for the founders/early employees who get a modest (sometimes excessive) paycheck.

> I've always thought of these VC fueled expeditions to nowhere as the opposite. Wealth transfer from the owning class to the middle class seeing as a lot of these ventures crash and burn with nothing to show for it.

That would be the case if VCs were investing their own money, but they're not. They're investing on behalf of their LPs. Who LPs are is generally an extremely closely-guarded secret, but it includes institutional investors, which means middle-class pensions and 401(k)s are wrapped up in these investments as well, just as they were tied up in the 2008 financial crisis.

It's not as clean-cut as it seems.

Re: Anthropic's AI-generated blog dies an early death

#34
post #8
post #5

AI generated web content has got to be one of the most counterproductive things to use AI on. If I wanted an AI summary of a topic or answer to a question, a chatbot of choice can easily provide that for you. There’s no need for yet another piece of blogspam that isn’t introducing new information into the world. That content is already available inside the AI model. At some point, we’ll get so oversaturated with fake…

This is pretty reductive. Many people want to pump some new thoughts they had into an AI to generate something tolerable to post on their blog. The writing isn't the point; the thoughts are. But they can't just post 200 words of bullet points (or don't feel like they can, anyway). So the AI is an assistant which takes their thoughts and makes them look acceptable for publication.

> The writing isn't the point; the thoughts are.

Writing _is_ thinking.

Re: Anthropic's AI-generated blog dies an early death

#35
post #5

AI generated web content has got to be one of the most counterproductive things to use AI on. If I wanted an AI summary of a topic or answer to a question, a chatbot of choice can easily provide that for you. There’s no need for yet another piece of blogspam that isn’t introducing new information into the world. That content is already available inside the AI model. At some point, we’ll get so oversaturated with fake…

While I largely agree, I don't think it's quite correct to say AI generated blogs contain no new information. At least not in a practical sense. The output is a function of the the LLM and the prompt. The output contains new information assuming the prompt does. If the prompt/context contains internal information no one outside the company has access to, then a public post thus generated certainly contains information new to the public.

Re: Anthropic's AI-generated blog dies an early death

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The joys of wealth transfer from the poor and the middle class workers to the asset owning class via inflation and the Cantillion Effect [1]. 1- https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/the-cantillion-effect

I've always thought of these VC fueled expeditions to nowhere as the opposite. Wealth transfer from the owning class to the middle class seeing as a lot of these ventures crash and burn with nothing to show for it. Except for the founders/early employees who get a modest (sometimes excessive) paycheck.

Can VC's get their funding from mutual funds and pension plans?

Re: Anthropic's AI-generated blog dies an early death

#37
post #15

I can tell you this much - most people who are opposed to AI writing blog articles are usually from the editorial team. They somehow believe they're immune to being replaced by AI. And this stems from the misconception that AI content will always sound AI, soul-less, dry, boring, easy to spot and all that. This was true with ChatGPT-3xx. It's not anymore. In fact, the models have advanced so much so that you will hav…

> We asked some of the naysayers from the editorial + CXO team to sit in a room with us, while we presented on a large white screen - a comparison of two random articles - one written by AI, which btw wasn't trained Needlessly close to bullying way to try and prove your point.

> We asked some

Which part of this looks like bullying? It was opt-in. They attended the presentation because they were interested.

Re: Anthropic's AI-generated blog dies an early death

#38
post #15

I can tell you this much - most people who are opposed to AI writing blog articles are usually from the editorial team. They somehow believe they're immune to being replaced by AI. And this stems from the misconception that AI content will always sound AI, soul-less, dry, boring, easy to spot and all that. This was true with ChatGPT-3xx. It's not anymore. In fact, the models have advanced so much so that you will hav…

Have you tried gptzero?

Yep, it is not able to recognize. To be fair, it's not just dump it into ChatGPT and copy paste kind of AI. We feed it into the model in stages, we use 2-3 different models for content generation, and another 2 later on to smoothen the tone. But, all of these are just OTS models, not trained. For example, we do use Gemini in one of the flows.

Re: Anthropic's AI-generated blog dies an early death

#39
post #5

AI generated web content has got to be one of the most counterproductive things to use AI on. If I wanted an AI summary of a topic or answer to a question, a chatbot of choice can easily provide that for you. There’s no need for yet another piece of blogspam that isn’t introducing new information into the world. That content is already available inside the AI model. At some point, we’ll get so oversaturated with fake…

This only means that the web (websites and web 2.0 platforms) for public usage is becoming redundant because any type of data that can be posted on the web can now be generated by an LLM. LLMs have been only around for a short while but the web is already becoming infested with AI spam. Future generations that are not accustomed to the old pre AI web will prefare to use AI rather than the web, LLMs will eventually be…

Editorial guidelines at many publications explicitly state that AI can assist with drafts, outlines, and editing, but not with generating final published stories.

AI is widely used for support tasks such as: - Transcribing interviews - Research assistance and generating story outlines - Suggesting headlines, SEO optimization, and copyediting - Automating routine content like financial reports and sports recaps

This seems like a reasonable approach, but even so I agree with your prediction that people will mostly interact with the web via their AI interface.

Re: Anthropic's AI-generated blog dies an early death

#40
post #25
post #5

AI generated web content has got to be one of the most counterproductive things to use AI on. If I wanted an AI summary of a topic or answer to a question, a chatbot of choice can easily provide that for you. There’s no need for yet another piece of blogspam that isn’t introducing new information into the world. That content is already available inside the AI model. At some point, we’ll get so oversaturated with fake…

This is the fundamental reason why I am in favor of a ban on simply posting AI-generated content in user forums. It isn't that AI is fundamentally bad per se, and to the extent that it is problematic now, that badness may well be a temporary situation. It's because there's not a lot of utility in you as a human being basically just being an intermediary to what some AI says today. Anyone who wants that can go get it…

I fully agree with this, besides that if an AI could auto-generate a commit message that I can edit to make actually correct and comprehensive, it will probably be a better, more descriptive message than whatever I come up with in usually ~3 minutes.

The value is a nice starting point but the message is still confirmed by the actual expert. If it's fully auto-generated or I start "accepting" everything, then I agree it becomes completely useless.

Post reply on HN