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Journalism generated by machine is on the rise

nytimes.com

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Re: Journalism generated by machine is on the rise

#51

Post by msla »

neffy wrote: post #45
msla wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we're probably decades away from really insightful NLG that offers "why" explanations, as opposed to "what" or "how" descriptions. For any specialized field, doing this would require something more than the kinds of schooling journalists get. It would also step on a lot of political toes: For example, the current national debt is $X. Why is it that big? Is that number a problem? Say anything concrete regarding eith…

To be fair to the journalists, those are actually open research questions.

> To be fair to the journalists, those are actually open research questions.

There are strong consensuses about some aspects of those problems, however, especially regarding the benefits of using government debt to finance stimulus programs as part of a counter-cyclical action against a recession. Saying it's all unknown is about as intellectually honest as saying that we don't know whether the world is flat or round because we're unsure of its topology at the millimeter scale.

Re: Journalism generated by machine is on the rise

#52

Post by Alterlife »

freehunter wrote: post #5
Alterlife wrote: post #2

Is AI the death of human creativity? Assisted AI apparently now designs our cars and our planes, designs our logos, designs our buildings, generates our music. More significantly, un-assisted AI curates what we are exposed to in the form of what's shown to us in our feeds and suggestions, and judging by the articles in OP, already is capable of writing articles for us. AI voices and news casters seem to be getting be…

I'd argue that this type of AI frees up humans to be more creative. If a journalist doesn't have to spend time writing routine articles about baseball scores, they have more time to spend tracking down real stories. I posted elsewhere in these comments about my own AI-powered news system, and if I didn't have that my entire day would be taken up writing routine articles that are interesting to readers but have very l…

While I do agree with your argument to a point, it breaks down because the internet is a mountain of crap, and while attention is a limited resource, the crap is limitless.

You say you use AI to generate mundane articles. Well, your mundane AI article about baseball and 10,000 other AI generated articles are competing with quality content written by real people.

There are people who are passionate about baseball, who went went out to watch that baseball game and write about the passion behind every play and every ball. Possibly interviewing the crowd and the players.

Your AI is probably learning from those articles and getting better at faking that passion. So much so that in a few years maybe people won't be able to tell the difference.

Re: Journalism generated by machine is on the rise

#53

Post by bgorman »

msla wrote: post #51
neffy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair to the journalists, those are actually open research questions.

> To be fair to the journalists, those are actually open research questions. There are strong consensuses about some aspects of those problems, however, especially regarding the benefits of using government debt to finance stimulus programs as part of a counter-cyclical action against a recession. Saying it's all unknown is about as intellectually honest as saying that we don't know whether the world is flat or round…

Economics, like all social sciences is nowhere near as sound as the hard sciences. You simply cannot have control groups for many experiments so you are left with case studies, which are often unconvincing. For example, does a true free market really exist anywhere in the world? How about a 100% command economy? How can you honesty determine if the federal reserve helps or hurts the economy?

Re: Journalism generated by machine is on the rise

#54

Post by dreen »

vharuck wrote: post #29
dreen wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting! Please tell me more about the can anyone detect the AI comments?

Does humor signal humanity, or does a reference to a popular line from a show famous in nerd culture show lack of creativity? No matter the answer, I was entertained.

Not aware of the show you speak of, was just parroting poorly written chatbots.

As for humor, that's one thing AI is not going to be able to do well for many years to come because it requires too much creativity. But as a Turing test it's not very good - some people are just fundamentally unfunny.

Re: Journalism generated by machine is on the rise

#55

Post by Footkerchief »

Alterlife wrote: post #52
freehunter wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that this type of AI frees up humans to be more creative. If a journalist doesn't have to spend time writing routine articles about baseball scores, they have more time to spend tracking down real stories. I posted elsewhere in these comments about my own AI-powered news system, and if I didn't have that my entire day would be taken up writing routine articles that are interesting to readers but have very l…

While I do agree with your argument to a point, it breaks down because the internet is a mountain of crap, and while attention is a limited resource, the crap is limitless. You say you use AI to generate mundane articles. Well, your mundane AI article about baseball and 10,000 other AI generated articles are competing with quality content written by real people. There are people who are passionate about baseball, who…

In most cases, they are not competing, because the primary niche for NLG is to generate content that was never economical for a human to take the time to create -- minor leagues, fantasy football, etc.

Re: Journalism generated by machine is on the rise

#56

Post by msla »

bgorman wrote: post #53
msla wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be fair to the journalists, those are actually open research questions. There are strong consensuses about some aspects of those problems, however, especially regarding the benefits of using government debt to finance stimulus programs as part of a counter-cyclical action against a recession. Saying it's all unknown is about as intellectually honest as saying that we don't know whether the world is flat or round…

Economics, like all social sciences is nowhere near as sound as the hard sciences. You simply cannot have control groups for many experiments so you are left with case studies, which are often unconvincing. For example, does a true free market really exist anywhere in the world? How about a 100% command economy? How can you honesty determine if the federal reserve helps or hurts the economy?

> Economics, like all social sciences is nowhere near as sound as the hard sciences. You simply cannot have control groups for many experiments so you are left with case studies, which are often unconvincing.

You can say the same thing about paleontology, but do you seriously doubt the past existence of non-avian dinosaurs?

> For example, does a true free market really exist anywhere in the world? How about a 100% command economy?

You don't need perfect examples of things to observe what happens when economies closely approach those extremes.

> How can you honesty determine if the federal reserve helps or hurts the economy?

By observing how horrible the business cycle was prior to its existence.

Re: Journalism generated by machine is on the rise

#57

Post by CryptoPunk »

msla wrote: post #51
neffy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair to the journalists, those are actually open research questions.

> To be fair to the journalists, those are actually open research questions. There are strong consensuses about some aspects of those problems, however, especially regarding the benefits of using government debt to finance stimulus programs as part of a counter-cyclical action against a recession. Saying it's all unknown is about as intellectually honest as saying that we don't know whether the world is flat or round…

>>There are strong consensuses about some aspects of those problems, however, especially regarding the benefits of using government debt to finance stimulus programs as part of a counter-cyclical action against a recession.

There is no consensus that counter-cyclical stimulus is beneficial, outside of those economists already committed to central economic planning of the money supply. Basic economic theory tells us that spending directed by political forces is likely to be less efficient than spending directed by market forces. Counter-cyclical stimulus uses future earnings of the private sector to pay for current government spending, so assuming all other factors remain equal, the price is less market-directed spending.

Moreover, counter-cyclical stimulus interferes with the development of the natural corrective processes of a free market, because it means those who saved cash during the credit bubble have less opportunity to buy up assets when the bubble pops. By reducing the capital allocated to this group, you reduce their future influence on the economy, which would have the effect of reducing the magnitude of bubbles, and with it, economic volatility.

Re: Journalism generated by machine is on the rise

#58

Post by jon-wood »

freehunter wrote: post #41
jon-wood wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept seems pretty solid, but reading the output I feel like this is bordering on unethical. Maybe this is just a bad example, but it seems you’ve gone past programmatically giving people information, and into giving the impression you’re actually endorsing things. Unless you actually add metadata to the artist saying you love them, or rate the venue to indicate it’s good for live music, you’ve got no way of go…

This is a very simplified example written by human hands just for this post (not machine written). The database is immense and has far more fields than you might imagine. It takes into account how many clicks content with Van Halen has had in the past and how many clicks content with American Brewpub has had etc to figure out how likely this article is to resonate with our audience, plus how many human-written articl…

That’s incredibly cool, and definitely covers my concerns there. Good work on giving it some restraint rather than going for sheer volume as well.

Re: Journalism generated by machine is on the rise

#59

Post by msla »

msla wrote: post #56
bgorman wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economics, like all social sciences is nowhere near as sound as the hard sciences. You simply cannot have control groups for many experiments so you are left with case studies, which are often unconvincing. For example, does a true free market really exist anywhere in the world? How about a 100% command economy? How can you honesty determine if the federal reserve helps or hurts the economy?

> Economics, like all social sciences is nowhere near as sound as the hard sciences. You simply cannot have control groups for many experiments so you are left with case studies, which are often unconvincing. You can say the same thing about paleontology, but do you seriously doubt the past existence of non-avian dinosaurs? > For example, does a true free market really exist anywhere in the world? How about a 100% co…

I see disagreement by downvoting is in effect, which discredits the disagreement.

Re: Journalism generated by machine is on the rise

#60

Post by pouta »

freehunter wrote: post #4

My side project is a local news outlet for two small cities near me. They are small enough cities that I am the only game in town when it comes to digital media, the only competitor is the local newspaper who has no online presence. Plenty of our stories are actual news articles talking about local politics and new businesses/restaurants and local interest type stuff, all written by humans. But filling in the gaps is…

I've been working on something along the same lines for the past couple of years. I would love to exchange some ideas with you!

Send me an email at moura at my the domain in my profile

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