Google is funding the creation of software that writes local news stories
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Re: Google is funding the creation of software that writes local news stories
#2I ran across this article while researching a stock and as I read, I kept thinking, "This was not written by a person. This was written by software." [0]
I checked the attribution, and there is a person's name on it. Sure, any hack can write and publish and this is probably just another example. But the odd style doesn't even strike me as 'writing the way I think' or writing and publishing quickly without editing. For example, from the 2nd paragraph, "The corresponding low also paints a picture and suggests that the low is nothing but a 97.89% since 11/14/16." I can't gather any meaning from that statement, yet it has oddly specific details.
I am not glad to see this trend and not glad that Google is embarking on this path. I suppose it is inevitable, but unless there is expertise built into this AI that can extract meaning from data on my behalf and present it in a way that is more insightful and interesting than I am, it will become yet another source of chaff I'll have to filter.
Can we at least, please, flag AI generated prose as such?
[0] https://www.nystocknews.com/2017/07/05/tesla-inc-tsla-showca...
Re: Google is funding the creation of software that writes local news stories
#3So what happens when these bots are manipulated into writing fake news (in the same way the way better funded Google search is still manipulated for SEO purposes) ?
Re: Google is funding the creation of software that writes local news stories
#4I ran across this article while researching a stock and as I read, I kept thinking, "This was not written by a person. This was written by software." [0] I checked the attribution, and there is a person's name on it. Sure, any hack can write and publish and this is probably just another example. But the odd style doesn't even strike me as 'writing the way I think' or writing and publishing quickly without editing. Fo…
I've also noticed this on financial/stock news articles. I've seen a few of them use full 4-word names for corporations ("The Coca-Cola Company") dozens of times in one article, and multiple times per sentence.
Re: Google is funding the creation of software that writes local news stories
#5I ran across this article while researching a stock and as I read, I kept thinking, "This was not written by a person. This was written by software." [0] I checked the attribution, and there is a person's name on it. Sure, any hack can write and publish and this is probably just another example. But the odd style doesn't even strike me as 'writing the way I think' or writing and publishing quickly without editing. Fo…
> "The corresponding low also paints a picture and suggests that the low is nothing but a 97.89% since 11/14/16." I can't gather any meaning from that statement, yet it has oddly specific details.
Maybe it was a horribly sleep-deprived person in Wall Street at 2am and made a cut-and-paste error while half-asleep.
Re: Google is funding the creation of software that writes local news stories
#6This submission is at least tangentially relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14673489.
Combining these presents an interesting opportunity to create "future news" (news that is technically fake until it isn't) thereby owning the news cycle by always being first.
Re: Google is funding the creation of software that writes local news stories
#7I ran across this article while researching a stock and as I read, I kept thinking, "This was not written by a person. This was written by software." [0] I checked the attribution, and there is a person's name on it. Sure, any hack can write and publish and this is probably just another example. But the odd style doesn't even strike me as 'writing the way I think' or writing and publishing quickly without editing. Fo…
Those articles are all over the web on all sorts of throwaway made-up sites. They're absolutely computer generated. They make for really annoying search engine spam.
Re: Google is funding the creation of software that writes local news stories
#8So what happens when these bots are manipulated into writing fake news (in the same way the way better funded Google search is still manipulated for SEO purposes) ?
Google makes a lot of money
Re: Google is funding the creation of software that writes local news stories
#9So what happens when these bots are manipulated into writing fake news (in the same way the way better funded Google search is still manipulated for SEO purposes) ?
Then they are just as good/bad as bloggers today :)
Re: Google is funding the creation of software that writes local news stories
#10This submission is at least tangentially relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14673489 . Combining these presents an interesting opportunity to create "future news" (news that is technically fake until it isn't) thereby owning the news cycle by always being first.
About 15 years ago I had the good luck of covering a news story before it happened and got a truly tremendous amount of traffic as a result.