That’s an interesting perspective, but from the excerpt you posted Mercier seems to have overlooked the fact that “reliable news outlets” have been under sustained, concerted attack for years, to the point that we no longer agree on who is or is not a reliable source. And flooding the channel with LLM-generated disinformation certainly doesn’t help with that.
2 Likes
In related news, StackOverflow has entered into a partnership with Google, where Google will train its AI on questions and answers from the StackOverflow community, in order to sell those insights back to the community:
So what exactly do we get for curating a multi-billion dollar corporation’s data set for them, other than they will make us something cool that we can pay them for?
2 Likes
I disagree with this, tbh. See the following stats for the BBC news audience from the regulator in the U.K. below. That the U.S. news environment is reportedly more partisan seems down to political and institutional decisions made there long before the advent of social media or even the internet and is driven by major news networks, rather than the web.
2 Likes
I believe it’s also a bit strange to say that news corporations have been “under attack” when they themselves sort of brought the mistrust on them. Good recent examples is the pro Iraq War propaganda and the extremely dogmatic approach during covid on topics without scientific consensus, which later backfired when scientific consensus was reached.
2 Likes
This is true, and I’m not saying declining trust in the news was caused by social media. But it’s certainly been made much worse in recent years, and I expect adding LLMs into the mix won’t help.
It’s interesting that BBC remains as highly respected as your quote shows. In Canada the main opposition party (the Conservatives) to the governing Liberals has made defunding the CBC part of their election platform. This reflects the widespread view on the right that our public broadcaster is no longer a trustworthy source of information. So the polarization isn’t limited to the US.
2 Likes
I’m not saying the news corps are blameless, and your examples are well taken! But when the (now former) President describes journalists as vermin and ‘enemies of the people’, that’s a pretty clear attack.
2 Likes
Yep, completely agree.
1 Like
If your opponents think the public broadcaster is the threat, that’s telling you something about where your priorities should be, I guess.
1 Like
I use the StartPage search engine to stay as private as possible but even it throws up “Sponsored results” above the top of the real stuff.
So much for AI, some of those results have nothing to do with my query. Meanwhile I’ve just been forced into the latest Gmail (was stubbornly on Basic) and it looks like their stupid AI reads a received email and puts up suggested replies for you … grump.
2 Likes
I use the GMail web portal only for troubleshooting and creating filters. I always use a standalone client via IMAP. No troubles with ads (outside of messages).
Settings, then scroll down to:
But one has to accept that there is no free lunch: how are they supposed to run the service without income?
A non-personalised ad is probably better than selling your profile data.
2 Likes
Good point. But thanks for the tip which worked well.
Nope
A real horror AI moment for me today. I received a notification from YouTube that one of my favourite artist had released a new music video. Great, until I realised that I was watching AI generated video which the singer may or may not have contributed to or authorised. It just undermines the authenticity of performing artists. I guess Elvis will make a return.
3 Likes
This has been happening on Spotify, too. IDK whether they are fighting it or going along with it. 
And Kindle, according to the blog. (I never got on with e-books)
I don’t understand. Could you please provide a link for me to read?
AFAIK, Amazon requires the use of AI to be stated by authors (whether it’s assistance or outright generation).
From the blog at the top of this thread. I can’t vouch for it being accurate!
“ Amazon’s Kindle eBook platform has been flooded with AI-generated content thatbriefly dominated bestseller lists, forcing Amazon to limit authors to publishing three books a day. This hasn’t stopped spammers from publishing awkward rewrites and summaries of other people’s books, and because Amazon’s policies don’t outright ban AI-generated content, ChatGPT has become an inoperable cancer on the body of the publishing industry.
“Handmade” goods store Etsy has its own AI problem, with The Atlantic reporting last yearthat the platform was now pumped full of AI-generated art, t-shirts and mugs that, in turn, use ChatGPT to optimize listings to rank highly in Google search”
3 Likes
While I haven’t seen this myself directly, I’ve noticed on Apple’s ebook store that there are often copycat books with the same or almost the same title by different “authors” at cheaper prices, and free FT or economist articles with same headline and pretty much same content on random websites. Doesn’t have to be AI but I guess would be easier. Apple doesn’t seem to do anything to cull these infringements.
Elon can bring him back from Mars
No AI necessary:
1 Like