The strange thing about news orgs automating their staff’s jobs is that like… do they not understand what’s happening here? Why would people even pay to read articles from an organisation that produces AI generated content when it will soon be completely accessible for all? Making articles, music, novels, etc. impersonal things just helps the trend of moving away from consumption as a deliberate act and toward it as a passive act. They’re contributing to the devaluing of human creative work and are speed running the end of orgs like theirs.
Billionaires are deliberately zeroing out the very concept of a newspaper. Let the inflexibly centrist New York Times be the paper of record; everything else can just be AI slop.
They have no economic incentive to ‘inform the public.’ They work for/with MAGA now, and their job is to control the flow of information, not to “get it right.”
These billionaires don’t *need* these newspapers in order to maintain their wealth; they’re ideologues and saboteurs, not media moguls.
I believe the rhetoric and actions are going to be similar across organizations and the globe:
1. AI is here to help employees focus on creative activities.
2. AI can do creative activities too.
3. Why need employees?
4. Fire them, fire them all. OK, maybe not all, after all someone may have to reset the network router every now and then and renew Netflix, even AIs can get bored.
The manufacturers of AI tools will treat "misfirings" like the one described in this article as birth pangs of the MessAIah, the DOGE approach to "innovation", creative destruction. The manufacturers will say "these tools are new, you know, nobody has been born perfect, you know, we'll tweak the RAG system a little more, fine-tune, scale etc." BS ad nauseam. And philosophers with their materialist metaphysics are paving the ground by denying or eliminating mind, consciousness , qualia, everything they cannot explain. Since they cannot elevate AI to that level the only way for them is to pull us down to the level of automata and machines, and making it sound modern.
Maybe it was a smart ploy making ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini etc. available to the masses to make them/us believe that these tools are actually quite good, thus increasing self-doubt. Constant dripping wears the stone.
Great article, Brian! I suspect we’ll see many more snafus like this one. In the meantime, I hope you’re doing well. America is going through an epidemic of mass layoffs caused by nothing less than psychopathy and its besties—narcissism and sociopathy (though I’d throw greed, which is more widespread, in there, too). Keep on keeping on!
The problem with AI and all the algorithms that their inventors have given the world is the creators have NO COMMON SENSE!!!They may made billionaires out of their creators but they lack wisdom. Look at the mess KING is making for the USA. Too bad the MAGA Republicans are letting the Government of the People, for the People and By the People become the Government of Billionaires, for the Billionaires, and by the Billionaires….WAKE UP AMERICA….!!!!
Wow. I mean yeah, some bigots *did* disingenuously claim that the KKK was only “responding to societal changes rather than an explicitly hate-driven movement,” but mentioning that without qualification is deceptive. As has been said before, it's not just the journalist's job to report that I e person says it's raining and another says it's sunny; they also need to look out the window and report what's actually going on.
Well, to be fair, the leadership of the 1920’s version of the KKK was highly motivated by love…of money. It was conceived as a Ponzi scheme that relied on chapter leaders to sell bedsheet costumes to their cowardly racist brethren. What’s that expression…oh yeah, follow the money. Helps explain the Klan of the 1920’s and the GOP of the 2020’s. The leaders anyway. Not so much the odious rank and vile. That’s the thing about a successful Ponzi scheme; it requires a lot of willing dupes.
chatGPT 4.5 was promoted as having a high EQ and sounding less robotic. I think newsrooms replacing human workers with AI features are hedging their bets and assuming that AI will be able to mimic the human voice to the point where they will still have readers with ao generated content.
I hadn't thought about the "value substitution" AI brings. The LA side-bot (I don't know what else to call this webpage appendage) was eye opening for me. If an AI feature can bring a few instances of watered down value that still helps the business function, then the value, whatever it is, created by humans is now pitted against it. It's like there's so much indirect competition from AI that it feels like direct competition. Even if these watered down AI appendages suck, the AI at least gives the owner the feeling of more control and, depending on who they are, providence.
The strange thing about news orgs automating their staff’s jobs is that like… do they not understand what’s happening here? Why would people even pay to read articles from an organisation that produces AI generated content when it will soon be completely accessible for all? Making articles, music, novels, etc. impersonal things just helps the trend of moving away from consumption as a deliberate act and toward it as a passive act. They’re contributing to the devaluing of human creative work and are speed running the end of orgs like theirs.
Billionaires are deliberately zeroing out the very concept of a newspaper. Let the inflexibly centrist New York Times be the paper of record; everything else can just be AI slop.
They have no economic incentive to ‘inform the public.’ They work for/with MAGA now, and their job is to control the flow of information, not to “get it right.”
These billionaires don’t *need* these newspapers in order to maintain their wealth; they’re ideologues and saboteurs, not media moguls.
I believe the rhetoric and actions are going to be similar across organizations and the globe:
1. AI is here to help employees focus on creative activities.
2. AI can do creative activities too.
3. Why need employees?
4. Fire them, fire them all. OK, maybe not all, after all someone may have to reset the network router every now and then and renew Netflix, even AIs can get bored.
The manufacturers of AI tools will treat "misfirings" like the one described in this article as birth pangs of the MessAIah, the DOGE approach to "innovation", creative destruction. The manufacturers will say "these tools are new, you know, nobody has been born perfect, you know, we'll tweak the RAG system a little more, fine-tune, scale etc." BS ad nauseam. And philosophers with their materialist metaphysics are paving the ground by denying or eliminating mind, consciousness , qualia, everything they cannot explain. Since they cannot elevate AI to that level the only way for them is to pull us down to the level of automata and machines, and making it sound modern.
Maybe it was a smart ploy making ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini etc. available to the masses to make them/us believe that these tools are actually quite good, thus increasing self-doubt. Constant dripping wears the stone.
Great article, Brian! I suspect we’ll see many more snafus like this one. In the meantime, I hope you’re doing well. America is going through an epidemic of mass layoffs caused by nothing less than psychopathy and its besties—narcissism and sociopathy (though I’d throw greed, which is more widespread, in there, too). Keep on keeping on!
The problem with AI and all the algorithms that their inventors have given the world is the creators have NO COMMON SENSE!!!They may made billionaires out of their creators but they lack wisdom. Look at the mess KING is making for the USA. Too bad the MAGA Republicans are letting the Government of the People, for the People and By the People become the Government of Billionaires, for the Billionaires, and by the Billionaires….WAKE UP AMERICA….!!!!
Wow. I mean yeah, some bigots *did* disingenuously claim that the KKK was only “responding to societal changes rather than an explicitly hate-driven movement,” but mentioning that without qualification is deceptive. As has been said before, it's not just the journalist's job to report that I e person says it's raining and another says it's sunny; they also need to look out the window and report what's actually going on.
This is both something one could expect to happen—and then also totally un-fucking-believable.
Well, to be fair, the leadership of the 1920’s version of the KKK was highly motivated by love…of money. It was conceived as a Ponzi scheme that relied on chapter leaders to sell bedsheet costumes to their cowardly racist brethren. What’s that expression…oh yeah, follow the money. Helps explain the Klan of the 1920’s and the GOP of the 2020’s. The leaders anyway. Not so much the odious rank and vile. That’s the thing about a successful Ponzi scheme; it requires a lot of willing dupes.
chatGPT 4.5 was promoted as having a high EQ and sounding less robotic. I think newsrooms replacing human workers with AI features are hedging their bets and assuming that AI will be able to mimic the human voice to the point where they will still have readers with ao generated content.
I hadn't thought about the "value substitution" AI brings. The LA side-bot (I don't know what else to call this webpage appendage) was eye opening for me. If an AI feature can bring a few instances of watered down value that still helps the business function, then the value, whatever it is, created by humans is now pitted against it. It's like there's so much indirect competition from AI that it feels like direct competition. Even if these watered down AI appendages suck, the AI at least gives the owner the feeling of more control and, depending on who they are, providence.
Speaking of, i plan to ban the KKK and white supremacist groups when emperor. Think you can help?
Great another rag