G/O Media, who owns popular tech site Gizmodo along with a slew of other outlets, began publishing AI-generated articles last week, despite strong objections from many of the members of its staff, according to The Washington Post. The articles are all credited to various bots — Gizmodo Bot, for example — with no other indication that the article was created using an AI chatbot. Unsurprisingly, the stories needed a lot of work.
Humans that write shitty clickbait articles upset that AI can write even shittier ones… News at 11.
I can’t blame them. Bots may write reports on structured events with a clear source of data, i.e. the results for a football match, but they can’t reliably do research. At least not yet.
The reality of the matter is pretty bleak too. They are going to get these LLMs refined by having them submit articles that human editors will fix up for publish, and likely be used to edit and tweak human writers. I imagine the end goal will be an LLM that just goes on autopilot.
Which if you are a publishing business must sound amazing. I struggle to see why any reader will care though since the machines will have no actual interest or ability to care about the material they are writing and editing about. We need the human element that actually cares about this stuff.
Nobody cares about a list of Star Wars movies to watch the series chronologically. What we want is a fan to argue why “their” order is the correct one. That actually we can skip episode one, go to this special cut made by Topher, and then… Like that is why we read, not for random lists but for actual content.
I think you are underestimating the amount of people out there who literally just want a list of the ten best of anything with minimal explanation.
I’ve got a family member who loves reading off dumb lists every day without paying any attention to who is writing the list or why. Some of the people on the internet are elderly people who are trying to stay in the loop but also have eroded critical thinking capabilities and they will probably gobble AI articles up.
GMG Union, which represents Gizmodo’s writers and is part of the Writers Guild of America, East, asked readers not to click on any AI-written articles, saying the articles are “unethical and unacceptable.”
Disclosure: Vox Media’s editorial team, which includes The Verge, is also unionized with the Writers Guild of America, East.
Feeling the hammer coming, aren’t we?
Facts don’t matter - just get those people to click the link and load those ads!
