this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023

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founded 2 years ago

Entirely Automated AI-Powered Balanced News Site* (media.kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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For the last few months our team has been working on an entirely automated AI-powered news site. I am excited to announce that v1.0 is finally being released. This version includes full coverage with every article generated from 2 left leaning, 2 right leaning, and 2 neutral sources. We have also added an anonymous commenting system for people to share their opinions freely. Our servers are now running 24/7 so that new articles appear as they happen! Let me know what you guys think, as well as any comments/concerns/questions you have!

Here's the link: https://www.neuraltimes.org/

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Good gods, no.

The last thing this world needs is bot-generated news making things up and/or muddying the waters any further. There's already enough disinformation, thank you.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Hey, take a look at the articles and let me know what you think.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

There's absolutely nothing to say. The entire premise of the project is beyond reprehensible. It's not gathering facts, investigating leads, following trails, or earning any of the knowledge.

It's scraping the work real journalists have done, repackaging it, and presenting a bastardized version of it.

The project adds absolutely no value to the world and, if adopted by any publications morally bankrupt enough to do so, will put real journalists out of work.

And then who's work will it scrape?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The purpose of the site is not to replace journalists, rather aggregate information so that readers can see everyone's opinion without individually looking at each source.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Your naïvety is matched only by your hubris.

Also, you can go almost literally anywhere on the internet and get a mix of news from various sources with various biases and levels of credibility.

If one news source is saying it's raining and the other says it's not, it's the job of the journalists to go outside and fucking find out. Aggregating the reporting down to 'It might be raining' doesn't help anyone.

Please do something different with your life because what you're doing now is not only pointless but actively detrimental to society.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

we don't need "balanced news", that is fundamentally wrong idea.

when political party A suggests resolution that the earth is flat and B rejects it, the "balanced news" is not "A and B can't agree on the shape of earth".

we need trustworthy news and these can't be generated by ai.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The idea is to show different perspectives on an issue as media can become quite polarized. Let people know all perspectives, and allow them to come to their own conclusions.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

the problem is sometime there are no multiple perspectives, some things are just not a matte of opinion, but hard facts. and if you have truth on one side and bullshit on the other, no matter what the sides are, there is no middle road.

we need real reporting done by respectable journalists, not bullshit generated by ai. nothing personal against you, but i really hope this project will be a failure, because it this should have been future, it would be truly dystopian one.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Your selection of source sites is inherently unbalanced. Your 'left' sites are centre/centre-right and everything else is to the right of that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I brought this to his attention earlier, and he seems to have fixed it for future posts.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Take LGBTQ+ rights. Hell, even narrow down to trans rights. One side finds people like me inconvenient to talk about, the other wants us to be denied all medical care despite the disastrous effects that has on suicide rates (eso amongst trans kids). What is the "balanced" perspective there? What's the "center" view that you're striving to achieve using your stochastic parrot engines?

Even if LLMs did what you claim they did (they don't), your stated objectives are reprehensible and, if successful, will get people killed.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Well this is the most dystopian thing I've seen today. The RFK article alone is a single right leaning source quoted twice and does 0 analysis on any claim.

If you fundamentally believe quoting NBC and the NY post is useful as 'both sides', I think you're a shame to your name, or beyond sheltered.

I'm not even endorsing it, but if you want at least a veneer of lefty opinions start with Jacobin, they're the ideological opposite of Fox news if there is one. And even on the worst day the content is better sourced.

Quoting fox news and NPR is useful if you have something to add, or analyze, not scrape and then provide no direct quotes.

You want an actually useful AI project? Take every direct word from public speeches and fact check it from public/govt DBs.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

So I’m trying to get some info about an upcoming medical procedure. I wanted to make sure I get a balanced view so I asked 2 doctors, 2 people who once took a first aid class once at summer camp, and 2 who believe vaccines cause autism.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I looked at 5 articles 3 were essentially just trash articles that made up facts. I'm not going to say which because then it only encourages spot fixing of the system by deleting those 3 embarrassing articles that read like shit and make up things from thin air. Work on your site. I remember a Reddit boy that trimmed out 60% to 80% of the words in an article. Maybe make a news site like that first with reputable sources then try to add bipartisanship.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Pretty convenient for you to leave out the stories lol.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Finding "AI" inaccuracies is the least surprising thing in the world. Given how LLMs work and their extremely well-documented failures to produce accurate information, the burden of proof lies squarely on "AI" vendors to show the accuracy of their products. To say that they have thus far failed to do so is... generous.

None of this snake oil should be touching news.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Holy fuck this site made me fear the future.

As usual LLM generated text looks like Mighty Fine Sentences, but there is no meaning behind them, it just produces good looking Language. The content is just pretty looking regurgitation of someone elses sentences. It doesn't matter what way the sources are leaning, the LLM doesn't actually understand the undercurrent of the meaning and does no analysis nor verification on any claim, it just presents everything as a pretty looking facts because "it heard it on the Internet".

Having sites like Fox News as a source? Why? They're not the journalistic "other side" - they're just a fucking clown car. You might as well include TV-evangelists as a source then, because their words "come from God". All your sources are right, far-right or "off the fucking scale right".

That was the worst possible way to start my morning.
The best way to move forward with this would be to shut down the webserver and unregister the domain. Hope this helps.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Wanting to censor an aggregate AI news site is so telling of your actual agenda. You're not fooling anyone in this forum with your weak little brigade bots. Your pro-establishment, elitist agenda will fail. Corporate and government elites are losing power as a result of people finally waking up, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. You'll kick and scream the whole way down, but your loss is inevitable as a result of the will of the people.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

We don't censor our site actually.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Their comments are very probably AI generated too, for astroturfing reasons.

They will prime the pump with inflammatory comment to push you to react and you will end up working for them with your comments.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

and two neutral sources

Problem is, who is it who decides if a source is “neutral”?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

We characterize our sources with allsidesmedia.com to stay consistent. https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Wait till you see the one about Biden's granddaughter

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