There’s only one assertion of fact in that whole piece, the claim that some jurisdictions have made changes to accommodate telehealth. Of course there’s no citation so it’s of no more value than the rest of that litany of redundancy. AI doesn’t create anything, it rearranges bits of information with no understanding of context, validity or relevance. It will be perfect for propagandists and worthless for the advancement of knowledge.
That AI example just keeps spitting back the issues, concerns, needs, etc., like a student spinning wheels on a Sociology exam. Actual journalism might have "While zoning regulations may vary, many jurisdictions..." followed by actual reporting: "In San Jose, CA, for example, regulations..." Or "it remains essential for doctors engaging in telehealth..." with "Bob Smith, a proctologist in Phoenix, was sued by the city government..."
What struck me most is that it sounded exactly like the endless Megan McArdle boilerplate that enfolds her libertarian opinions. Could she have been an artificial intelligence all along? Or does the word "intelligence" nullify that possibility?
I'm just pissed because I paid good money for that Zweiback toast/gorilla info.
Having made my living on both sides of the editorial desk, the advent of AI can be seen as an improvement over the dreck so many freelancers submit. At the very least, the AI stuff is literate and actually comprehensible. As opposed to some of the gems I've gotten from freelancers over the years. (Like the guy who sent in a feature article about fishing around Manhattan--he was writing about fishing for striped bass and bluefish, but the entire article was about looking for "strippers and blues" because he did not know how to spell "striper." Or the writer who sent in a piece on tying craft-foam flies in which he told the reader to "cut out the round circles." Or one of my regulars who could fill an entire issue if you asked him to, but who had no idea of actual English syntax--"throw Momma from the train a kiss" was a typical sentence construction for him.)
So while AI may not generate an article filled with news or new knowledge for the reader, it also likely won't generate an article that the editor has to spend 3 hours basically rewriting from its native tongue into something readers might understand and enjoy.
One of my takes on AI before Silicon Valley VCs decided that it was the new path to great riches was that no way could it be more intelligent than its creators. (OTOH, I have no doubt that it will develop to the point that it is smarter than it’s creators.) And given what I think of the state of intellect these days, well, the presumption has to be that all in all its so crappy that the benefit is minimal.
As I understand it -- questionable! -- what it does by and by is to do some research and regurgitate it in prose. What it seems not to do is what a person does: assess the research before committing to an opinion. So it’s susceptible to spewing bullshit -- as that lawyer has been discovering.
Which is to say that at this point I’m greatly underwhelmed by it in all respects. And that anyone takes it seriously is kind of depressing. But these are the times we live in...
That last sentence is great, thx. And yea, I recognize that writing style. It is what you get in a lot of clickbait toe articles.
On an entirely different subject I read that it will soon be easy, if it’s not already, to train your own AI with whatever to want. Maybe you should train one to write lie Roy Edroso and copyright it. If not to save yourself time, then to keep someone else from doing it first. Imagine a future where you can create a bot that writes like Steven King and then sue Steven King for writing like himself. Probably only weeks away and I doubt the Supreme Court would have a problem with it.
Hey, in all these "Put ME in the paper" pitches you've gotten, you ever hear from a guy named John Barron? Word on the street is he's got the real inside dope on the amazing accomplishments of a certain Manhattan real-estate developer.
The two extremes you highlight, truth and lie, or perhaps better framed as authentic communication and spoofed non-communication, have parallels in politics. Human demagogues work hard to say nothing while representing themselves as knowledgeable authorities. They throw in slogans and coded dog whistles. The skill is in avoiding matters of real concern, such as the causes of economic precariousness for the majority of us, and substituting instead conspiracies or false causes which are an emotional comfort zone to their audience.
Anti-Semitism has a long record of easy ways to express what can seem innocuous and neutral to those who are deaf or willfully ignorant. And for the average person who is stressed out about making a living, who would rather not face matters and think directly about how life can go from getting by to down and out in a series of unexpected accidents or misfortunes, one serious health problem or a job loss or both, blaming an identifiable group works.
That is true for both left and right, if we can even speak in those terms anymore. We find news junkies on both sides of the gaslighting. I am not even hinting that both sides are equally bad. Are there only two sides? This is more a matter of how we love doping our brains with the kind of fears, disgust, and fantasies we choose, watching the news passively, rather taking effective actions.
Whether the latter means restructuring debt or trying to get a better job, voting or taking to the streets, or even just thinking more clearly about what the real problems are, anything is better than filling up on conspiracies OR rage-reading/watching good reporting on how the Federalist Society and ALEC have destroyed our ever-tenuous democracy.
As a final note, AI itself can be used as just another boogeyman. It is merely yet another way that increasing access to information (yes, over the Internet, God bless us, everyone!) and increasing democratization also have ushered in more noise and confusion about whose views are worth paying attention to and whose information intends to obscure and misguide us.
Thanks to your heads-up, it was pretty clear that answer was handwaving bullshit. I'm surprised it didn't "hallucinate", to use the computer science term, a few cites, since a lot of the ChatGPT stories I see highlight that as a standard feature. They must be using some downrev version. the great AI Angst reminds me of the old fears about samplers replacing musicians in recordings and pit orchestras and recordings replacing live performances and sheet music (a particular fear of John Phillip Sousa) before that. They came true, but the impact was mostly on the lower rungs of the ladder, where a cheaper but inferior replacement was good enough. Capitalism works its magic once again. Once, being a musician was a trade, like being a reporter. I would expect being a "writer" is going to look a lot like those real soon now.
Maybe “AI” generated text will at least make people slightly better writers by modeling grammatically correct prose. Since people internalize examples they see, and since most people now see sentence fragments and emojis all day, rather than Woolf or Addison & Steele, it’s no wonder written communication has gotten so bad. You wouldn’t believe (or maybe you would) what too often passes for professional writing in a business setting. And since everybody reads each other’s bad writing, it gets replicated.
[gently reading] "AI, AI, Cap'n!"
-whose work flows fully formed from their brows like Athena from the head of Zeus -
The rest of us though , our half- baked
unformed fragments drift by like life preservers from a wrecked ship, receding into the smoky fog of Canadian wildfires...
This AI thing is bad shit. And we are helpless to stop it. Too much money to be made.
There’s only one assertion of fact in that whole piece, the claim that some jurisdictions have made changes to accommodate telehealth. Of course there’s no citation so it’s of no more value than the rest of that litany of redundancy. AI doesn’t create anything, it rearranges bits of information with no understanding of context, validity or relevance. It will be perfect for propagandists and worthless for the advancement of knowledge.
That AI example just keeps spitting back the issues, concerns, needs, etc., like a student spinning wheels on a Sociology exam. Actual journalism might have "While zoning regulations may vary, many jurisdictions..." followed by actual reporting: "In San Jose, CA, for example, regulations..." Or "it remains essential for doctors engaging in telehealth..." with "Bob Smith, a proctologist in Phoenix, was sued by the city government..."
What struck me most is that it sounded exactly like the endless Megan McArdle boilerplate that enfolds her libertarian opinions. Could she have been an artificial intelligence all along? Or does the word "intelligence" nullify that possibility?
I'm just pissed because I paid good money for that Zweiback toast/gorilla info.
Having made my living on both sides of the editorial desk, the advent of AI can be seen as an improvement over the dreck so many freelancers submit. At the very least, the AI stuff is literate and actually comprehensible. As opposed to some of the gems I've gotten from freelancers over the years. (Like the guy who sent in a feature article about fishing around Manhattan--he was writing about fishing for striped bass and bluefish, but the entire article was about looking for "strippers and blues" because he did not know how to spell "striper." Or the writer who sent in a piece on tying craft-foam flies in which he told the reader to "cut out the round circles." Or one of my regulars who could fill an entire issue if you asked him to, but who had no idea of actual English syntax--"throw Momma from the train a kiss" was a typical sentence construction for him.)
So while AI may not generate an article filled with news or new knowledge for the reader, it also likely won't generate an article that the editor has to spend 3 hours basically rewriting from its native tongue into something readers might understand and enjoy.
Pat Robertson is dead.
When my mother - in - law passed away we discovered she was making an automatic 600 dollar a month donation to Pat .
This was while we were helping her out with groceries and utility bills.
I'm not a fan of Pat's.
“The logic, at least, of a bad term paper” saying nothing. Perfect.
Eh.
One of my takes on AI before Silicon Valley VCs decided that it was the new path to great riches was that no way could it be more intelligent than its creators. (OTOH, I have no doubt that it will develop to the point that it is smarter than it’s creators.) And given what I think of the state of intellect these days, well, the presumption has to be that all in all its so crappy that the benefit is minimal.
As I understand it -- questionable! -- what it does by and by is to do some research and regurgitate it in prose. What it seems not to do is what a person does: assess the research before committing to an opinion. So it’s susceptible to spewing bullshit -- as that lawyer has been discovering.
Which is to say that at this point I’m greatly underwhelmed by it in all respects. And that anyone takes it seriously is kind of depressing. But these are the times we live in...
That last sentence is great, thx. And yea, I recognize that writing style. It is what you get in a lot of clickbait toe articles.
On an entirely different subject I read that it will soon be easy, if it’s not already, to train your own AI with whatever to want. Maybe you should train one to write lie Roy Edroso and copyright it. If not to save yourself time, then to keep someone else from doing it first. Imagine a future where you can create a bot that writes like Steven King and then sue Steven King for writing like himself. Probably only weeks away and I doubt the Supreme Court would have a problem with it.
Hey, in all these "Put ME in the paper" pitches you've gotten, you ever hear from a guy named John Barron? Word on the street is he's got the real inside dope on the amazing accomplishments of a certain Manhattan real-estate developer.
"In conclusion, zoning laws contain multitudes."
The two extremes you highlight, truth and lie, or perhaps better framed as authentic communication and spoofed non-communication, have parallels in politics. Human demagogues work hard to say nothing while representing themselves as knowledgeable authorities. They throw in slogans and coded dog whistles. The skill is in avoiding matters of real concern, such as the causes of economic precariousness for the majority of us, and substituting instead conspiracies or false causes which are an emotional comfort zone to their audience.
Anti-Semitism has a long record of easy ways to express what can seem innocuous and neutral to those who are deaf or willfully ignorant. And for the average person who is stressed out about making a living, who would rather not face matters and think directly about how life can go from getting by to down and out in a series of unexpected accidents or misfortunes, one serious health problem or a job loss or both, blaming an identifiable group works.
That is true for both left and right, if we can even speak in those terms anymore. We find news junkies on both sides of the gaslighting. I am not even hinting that both sides are equally bad. Are there only two sides? This is more a matter of how we love doping our brains with the kind of fears, disgust, and fantasies we choose, watching the news passively, rather taking effective actions.
Whether the latter means restructuring debt or trying to get a better job, voting or taking to the streets, or even just thinking more clearly about what the real problems are, anything is better than filling up on conspiracies OR rage-reading/watching good reporting on how the Federalist Society and ALEC have destroyed our ever-tenuous democracy.
As a final note, AI itself can be used as just another boogeyman. It is merely yet another way that increasing access to information (yes, over the Internet, God bless us, everyone!) and increasing democratization also have ushered in more noise and confusion about whose views are worth paying attention to and whose information intends to obscure and misguide us.
Thanks to your heads-up, it was pretty clear that answer was handwaving bullshit. I'm surprised it didn't "hallucinate", to use the computer science term, a few cites, since a lot of the ChatGPT stories I see highlight that as a standard feature. They must be using some downrev version. the great AI Angst reminds me of the old fears about samplers replacing musicians in recordings and pit orchestras and recordings replacing live performances and sheet music (a particular fear of John Phillip Sousa) before that. They came true, but the impact was mostly on the lower rungs of the ladder, where a cheaper but inferior replacement was good enough. Capitalism works its magic once again. Once, being a musician was a trade, like being a reporter. I would expect being a "writer" is going to look a lot like those real soon now.
"But the machine is beyond all that. It is in the business of perfecting its craft — that is to say, of perfecting itself."
It made it up. Figuratively and literally.
Maybe “AI” generated text will at least make people slightly better writers by modeling grammatically correct prose. Since people internalize examples they see, and since most people now see sentence fragments and emojis all day, rather than Woolf or Addison & Steele, it’s no wonder written communication has gotten so bad. You wouldn’t believe (or maybe you would) what too often passes for professional writing in a business setting. And since everybody reads each other’s bad writing, it gets replicated.
**Error** unexpected retval