[telepathy]

Why do we trust human journalists exactly? Very few of them are interested in truth. This article is motivated by the same existential anger we see from artists. Human journalists have a horrible track record spreading war and misery and lies. Plus sounds like this guy would be the type to cheap out and use GPT-3.5 and save money on tokens. We're just going to write off journalism done by GPT-7?

[afavour]

> Why do we trust human journalists exactly?

Well, by default we don’t. We typically trust human journalists either because they produce evidence alongside their work or because they have a good enough track record of being right that we believe they are this time too. It’s a pretty fuzzy thing.

To me the core failure in the concept of AI news is that all AI does is regurgitate things other people have written. I know, I know, “that’s all journalists do lol” but in reality journalists do a lot of boots on the ground reporting, they conduct interviews, so on.

Even if GPT-7 totally solves problems like hallucinations there’s still the fundamental problem of it having no first hand knowledge. And very specifically in the world of breaking news (which human journalists get wrong often too) it feels immensely risky.

[telepathy]

None of those problems are solved by using humans instead of AI. Very few journalists are doing "boots on the ground" interviews. They're lazy. And why can't an AI do a zoom interview?

[xarope]

on the other hand, that's what the pulitzer prize for public service is for, to highlight the efforts of journalists who do precisely this; the truth, and the willingness and effort to put their careers, and sometimes lives, on the line, for the truth - or so my idealist side would like to believe.

e.g. watch the movie "Spotlight", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_(film)

[telepathy]

Stop trying to learn about reality from movies

[add-sub-mul-div]

> Why do we trust human journalists exactly?

Humans are (not often enough in practice, but in principle) accountable. Look at Fox News and Alex Jones paying out over $1 billion for their lies about the election and Sandy Hook, respectively.

[telepathy]

Good one

[threeseed]

> Human journalists have a horrible track record

Do they ? Would like to see some statistics on this.

Given that journalism produces a lot of content each day and majority is fine.

[telepathy]

I don't think anyone is alleging the majority of BNN was not "fine." It's some tiny percentage that was apparently controversial - just like human journalists.

Judith Miller is a good example to look at if you're having trouble with this