Not sure I agree with you about the writing News part. Grammer not withstanding, News is just reporting events and information of note. If we are just talking that then a News bot would be perfect.
Analysis and Editorials would be a different thing, but basic news would be a perfect use case for an LLM.
@CWSmith The thing is, the hard part about news isn’t the actual writing. That part is easy. It’s probably faster to get that done by hand than use an A.I.
The real hard part is the actual reporting and fact-checking. This is something an A.I. is unable to do because it can’t verify.
@atomicpoet@CWSmith What Chris said. Journalism is a real job.
It's being disparaged a lot these days because too many imposters (be it penpushers or "pundits") have been calling themselves journalists these days (in a sense they're killing the job as much as AI, but that's another topic, probably)
I think News I think events, situations that all the information isn't there yet, and other things. A straight reporting of what happened when and involving who. This is where an AI reporter would work well. It's not about having it all right then, just what information is available.
Verification and fact checking isn't necessarily needed for that sort of reporting. Especially since the Fact checking is on the fly or more facts are coming in in real time.
@CWSmith@atomicpoet Verification and fact-checking is needed for every single sort of reporting. This is what journalism is supposed to be. How will your AI journalist go on site? How will it speak to the actors or the witnesses of the news?
An AI journalist can only rephrase what other human journalists wrote (or worse what another AI journalist has written.) This is not journalism. This is paraphrasing. And yes, I know this is what many so-called "news sites" are doing. It's not journalism.
I think the single biggest reason that people lost respect for the news is that they simply repeat what people say without checking if any of those things are actually true. This directly undermines democracy because it magnifies deception.
@rastilin@CWSmith@atomicpoet Yes, fact-checking is the heart and soul of journalism. It what journalism is (or is supposed to be.) And it's what many "journalists" are not doing anymore, they're just repeating what they hear. This has never been part of the job of a journalist.
If A says that the apple is blue and B says that the apple is red. It is not the job of the journalist to repeat both. The journalist should either say "the apple is red" (possibly adding "as B says") or (1/2)
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