News sucks

[Swammerdami]

Sometimes something mediocre is what we want.

Yeah, nah.

Sometimes I am too tired to be bothered to complain about the mediocre.

Sometimes something mediocre is close enough to be good enough.

But something mediocre is never what I want, even when it's what I will settle for right now.

You seek to maximize quality and minimize flaws.
Businesses seek to maximize sales and minimize costs.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Sometimes something mediocre is what we want.

Yeah, nah.

Sometimes I am too tired to be bothered to complain about the mediocre.

Sometimes something mediocre is close enough to be good enough.

But something mediocre is never what I want, even when it's what I will settle for right now.

You seek to maximize quality and minimize flaws.
Businesses seek to maximize sales and minimize costs.

And consumers seek to maximise value for money. They'll often gladly settle for the mediocre if they get it for cheap.

 

[unapologetic]

Productivity is a nearsighted way to judge AI. Productivity is an inhuman way to judge humans.
If productivity is the only factor in it's use, then AI is inhuman and will always be suspect.
AI needs integrety. We need to be able to trust it, over it's productivity.

I like not having to waste my time kissing an artists ass

Sometimes we are impressed how dificult a task was.

Is it to keep people busy all day or is it wealth generation?

Do you think your ultimate 'wealth generation' will spread out to those who have no more work to do?
Even now, there are not enough jobs to provide eveyone with an income.

why not ban all technology and go back to us all being farmers, or hunter gatherers?

That is what your concept of AI will accoimplish.

The problem isn't that journalists are lazy. It's that their mission isn't to inform us. It's to terrify us. Scare us into clicking.

Their mission WAS to inform till FauxNews/Murdock came along. There is still a journalism award named for Edward R. Murrow.

I honestly don't care whether news is bot generated or not. What I care about is the quality. As long as it's honest and representative of reality the method by which it is produced is irrelevant to me

always more work than having a document generated and then proof reading it, and leads to a better end result.

The users of AI are just as lazy as you claim journalists are. They just chase clicks. and don't bother proofreading or editing their shit.

So naturally it started adding bullshit qualifications that was guaranteed to get her that job

Congratulations, AI produced an unqualified employee. This hurts your argument, not helps.
Students use AI to produce their written assignments. Does this help them, in the long run? No.

Art is internal motivation not external commission, it has mood, it conveys feeling.

I disagree. What I look for is the mood and feeling it gives me. The mood and feeling of the artist is just masterbation, not my business. And I realy don't want to know.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Productivity is a nearsighted way to judge AI.

So how would you judge it?

Productivity is an inhuman way to judge humans.

Ok, fine. But that’s how its customery to judge stuff in a market

If productivity is the only factor in it's use, then AI is inhuman and will always be suspect.
AI needs integrety. We need to be able to trust it, over it's productivity.

No we don't. Humans aren't trustworthy. We use humans for all kinds of stuff.

I like not having to waste my time kissing an artists ass

Sometimes we are impressed how dificult a task was.

Ok. Yeah. I am not sure how that’s relevant. As a consumer I don't care about the process. I just want the desired result and pay as little as possible.

Is it to keep people busy all day or is it wealth generation?

Do you think your ultimate 'wealth generation' will spread out to those who have no more work to do?

Yes. That's how it works today. In the 19th century we didn't have welfare. Now we do. Paid for by industrialisation and economic efficiency

Even now, there are not enough jobs to provide eveyone with an income.

Who cares? Its the wealth generation of the entire system that matters. That's the goal no matter if you are socialist or conservative. The greater the wealth generation the more money the state can redistribute.

why not ban all technology and go back to us all being farmers, or hunter gatherers?

That is what your concept of AI will accoimplish.

It makes desk workers get more done in fewer hours. It'll lead to redundancies that will lead to opportunities to hire those made redundant and an expansion of the entire market

Today something like 90 to 95 % of what we consume is stuff nobody needs for survival. Our consumption today is largely artificial. What that proves is that the market can probably expand infinitely. The limiting factor is people willing to work.

The problem isn't that journalists are lazy. It's that their mission isn't to inform us. It's to terrify us. Scare us into clicking.

Their mission WAS to inform till FauxNews/Murdock came along. There is still a journalism award named for Edward R. Murrow.

The more I learn the less I think news quality has degraded. I think news before Internet was basically an information cartell with little external oversight.

Internet changed all that.

I think journalists have always been lazy and pandered to their readers.

I think the quality if the news was always bad. What has changed is our ability to externally validate it.

I honestly don't care whether news is bot generated or not. What I care about is the quality. As long as it's honest and representative of reality the method by which it is produced is irrelevant to me

always more work than having a document generated and then proof reading it, and leads to a better end result.

The users of AI are just as lazy as you claim journalists are. They just chase clicks. and don't bother proofreading or editing their shit.

Sure. But what matters is the quality of the end result. If AI improves overall quality then its good

So naturally it started adding bullshit qualifications that was guaranteed to get her that job

Congratulations, AI produced an unqualified employee. This hurts your argument, not helps.
Students use AI to produce their written assignments. Does this help them, in the long run? No.

She didn't submit that CV. She changed the prompt until the AI produced a CV she could use. It still saved her a lot of work

Art is internal motivation not external commission, it has mood, it conveys feeling.

I disagree. What I look for is the mood and feeling it gives me. The mood and feeling of the artist is just masterbation, not my business. And I realy don't want to know.

There's no rules. Whatever leads to good art is a good process

 

[unapologetic]

Is it to keep people busy all day or is it wealth generation?

Do you think your ultimate 'wealth generation' will spread out to those who have no more work to do?

Yes. That's how it works today. In the 19th century we didn't have welfare. Now we do. Paid for by industrialisation and economic efficiency

Have you seen our welfare system lately? It is failing. The Repugs are trying to kill it, So the wealthy won't need to chip in. Generating more wealth is no guarentee that everyone benifits from it. You are talking ideals, not reality.

No we don't. Humans aren't trustworthy. We use humans for all kinds of stuff.

But we don't trust humans. We make them prove themselves. AI has even less self-restraint.

The greater the wealth generation the more money the state can redistribute.

Could redistribute, but it dosen't. The state is working on the theory that the less interferiance, the more wealth generated.

It'll lead to redundancies that will lead to opportunities to hire those made redundant and an expansion of the entire market

Oppertunities to hire cheaper labor. That does not expand markets.

The limiting factor is people willing to work.

The limiting factor is JOBS.

I think news before Internet was basically an information cartell with little external oversight.

Before FauxNews the news media had more integrety. Needed less oversight.

What has changed is our ability to externally validate it.

That ability has degraded.

Sure. But what matters is the quality of the end result. If AI improves overall quality then its good

Sure. But AI is NOT improving quality. AI can not evaluate the quality of what we imput to it.

 

[unapologetic]

Productivity is a nearsighted way to judge AI.

So how would you judge it?

Productivity is an inhuman way to judge humans.

Ok, fine. But that’s how its customery to judge stuff in a market

"stuff"? You mean people?
'Market' As in job market?
Maybe you are thinking of office work. I've worked in factorys. Where productivity is 'most widgets per hour'. It sucks.
I would judge AI by accuracy and quality, not speed.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Good point. You are right, We can't know that, and there's no test we can do to prove it. But what we've learned is that writing a document from scratch is always more work than having a document generated and then proof reading it, and leads to a better end result. Writing it from scratch will introduce more errors. Andf this increases productivity across the board.

Basically, humans are not good at doing boring things. As soon as we are bored quality goes down.

Sorry, but in many cases find the error is harder than just doing it. Humans perform abysmally at tasks where the system does it and the human acts as quality control. Look at the mess Tesla has made of supposed self driving.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Productivity is a nearsighted way to judge AI. Productivity is an inhuman way to judge humans.
If productivity is the only factor in it's use, then AI is inhuman and will always be suspect.
AI needs integrety. We need to be able to trust it, over it's productivity.

I don't think this is stated right.

It's not truly productivity if what it produces isn't right.

 

[Swammerdami]

When I give talks about AI at work I use the phrase "AI is like an army of junior employees". That’s what it is. They work fast, but make a lot of mistakes. They're still valuable

This is congruent to my impressions, and what some experts imply. Is AI still improving quickly? Or is it stymied at simplistic LLM and waiting for a major breakthrough?

I read reports that some companies are disappointed in their AI efforts, but these reports may be "fake news" as OP suggests.

Dr Z: Without infringing on confidentiality can you outline your experience with AI? How much does it cost? Is it replacing workers or just increasing their productivity? What specific chores is it best at? How rapidly is its applicability expanding?

 

[DrZoidberg]

When I give talks about AI at work I use the phrase "AI is like an army of junior employees". That’s what it is. They work fast, but make a lot of mistakes. They're still valuable

This is congruent to my impressions, and what some experts imply. Is AI still improving quickly? Or is it stymied at simplistic LLM and waiting for a major breakthrough?

It depends what your expectations are. There is a pretty solid theoretical ceiling to how good AI can get. AI is basically a statistical engine that works on probability. That means that any knowledge that is either cutting edge or extremely specialised AI can't help you. AI is awesome on any knowledge that is mid range. But as soon as you get to any of the extremes in specialisation AI goes retarded.

Yes, AI will keep improving. But there's zero risk we'll all be replaced by AI. Or to put it another way, if you get replaced by AI then you suck.

And when it comes to following simple reproducable rules, like grammar, AI will outperform humans. Right now is a bad time to get a degree in translation. That's going to be fully AI in the future. Lawyers is another one where the market is set to become crowded.

What amuses me the most with AI is the art. What AI proves is that you can make great art with mediocre skill. It's simply a question of practicing. AI will never be able to produce unique master works. Of course. But for stuff people pay €1000 for to hang on their walls at home, AI can bang that out i seconds and it'll be superior. There's so many dirt poor artists who continuously whine about how hard it is to survive as an artist. When the reason they're poor is because they suck so much, and should get another job. AI has demonstrated this. I think it's an awesome reality check.

I read reports that some companies are disappointed in their AI efforts, but these reports may be "fake news" as OP suggests.

I have two replies to that.

1) Based on my own company, disappointments comes from people who think that AI is a "magical problem fixing machine". It's just not. Like any tool AI is great at certain things and bad at other things. If you try to use it for something it's bad at you'll think it sucks. Prompting is also a skill. Learning how to use AI is a learning curve. People are still getting used to it. I remember when Internet came. I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. Normal people made fun of me. This is no different. Once normal people catch on it will transform the world into a better place. Just like the Internet did.

2) Journalists love hating on AI. So they are mining responses for the negative. So yes, fake news.

Dr Z: Without infringing on confidentiality can you outline your experience with AI? How much does it cost? Is it replacing workers or just increasing their productivity? What specific chores is it best at? How rapidly is its applicability expanding?

I can't actually say what we use or what we paid. That would violate my nda. But I can say that most corporations use a private Microsoft Copilot, ie does not send data outside the company to train the AI. It's baked into what they pay for Microsoft Office anyway. So very little extra cost. The big cost comes from training staff in AI. Based on this statement you can probably work out what we are using.

We fully embraced AI in November 2023. Which was early. In May 2025 we fired almost the entire HR department. AI answered faster and gave better answers. Stuff like this will keep happening. Novo Nordisk, Denmarks biggest and most profitable company (yes, the people who make Ozempic) are in the process of cutting 11% of its workforce. It's HR roles, admin and support staff. All roles AI does better. I don't know this for a fact, but I think it's AI. They're a high tech company, so will be fast at adopting new high tech solutions. They're certainly not doing it because they're struggling financially. They're one of the strongest companies on the planet.

 

[bilby]

Once normal people catch on it will transform the world

Possibly.

into a better place.

Not very likely.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Once normal people catch on it will transform the world

Possibly.

into a better place.

Not very likely.

Just like the Internet?