Fuck AI

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Source (Via Xcancel)

Source (Mastodon)

“Israel built an ‘AI factory’ for war. It unleashed it in Gaza,” laments the Washington Post. “Hospitals Are Reporting More Insurance Denials. Is AI Driving Them?,” reports Newsweek. “AI Raising the Rent? San Francisco Could Be the First City to Ban the Practice,” announces San Francisco’s KQED.

Within the last few years, and particularly the last few months, we’ve heard this refrain: AI is the reason for an abuse committed by a corporation, military, or other powerful entity. All of a sudden, the argument goes, the adoption of “faulty” or “overly simplified” AI caused a breakdown of normal operations: spikes in health insurance claims denials, the skyrocketing of consumer prices, the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. If not for AI, it follows, these industries and militaries, in all likelihood, would implement fairer policies and better killing protocols.

We’ll admit: the narrative seems compelling at first glance. There are major dangers in incorporating AI into corporate and military procedures. But in these cases, the AI isn’t the culprit; the people making the decisions are. UnitedHealthcare would deny claims regardless of the tools at its disposal. Landlords would raise rents with or without automated software. The IDF would kill civilians no matter what technology was, or wasn’t, available to do so. So why do we keep hearing that AI is the problem? What’s the point of this frame and why is it becoming so common as a responsibility-avoidance framing?

On today’s episode, we’ll dissect the genre of “investigative” reporting on the dangers of AI, examining how it serves as a limited hangout, offering controlled criticism while ultimately shifting responsibility toward faceless technologies and away from powerful people.

Later on the show, we’ll be speaking with Steven Renderos, Executive Director of MediaJustice, a national racial justice organization that advances the media and technology rights of people of color. He is the creator and co-host, with the great Brandi Collins-Dexter, Bring Receipts, a politics and pop culture podcast and is executive producer of Revolutionary Spirits, a 4-part audio series on the life and martyrdom of Mexican revolutionary leader Francisco Madero.

Source (Bluesky)

The news outlet has had to correct at least three dozen A.I.-generated summaries of articles published this year.

The giant financial news site Bloomberg "has been experimenting with using AI to help produce its journalism," reports the New York Times. But "It hasn't always gone smoothly."

While Bloomberg announced on January 15 that it would add three AI-generated bullet points at the top of articles as a summary, "The news outlet has had to correct at least three dozen A.I.-generated summaries of articles published this year." (This Wednesday they published a "hallucinated" date for the start of U.S. auto tariffs, and earlier in March claimed president Trump had imposed tariffs on Canada in 2024, while other errors have included incorrect figures and incorrect attribution.)

Bloomberg is not alone in trying A.I. — many news outlets are figuring out how best to embrace the new technology and use it in their reporting and editing. The newspaper chain Gannett uses similar A.I.-generated summaries on its articles, and The Washington Post has a tool called "Ask the Post" that generates answers to questions from published Post articles. And problems have popped up elsewhere. Earlier this month, The Los Angeles Times removed its A.I. tool from an opinion article after the technology described the Ku Klux Klan as something other than a racist organization.

Bloomberg News said in a statement that it publishes thousands of articles each day, and "currently 99 percent of A.I. summaries meet our editorial standards...." The A.I. summaries are "meant to complement our journalism, not replace it," the statement added....

John Micklethwait, Bloomberg's editor in chief, laid out the thinking about the A.I. summaries in a January 10 essay, which was an excerpt from a lecture he had given at City St. George's, University of London. "Customers like it — they can quickly see what any story is about. Journalists are more suspicious," he wrote. "Reporters worry that people will just read the summary rather than their story." But, he acknowledged, "an A.I. summary is only as good as the story it is based on. And getting the stories is where the humans still matter."

A Bloomberg spokeswoman told the Times that the feedback they'd received to the summaries had generally been positive — "and we continue to refine the experience."

:( fuck it

While the title gave me a chuckle, it did have this to say...

The research, detailed in a paper titled “AI and the advent of the cyborg behavioral scientist,” tested how well popular generative AI models including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot and Google’s Gemini could handle various stages of the research process.

[...]

What they discovered was a mixed bag of capabilities and limitations, presumably good news for research scientists wondering if AI will take their job.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/24516433

Source (Mastodon)

It has sound.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/26350554

The makers of comic book heroes from Dennis the Menace to Judge Dredd are banding together to take on their biggest enemy yet — AI copycats.

A newly formed trade association, Comic Book UK, will bring together companies such as DC Thomson, which publishes the Beano, and Rebellion Entertainment, which makes 2000AD.

Other members will include The Phoenix Comic, which has published the Bunny vs Monkey series, graphic novel company Avery Hill Publishing and Fable, a digital comics platform.

The group will lobby for government and investor recognition that UK comics are an important export industry and develop valuable intellectual property.

One of the most immediate issues will be securing the industry’s future as the UK government considers proposals to relax copyright laws to train AI models.

...

Comic Book UK says the industry produces hundreds of thousands of pages of comic book content every year and has extensive archives of historic content.

British publishers are behind some of the most recognisable comic characters in titles “enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of readers every week and graphic novels read by millions more each year”, it says. These characters are often used in films, TV programmes and video games. Comic book content is particularly valuable for generative AI training because it is both highly visual and narrative driven, it argues.

The group warns that exemption proposals are not feasible in practice and will fail to provide rights holders with appropriate control over and means to seek remuneration for the use of their content and IP in AI training.

This will inhibit the growth of the comics industry, it said.

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