Permanently Deleted

    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      How much of Buzzfeed article writing was already just Mad Libbing through a prompt guide anyway?

      How much of their traffic was just confused olds and automated screen scrappers stumbling through their clickbait ads?

      Like, nevermind surplus. Please tell me what value Buzzfeed even creates. It's just a seven layer dip of ads on ads.

      • mittens [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        There's no way the stock wont dip again, it's like basically confirming that buzzfeed is an automated content mill not worth reading, who actually wants this? And it's so funny because maybe there's the possibility that maybe readers won't notice, but they also need to literally announce publicly that they're using AI to get the stock spikes in the first place.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Please tell me what value Buzzfeed even creates. It’s just a seven layer dip of ads on ads.

        As far as I understand it this is almost the entire internet now. Online advertising doesn't work at all and never has. Companies have been pouring their ad budgets in to a black hole for years. As near as I can tell they just don't know what else to do because every market is so saturated. Online shopping is also starting to get to a point where the decades of loss leader anti-competitive practices are starting to have their bills come due and online retailers can't afford to keep it up.

        • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Online advertising doesn’t work at all and never has.

          Orly?

          :hillary-contempt: :putin-wink: :trump-moist:

        • Mardoniush [she/her]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Online advertising used to work, and some sections still do a little like influencer and some Google Ads stuff in some niches, but in the last two years effectiveness has plummeted, even using very advanced advertising techniques.

          It's in a massive race to the bottom now.

    • iridaniotter [she/her, she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Jobs are the only way to get surplus value though. Initially this may give them increased profits compared to other companies in the industry if the tech works, but then everyone else will adopt it and fire their employees. The end result is a reduced rate of profit. :marx:

    • UlyssesT
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      deleted by creator

  • Commander_Data [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Gonna develop my own search engine that uses AI to filter out AI written results. Gonna call it "Deckard" and wait for Ridley Scott to sue me.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      They tried to do this with video game cheat programs, resulting in an AI arms race. The current status of the conflict is that cheating programs have become so sophisticated they're effective impossible to detect without generating so many false positives that it becomes self-defeating.

      • Commander_Data [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Oh, I'm aware. The new EA anti-cheat that they rolled out on FIFA 23 is kernel level. Imagine giving kernel-level access to a shit company like EA.

        • Dryad [she/her]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Riot also did this with their anticheat for Valorant. Yeah lemme reboot my whole computer so I can try your fuckin counterstrike clone lmao

  • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Surprised they weren't doing this already? Idk a lot of tech and sports news seems to have been written by bots for almost a decade now. Outside of their investigative work seems like Buzzfeed would've done the same.

    • duderium [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I think this is true, and since automation equals less surplus labor to exploit, it may help to explain the decline of newspapers, magazines, publications, and corporate media generally. Plus, journalists (whether human or AI) aren’t allowed to write anything interesting (since that would anger the bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy, the only people who can pay to subscribe), which also helps to explain this decline, as well as competition from many forms of media which didn’t exist or weren’t as prominent only a few decades ago (video games, twitter, podcasts). There are only so many hours in the day we have to consume shit.

  • Grandpa_garbagio [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    This was always going to happen. It's also not going to work well when something god awful slips through, and it'll be about two months before they have writers doing the content again.

    Might not rehire people though, just double the workload of some freelancers or something.

    It's tech being forced on the masses, no one wants this anymore than NFTs. Going to see a bunch of dumb shit companies barely turning a profit (or losing money) see this as their golden ticket, then it's going to backfire as people are end up repulsed by it and eventually companies will stop pushing it so hard.

    Though individual workers will probably use some form as productivity tools

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      It already happened a long time ago. Using writing algorithms to do most of the work then having a barely compensated editor clean up the resulting vomit has been a norm for a lot of clickbait mills for years now. It's part of the reason why there's discussion of AI models training on the output of AI models, since so much of the internet is already algorithmically generated SEO traps or similar "Content".

      *dead internet intensifies*

        • UlyssesT
          ·
          edit-2
          2 months ago

          deleted by creator

          • Sea_Gull [they/them]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Don't forget the occasional embedded links to keep people clicking

            • UlyssesT
              ·
              edit-2
              2 months ago

              deleted by creator

              • Sea_Gull [they/them]
                ·
                edit-2
                2 years ago

                With this, deep fakes, and YouTube ad plugs, we're just going to have inoffensive ai-generated avatars playing games while seamlessly talking about Raid Shadow Legends or Hello Fresh.

                • UlyssesT
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  2 months ago

                  deleted by creator

      • Grandpa_garbagio [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        There's a pretty big difference between hiring a writer to fix AI and just using AI though

    • UlyssesT
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      deleted by creator

        • UlyssesT
          ·
          edit-2
          2 months ago

          deleted by creator

  • SerLava [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    Oh okay nice, can't wait to read articles from the vibe machine that's designed to pretend it knows what it's talking about and just makes shit up out of whole cloth.

    I watched a tech demo for an AI writing program on the homepage of the AI writing program company's website- the random prompt they chose was inflation because of the ongoing inflation crisis. One of the things it spit out was "recently, inflation has been slow and steady" wow! Beautiful. So helpful, AI.

    This is going to be so good for a NEWS website lmao

    • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      If you've ever googled basic information about a tech item, video game, or sports in the past decade or so, and scrolled past like the 3rd result, usually you get a ton of really bad AI. "X is being released on its release date. The anticipated release date is spring 2020" type stuff.

      • VHS [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        This is basically the robocall of the internet, it pisses everyone off and makes web search nearly unusable

      • MemesAreTheory [he/him, any]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        Hey, it's also used for mountains of misinformation "reviews" to legitimize shit products that are basically scams. Entire fake review websites exist, dozens upon dozens, regurgitating the same key talking points fed by some garbage marketing department. The algorithm just shuffles them around a little and slaps some new URL on it.

        That's INNOVATIVE and VALUABLE.

  • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Makes sense. Buzzfeed articles are generic enough for AI to write on their own. A shame they got rid of their journalistic writers though because they were good for the most part, except for that Xinjiang bullshit. AI still isn't good enough to write creative fiction all that well. I've read some of their stuff and it's pretty generic and dull. You could probably say the same for most stuff on bookshelves but still.

    • Awoo [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Wait they also fired the Buzzfeed News staff? Wtf that's wild given their awards.

    • mittens [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Gonna need a source for buzzfeed news journos being fired, pretty sure this is replacing the worthless listicle stuff nobody was reading anyway.

  • waterfox [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    The funny part is that this will probably make Buzzfeed articles better :hahaha:

  • Leon_Grotsky [comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    You expect me to believe a totally real person named Al Mayadeen wrote this article, eh?

    Nice try, SkyNet!

    • AbbysMuscles [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Given how much of the web is scraper bots and trackers and repost bots and false subs and God knows what else, it basically is at this point

  • UlyssesT
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    deleted by creator

  • Awoo [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    We're gonna need a new word for writing that is performed by humans vs writing that is performed by AI.

    This isn't going to kill real human-driven content. But that human content is going to have to build a new language to separate itself linguistically from the drivel produced by AI.

    I think AI performs very poorly at being concise and that's where humans should aim for.

      • Awoo [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Not bad not bad. If we codify something and get it in usage we also then have a language to use for potential regulation of it, such as forcing all content to be labelled clearly as "MLM" (or whatever other term ends up being the norm).