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Top news app caught sharing “entirely false” AI-generated news (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 125 points 1 month ago

Sometimes, the AI gets the little details wrong.

In school we always get an assignment to compare the same story in different newspapers. It was amazing to see them all have different details. And that was before the internet existed. So AI here isn't better, just cheaper.

Other times, the AI wholly fabricates events.

We call that Boris Johnson.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

We call that Boris Johnson.

We call that politicians haha.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I mean, the AI is worse. It's literally impossible to not be worse, it would need a 100% accuracy to the sample data while also never hallucinating, that's pretty much completely impossible.

[-] [email protected] 70 points 1 month ago

Take an article from a reputable publisher, an article for a subject that you are expert in.

Read it and make note of facts they got right and got wrong.

Now apply that same ratio to articles where you have little or no expertise.

These guys are just speed running th at to its inevitable end.

[-] [email protected] 55 points 1 month ago

Take an article from a reputable publisher, an article for a subject that you are expert in.

Read it and make note of facts they got right and got wrong.

This is what got me to shake free of some podcasters I placed far too much faith in at one point in the past. When I realized how slanted and fucked their opinion was on things I knew about, it put all their other opinions in a much different light.

[-] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago

Same here used to love Sam Harris and to some extent Joe Rogan, like 2016'ish. Then they got into that whole intellectual dark web nonsense and stayed political instead of trippy brain science and meditation stuff, they started talking about international politics and they are both fucking bigots. Really turned me off hearing Sam basically support the genocide of Palestine.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

I listened to Sam for a little while, but then he got stuck on Genetics & IQ back in about 2017-18.

I was like - OK, but do you account for any other differences, like poverty and affluence rates? Nope, he could only fathom the two factors: "race in, IQ out - so people of African heritage are dumb", because his expert said that, he thought it too.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

I forgot about the IQ thing! His opinions on deterministic behavior are also a little out there and kind of look at the decision process backwards.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

I don't even want admit who it was. (It wasn't Rush or Hannity, more stealth than those guys but I should have known better anyway.) 😬

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Rogan is a great example of the influence Trump has had on Americans. Rogan used to have all types on his program but now it's nothing but MAGAts.

[-] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago

I think it's important to recognize when someone holds a different opinion/conclusion and when they are repeating misinformation or have facts wrong.

I can't listen to Joe at all because he doesn't bring anything intellectually to thr table and prompts pseudoscience. Sam on the other hand is brilliant and tries hard to bring facts to the table. However, no one is "perfect" or will share all of our opinions/conclusions.

I for one am not onboard with Sam in regards to the Isreal/Palestine conflict, some if his opinions on guns, etc. But I still enjoy listening because even when those opinions clash with mine he lays out why he has that opinion and I can see he gave it some thought but has a different conclusion than me.

The only reason I write all this is to say that we shouldn't allow ourselves to blend misleading facts and differing opinions into one.

[-] [email protected] 39 points 1 month ago

“When news breaks, we fix it”

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Where is Craig Kilborn when you need him?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

You’re thinking of NewsFix.

[-] [email protected] 32 points 1 month ago

The app? Or the news company/network.

[-] [email protected] 45 points 1 month ago

"NewsBreak", a free app with roots in China that is the most downloaded news app in the United States.

Never heard of it. Hard to believe it's the most downloaded news app. I guess I'm out of touch.

[-] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago

50M+ downloads on Google Play. Hard to verify if farmed tho.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

“Most downloaded” just means “biggest phone farm”.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

I was expecting it to be Ground News considering how much they advertize on YouTube.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Do most Americans really get their news from Chinese AI now? I can’t really believe that but then sadly maybe I can…

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Probably propogated by TikTok or similar operations, I hope the 2 new laws passed alongside the tiktok forced sale makes them divest and stop sharing data overseas.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

China will always win. It’s just a numbers game at this point. Thankfully I’ll be dead and gone by then.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

If it's purely a numbers game then I'm interested to see how India develops over the next 50 years.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Yes

[-] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago

Speaking of details wrong:

most downloaded local news app

  • 50,000,000+ downloads

Meanwhile Google News (which does local):

  • 1,000,000,000+ downloads
[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

Eh, for a while google news was a bake-in app. I'm okay excluding those figures.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

Yeah, but "2nd place" (if it's even that) is so far down that many of us including me haven't even heard of it before.

[-] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago

This is a bit of cliche, but still relevant to our current times:

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.

Antonio Gramsci (Italian Marxist philospher from the turn of the century)

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

problem is, that statement can be applied at any given time in history

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I think there are times when it is more relevant, e.g. initial change from a feudal/agrarian model to industrialization. By all accounts this was perhaps the biggest, most impactful change in human history.

One could argue that we are now witnessing a similar transition with respect to the information age.

At any rate, this was a somewhat glib statement on my part. :)

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Maybe that's why he didn't specify which century.

[-] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It's almost like they are trying to shoehorn AI into anything and everything regardless of whether it is a good fit, and regardless of whether the technology is ready, and regardless of the outcome. Like blockchain. And IoT. And Angry Birds. (j/k on that last one. Kinda.)

But that's none of my business, I'm just a puppet frog drinking tea.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

This is most definitely a feature here. What ARS won’t say (but their source articles do) is that Newsbreak is an app right out of China. That’s why they don’t care that this creates entirely fictional stories. This is the leftwing equivalent of all those rightwing agitprop sites that pretend to be local news in order to trick people

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Oh wow, I did not read the source Reuters article and yeah it's a Chinese project.

This is the kind of stuff that should make Americans evaluate whether their orthodox and somewhat parochial approach to "free speech" (the polemical definition as opposed to the broad concept) needs updating to reflect modern realities.

Even before AI and digitization, there were many examples of how an American interpretation of free speech was clearly lacking, but this AI spam and strategic methods used by russia/China are going to make these deficiencies a much more pressing matter.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Oh wow. I've been considering checking out News Break for a bit. I'm glad I saw this.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Like cloud, too. Behind the Bastards did an episode on these trends. He had an interesting take. I guess “AI” and/or the tech bros who pump and dump these tech trends one after the other were the bastards.

[-] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago

I usually respect ars technical for writing great stories. This time, however, they could've included the name of the app so it wasn't clickbaity. It's newsbreak for those wondering.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago

Uh... The very first sentence mmmmm

After the most downloaded local news app in the US, NewsBreak, shared an AI-generated story about a fake New Jersey shooting last Christmas Eve, New Jersey police had to post a statement online to reassure troubled citizens that the story was "entirely false," Reuters reported.

[-] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago

Right, but the headline doesn't include that to bait you into clicking the article to get that information. Just like every other click bait article about android app issues.

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[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

It's an exciting change from legacy media sharing old fashioned, entirely false news.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

False news WITH plausible deniability!

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Is it a "top" news service if I've never heard of it?

I've seen false AI gen stories reported by Reuters itself for pity sake.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Future historians will have a lot of trouble identifying fake ai news when studying our current era.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

AI news barely able to make Onion obsolete, what a time to be alive!

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

News about news about fake news, can we go any deeper

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this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
534 points (98.5% liked)

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