[Peace-discuss] All the more why we need independent journalism

[J.B. Nicholson]

https://www.rt.com/news/580131-google-journalism-ai-chatbot-genesis/ begins

> Google is testing an AI-powered journalism product and pitching it to major news
> organizations, the New York Times reported on Thursday, citing three sources close
> to the matter. The Times was allegedly one of the outlets approached by Google.
> 
> Known internally as Genesis, the tool is capable of generating news stories based
> on user inputs – details of current events like who, what, where, or when, the
> sources said. The company allegedly sees it as “responsible technology” – a
> middle-ground for news organizations not interested in replacing their human staff
> with generative AI.
> 
> In addition to the creep factor – two executives who saw Google’s pitch reportedly
> called it “unsettling” – Genesis’ mechanized approach to storytelling rubbed some
> journalists the wrong way. Two insiders told the Times it appeared to take for
> granted the talent required to produce news stories that were not only accurate
> but well-written.
> 
> A spokeswoman for Google insisted Genesis was “not intended to…replace the
> essential role journalists have in reporting, creating, and fact-checking their
> articles” but could instead offer up options for headlines and other writing
> styles.

This means that what constitutes news could come from one organization with 
well-known government ties (think union of state and private power) -- Google -- 
quickly generating articles that are published by a number of front-ends -- 
organizations whose brand names you ostensibly trust. Publishing under a lot of 
different brands reduces those outlets to brand names and gives the reader the 
impression that they're getting the same overall view from multiple outlets which 
will help the unsavvy reader think that they're getting the truth.

With the exception of being automatically generated, we see this in the tech articles 
all the time.

In tech journalism, industry norms are repeated with great speed. Humans read press 
releases from all of the big tech names you know such as Microsoft, Apple, Qualcomm, 
and others, then reiterate (and in some cases repeat and/or point to) those press 
releases. The human-generated output is published as news. Tech discussion sites link 
to those news articles and invite the public to discuss the article.

Countervailing opinions on tech discussion sites are quickly "moderated". For 
instance, if one dares to bring up software freedom (the freedom to run, share, and 
modify published computer software) in the context of an article where non-free 
software is at the center of the discussion, one finds that that post is silenced. On 
Hacker News, for example, such a post will be drawn in a color closer to that of the 
background color making that post harder to see by default. On Slashdot, the post's 
score will be lowered by other site account holders (including industry shills and 
people who don't want to engage in honest conversation). This makes the post less 
likely to be shown at all because high-scoring posts are sorted to the top. 
Eventually the low-score post is simply not republished by default which means most 
visitors to the site won't see that post. Posts that support (or at least don't 
challenge) the article's assumptions and point of view are either given points or 
left alone. Moderation is thus indistinguishable from censorship and because 
moderation is done by other user accounts, we're supposed to believe that moderation 
is acceptable.

Pro-software freedom articles are rarely accepted for discussion on such tech 
discussion sites. They show up just often enough to allow the site to dodge 
criticisms that the site is entirely one-sided but if you scroll through the articles 
you'll easily find far more articles and posts supporting industry narrative than 
those challenging industry narrative.

Google's main contribution here, then, is automating the first step of writing the 
article.

This has bad outcomes for anyone whose opinions don't align with the site's 
pro-industry narratives. I think that this model is going to show up more in other 
areas of journalism including issues such as war and peace, life and death.