Secret Chief
Very strong language
Very.
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Bad source. Bias source. Etc.
- Thread starter We Never Know
- Start date
Tomef
Well-Known Member
Do you mean skewed?
Nimos
Well-Known Member
Yes and no, because you also need to be able to find the information, which could technically be made less prioritized to you than other information. Kind of like if you search on Google a lot of the results you get are paid for, it's not necessarily the best information or products etc. And depending on how well the whole AI turns out, it could also be fed biased data and so forth. All this information that is going into the AI is done both automatically but also by humans validating the information for whether they are relevant or not.
Again depending on the AI, I think the internet will turn more towards the AI presenting information with links rather than presenting you with websites. And there is obviously an issue here, if Google is just crawling the information from websites, then these people don't get the same amount of traffic or maybe the full context of the information might be wrong etc. Like those examples I posted above, where some of the stuff the AI puts out is from random people on Reddit, clearly not a place that the AI should get information from.
But I agree that I think people will go to places they trust more. You eventually can't even trust a video that looks legit, because it could potentially be AI-generated, once the quality becomes good enough. There are just a lot of potential issues, that I don't think we have really experienced yet.
Nimos
Well-Known Member
Tomef
Well-Known Member
Why would you rely on Google for any of that? That might be a way to find out where to look for the info you want - books, articles, research, journals etc - but shouldn’t be treated as a source in itself.
Nimos
Well-Known Member
But if you can't trust that information, because it is all a huge mess. Most people will not be bothered quoting a book etc. Because the person you quote it to also has to be able to verify what you are quoting. There is already is a lot of trust involved when people speak with each other.
Tomef
Well-Known Member
Only in the sense that a lot of information is dumped on the internet. I think the real issue though is that having access to information, correct or not, all the time can lead people to think they know something without knowing anything about it. I’ve had that sort of discussion, with a person who responds with something cut and paste from a source they have skim read. Presumably they think that counts as an argument. It’s not really different than before the internet in a more general sense, there are and have always been people who just don’t understand the difference between a random, accidental notion and an opinion based on some knowledge of a subject. The only actual difference is that those people now copy and paste the results of a quick google search rather than quoting someone they know who knows someone who had something to say about it. And there have always been people who don’t bother to learn anything. The only difference now is the context and level of interaction.
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Good OP!
One metric I use when determining if what I'm reading is credible is the frequency of easily falsifiable claims. When a source contains many easily falsifiable claims, I tend to trust it more, regardless of its biases.
What I see a LOT in what passes for journalism these days is a lack of the basic facts. The old who, what, why, when, where, and how that used to be the cornerstone of good journalism.
PureX
Veteran Member
So far, nearly all the corporate entities using AI to create content for sale and public consumption are hiding the fact that they are using it. And are outright lying to us about it. They are creating and selling books, news articles, songs and videos all created by AI, and all falsely being attributed to human authors.
If AI is so great and so harmless, why are the people using it to increase their profits deliberately lying to us about it? And why on Earth should we trust them as sources for anything?
If AI is so great and so harmless, why are the people using it to increase their profits deliberately lying to us about it? And why on Earth should we trust them as sources for anything?
McBell
Unbound
Source?
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
That they would at least try Chat GPT and other free sources is not unreasonable. Are they hiding it or just not publicly announcing it? I would think that if they are using AI it is the latter. Businesses do not, nor do they morally have to, tell others all of their marketing strategies.
In other words, are they probably at least dabbling in AI? Almost surely. Are they hiding that action if they are doing so? No.
wellwisher
Well-Known Member
The way I check contemporary sources is to look back and see how each source treated the Russian Collusion Coup. That drama lasted over 2 years, and if the rags continued to run with the scam, until debunked. If they could not find the truth in less than two years with that, they cannot be trusted with faster paced stories. Lies can hit and run fast, and the truth takes time to catch up. Good Journalism does more checking of fact and sources and can get it sooner, than two years.
Then again I attribute that to FOX buying all the best News People, with half them NYT Best Sellers. Their position as number 1, means money and the ability to buy the best talent. The rest get the second string who is not quite up to snuff. They demonstrated that.
One of the subtle scams that many articles use, is to report facts that are true, but not all the true facts. They cannot be accused of lying, but without all the facts, for better context, the selective facts can lead the audience to the biased conclusion they seek.
For example, an article or news report may say a person of interest was seen near a factory fire, just minutes before the alarm sounded. This may be true. Based on this fact, many will draw the conclusion, this person of interest, set the fire. However, another fact, not reported, is this person came out of his house, nearby, saw smoke, and pulled the alarm. He then disappeared, after the alarm sounded, since he did not want to be involved with the hoopla. He is a person of interest, because the owner of the factor wishes to thank him.
If my goal was to scare people, the first way is a better use of a selective and lack of context fact. If the goal is to make people feel better, the whole truth works better, with the leading story the heroism, and the man hunt to thank him. We can thank him on the news to respect his privacy.
Another scam. which is common to rags like the NYT, is to place the news or opinion they want you to read, on page 1, and alternate view and news on page 78. Or they will They will lie, on the front page, and then have to apologize, which is placed on page 30. The audience never sees the correction and passes on the lie, assuming this is still credible.
What I often do is, know the audience and link to sources they would trust. Often this data may bury it on page 405 in the competitive source, but at least it will be a trusted source, and I can bring this data to page 1. Often not reporting story is a tell, so they use that loophole.
Tomef
Well-Known Member
How many people read newspapers in page order these days?
Could you provide some examples to back up your idea here please.
Tomef
Well-Known Member
What are you basing this on? Fox is the source of confusing answers to questions about the nature of its news staff, at times making a distinction between journalists and talk show presenters that is contradicted by claims from characters like Hannity to be ‘news people’, or ‘advocacy/opinion journalists’. The main issue is that as Hannity, Carlson and others are not professional journalists as such, they are not held to the same standards, and hence are free to spout whatever nonsense best serves the people and interests they advocate for. An example of this is Fox’s decision not to discipline Hannity over his failure to disclose a conflict of interest regarding his relationship with Cohen (prior to Cohen’s conviction), something a real journalist would be likely to be suspended or fired over, at least in a more reputable organisation.
More generally, the problem with Fox and other like sources is that they exist in a kind of liminal space between personal opinions rooted in the relationships and general social and political alliances of its main spokespeople, the need to maintain a close relationship with their punters, who don’t like to hear anything they don’t already agree with, and the need to maintain some contact with real world events. The most obvious example of this is the hoohah over the conflict between pretending there was some substance to Trump’s claims of election fraud - what people wanted to hear - and the reality as revealed in messages between staff at Fox, including Carlson and other talking heads, that they - like anyone with a passing interest in reality - knew it was all nonsense. Until hit with a lawsuit, Fox continued to peddle the made up nonsense rather than disappoint their viewers with a dose of reality.
What examples do you have to back up any of your claims about low journalistic standards at, for example, the NYT? Please be specific.
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Tomef
Well-Known Member
Such as...?
The initial investigation, prompted by questions raised (and taken seriously) by both Republican and Democrat politicians set out to determine what could be discovered relating the specific allegation that members of Trump's campaign worked with Russia to sway the 2016 election in his favour. It led to several high-profile convictions of people at the top level of Trump’s retinue. The ‘collusion’ blah is a straw man used by low-quality media to try and dismiss all of this.
What do you object to in coverage of this by the NYT?
Here is a series of articles from the last 8 years, just a few but representative of the diverse reporting and opinion on the topic featured in the NYT (plus one from the Washington Post). It shouldn’t take you that long to go over them. What here do you object to, and why? What do you consider to be ‘fake news’, and on what basis? Or use some examples of your own. Provide some kind of evidence for any of your claims.
Gather Round, Everyone. It’s Time to Play ‘Find the Collusion’! (Published 2018)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...5f6f8a-3aff-11e7-8854-21f359183e8c_story.html
Opinion | Republicans’ Big Lie About Trump and Russia (Published 2019)
Durham Finds Fault With F.B.I. Over Russia Inquiry (Published 2023)
Opinion | Russians Always Knew There Was No Collusion (Published 2019)
Rudy Giuliani Backs Off Remarks on Potential Collusion by Trump Aides (Published 2019)
Indictment Details Collusion Between Cyberthief and 2 Russian Spies (Published 2017)
Opinion | The Trump Campaign Accepted Russian Help to Win in 2016. Case Closed. (Published 2020)
Opinion | The Russians Were Involved. But It Wasn’t About Collusion. (Published 2017)
Trump Falsely Claims That Manafort Judge Declared There Was ‘No Collusion’ With Russia (Published 2019)
Opinion | Can We Please Stop Talking About ‘Collusion’? (Published 2017)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/...sia-michael-cohen.html?searchResultPosition=4