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The Washington Post Tells Staff It’s Pivoting to AI
Futurism ^ | 5/22/24 | Noor Al-Sibai

Posted on 05/23/2024 8:41:01 AM PDT by DallasBiff

Already facing scandal, the Washington Post's new-ish CEO and publisher, Will Lewis, has announced that the newspaper will be pivoting to artificial intelligence to turn around its dismal financial situation.

As Semafor media industry editor Max Tani tweeted, Lewis told Post staffers today that the newspaper will be looking for ways to use AI in its reporting as it seeks to recoup some of the $77 million it lost last year.

(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Front Page News; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: ai; wacompost; washingtonpost
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What is the big deal? The Wash Post has been running on AI since Woodward & Bernstein.
1 posted on 05/23/2024 8:41:01 AM PDT by DallasBiff
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To: DallasBiff

they already slant the news to what they think the people want, why go to AI to do that?


2 posted on 05/23/2024 8:43:22 AM PDT by teeman8r (Armageddon won't be pretty, but it's not like it's the end of the world or something )
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To: DallasBiff

It’s an upgrade from their usual human dumminess.


3 posted on 05/23/2024 8:44:16 AM PDT by HYPOCRACY (Brandon's pronouns: Xi/Hur)
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To: DallasBiff

4 posted on 05/23/2024 8:46:00 AM PDT by z3n (Kakistocracy)
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To: teeman8r

Using AI is cheaper than supporting a cohort of overpaid little writers with exalted opinions of their own worth. Remember, these were the idiot girls and boys who went whining to the media about how they weren’t being paid enough, when any high school graduate could do what they do.


5 posted on 05/23/2024 8:46:36 AM PDT by hinckley buzzard ( Resist the narrative. )
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To: DallasBiff

An AI would still have more authentic emotions than Taylor Lorenz!


6 posted on 05/23/2024 8:49:27 AM PDT by aynrandfreak (Being a Democrat means never having to say you're sorry)
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To: DallasBiff

Maybe its really not Will Lewis thinking its cheaper, but the folks at Langley. A lot easier to mail out the AI written article, than contacting the newsroom and saying “these are the talking points on such-and-such topic. Craft a story that doesn’t make things too obvious where its coming from.”


7 posted on 05/23/2024 8:57:21 AM PDT by Tench_Coxe (The woke were surprised by the reaction to the Bud Light fiasco. May there be many more surprises)
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To: hinckley buzzard

AI can download DNC talking points—no reporters needed.

Just call it ALie.


8 posted on 05/23/2024 8:58:59 AM PDT by cgbg ("Our democracy" = Their Kleptocracy)
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To: DallasBiff

Bound to be an improvement.


9 posted on 05/23/2024 9:03:53 AM PDT by 'smith
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To: Tench_Coxe

Cutting out the middleman in producing lies. I like it! Very efficient


10 posted on 05/23/2024 9:04:33 AM PDT by j.havenfarm (23 years on Free Republic, 12/10/23! More than 8,000 replies and still not shutting up!)
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To: DallasBiff

AI = Artificial Idiocy.

No more human error. Computers will deliberately get everything wrong now.


11 posted on 05/23/2024 9:07:49 AM PDT by Eleutheria5 (Every Goliath has his David. Child in need of a CGM system. https://gofund.me/6452dbf1. )
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To: DallasBiff

Artificial Indoctrination.


12 posted on 05/23/2024 9:16:46 AM PDT by KarlInOhio (Democrats' version of MAGA: Making America the Gulag Archipelago. Now with "Formal Deprogramming")
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To: hinckley buzzard

Exactly. The little twerps have already written volumes of bullcrap propaganda why keep paying them when AI can just read it all and regurgitate it for free?


13 posted on 05/23/2024 9:19:56 AM PDT by monkeyshine (live and let live is dead)
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To: DallasBiff

Washington Post’s management next step, email AI to write nice note firing humans..... Mission accomplished..... oops sorry guess the Washington Post would not use Bush’s slogan. Guess they could use “If you drag a hundred dollar bill through a server farm, you never know what you’ll find to replace workers”.


14 posted on 05/23/2024 9:30:20 AM PDT by Lockbox (politicians, they all seemed like game show hosts to me.... Sting…)
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To: Tench_Coxe

“these are the talking points on such-and-such topic. Craft a story that doesn’t make things too obvious where its coming from.”

A reporter’s job is collecting raw data and telling it to their audience.

The activity described by the above quote is rehashing, not reporting, because the writer is being given the raw data.

Replacing the rehashers on the Washington Post’s staff with machines sounds like a good business decision and we readers won’t suffer.


15 posted on 05/23/2024 9:32:39 AM PDT by cymbeline (we saw men break out of a concentration camp.”)
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To: DallasBiff

Every 3 to 6 months, I buy a real book, not a kindle to read/underline and highlight.

Below is my newest real book: Bohica* best describes the first 30 pages of this book.

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century’s Greatest Dilemma
by Mustafa Suleyman (Author), Michael Bhaskar
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 2,025 ratings 3.9 on Goodreads 4,883 ratings
#1 Best Seller in Social Aspects of Technology

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An urgent warning of the unprecedented risks that AI and other fast-developing technologies pose to global order, and how we might contain them while we have the chance—from a co-founder of the pioneering artificial intelligence company DeepMind and current CEO of Microsoft AI.

“A fascinating, well-written, and important book.”—Yuval Noah Harari
“Essential reading.”—Daniel Kahneman
“An excellent guide for navigating unprecedented times.”—Bill Gates

A Best Book of the Year: CNN, Economist, Bloomberg, Politico Playbook, Financial Times, The Guardian, CEO Magazine, Semafor • Winner of the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award • Finalist for the Porchlight Business Book Award and the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award

We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change.

Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organize your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy.

None of us are prepared.

As co-founder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind, part of Google, Mustafa Suleyman has been at the center of this revolution. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies.

In The Coming Wave, Suleyman shows how these forces will create immense prosperity but also threaten the nation-state, the foundation of global order. As our fragile governments sleepwalk into disaster, we face an existential dilemma: unprecedented harms on one side, the threat of overbearing surveillance on the other.

Can we forge a narrow path between catastrophe and dystopia?

This groundbreaking book from the ultimate AI insider establishes “the containment problem”—the task of maintaining control over powerful technologies—as the essential challenge of our age.

BOHICA: Stands for Bend Over, Here It Comes Again. The meaning is that something undesirable is going to happen again and that there’s not much else one can do other than just endure it.


16 posted on 05/23/2024 9:35:10 AM PDT by Grampa Dave (“If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it!” )
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To: DallasBiff

Take an email from the DNC and run it through AI. Instant story.


17 posted on 05/23/2024 9:36:29 AM PDT by AppyPappy (Biden told Al Roker "America is back". Unfortunately, he meant back to the 1970's)
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To: DallasBiff

Wapo sick and tired of foot stomping DEI hires demanding this that and the other thing and getting sued for some bogus racist acts?

Why pay college grads to be abusive to staff when AI can do the same work with no lip?


18 posted on 05/23/2024 9:42:25 AM PDT by Bob434
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To: DallasBiff

All they have to do is train their AI on all of the newspapers except for a few like the New York Post that lean right and they will get the exact same garbage as their overpaid Ivy League presstitutes and the AI will write the exact same garbage for far less.


19 posted on 05/23/2024 9:57:27 AM PDT by wildcard_redneck (He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.)
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To: DallasBiff

We’re already barreling down the slippery slope and everyday more morons jump on to make us go faster!


20 posted on 05/23/2024 9:58:52 AM PDT by 100%FEDUP
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