Sigh.
Of course there are a lot of lazy journalists. There are a lot of lazy everything. There are also journalists putting themselves in significant danger reporting in warzones. Is all of their work invalid because some lazy people write clickbait? No. The answer is no.
> And why can’t an AI do a zoom interview
Not everyone is available on Zoom. Not everyone wants to be interviewed. Some interview subjects have to be tracked down and forced to answer questions.
In a breaking news scenario it’s incredibly valuable to have trusted physical presence. Imagine the next 9/11. How will we be able to trust AI isn’t being fooled by deepfake videos posted to YouTube?
> Very few journalists are doing "boots on the ground" interviews
So at least a few are then? That's more boots than AI has
From a year ago...
https://www.npr.org/series/1178395718/planet-money-makes-an-...
> MALONE: Yeah. We had told the AI, write five interview questions that would help an audience understand this academic paper. And we were going to just read those questions word for word to these academics. And Jeff and I were a little nervous, to be honest, 'cause would they figure this out, and if they did, were they going to be mad at us?
> ...
> GUO: Yeah. So Dan starts talking to us about AI and the kinds of jobs it might replace, but he goes out of his way to reassure us. He says, you two, Kenny and Jeff. AI probably won't be coming for your jobs.
> GROSS: That AI won't be able to ask a question as incisive as the one you just came up with. So perhaps you're safe.
> MALONE: Hey, hold. On, I got to - we were going to - I have to jump in. Are you aware of what's happening? Because AI 100% generated all the questions that we asked you.
Well, by default we don’t. We typically trust human journalists either because they produce evidence alongside their work or because they have a good enough track record of being right that we believe they are this time too. It’s a pretty fuzzy thing.
To me the core failure in the concept of AI news is that all AI does is regurgitate things other people have written. I know, I know, “that’s all journalists do lol” but in reality journalists do a lot of boots on the ground reporting, they conduct interviews, so on.
Even if GPT-7 totally solves problems like hallucinations there’s still the fundamental problem of it having no first hand knowledge. And very specifically in the world of breaking news (which human journalists get wrong often too) it feels immensely risky.