Henry Luce (the creator and original publisher of SI) is turning in his grave again, not having completely recovered from the butchery job that has been done to his other creations, "Time", "Life" and "Fortune".
I haven't checked it out for a while, but hasn't Time sort of rallied a bit journalistically since being purchased by Marc Benioff? Probably still a shell of its former Luce self, though.
Yes, human everything. Robot hands will never be human hands. There's a reason God gave us hands to create--and why He emphasizes throughout the Bible that we use our hands. It's why my business continues to at least sustain me during these challenging times.
That, and the free ride for AI "creators," to really stretch the definition of the word, is just about over. AI companies can't keep draining the lakes and reservoirs for free. They've started metering their AI output for software developers and other users. Writers won't be far behind. Without the free ride, most of these sham writers will disappear.
AI is symptom of a much bigger problem, Ted. Take a more global view. Are these media going away because they use AI? Or are they resorting to AI because they can no longer afford to pay real people for real writing/reporting? The Internet and social media blew up the advertising support model traditional journalism relied on for centuries. Craigslist on its own sucked up the most lucrative portion of advertising: classified ads. I want to support dozens of local, regional, and national media and indie writers/reporters but my finances are not endless. What we need desperately is a new revenue model for journalism beyond a billionaire buyer. Any ideas, Ted? Or do you stick to carping about using AI? I also hate it, but I know that in the case of media, there is true financial desperation behind it. How do we change that but leave media independent?
Very true. It's the reason my newsletter is free. People can subscribe and still have money to pay other Susbtackers who need the income more than I do.
Crazy idea: Journalists adapt to and stay ahead of evolving media. Journalists as "Best and Most Trustworthy Influencers". The media is the message.
Influencers everywhere today are 99% SHIT. At best, they provide superficial advice such as makeup tips. At worst, they harm others, sometimes greatly, occasionally with fatal results.
Every social media view generates micro-revenue. Trust is in short supply. People need advice they can use, and that measurably improves their lives. Journalists are uniquely positioned to fulfill those needs and earn $0.0001 (?) per view. The more trust they gain, the more views they get and the more followers they acquire. As that grows, more followers seek out longer-form articles that require subs and/or larger micropayments.
It's true independence - beholden to none. And as always, the ones who do not adapt will die.
I have no idea if that would work out or not, but I wanted to throw it out there.
It's possible. The rub is the algorithm. Social media platforms change these regularly, and someone with a large audience loses it overnight. Substack makes money by taking a cut from each writer's paid base, and has no incentive to offer cafeteria subscriptions that would be more affordable. If we don't examine ideas, however, this situation will not get better.
I was a bookish, reflective kid, a dreamer, and it concerned my grandparents enough that they bought me a subscription first to Boy’s Life (I can’t imagine that title flying today), and then to Sports Illustrated, presumably hoping to activate my testosterone.
I didn’t care about sports, but I loved to read, and every one of those magazines had my name on the postage label, so I read the articles and became knowledgeable about many things I would never have otherwise encountered.
I also loved looking at the pictures, both the terrific photos and the paintings and drawings by the top illustrators of the day, like Bernie Fuchs, Bart Forbes, Bob Peak, and Mark English. Where most of the glossy magazines had switched to all-photograph formats, SI still employed visual artists, and many of the covers were paintings rather than photos. I’m sure that a lot of people who might never look at visual art were in this way influenced to see the world a little differently.
The quality of the writing was very high as well, and the overall impression of the publication was that Sports fit into Culture as a whole, and could be discussed from that perspective rather than catering only to sports fans who were obsessed with stats, tribal rivalry and hero-worship.
I’m glad and grateful for that subscription, and sorry that the publication has failed.
This is cultural insanity. Sir Roger Penrose, Nobel prize for work on black holes, believes AI is a misnomer as it is not conscious so has no place being labelled ‘intelligence’. To put AI into anything requiring creativity implies a complete misunderstanding of what it is and what it can do and what it cannot. I shall say, well write, again, AI can only operate on the known. It cannot create. It cannot imagine, in any sphere so no e=mc2, Van Gogh, Shakespeare, Duke Ellington, no Quantum Mechanics…….etc.
Not only is there a dearth of writers due to an obliteration of pubs for which to write, readers are dwindling because we have to pay to read now - thanks to this very subscription model. An informed society has access to information, and in this era you have to pay to be informed or misinformed as the case may be. Talk about class warfare. I'm all for taxpayer-sponsored objective public news and entertainment outlets if the actual government keeps its snout out of the trough of content.
We always paid to be informed, we always had to buy that newspaper. The difference is that now you have to buy every issue of that newspaper - so access does become more restricted.
We’re slowly recreating the newspaper model, except instead of buying one paper at the corner store, you need fourteen logins, six monthly subscriptions, and the memory of a cybersecurity analyst.
Sure, agree. And it was expansive coverage and journalism valued objectivity not like today. I remember when families first bought a tv set which was not cheap relatively speaking, but suddenly the world was watching and thrown into the same reality. The civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, the moon landing, all manner of history shaped by this shared experience of access. I’m sure there was shared propaganda and nonsense too. My mom used to call it the boob box.
Twasn't called the Penny Press then the Nickel Press then the Nickel & Dimed Press for nothing. Also, the Yankee & Dixie modified aphorism modeled on the William Randolph Hearst legacy: "Freedom of the press belongs to the heir(s) that own(s) one..."
See the best illustration from my newspaper and news 'zine junkie of my well-spent yoot, the Hearst Family Tree for whom I worked for 7 then 11 years (when the Joint Operating Agreement allowed the 2 Plutocratic once-biz-rival families of Hearst the model of Orson Welles "Citizen Kane" the SF EXAMINER) and DeYoung Family owned larger market morning paper with largest viewership network TV & Radio regional markets (SF CHRONICLE) to carve up the wealthiest of Bay Area Bid-Net Class to take over lions share of most profitable advertiser and captured labor classes exempt from anti-trust law.
After all the tiny Oakland Tribune blue collar readership was legal "competition" so no anti-trust monopolistic harm, no foul and the ownership by the oligarchs of the broadcast News Stations got to own the minds of their blue collar captured classes without any Science Fiction need to do as CIA was experimenting via Mind Control federally funded research science across academic disciplines and lighter yet more effective ideological conditioning.
See under Christopher Simpson's thin if very well sourced and foot-noted via flood of declassified government documents book of the FOIA 90's, namely the very accessible SCIENCE OF COERCION.
Full disclosure: Together with KPFA Special Events Director Bob Baldock we co-produced a Pacifica Radio in Berkeley full-house Special Event, the audio tapes of which have been a big fund-raiser for listener-funded community and public radio as well as on-line distribution via independent publishing.
That Special Event including panel discussion and audience Q&A has been present on community airwaves since. Meanwhile the rest of U.S. corporate-captured News Media has had little interest in speaking with or sourcing American U. non-ideological researcher of Cold War Mind Control warfare scholarship, such as Prof. Christopher Simpson's productive American U. scholarly and multi-sourced works on the manufacture of Cold War Ideological tools and curricula:
"A follow-up to an interview conducted in October of 1997, this program continues the examination of the relationship between the U.S. psychological warfare establishment and American communication research as an academic discipline."
"Based on the material in Christopher Simpson’s book Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare; 1945-1960 (Oxford University Press; Copyright 1994), the interview focuses on the pivotal economic, political and intellectual effects that the National Security Establishment has had on communication research."
"With much of the funding for research in the social sciences coming from the military during the Cold War, U.S. communication research both drew from and contributed to psychological warfare. The relationship between them was so profound that, in effect, psychological warfare theory and practice became the foundation for communication research as a discipline."
"In addition to the impact of military funding, professional relationships formed during work for the U.S. psychological warfare program carried over into the civilian sector as well. The resultant “Old Boy” networks had a significant effect on communication research and the development of the media as well."
"Program highlights include: a discussion of Public Opinion Quarterly, its reflection of psychological warfare theory and practice and its role as an academic pillar of communication research; an analysis of “development theory,” a theoretical school of communication research which became embodied as a National Security doctrine as “limited” or “low-intensity” warfare; “Project Revere,” an Air Force study of “diffusion theory” which contributed significantly to the race to build strategic bombers; Wilber Schramm’s seminal career as a psychological warfare graduate who went on to shape much of contemporary communication theory; and the effect of U. S. psychological warfare programs on the development of the methodological “paradigm” of communication research."
That was called a subscription. It used to be cheaper than paying for the paper every day, and was delivered to you by the neighbor's kid. No logins, but it took a lot of paper and ink and fleets of delivery trucks. Employed a lot of local people. Some of those newspapers were great, and some were terrible.
It was sort of like buying a cable package used to be. You paid one price for the content and the delivery.
When the web made information cheap, the newspaper model stopped working. Even the one newspaper still standing up at this point, the New York Times, did so by becoming a platform, or brand. Now it acts like every other business of that type.
When local newspapers controlled the local advertising market (classified ads and display ads) they were in a position to refuse business from advertisers who wanted to pressure them. I worked for two such newspapers and they did refuse advertising, such as from cigarette companies.
When chains came along and become money machines (like the Gannett newspapers famously were, with margins up to 40 percent) they didn't refuse, or dare offend, any advertisers. Money talked, same as it does now.
There was also a period called "Yellow Journalism" when the newspapers were competing fiercely for readers and would do anything to get them, usually by pandering to them and telling them what they wanted to hear, same as Fox News and the influencers do now.
Watch "Citizen Kane" for a rough idea how that worked.
It didn't work out for Kane in the end. He ended up isolated and without any real friends, just like some we know of today. The winner of the newspaper "Monopoly" game wasted his life by doing so, just like today's Kanes.
Not as a strap-hanging subway or bus commuter alone could one become seeded for a lifetime (if not necessarily "livelihood") of reading through the scraps of the Hearst, DeYoung family-owned dying newspapers and post Cold War generations of advertiser-sponsored while thoroughly corporate-captured educated masses squirming to feel free .
Thoughtful and lazy or sloppy reading commuters often left us their scraps....Don't complain about partially filled-in crosswords and assorted word\letter games (often done in ink! What we lacked in research smarts or where to look in libraries of schools and the Public town square yet ever on the PROTEST and PRESSURE look-out by community DECENCY CRUSADERS seeking excision via often coordinated campaigns by the Media Content Purifiers ramped up during the post WW II years of serial warfare Washington conducted overseas and propping up residual reading markets of the big consolidated News Publishers and Broadcasters and keeping the thorough researchers such as Christopher Simpson and a good alternative press, academic book & 'zine trade in well-sourced non-broadcast-able and 'officially certifiable' research... )
I will gladly pay to read someone's book or someone's podcast to expand upon knowledge, but we all need basic news and information about the world in which we live to function and contribute to the conversation.
AI "writing" not only bad writing and deception. It is an attack on the uniqueness of human beings, made in God's image and likeness. It defaces and desecrates God's creation through deception.
The good news in this situation is the rejection of it by readers - we don't want this slop, and your business will suffer if you try to pull a fast one. This is a happy story!
It's interesting that you rail against AI being used to write creatively, yet you take as absolute truth that AI detectors (which are AI driven) can reliably tell the difference. They are prone to false positives and should all be scrapped. I've tested a lot of them and it's kind of a joke. Another way you can destroy a reputation is to claim that it was written by AI.
Sure you did. You touted Pangram's finding that 4 Commonwealth prize stories were written by AI. "Embarrassing news" which means you took it on faith that these stories were indeed generated by AI.
This is an easy concept to understand. It's been known for thousands of year's as the "Caesar's wife" standard. Wise people avoid anything that might hint of impropriety. If you still don't comprehend, read this: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Caesar%27s_wife_must_be_above_suspicion
If the hint of impropriety is generated by an AI bot perhaps there is no hint of impropriety. I think this falls under the "When did you stop beating your wife" standard. An easy concept to understand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question
You now have stated your opinion. But mine hasn't changed. AI detection tools provide indicators, but are not absolute truth. You can spin as much as you want, but my position is what it is. Continuing this dialogue with you is pointless—I've realized that by now. So I'll stop bothering. But I have made my position clear to any sensible reader who cares about such things.
And AI still can't even properly count Starbucks inventory.
Arguably, the problem isn't even AI or those pushing it, but the fools who actually buy into these ridiculous narratives. These are usually folks who have a pathetic or lowly opinion of human beings in general, such that they believe much of humanity is just superfluous.
That anti-human idea and the Gnostic elite which has always pushed these notions even before AI are the real people that need to be pushed back against.
Norbert Wiener, the father of Cybernetics, also thought the human brain was largely just a biocomputer. Everything about both living beings and machines could be reduced to a system of feedback loops, he believed. This became the science of Cybernetics, which continues to be one of the key concepts governing how the elites organize and manage society from the top down. The AI cult is only the latest outgrowth of this same movement, which seeks to take the ideas to the next step.
At the heart of all this is a rejection of the idea of human creativity as an actual principle in the universe, or that every individual is made in the image of God and therefore has an intrinsic potential, which can be awakened and developed, if only they are given the chance and provided with the right kind of education and resources.
The Gnostic elite and AI cultists have an atavistic hatred for this kind idea, a hatred beyond what most people can imagine.
The Sports Illustrated autopsy is clean. But it's worth naming what actually killed the patient: AI as labor replacement, not AI as creative expansion. The magazine didn't use AI to make something new — it used AI to pretend it was still making the old thing at lower cost. The fake bios are the tell. That's not a failure of AI. That's a failure of honesty dressed as innovation.
I still think about Frank Deford's 1980s writeup of "Casey at the Bat." I read that as a kid in SI and it just pulled me into a complete world. Plus Dr Z's writing. How does a civilization let these great things slide away?
Thanks for exposing this, Ted. We must continue to fight for real, good human writing and fight against the onslaught of AI slop. As a Professor, I am especially concerned about how AI undermines education and knowledge.
Human sloth and laziness accompanied by “ the Hood” culture is the real culprit that undermines learning. I enjoy Chat GPT for what answers it gives me.
Henry Luce (the creator and original publisher of SI) is turning in his grave again, not having completely recovered from the butchery job that has been done to his other creations, "Time", "Life" and "Fortune".
I haven't checked it out for a while, but hasn't Time sort of rallied a bit journalistically since being purchased by Marc Benioff? Probably still a shell of its former Luce self, though.
It's a frustrating situation. But I believe the real revolution in the creative arts will be the reemergence of human voices.
Yes, human everything. Robot hands will never be human hands. There's a reason God gave us hands to create--and why He emphasizes throughout the Bible that we use our hands. It's why my business continues to at least sustain me during these challenging times.
Exactly. Use our hands. Use our brains. God didn't give us these things for us to not use them.
Opposable thumbs for the win!
That, and the free ride for AI "creators," to really stretch the definition of the word, is just about over. AI companies can't keep draining the lakes and reservoirs for free. They've started metering their AI output for software developers and other users. Writers won't be far behind. Without the free ride, most of these sham writers will disappear.
Indeed. We are simply the first generation to figure out the best uses of this new technology. We'll figure it out.
The more synthetic everything becomes, the more valuable genuine human voice, weirdness, flaws, and perspective will feel.
Nobody falls in love with efficiency.
They fall in love with humanity.
Yes, so true. The task set before us to to make human great again. 💜
You are speaking of rebuilding. We are living in a time of destruction. The rebuild may come in the future but is not here yet.
AI is symptom of a much bigger problem, Ted. Take a more global view. Are these media going away because they use AI? Or are they resorting to AI because they can no longer afford to pay real people for real writing/reporting? The Internet and social media blew up the advertising support model traditional journalism relied on for centuries. Craigslist on its own sucked up the most lucrative portion of advertising: classified ads. I want to support dozens of local, regional, and national media and indie writers/reporters but my finances are not endless. What we need desperately is a new revenue model for journalism beyond a billionaire buyer. Any ideas, Ted? Or do you stick to carping about using AI? I also hate it, but I know that in the case of media, there is true financial desperation behind it. How do we change that but leave media independent?
Substack is not the answer either. It’s too expensive.
Very true. It's the reason my newsletter is free. People can subscribe and still have money to pay other Susbtackers who need the income more than I do.
Crazy idea: Journalists adapt to and stay ahead of evolving media. Journalists as "Best and Most Trustworthy Influencers". The media is the message.
Influencers everywhere today are 99% SHIT. At best, they provide superficial advice such as makeup tips. At worst, they harm others, sometimes greatly, occasionally with fatal results.
Every social media view generates micro-revenue. Trust is in short supply. People need advice they can use, and that measurably improves their lives. Journalists are uniquely positioned to fulfill those needs and earn $0.0001 (?) per view. The more trust they gain, the more views they get and the more followers they acquire. As that grows, more followers seek out longer-form articles that require subs and/or larger micropayments.
It's true independence - beholden to none. And as always, the ones who do not adapt will die.
I have no idea if that would work out or not, but I wanted to throw it out there.
It's possible. The rub is the algorithm. Social media platforms change these regularly, and someone with a large audience loses it overnight. Substack makes money by taking a cut from each writer's paid base, and has no incentive to offer cafeteria subscriptions that would be more affordable. If we don't examine ideas, however, this situation will not get better.
I was a bookish, reflective kid, a dreamer, and it concerned my grandparents enough that they bought me a subscription first to Boy’s Life (I can’t imagine that title flying today), and then to Sports Illustrated, presumably hoping to activate my testosterone.
I didn’t care about sports, but I loved to read, and every one of those magazines had my name on the postage label, so I read the articles and became knowledgeable about many things I would never have otherwise encountered.
I also loved looking at the pictures, both the terrific photos and the paintings and drawings by the top illustrators of the day, like Bernie Fuchs, Bart Forbes, Bob Peak, and Mark English. Where most of the glossy magazines had switched to all-photograph formats, SI still employed visual artists, and many of the covers were paintings rather than photos. I’m sure that a lot of people who might never look at visual art were in this way influenced to see the world a little differently.
The quality of the writing was very high as well, and the overall impression of the publication was that Sports fit into Culture as a whole, and could be discussed from that perspective rather than catering only to sports fans who were obsessed with stats, tribal rivalry and hero-worship.
I’m glad and grateful for that subscription, and sorry that the publication has failed.
This is cultural insanity. Sir Roger Penrose, Nobel prize for work on black holes, believes AI is a misnomer as it is not conscious so has no place being labelled ‘intelligence’. To put AI into anything requiring creativity implies a complete misunderstanding of what it is and what it can do and what it cannot. I shall say, well write, again, AI can only operate on the known. It cannot create. It cannot imagine, in any sphere so no e=mc2, Van Gogh, Shakespeare, Duke Ellington, no Quantum Mechanics…….etc.
This is exactly correct. AI has no consciousness and no agency. It writes nothing and knows nothing.
The ultimate irony is using AI to track and identify AI-created content, and then to call that content out.
Not only is there a dearth of writers due to an obliteration of pubs for which to write, readers are dwindling because we have to pay to read now - thanks to this very subscription model. An informed society has access to information, and in this era you have to pay to be informed or misinformed as the case may be. Talk about class warfare. I'm all for taxpayer-sponsored objective public news and entertainment outlets if the actual government keeps its snout out of the trough of content.
We always paid to be informed, we always had to buy that newspaper. The difference is that now you have to buy every issue of that newspaper - so access does become more restricted.
That’s a great point.
We’re slowly recreating the newspaper model, except instead of buying one paper at the corner store, you need fourteen logins, six monthly subscriptions, and the memory of a cybersecurity analyst.
The internet promised a global library.
Some days it feels more like a digital toll road.
Sure, agree. And it was expansive coverage and journalism valued objectivity not like today. I remember when families first bought a tv set which was not cheap relatively speaking, but suddenly the world was watching and thrown into the same reality. The civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, the moon landing, all manner of history shaped by this shared experience of access. I’m sure there was shared propaganda and nonsense too. My mom used to call it the boob box.
Twasn't called the Penny Press then the Nickel Press then the Nickel & Dimed Press for nothing. Also, the Yankee & Dixie modified aphorism modeled on the William Randolph Hearst legacy: "Freedom of the press belongs to the heir(s) that own(s) one..."
See the best illustration from my newspaper and news 'zine junkie of my well-spent yoot, the Hearst Family Tree for whom I worked for 7 then 11 years (when the Joint Operating Agreement allowed the 2 Plutocratic once-biz-rival families of Hearst the model of Orson Welles "Citizen Kane" the SF EXAMINER) and DeYoung Family owned larger market morning paper with largest viewership network TV & Radio regional markets (SF CHRONICLE) to carve up the wealthiest of Bay Area Bid-Net Class to take over lions share of most profitable advertiser and captured labor classes exempt from anti-trust law.
After all the tiny Oakland Tribune blue collar readership was legal "competition" so no anti-trust monopolistic harm, no foul and the ownership by the oligarchs of the broadcast News Stations got to own the minds of their blue collar captured classes without any Science Fiction need to do as CIA was experimenting via Mind Control federally funded research science across academic disciplines and lighter yet more effective ideological conditioning.
See under Christopher Simpson's thin if very well sourced and foot-noted via flood of declassified government documents book of the FOIA 90's, namely the very accessible SCIENCE OF COERCION.
Full disclosure: Together with KPFA Special Events Director Bob Baldock we co-produced a Pacifica Radio in Berkeley full-house Special Event, the audio tapes of which have been a big fund-raiser for listener-funded community and public radio as well as on-line distribution via independent publishing.
That Special Event including panel discussion and audience Q&A has been present on community airwaves since. Meanwhile the rest of U.S. corporate-captured News Media has had little interest in speaking with or sourcing American U. non-ideological researcher of Cold War Mind Control warfare scholarship, such as Prof. Christopher Simpson's productive American U. scholarly and multi-sourced works on the manufacture of Cold War Ideological tools and curricula:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzJh6l0gLFc
"FTR #93 Christopher Simpson on 'The Science of Coercion' (1997)
Our Hidden History
31.7K subscribers
Share
Ask
1,520 views Jul 22, 2018 Dave Emory: Anti-Fascist Archives and For The Record
ORIGINAL: http://spitfirelist.com/for-the-recor...
"A follow-up to an interview conducted in October of 1997, this program continues the examination of the relationship between the U.S. psychological warfare establishment and American communication research as an academic discipline."
"Based on the material in Christopher Simpson’s book Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare; 1945-1960 (Oxford University Press; Copyright 1994), the interview focuses on the pivotal economic, political and intellectual effects that the National Security Establishment has had on communication research."
"With much of the funding for research in the social sciences coming from the military during the Cold War, U.S. communication research both drew from and contributed to psychological warfare. The relationship between them was so profound that, in effect, psychological warfare theory and practice became the foundation for communication research as a discipline."
"In addition to the impact of military funding, professional relationships formed during work for the U.S. psychological warfare program carried over into the civilian sector as well. The resultant “Old Boy” networks had a significant effect on communication research and the development of the media as well."
"Program highlights include: a discussion of Public Opinion Quarterly, its reflection of psychological warfare theory and practice and its role as an academic pillar of communication research; an analysis of “development theory,” a theoretical school of communication research which became embodied as a National Security doctrine as “limited” or “low-intensity” warfare; “Project Revere,” an Air Force study of “diffusion theory” which contributed significantly to the race to build strategic bombers; Wilber Schramm’s seminal career as a psychological warfare graduate who went on to shape much of contemporary communication theory; and the effect of U. S. psychological warfare programs on the development of the methodological “paradigm” of communication research."
"For more related content, please visit: https://ourhiddenhistory.orghttps://archive.org/details/@altviews... "
Share and discuss amongst yourselves...
Tio Mitchito
TM
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of A-tone-ment Seekers)
Media Discussion List\Looksee
That was called a subscription. It used to be cheaper than paying for the paper every day, and was delivered to you by the neighbor's kid. No logins, but it took a lot of paper and ink and fleets of delivery trucks. Employed a lot of local people. Some of those newspapers were great, and some were terrible.
It was sort of like buying a cable package used to be. You paid one price for the content and the delivery.
When the web made information cheap, the newspaper model stopped working. Even the one newspaper still standing up at this point, the New York Times, did so by becoming a platform, or brand. Now it acts like every other business of that type.
When local newspapers controlled the local advertising market (classified ads and display ads) they were in a position to refuse business from advertisers who wanted to pressure them. I worked for two such newspapers and they did refuse advertising, such as from cigarette companies.
When chains came along and become money machines (like the Gannett newspapers famously were, with margins up to 40 percent) they didn't refuse, or dare offend, any advertisers. Money talked, same as it does now.
There was also a period called "Yellow Journalism" when the newspapers were competing fiercely for readers and would do anything to get them, usually by pandering to them and telling them what they wanted to hear, same as Fox News and the influencers do now.
Watch "Citizen Kane" for a rough idea how that worked.
It didn't work out for Kane in the end. He ended up isolated and without any real friends, just like some we know of today. The winner of the newspaper "Monopoly" game wasted his life by doing so, just like today's Kanes.
You reap what you sow.
Not as a strap-hanging subway or bus commuter alone could one become seeded for a lifetime (if not necessarily "livelihood") of reading through the scraps of the Hearst, DeYoung family-owned dying newspapers and post Cold War generations of advertiser-sponsored while thoroughly corporate-captured educated masses squirming to feel free .
Thoughtful and lazy or sloppy reading commuters often left us their scraps....Don't complain about partially filled-in crosswords and assorted word\letter games (often done in ink! What we lacked in research smarts or where to look in libraries of schools and the Public town square yet ever on the PROTEST and PRESSURE look-out by community DECENCY CRUSADERS seeking excision via often coordinated campaigns by the Media Content Purifiers ramped up during the post WW II years of serial warfare Washington conducted overseas and propping up residual reading markets of the big consolidated News Publishers and Broadcasters and keeping the thorough researchers such as Christopher Simpson and a good alternative press, academic book & 'zine trade in well-sourced non-broadcast-able and 'officially certifiable' research... )
Tio Mitchito
TM
And you got a weeks worth of reading w one Sunday Times.
I will gladly pay to read someone's book or someone's podcast to expand upon knowledge, but we all need basic news and information about the world in which we live to function and contribute to the conversation.
That is an insurmountable “ if”
The layoffs were the real point.
AI "writing" not only bad writing and deception. It is an attack on the uniqueness of human beings, made in God's image and likeness. It defaces and desecrates God's creation through deception.
The good news in this situation is the rejection of it by readers - we don't want this slop, and your business will suffer if you try to pull a fast one. This is a happy story!
the lemonade you make from AI lemons is, admittedly, good.
It's interesting that you rail against AI being used to write creatively, yet you take as absolute truth that AI detectors (which are AI driven) can reliably tell the difference. They are prone to false positives and should all be scrapped. I've tested a lot of them and it's kind of a joke. Another way you can destroy a reputation is to claim that it was written by AI.
I never said that AI detectors deliver absolute truth. By all means, criticize my views, but don't attribute views to me that I don't hold.
My point is simply that AI detection tools can impact a reputation. That should be obvious to everybody now, no matter where they stand on AI.
Sure you did. You touted Pangram's finding that 4 Commonwealth prize stories were written by AI. "Embarrassing news" which means you took it on faith that these stories were indeed generated by AI.
This is an easy concept to understand. It's been known for thousands of year's as the "Caesar's wife" standard. Wise people avoid anything that might hint of impropriety. If you still don't comprehend, read this: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Caesar%27s_wife_must_be_above_suspicion
If the hint of impropriety is generated by an AI bot perhaps there is no hint of impropriety. I think this falls under the "When did you stop beating your wife" standard. An easy concept to understand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question
You now have stated your opinion. But mine hasn't changed. AI detection tools provide indicators, but are not absolute truth. You can spin as much as you want, but my position is what it is. Continuing this dialogue with you is pointless—I've realized that by now. So I'll stop bothering. But I have made my position clear to any sensible reader who cares about such things.
And AI still can't even properly count Starbucks inventory.
Arguably, the problem isn't even AI or those pushing it, but the fools who actually buy into these ridiculous narratives. These are usually folks who have a pathetic or lowly opinion of human beings in general, such that they believe much of humanity is just superfluous.
That anti-human idea and the Gnostic elite which has always pushed these notions even before AI are the real people that need to be pushed back against.
Norbert Wiener, the father of Cybernetics, also thought the human brain was largely just a biocomputer. Everything about both living beings and machines could be reduced to a system of feedback loops, he believed. This became the science of Cybernetics, which continues to be one of the key concepts governing how the elites organize and manage society from the top down. The AI cult is only the latest outgrowth of this same movement, which seeks to take the ideas to the next step.
At the heart of all this is a rejection of the idea of human creativity as an actual principle in the universe, or that every individual is made in the image of God and therefore has an intrinsic potential, which can be awakened and developed, if only they are given the chance and provided with the right kind of education and resources.
The Gnostic elite and AI cultists have an atavistic hatred for this kind idea, a hatred beyond what most people can imagine.
The Sports Illustrated autopsy is clean. But it's worth naming what actually killed the patient: AI as labor replacement, not AI as creative expansion. The magazine didn't use AI to make something new — it used AI to pretend it was still making the old thing at lower cost. The fake bios are the tell. That's not a failure of AI. That's a failure of honesty dressed as innovation.
I still think about Frank Deford's 1980s writeup of "Casey at the Bat." I read that as a kid in SI and it just pulled me into a complete world. Plus Dr Z's writing. How does a civilization let these great things slide away?
Thanks for exposing this, Ted. We must continue to fight for real, good human writing and fight against the onslaught of AI slop. As a Professor, I am especially concerned about how AI undermines education and knowledge.
Human sloth and laziness accompanied by “ the Hood” culture is the real culprit that undermines learning. I enjoy Chat GPT for what answers it gives me.
Thank you for this eye-opener Ted.