cover of episode The Story Behind Gannett's AI Debacle

The Story Behind Gannett's AI Debacle

2023/9/27
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Twitter用户：Gannett公司使用AI生成的体育新闻报道中出现了许多奇怪的短语，例如“close encounters of the athletic kind”，以及一些语句不通顺的问题，引发了广泛关注和批评。这些错误暴露出AI技术在新闻报道中的应用仍存在诸多问题。 Scott Simon：AI生成的体育新闻报道中存在占位符，本应出现吉祥物名称的地方却空着，进一步说明AI技术在处理细节信息方面存在不足。 Micah Loewinger：Gannett公司因AI生成的新闻报道出现问题而面临公关危机，暂停了使用AI报道高中体育比赛结果的项目，并停止了与Lede AI公司的合作。这起事件引发了人们对AI技术在新闻报道中应用的担忧和反思。 Jay Allred：Lede AI系统利用ScoreStream服务收集的高中体育比赛结果数据，并根据比赛结果的不同场景选择预先写好的模板生成新闻报道。Gannett公司报道中出现的错误是由于Lede AI为Gannett公司定制的代码中存在bug，并且测试不足导致的。一些尴尬的短语是人工编写的，并非AI生成的。Lede AI的目标是为新闻机构提供高中体育比赛的基本报道，从而解放记者去做更有意义的报道。Richland Source使用Lede AI来报道一些他们无法派记者去现场报道的比赛。Richland Source的记者会报道重要的比赛，而Lede AI则负责报道其他比赛，编辑可以根据需要对Lede AI生成的报道进行补充。Richland Source会在AI生成的新闻报道中明确标注作者为“Auto Newsdesk”，并在文章底部注明使用了AI工具，并提供反馈表格。作者认为AI技术应该用于报道那些无法被报道的新闻，并对其进行严格的审查和验证。作者也表达了对AI技术可能取代入门级记者职位的担忧，以及对大型新闻机构盲目采用AI技术的担忧。作者认为，AI技术的应用目标应该是提高新闻报道的价值，而非单纯追求效率和裁员。 Micah Loewinger: The incident highlights the risks of AI automation, even in low-stakes areas like high school sports reporting. The accumulation of small errors across numerous articles demonstrates the need for cautious scaling and thorough testing of AI systems before widespread deployment. The potential for harm is significantly greater in high-stakes reporting such as crime or arrest reports.

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Gannett's AI service for high school sports coverage quickly faced issues with bizarre phrases and robotic placeholders, leading to a PR crisis.

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In late August, Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper company, rolled out a new artificial intelligence service that promised to automate high school sports coverage across the country. And within a matter of days it had gone horribly wrong. People on Twitter quickly discovered that bizarre phrases like “close encounters of the athletic kind,” or how one team “took victory away” from another, had shown up on Gannett news sites in Florida, Indiana, Georgia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. As Scott Simon explained on NPR), in some of these AI articles there were robotic place holders where there should’ve been a mascot’s name.

Jay Allred) is the CEO of Source Media Properties, which includes Richland Source, a local news organization in Ohio, and LedeAI, the company that built the technology that Gannett was using to automate its high school coverage. For the midweek podcast, OTM correspondent Micah Loewinger speaks with Jay about what went wrong, why he wanted to build this technology in the first place, and whether this disaster had shaken his belief in its potential.

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