The stakes surrounding the utilization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) couldn’t be higher for News Corp CEO Robert Thomson who offered a number of dire warnings over the outcome from “left-wing” bias creating “maggot-ridden mind mold.”
(Video: Yahoo! Finance)
Thursday, while attending the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology Conference in San Francisco, the CEO of the parent company to outlets like The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post offered considerable commentary on the “epochal” impact AI would have on news media.
Of particular note was Thomson’s take on the troublesome results that have oft demonstrated bias toward left-leaning positions to which he asserted in a conversation with Yahoo! Finance executive editor Brian Sozzi, “People have to understand that AI is essentially retrospective. It’s about permutations of pre-existing content.”
“The danger is, it’s rubbish in, rubbish out, and in this case, rubbish all about because it’s distributing — exponentially — potentially damaging content,” he critiqued.
“And so instead of elevating and enhancing,” the CEO opined on the squandered development of the burgeoning technology, “what you might find is that you have this ever-shrinking cycle of sanity surrounded by a reservoir of rubbish. So instead of the insight that AI can potentially bring, what it will evolve into, essentially — maggot-ridden mind mold.”
As previously reported, the various chatbots like Google’s Bard and OpenAI’s ChatGPT had been put through batteries of tests with prompts from across the political spectrum on an array of issues. In response, the results overwhelmingly supported Thomson’s position toward a bias on matters like transgenderism and presidential politics. Bard even claimed despite evidence to the contrary, “I don’t have a liberal bias.
Google’s chatbot denies political bias, but test results tell another story: reporthttps://t.co/DFDj58ycF1
— American Wire News (@americanwire_) March 28, 2023
“We’re clearly doing a lot of tracking of the use of AI and our content,” Thomson told Sozzi, “and there are certain AI engines that are churning out content, apparent news, factual content, which is off the political spectrum, which would essentially make Marx and Lenin persona non grata — it’s that left-wing.”
“You’re also seeing the effects, sometimes pernicious, of the bias of the input-er. These AI engines are a combination of the input and the input-er. So, the idea that it’s some kind of abstract black box that ‘I don’t know how on earth this stuff comes out,’ that’s not and answer, because basically, it’s untrue,” he argued further.
Additionally, Thomson voiced his concern with regard to a diminishing workforce in news media and remarked, “When you look at the dramatic decline in newsroom employment in the U.S. from 2008 to 2020 — it’s down around 57 percent or more, depending on how you calculate it. And that shows you that the first wave of digital disruption has been profound.”
“We’re in a position where there’s an even more damaging wave looming,” he warned and added over questions of content creation, origination and ownership, “What you’ll see over time is a lot of litigation. Some media companies have already begun those discussions.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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