https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/02/tech/microsoft-ai-news/
"False claims that President Joe Biden fell asleep during a moment of silence
for victims of the Maui wildfire. A conspiracy theory that the latest surge in
Covid-19 cases is being orchestrated by the Democratic Party ahead of the
election. An obituary for a late NBA player that described him as “useless.”
These false and bizarre stories aren’t showing up on some far-flung corner of
the internet — they’re being published by Microsoft. The company’s homepage,
also known as MSN.com and Microsoft Start, remains one of the world’s most
trafficked websites and a place where millions of Americans get their news
every day.
But Microsoft’s decision to increasingly rely on the use of automation and
artificial intelligence over human editors to curate its homepage appears to be
behind the site’s recent amplification of false and bizarre stories, people
familiar with how the site works told CNN.
The site, which comes pre-loaded as the default start page on devices running
Microsoft software, including on Microsoft’s latest “Edge” browser, the
successor of the company’s Internet Explorer browser, employed more than 800
editors in 2018 to help select and curate news stories shown to millions of
readers around the world.
But in recent years Microsoft has laid off editors, some of whom were told they
were being replaced by “automation,” what they understand to be AI.
Microsoft’s early investment in OpenAI —the creators of the buzzy ChatGPT app —
has put it at the forefront of the promising and potentially perilous AI
revolution even as the tech giant’s president has publicly lectured on the
responsible use of the technology.
But the apparent role of AI in Microsoft’s recent amplification of bogus
stories raises questions about the company’s public adoption of the nascent
technology and for the journalism industry as a whole."
Via Diane A.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
