News Corp CEO Robert Thomson blasted the left-wing bias and inaccuracies spewed out by AI generated content — calling it “rubbish in, rubbish out” — at the same time as he warned the technology threatens to kill hundreds more jobs across the news industry.
Left-leaning media giants that dominate the news business have churned out stories for years that are usually not only riddled with errors, but additionally written with a left-wing slant.
Yet bots like the favored ChatGPT search engine will regurgitate the claptrap as fact, in accordance with Thomson.
“People have to know that AI is basically retrospective,” the media executive said during an appearance on the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology Conference in San Francisco on Thursday.
“It’s about permutations of pre-existing content.”
“The danger is, it’s rubbish in, rubbish out, rubbish all about,” said the CEO of News Corp — the parent of newspapers including The Post and The Wall Street Journal — adding: “Since it’s distributing — exponentially — potentially damaging content.”
“Don’t forget, it’s rubbish in, rubbish out, rubbish all about, particularly with AI,” Thomson told a tech conference in San Francisco on Thursday.Getty Images for The Wall Street Journal
“And so as an alternative of elevating and enhancing, what you may find is that you’ve got this ever-
shrinking circle of sanity surrounded by a reservoir of rubbish,” he continued. “So as an alternative of the insight that AI can potentially bring, what it can evolve into, essentially, is maggot-ridden mind mold.”
In February, ChatGPT, the bot created by Silicon Valley unicorn OpenAI, refused to write a story about Hunter Biden within the sort of the Recent York Post — but did generate a CNN-like puff piece protective of the president’s embattled son.
“We’re clearly doing lots of tracking of using AI and our content, and there are specific AI engines which might be churning out content, apparent news, factual content, which is off the political spectrum, which might essentially make Marx and Lenin persona non grata — it’s that left-wing,” Thomson said.
“You’re also seeing the results, sometimes pernicious, of the bias of the input-er,” he said. “These AI
engines are a mix of the input and the input-er. So, the concept it’s some type of
abstract black box that “I don’t know the way on earth these items comes out.” That’s not a solution,
because mainly, it’s unfaithful.”
Thomson also demanded that corporations which might be “training” generative artificial intelligence engines using “archived material” pay the publishers who employ the trusted sources creating the content.
“For those who derive profit from our content, we must always derive a profit or else you’re at risk of undermining the creation of that content,” Thomson said.
Thomson warned of a “damaging wave looming” for the news industry because of the hazards of AI.REUTERS
The rapid development of AI poses a big threat to a news industry already decimated by the emergence of Big Tech giants like Google and Facebook, he said.
“Once you take a look at the dramatic decline in newsroom employment within the US from 2008 to 2020 — it’s down around 57% or more, depending on the way you calculate it,” Thomson noted.
“And that shows you that the primary wave of digital disruption has been profound.”
With the arrival of AI, Thomson added: “We’re able where there’s a fair more damaging wave looming.”
The disruption to the underside line has led several media corporations, chief amongst them Barry Diller’s IAC, to form a coalition that’s weighing legal motion against AI tech corporations in an effort to guard mental property.
Despite initial reports that News Corp would join the fight, Thomson confirmed there are not any plans to go that route.
“What you’ll see over time is lots of litigation,” Thomson said. “Some media corporations have already begun those discussions.”
“Personally, we’re not fascinated by that at this stage. We’re far more fascinated by negotiation.”
He added: “We prefer to reward the journalists, not the lawyers, who’re the inevitable beneficiaries.”
