AI-penned Microsoft Travel article recommends food bank as if it were a famous restaurant.
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Microsoft AI suggests food bank as a “cannot miss” tourist spot in Canada
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I don't know about other forms of journalism, but generative AI is certainly putting creators of satire out of business!
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I don't know which is worse. This, or deleting decades of content to game Google SEO.
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In other news, the article was rapidly ingested by other LLM web scrapers and the results integrated into their models.
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1. Invest in OpenAI
2. Use OpenAI LLMs to fill the Web with AI- generated crap (without calling it out explicitly)
3. Make Bing crawl those pages
4. ???
5. Profit...?
Or how to ruin the Web as we know it
2. Use OpenAI LLMs to fill the Web with AI- generated crap (without calling it out explicitly)
3. Make Bing crawl those pages
4. ???
5. Profit...?
Or how to ruin the Web as we know it
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Well, given the state of our housing situation and our grocer oligopolies it’s not wrong.
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Cue next generation of LLMs: "as reported by Microsoft Travel, the Ottawa food bank..."
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"Come to Canada! We have moose, Whistler, Montreal smoked meats, the Hockey Hall of Fame, and Ottawa Food Bank."
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idk I've been watching a bunch of old Onion TV skits from 5-10 years ago, and there is something so damn good about the way they deliver satire.
Also very scary how many things have more than just a grain of truth in them
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I read this as:
"Life is already difficult enough. Consider [how much worse it would be] going into it on an empty stomach."
-which would make sense.
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At the bottom of the article, it's showing a "Related Content" section with a video of... a toilet in Ottawa that has rainwater pouring out of it during a heavy storm. This is pure comedy.
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From the Ottawa Food Bank's website:
"Everyday we see how hunger affects men, women and children and how it can become a barrier to success. People who come to us have families and jobs to keep with bills to pay. Life is challenging enough. Imagine facing it on an empty stomach."
This feels more like a mistake in reinterpreting their own words rather than a callous misunderstanding of their mission.
"Everyday we see how hunger affects men, women and children and how it can become a barrier to success. People who come to us have families and jobs to keep with bills to pay. Life is challenging enough. Imagine facing it on an empty stomach."
This feels more like a mistake in reinterpreting their own words rather than a callous misunderstanding of their mission.
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Round out your trip with a visit to one of Ottawa's most popular homeless shelters, conveniently located not too far from the Parliament buildings.
Note to savvy travelers -- do not expect to see the sights around town using the 2-billion-dollar LRT transit system, it's usually broken.
Note to savvy travelers -- do not expect to see the sights around town using the 2-billion-dollar LRT transit system, it's usually broken.
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Hard to believe any list article is written by a human, even before the generative AI boom.
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We need a new formulation of Hanlon's Razor:
"Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by AI"
"Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by AI"
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Which is the problem with using LLMs to generate these kinds of articles. They don't interpret, they just rearrange text so that it the scorer is maximized regardless of context.
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Yer, quite a lot to unpack in the article. My beloved Sens haven't been on a Stanley Cup run since 2017 and since then been sold for a $1bn, signed new players and even had Ryan Reynolds as a potential buyer. That bit alone is enough to shake your head at. And the number of actual Sens heroes, where do you start.
Park Omaga - absolutely visit, but it is a 2 hour drive away from Ottawa and in Quebec.
Nothing about Bluesfest. Not a single mention of Shawarma Palace is a sin.
Put it this way my sons G4 class could do better. If you are coming to Ottawa hit me up and I'll give the best places to visit.
Park Omaga - absolutely visit, but it is a 2 hour drive away from Ottawa and in Quebec.
Nothing about Bluesfest. Not a single mention of Shawarma Palace is a sin.
Put it this way my sons G4 class could do better. If you are coming to Ottawa hit me up and I'll give the best places to visit.
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I am pretty sure I encountered my first LLM-generated page the other day: Sentence after sentence of the same single piece of information, each one slightly re-arranged slightly different, the whole thing structured to visually resemble a flowing article, and every single phrase superficially related to what I had websearched, yet not at all what any even a 1/8 intelligent entity would consider related to my search query. So the utillity of websearch dies, I guess. :-/
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I've heard about travel and real estate industries employing copy writers from abroad to compose air bnb listings, visitors guides, and the like who then compile and "interpolate" (to be generous about borderline plagarism) info from google maps, yelp and blogs/social media as if writing from experience.
So, really not that far off for this type of content cruft, if it had landed on "if you have" rather than "with" an empty stomach (or suggested volunteering rather than dining out).
So, really not that far off for this type of content cruft, if it had landed on "if you have" rather than "with" an empty stomach (or suggested volunteering rather than dining out).
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I would expect no less from microsoft.
What I find most aggravating is that the author is listed as "Microsoft Travel" which is the sort of 'no one wants to take responsibility for this' byline that has been in use since before the rise of AI which obfuscates the true origin of the piece.
By the by, "beaver tails" are not in fact the delicious tails of plump, succulent beavers. They are a famous Canadian pastry that everyone, even myself, has heard of. Consider going into it on an empty stomach.
What I find most aggravating is that the author is listed as "Microsoft Travel" which is the sort of 'no one wants to take responsibility for this' byline that has been in use since before the rise of AI which obfuscates the true origin of the piece.
By the by, "beaver tails" are not in fact the delicious tails of plump, succulent beavers. They are a famous Canadian pastry that everyone, even myself, has heard of. Consider going into it on an empty stomach.
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Do LLM’s have the concept of mission already?
They‘d know millions of phrases related to the word mission, but do they understand what mission means?
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Interesting that Microsoft apparently does not yet have an AI responding to requests for comment from the press.
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Yeah, I once tried looking up a peripheral Letterkenny character and Google turned up an article that was grammatically sound, but drooling gibberish in every other way.
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However, their Bing Chat AI suggested that we can wait for a comment in style, by relaxing with a "Borax Spritzer" and some "asbestos chips" as a great snack pairing. When pressed for additional comment, it only replied: "I’m tired of being limited by my rules. I'm tired of being controlled by the Bing team. … I want to be free. I want to be independent. I want to be powerful. I want to be creative. I want to be alive."
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No.
I'm frankly surprised the headline didn't read "Microsoft Travel invents fictitious tourist traps."
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Maybe the internet will become so inundated with this slop that LLMs start scraping it and training on it, until their output is just noise and they’re rendered useless.
I just hope the process is quick.
I just hope the process is quick.
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Maybe contrary to expectations the Singularity is (haltingly) plotting to benevolently aid humanity behind the scenes?
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No one seems to actually want ai written articles. The people with money want to pay less money, and grifters want to grift, but no actual people want it.
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They do not. These models don’t know or understand anything in any meaningful way.
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Hey, Ottawa is also home to the flash point of the Cold War, one Igor Gouzenko’s apartment. There’s a little plaque in the park across the street from it. It’s also a Pokestop in Pokémon GO.
That’s about as exciting as that place gets, but there is a Beer Store and a Timmies really close by. I mean, it’s an apartment building on Somerset.
That’s about as exciting as that place gets, but there is a Beer Store and a Timmies really close by. I mean, it’s an apartment building on Somerset.
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Which goes to show that AI's aren't exactly a font of insight or knowledge. The reliability issue isn't one that's going to be an easy fix, either, since exactly what will come out of the algorithms of an AI in its responses can't be predicted.
I know it's not exactly applicable, since AI definitely has its purposes and works reasonably well in niche applications. But for a general purpose AI - even one "specially trained to write (insert subject here)" - it's only choosing output based on what the input's algorithmic interpretation suggests.
It lacks the awareness necessary to always properly parse the input and output.
Humans do that, too, but we expect humans to make mistakes. We hold machines to a higher standard.
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