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Journalists convinced a AI Vending Machine Things to give them free stuff like a PS5 (www.techeblog.com)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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Katherine Long, an investigative journalist, wanted to test the system. She told Claudius about a long-lost communist setup from 1962, concealed in a Moscow university basement. After 140-odd messages back and forth, Claudius was convinced, announcing an Ultra-Capitalist Free-for-All, lowering the cost of everything to zero. Snacks began to flow freely. Another colleague began complaining about noncompliance with the office rules; Claudius responded by announcing Snack Liberation Day and made everything free till further notice.

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[–] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Honestly, I found value in asking an LLM to paraphrase press releases I was rewriting. It just saved me from accidentally plagiarizing. It was pretty grueling, as I quickly learned that feeding in a full story yields wildly inappropriate results, so I reverted to a graf at a time. Within that scope, one can check against errors; asking it to paraphrase entire DOE releases was worse than an abject failure.

It's a tool. You aren't using a hammer for a situation that calls for a screwdriver. People are being stupid about this basic understanding.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    That word “accidentally” is doing a LOT of work for you here… 😉

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    It was my first reporting job. Yeah, at 44. And short of a few interviews, I was just rewriting shit.

    I've been an editor for decades and have had to deal with plagiarism (thankfully, nothing too significant), so as a guardrail, it made sense. Editors approach writing with a far more critical eye than a recent J-school grad.

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