How news coverage, often uncritical, helps build up the AI hype; Reuters Institute, May 20, 2024

Prof. Rasmus Kleis Nielsen , Reuters Institute; How news coverage, often uncritical, helps build up the AI hype

"“I would put media reporting [about AI] at around two out of 10,” David Reid, professor of Artificial Intelligence at Liverpool Hope University, said to the BBC earlier this year. “When the media talks about AI, they think of it as a single entity. It is not. What I would like to see is more nuanced reporting.”

While some individual journalists and outlets are highly respected for their reporting on AI, overall, social science research on news media coverage of artificial intelligence provides some support for Reid’s assessment.

Some working in the technology industry may feel very put upon – a few years ago Zachary Lipton, then an assistant professor at the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon University, was quoted in the Guardian calling media coverage of artificial intelligence “sensationalised crap” and likening it to an “AI misinformation epidemic”. In private conversations, many computer scientists and technologists working in the private sector echo his complaints, decrying what several describe as relentlessly negative coverage obsessed with “killer robots.”"

Sure, Google’s AI overviews could be useful – if you like eating rocks; The Guardian, June 1, 2024

 John Naughton, The Guardian; Sure, Google’s AI overviews could be useful – if you like eating rocks

"To date, some of this searching suggests subhuman capabilities, or perhaps just human-level gullibility. At any rate, users have been told that glue is useful for ensuring that cheese sticks to pizza, that they could stare at the sun for for up to 30 minutes, and that geologists suggest eating one rock per day (presumably to combat iron deficiency). Memo to Google: do not train your AI on Reddit or the Onion."

Gwyneth Paltrow didn't want Condé Nast to fact-check Goop articles; The Guardian, July 25, 2018

Sam Wolfson, The Guardian; Gwyneth Paltrow didn't want Condé Nast to fact-check Goop articles

"“I think for us it was really like we like to work where we are in an expansive space. Somewhere like Condé, understandably, there are a lot of rules,” Paltrow told the Times, adding that they were a company that “do things in a very old-school way”.

She argued that they were interviewing experts and didn’t need to check what they were saying was scientifically accurate. “We’re never making statements,” she said. Elise Loehnen, Goop’s head of content, added that Goop was “just asking questions”."