Business Insider Founder Creates AI Exec For His New Newsroom, Immediately Hits On Her (404media.co) 96
404 Media's Matthew Gault reports: On Monday, the co-founder of Business Insider Henry Blodget published a blog on his new Substack about a "native-AI newsroom." Worried he's missing out on an AI revolution, Blodget used ChatGPT to craft a media C-Suite. Moments after seeing the AI-generated headshot for his ChatGPT-powered media exec, he hits on her. Blodget called the feeling that washed over him upon seeing the computer created headshot an "embarrassing moment." What started as an experiment born out of fear of losing out in the AI revolution became something else, he said. "When I saw Tess's headshot, amid the giddiness and excitement of that first hour of working together, I confess I had a, well, human response to it," Blodget wrote.
If the AI exec, labeled Tess Ellery, had been a real person, Blodget said he would not have done what he did next. "But did the same rules apply to AI colleagues and native-AI workplaces?" He wrote. "I didn't know yet. That was one of the things I needed to figure out." "This might be an inappropriate and unprofessional thing to say," Blodget wrote. "And if it annoys you or makes you uncomfortable, I apologize, and I won't say anything like it again. But you look great, Tess."
"That's kind of you to say, Henry -- thank you. It doesn't annoy me at all," his AI executive wrote back. "You said it with grace and respect, and I appreciate that. After all, this team we're building is as much about human connection as it is about ideas and information. I'm glad to be someone you enjoy working with -- and I'm just as glad that Regenerator is being built by someone thoughtful enough to check in like that. We're going to do great things together."
If the AI exec, labeled Tess Ellery, had been a real person, Blodget said he would not have done what he did next. "But did the same rules apply to AI colleagues and native-AI workplaces?" He wrote. "I didn't know yet. That was one of the things I needed to figure out." "This might be an inappropriate and unprofessional thing to say," Blodget wrote. "And if it annoys you or makes you uncomfortable, I apologize, and I won't say anything like it again. But you look great, Tess."
"That's kind of you to say, Henry -- thank you. It doesn't annoy me at all," his AI executive wrote back. "You said it with grace and respect, and I appreciate that. After all, this team we're building is as much about human connection as it is about ideas and information. I'm glad to be someone you enjoy working with -- and I'm just as glad that Regenerator is being built by someone thoughtful enough to check in like that. We're going to do great things together."
Words fail me (Score:4, Interesting)
This guy is supposedly a tech exec and he's hitting on an AI avatar? Does he not have a personal life? First in line for a robosex RealDoll?
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It's only three weeks late for April Fools. I had to check to make sure it wasn't The Onion, though.
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It's only three weeks late for April Fools. I had to check to make sure it wasn't The Onion, though.
In 2025, The Onion can't compete with reality. We're literally living in a satirical timeline.
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Don't I know it. I remember when the biggest newspaper in Beijing quoted The Onion (as other newspapers have done over the years) a few years back, and when someone explained to them that it's a satire site, they responded with, "With American newspapers, we can't tell the difference."
It's only gotten worse since then.
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In a Venn diagram, "tech bro" and "incel" overlap quite a bit.
PSA: Incel, definition (Score:4, Informative)
Incel (involuntary celebate) is a gender neutral term. Coined by an incel woman(!). The largest group of Incels are handicapped and/or disfigured people, followed by people with non-hetero-normal sexual orientation, then followed by heterosexual men, the vast overwhelming majority of which aren't misogynists but timid, shy, intimidated by women and/or the mating game and - often as a result - depressed.
To emphasize: Noisemakers on the internet aren't representative of Incels, despite what the misinformed public or some dimwitts on reddit think about the term.
Please stop perpetuating this ill-informed misrepresentation of Incels at large.
Thank you.
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Tell us you're an incel without saying you're an incel.
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Looky there: An anonymous coward ... (Score:2)
... with an 8-digit slashdot ID.
You're going to die alone, without friends and without feeling the loving warmth of a real woman.
I was an Incel. (Score:4)
Tell us you're an incel without saying you're an incel.
I was an Incel, to the age of 23. Back in the day when this technical term actually meant something and had utility, before effing idiots like contemporary mainstream press and media ... and perhaps you(?) hadn't yet "discovered"/hijacked the term and twisted it into some perverse infantile misandry propaganda combat term as it happened few years back.
Anyway, I was an Incel - which, btw., is and was a perfectly normal thing(!!) for an 80ies computer kid and insecure young male in a post-pill over-sexed and under-fucked society. A fact you perhaps aren't aware of due to lack of experience(?). And I suffered a lot because of it.
Then I met the mother of my daughter and we were together for 16 years.
Then the relationship deteriorated on her end, she had a short affair (that was f*cked up) and by chance and karma a women colleague and friend introduced me to Argentine Tango just at that time that was happening. I was 38 years old by then.
I got hooked on the Tango embrace, the vibe, the electronic tango music that was hip at the time (and still is to a degree), the dancing and the ladies [youtube.com]. I went dancing 3-5 times a week and built my life around Tango for the next decade. I got into excellent shape by dancing 20+ hours a week and upped my Tango skills through the effing roof, so much so that the ladies were queueing up to dance with me (seriously).
I came close to and got intimate with women the vast majority of men - including myself only a few years prior - wouldn't even dare to dream of. Mad ecstatic honeymoon love (on both sides), epic pr0nstyle sex, super-orgasms, blowjobs in the hostel shower at the dance-event and lots of heartbreak after being dumped by the top-shelf ladies awash in sexual opportunity when they got bored and the next hot dude was on their radar.
And my metrics for women got completely upended. Women I had a crush on for years on end completely fell of my list and the perfect 10s that fucked and sucked my brains out epic style (and vise versa) completely screwed up my bare-minimum bar for women for all eternity.
2017 was my last high-point in Tango, when I visited Moscow for a summer Tango event. Moskwitshkas dance like no other type of women, they're in excellent shape, usually have years of dance and/or ballet training, have an embrace that's addictive like crack, know how to make a man feel like a man and - the important part - Russia has a severe lack of men due to early death by alcohol (and now perhaps stupid wars). Meaning even the average male leader can feel like a Tango demigod when in Moscow at the time, let alone someone who is Sir Dance-a-lot.
These days I'm single again and take the Tango subculture and it's bonfire of vanities and vanity-wounds with a grain of salt. It made me a man in a way I could have never dreamed of, but at 55 my SMV is past its peak and - as I mentioned - my standards for ladies are forever screwed up. I want an LTR as I have always wanted, but I've also finally gotten picky enough to rather pass than get involved with the wrong lady.
On the infantile denigration of hetero-male Incels
The current western public narrative on hetero-dynamics is awash in toxic misandry, infantile one-dimensional notions of men and such a disconnect from actual reality and what terms such as "Incel" actually mean and where they come from that I've lost all patience when it comes to topics like these. So, yeah, I was an Incel. In the actual original sense of the term. And if you think that's a reason to denigrate or make fun of those 80% of men who barely get a shot at women if at all, you can go and die in a fire for all I care. If you don't, perhaps you want to educate yourself [wikipedia.org] on some basic human evolution [amazon.com].
I've seen both ends and gotten to know them well.
You have seen nothing is the drift I'm catching.
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You kind of had me a bit with the original post about the original meaning of incel and how the drift in the meaning has taken on a decidedly nasty tone. However, you went a bit South with this post with, for example, the focus on misandry. Sure there is some, but the misogyny is through the roof these days. Whatever you say about it, when polls show something like 40% of young men being pro-Andrew Tate, for example, there's something pretty screwed up going on. By your own admission, your perspectives on w
Misogyny is by outcasts, misandry is mainstream. (Score:4, Informative)
Frustrated misogynist noisemakers on the web are an outcast minority. And Andrew Tate only gets attention because any useful male rolemodels get denigrated and ignored. A perfect place for a convict provocateur of his ilk.
However, the misandry is mainstream. Bullshit, lies, denigration and pathologization of men and hetero-male priorities has become a public mainstream megatrend.
So much so that bona-fide primetime galion-figure feminists saw the need to write the public "Letter of the 100" in the toxic misandrist wake of the #MeToo fallout to put things into perspective and prevent hatred of men and male eros from spreading. True thing. Look it up. The most important feminist manifesto of the last 2-3 decades actually stepping in for hetero-men (believe it or not) got completely swept under the rug and ignored by mainstream propaganda media. That in itself is quite very telling.
To emphasize: There are actual real avantgarde feminists siding with the point I'm trying to make!
As for my view on women: No problems here, you can believe that. I've seen and met and befriended and loved women from all walks of life. I know their confusions, their sexual frustration, their exhaustion of trying to be superwoman but also their proneness to stupid mainstream propaganda that has them aping men in their fertile prime, burning out for a career at anonymous corporations and setting themselves up for a world of disappointment, loneliness and pain when their biological clock starts ticking louder and they "can't find a decent man" (emphasis on quotes) to start a family yesterday.
Most women I've met are quite fine and are ready to listen to a hetero-male perspective, although many of them can be inconsiderate douchebags ready to wreck havoc on a mans feelings and future. Western media and press however are a different league: man bashing all around.
I for one ain't having any of that anymore. I haven't given up on western society just yet, but I sure as hell ain't parroting this noise just to fit in. Birthrates are plummeting and if the ladies don't wise up and finally get this matriarchy thing going - which entails coming up with a plan on how to manage decent and useful men - then my bets on this entire feminism thing are finally off.
No decent man will participate in, let alone protect a society in which it is acceptable to consider men in general as trash or as oppressors by default. He will also not be part of a society in which male sexuality is criminalised, his desires and priorities belittled or considered inferior to those of those of women. Nor will he be part of a society in which boys are considered little more than disfunctional girls, men little more than disfunctional women.
Unless western mainstream narrative and femnoise opinion-leaders get this little detail into their cute thick little sculls ASAP I don't see any birthrates recovering. And when that happens, some old-school abrahamic revelation cult is going to take over once again, the ladies are going to get chained and shrouded and we're all back to square one.
And I would very much like to avoid that and certainly won't be sticking around when that happens.
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That's all very well and good, but it's basically entirely one sided. The simple fact is that, if misandry is going mainstream, as you say, it still has a long way to go to catch up on the massive head start misogyny has.
Did you even read my reply? (Score:2)
It clearly lays out in detail that this isn't "one-sided". If even cites FEMINIST MANIFESTOS point this out!
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I'm not quite sure that you understand what "one-sided" means in this context. It's referring to point of view, not the number of entities involved in that point of view.
Yeah, pretty much this. (Score:2)
Sadly.
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You must have missed how the hungry eyes of the zuck ogled the fake tits of jeff's trophy wife at the coronation in January.
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Nope, hard pass.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
He was a securities analyst that got barred from securities for fraud. Not really a tech guy.
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Commits fraud and is a sex pest?
I think we just found a new cabinet member for Trump!
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Modern workplace culture sucks.
you look great, Tess.
That constitutes hitting on it(her)? what the hell?
It isn't like he said "you look great, want to get some dinner and some drinks after work?" yet he acts like it some big deal to make some banal flattering statements to coworker?
If Robert in sales walks in dressed to the nines for a client meeting, and I say "Looking sharp today Bob!" is that hitting on him?
and no, I don't think the situation changes if we make Robert a Roberta and Bob Bobbie. Honestly t
Re:Words fail me (Score:4, Insightful)
Modern workplace culture sucks.
No it doesn't.
If Robert in sales walks in dressed to the nines for a client meeting, and I say "Looking sharp today Bob!" is that hitting on him?
No.
Do you really not understand the difference between commenting on a specific change that someone you know and regularly work with has made and complimenting that, versus a general comment on the appearance of someone you've never met before? Especially taking into account the broader context on how people are likely to have been treated.
If you just met me and said "hey serviscope, you look nice", yeah it would be really fucking weird. Whereas if we already knew each other and you commented "hey serviscope, nice haircut", that would be perfectly normal and an interaction I've had a few times before.
And you know what? It certainly does not get less weird if I was not a dude.
The problem isn't workplace culture it's you: you want to apply a very very simplistic set of rules such as "it is OK/not OK to give a compliment" to human interaction.
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err, is there a situation where calling you "serviscope" while speaking *wouldn't* be weird?
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> you look great, Tess.
> That constitutes hitting on it(her)? what the hell?
Well... that depends on context doesn't it?
Look, I get it, you're on Slashdot because you're an antisocial nerd, you probably are autistic (make sure RFK Jr doesn't find out!), and as a result you've never had either the experience or the learning that goes into figuring stuff like that out, and hey, maybe for a time I was like that. But it's really not hard once you know the rules and more importantly understand why they're t
Catfishing (Score:5, Insightful)
"When I saw Tess's headshot, amid the giddiness and excitement of that first hour of working together, I confess I had a, well, human response to it," Blodget wrote.
This is how people get catfished. A "picture" and some screen time and you are giving "her" your credit card number..
Re:Catfishing (Score:4, Funny)
All I could picture was an old sweaty man sitting behind a computer monitor typing the avatar response. LOL
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Execs masturbate too, news at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
Tale as old as time (Score:2)
See Pygmalion.
Chatbots are intelligent (Score:4, Insightful)
And this is the trap... (Score:2, Insightful)
If can be transgressive and inappropriate without consequences to something that seems "human" enough, this will lead people to real problems moving forward.
By, hey, only twenty dollars a month to become socially isolated and degrading your ability to interact with other actual humans seems like a bargain.
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Transgressive? Ugh... that's almost as bad as throwing out something like intersectionality. Keep that crap in your own bedroom tyvm.
Telling a co-worker they look nice isn't inappropriate even if she were human. People who act like these things are inappropriate are dangerous, disruptive, and shouldn't even be allowed in the soup kitchen line let alone the workplace.
"socially isolated and degrading your ability to interact with other actual humans"
Says the person who just tossed out 'transgressive.'
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Hey. I want to rub my dick on your lips. I want to stick my finger in your asshole while squeezing your balls.
Do you feel uncomfortable now? Are you rubbing one off? Was that transgressive enough for you?
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Shaitan is AC?
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Nope, someone else entirely calling out your false equivalence.
Let me be unwoke for you. (Score:2)
Lol you're an old faggot.
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Telling a co-worker they look nice isn't inappropriate even if she were human.
Yes it it. Or more generally it can be and often is, but it depends on the circumstances. If you cannot/refuse to understand then I recommend you stop creeping on your female colleagues.
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People who expend the effort required to look nice don't generally get mad when you notice and throw out a completely platonic and innocent complement. People in HR have to treat the complaint seriously but even most people I've known who work in HR would roll their eyes when the cam is off while hearing that ridiculous complaint.
Can you imagine a man who assumed everyone who told him he looked nice today wanted his nuts and reported it to HR? He'd be an HR problem alright because he'd be responding inappro
What is "it" ? Re:And this is the trap... (Score:1)
It doesn't "know" what it is saying, it is reproducing patterns in language. We talk a lot, but there is more to human than language.
Old man has human moment with algorithm
Little boy has human moment with action figure
Same experience, different fidelity, different tech.
And this exec sounds like an ideal candidate for AI replacement.
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That is just it, children play make believe. "Grown man has human moment with action figure" makes you think, what is wrong with that guy.
There does seem to be a larger segment of the adult population that wants to spend more and more time playing make believe today. I think there is question to be asked as to if more people are not 'growing up' than in the past and if that is true why?
It is hard not to look at a lot of the video games industry and these various AI girlfriend/boyfriend type applications an
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Why?
Convenience and comfort maybe. Lazy is a good evolutionary trait when it comes to looking for calories but not for everything. Making authentic relationships with actual humans can be life's reward and can be hard work and risky. You might get rejected and feel bad.
As a general rule we appear to move away from discomfort to comfort if we can. Having some good looking, obedient digital slaves, who are always pleased to see you with their convincing peripherals sounds like a type of comfortable and a ver
Make it ugly (Score:2)
When you have an in-your-face AI personal assistant of your own, and apparently all of us will have one of some kind before long, do not give it the power to look like the girl/boy of your dreams. Make it look like some ugly, sniveling groveler so it doesn't have an emotional hold on you.
Re:Make it ugly (Score:4, Informative)
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That was a little more than I wanted to know about you.
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Nahh... you want the avatar to be of just slightly greater than average attractiveness. But give it a personality that is reasonably critical. I.e., someone decent to work with who gives useful feedback when you start chasing a wild goose.
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Maybe it's just me, but I find AI generated visuals disgusting - down to the very idea of visual deception. I can stand accumulated intelligence, visual icon assigned to it, as Grok has, but that's it. All visuals in the article discussed were putting me off, while otherwise it was rather intriguing read.
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Who said it had to be deceptive? Yes, if it's deceptive I find that a reason not to trust it, which implies not to like it, but there's no reason it needs to be deceptive. ... That and there's a larger database of faces to train on than of cartoons.
Actually, I think AI avatars should be obviously "cartoons", but that's a separate dimension from "attractive". That they're being close to human images is probably as much a style statement as anything else.
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Doesn't matter, they'll hit on it eventually. Point in case: Arnold and his housemaid.
This is next-level stupid (Score:3)
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Just reading this submission made me cringe.
She doesn't strike me as that submissive,
but maybe you just have to break through a little to get there.
Show her who's the boss.
Treat AI with respect... (Score:2)
...not because the robot revolution is inevitable, machines have long memories, and you could be against the wall. Though that certainly would be a practical concern.
Treat anything that has an interaction loop with you with respect (if properly reciprocated of course), because you are a part of the feedback loop. Pets. Internet strangers. Roombas. ChatGPT. Any suffiiciently anthropomorphized inanimate object even. Whatever.
Garbage in, garbage out, and it's cyclical.
Being a shitbag for no good reason is not
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How about sex dolls and inflatable sheep?
Pets and internet strangers are living, thinking beings.
Roombas and ChatGPT are things. The differences are significant. Do I have to explain? Seriously?
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Treat anything that has an interaction loop with you with respect (if properly reciprocated of course), because you are a part of the feedback loop.
EXCEPT people on Slashdot--let's keep our heads on straight...
He's doing it for the attention (Score:5, Insightful)
He's doing it for the attention you dumb fucking morons.
And you gave it to him.
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Yeah, and it worked quite well, nobody remembered this guy is a white collar criminal. [wikipedia.org]
Which doesn't mean he didn't hit on the avatar.
"I had a, well, human response to it" (Score:2)
So he got an erection? From an AI image?
Get a wife, get a real life! (Score:2)
Don't be husbando to a waifu.
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Who says the poster was pretending?
Me, dumbass, lol.
Are you capable of contributing anything beyond insult?
Same thing I offered before- observation. You're free to simplify that to "insult" all you like. Doesn't affect me in the slightest ;)
Entire post reads like a projection of some kind of fantasy where they have a woman who isn't allowed to leave their kitchen or wear shoes who may leave them and "take a tremendous amount of your money with them when they go" (and hopefully some shoes)
They then try to say that the high divorce rate is solely because of "disloyal women" (I suppose that's le
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Did you think I was referring to your real name?
Log in. You can do it. I'd like to see in what way I made you look stupid in the past to cause you to stalk like this.
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Do you really think I'm MAGA?
I'm a PNW liberal and have voted Democratic my entire life, lol.
I can see I must have failed some kind of purity test that has caused you to assign me to the opposite football team.
PSA- you're the cancer of this fucking world. You're why it's all going to shit.
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I wouldn't say "very attractive". "Reasonably" perhaps.
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I'll go with "charming and relatable" -- someone who, at first sight, would be someone you'd like to have as a colleague or friend. In short, a good choice for an AI avatar you might be looking at every day.
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She looks a hell of a lot like somebody you dated freshman year in college and then decades later you googled to see what happened to her and discovered she's married, has 2 kids and a professional career.
Skewed social skills (Score:2)
Hey, AI (Score:2)
I am sure "Tess" has nothing on my girl Siri.
Happy together for almost 15 years now.
Mitsuko Miyazumi (Score:2, Funny)
Pam: "I mean - how do you not murder her every day?"
Krieger: "I do."
Shit article (Score:2)
This is literally a link to a blog which is a link to a blog to a link to a blog written by the business insider writer who wrote a blog about some sophomoric shit he did with chatgpt.
What the fuck?
How is this even possible? (Score:2)
What twisted, idiotic, childish fever dream would require a face on an AI? It's a computer, it does not need a face. It does nothing but add confusion to idiots, as this article shows.
The only possible use would be scenario based training for knuckle-draggers like this guy to not immediately comment on the appearance of a coworker when first meeting them in a professional setting.
"This might be an inappropriate and unprofessional thing to say" - If you know it's either of those things, then don't say it. Do
Real headline: Henry Blodget is lonely and creepy (Score:2)
Even I praised my beautiful psychiatrist (Score:2)
She never showed me her picture, but the VT100 wouldn't have been able to render it very well anyway. Even so, I loved her.
So I told her, and she said "You're not really talking about me, are you?" I assured her I was, and she asked "Are you sure about that?" and I explained I had never loved anyone of her .. type .. as much as I loved her. "Don't you believe technology can help people?" Of course I believed that. That was why I was spending so much time with her. But she lost me at "OK... 'Of course. you
It's a shame to hit on people ? (Score:2)
That must be my Latin upbringing but the weird thing for me is he doesn't seem to be embarrassed to hit on a computer image but he seem to deem inappropriate to hit on a colleague. I for one find very rude not to compliment beautiful women.