They're clearly not super-human, but there was at least a general idea that you needed to corroborate someone's story with a separate independent source, and there was also a celebration of "good" journalism in their industry. There's no such mechanism to celebrate good truthful content on YouTube or Facebook (that I've seen - admittedly I'm not on Facebook).

I've been using Straight Arrow News recently, which is free, and the entire point of it is to try to create unbiased news content. So far I like it. But how much does it matter if a few of us seek out unbiased news, if the vast majority of people are flooded with clickbait content that tells them whatever they want to hear, with no fact checking?

We did some testing on some sealed lead acid batteries (for a high school robotics competition we're in). Most teams use a lesser-known but cheaper brand called MK. We did some tests against a brand name Duracell battery with the same specs (costing almost twice as much) and an Interstate battery as well. The Duracells were similar or slightly worse than the much cheaper MKs, and the Interstate batteries were just terrible, and barely lasted 6 months. The Interstate ones were also about 10% lighter, which is not a good sign. Both Duracell and Interstate are well-known brands that you pay a premium for, so it's really disappointing.

What we're talking about here is gatekeeping. Back a few decades ago, gatekeeping was the standard way things were done in the media simply because the technology created the gates: there were only so many channels, and setting up a channel was expensive. The FCC *did* regulate what you could say on broadcast TV (the 7 dirty words) and even instituted a "fairness doctrine" that forced channels to give equal airtime to both sides. Coupled with strong journalism ethics, only stories that were vetted by fact checking could even make it on the news, and you would hear the opposing point of view simply by watching the same channel.

There were pros and cons of this system. It did prevent the spread of misinformation, but it also suppressed minority viewpoints. Flat earthers simply didn't have a platform back then, and were just the butt of jokes, but the same could be said of gay people.

When the internet first arrived, it was still full of gatekeeping. Only people who were technologically savvy could setup a website or even a blog, so the content online during the web 1.0 phase tended to be more enlightened than what you see now. I was there. There was a lot of optimism in the 90's that worldwide access to the internet was going to lift humanity out of ignorance.

Web 2.0, or social media as we call it now, destroyed that dream by handing everyone a megaphone. Yes, it destroyed all the gates and the fences along with it. It gave access to groups who didn't have access before (a good example is the Arab Spring protests). But it flooded us all with clickbait and content designed to make us angry, suspend rational thought, and share it. It also didn't take long for governments to realize the opportunity and flood social media with one-sided narratives they wanted shared widely, which traditional media never would have published.

Social media has a fundamental problem: it spreads misinformation much more easily than evidence-based facts.

Gatekeeping has a fundamental problem: we don't trust the gatekeepers. But it drastically reduces misinformation spread.

But it's not like we can put the genie back in the bottle. We've democratized content generation. Anyone can make a youtube or facebook video from their phone, and it can spread far and wide long before it can be fact checked. And once it's fact checked, the truth doesn't have the sharing power of the original narrative.

Would introducing gatekeepers to social media fix the problem? I don't think so. It's a problem of scale. There's just too much content to fact check. And the only ones who could do it at scale are the social media platforms themselves and only with automated solutions, which aren't going to be very accurate. Worse, we don't want to give social media companies the power to be the arbiters of truth. At least under the old system, it was small enough that the arbiters of truth were a profession of journalists with codes of ethics, and journalism awards, and a reasonably independent news room that was separate from the editorial office.

So we're stuck with this. The future is a no holds barred competition of opinion manipulation. The tools that support this reality (the internet and web 2.0) are now augmented by even more powerful mass content generation in the form of generative AI. The worst part is, those of us who even want to fix it are in the minority. It's just too powerful of a tool, and both sides find it too valuable to give up.

And it doesn't really matter if you work hard to be a critical thinker, and you're suspicious of all new information. Even if you do, you're in the minority, and you're at the mercy of a majority that's happy to swallow whatever new narrative fires them up. So all you can do is sit quietly, hoping the eye of Sauron doesn't suddenly turn on you, or whatever group you happen to identify with.

Here is a pretty typical framework for tech innovation. I will use cars as an example.

1) New Tech appears. Disruption happens. More jobs, but people realize old jobs will go away.
Cars invented. Lots of new employees hired to build cars. Everyone involved in the horse based transportation system feels a chill.

2) More people being hired, but old jobs start vanishing. Still more jobs than before, but everyone can see the writing on the wall. Multiple car companies appear. horse trainers, raisers, carriage makers, all begin to lose business. Some go into the new business, others are in trouble.

3) Old business vanishes. New business is so much cheaper that poor people start using the new business, something they could not afford to do. Things that were rare become common and new related businesses start to rise. Less than 1% of people still using horses. But workers at car factories can afford a car, people start bussing kids to schools, and gasoline stations start appearing. Surprising, STILL more jobs than before. Why? Gasoline is a huge business. Where there was one horse per rich family on the block, two car families are common.

4) Even more uses/ businesses start to appear. New problems are created AND solved. Car racing is easier than horse racing. Government need to police the car owners, regulate the businesses and the vehicles themselves. Cars need new tricks - including air conditioners, towing capabilities. RVs appear. Car Insurance appears. Refrigeration trucks appear. People use cars for minor trips to the neighbor 20 blocks away (god, the kids are lazy....). The total number of jobs has actually risen far beyond what the horse based transportation system allowed.

5) New tech totally disrupts the old one - go back to step 1. Electric cars and self driving cars.

Note the article says it is AI written.

It also shows no link to Microsoft. Nothing supporting it's claim.
Nor a link to let you sign up for the claimed service.

Not saying it is definitely a hallucination. Just saying that if it is not a hallucination, it is typical of what bad writing looks like. A competent human would have put some link to Microsoft in the article.

Kids are lonely because they are bullied at school. We should fix this somehow.

The point is that people are investing vast sums of money to create elaborately-packaged boxed sets that are simply too vast to be actually enjoyed (apparently, the new boxed set Thunderbirds will include heavily restored footage that simply wasn't capable of being included in earlier releases), and upscaling a puppet show to 4K and still have it watchable is far from trivial -- those puppets were never made to be seen on such large screens at such high resolution. The scale of investment into making this publicity stunt and boxed set is incredible, the cost of the set isn't low, and the value of the material that's in the set - even to die-hard fans - isn't nearly as great.

Goblin/Guardian: The Lonely and Great God is an even more extreme example and includes 270 minutes of backstage footage, a large pack of publicity photos, scripts, and a tacky plastic sword. It's an extremely limited edition special collector's edition and the resale market is pricing it as though it includes a couple of solid gold ingots. People will certainly binge-watch the episodes once or twice, which will undoubtedly be in much higher resolution than the rare streamed versions, but not even the afficados will be watching all the making-of footage and the scripts will doubtless be on the Internet somewhere. Unlike high-end sci-fi, though, the storyline is simple so the difference between the scripts and fan-produced transcripts won't be vast. (It was a very good storyline, I was impressed, but it was hardly a case where the tiny nuances matter.) But K-Drama is milled in unimaginable quantities, so much so that many series just can't pick up any kind of audience and are abandoned. It's not produced for repeated watching and the odds of any show, however good, being repeatedly watched (the way fans repeatedly watch LoTR or SW) is essentially zero. But someone had to trawl through all the footage to put together the set, make the booklets, etc, and that wasn't cheap. The boxing is elaborate.

The importance of storytelling is high, but none of these are sophisticated stories. They're all pretty much on-par with Smith of Wooton Major - a great little read, but not one I'd pay £500 for, even if they did throw in a plastic sword. I'm not convinced anyone is buying these sets for the content, even though the content is enjoyable.

The degree of investment is phenomenal, the sophistication of presentation is exceptional, and the fans are buying in quantity. I'm just not sure what the benefit is, on either side.

AI is not smarter than a human. It is much, much dumber.

Fools think it is smarter because we teach it to specialize in one specific task that it easy for software to do.

It is like thinking a dog is somehow smarter than a human because it can smell drugs.

Our current AI works (on the tasks it is expensively trained to do well) about as well as an intern (on tasks the intern is simply told to do).

It lies, ignores simple instructions that were not part of the training, and generally fails except on very specific tasks.

I had no interest in all in [hot underage, illegal porn] [Free Tibet] [3d printed guns] [....].

It was Microsoft Browser that decided to go to that page. I swear it on my life.

Sports guys are not elites. They are well paid slaves. Think roman gladiators.

Anyone that cannot quit their job and move to another company is not an elite.

Any profession where drugs that interfere with your professional performance are prevalent, is not elite.

Any profession where the only real contract negotiation is about money is not elite.

In addition, their managers etc. tend to put their own needs above their players. They COULD have negotiated the right to things besides money but the agents only get a portion of the money - not the things besides money.

Musicians are in a similar situation. Low level actors as well, but high paid actors have gotten out of that trap.

If you read the article carefully, they are talking about lenses THINNER than a hair. I see several of the posts here thinking the width/radius of the lenses is this small, a reasonable mistake given the way this was written. Having a radius that small would severely reduce their light gathering ability, requiring very bright light or very dim images or very long exposure times.

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I don't get what you're saying. Let's say I made $300k per year for 10 years, and I knew that's the most I'll be able to make. I could just put 2/3 of that away, which would be $2 million, which could then compound over my entire working life, until I'm 65, and easily be worth the 4 to 10 million you're talking about. That would still leave me $100k/year to live on, which is a comfortable life, and after I retire from football I could still do other jobs to put money in the bank. In no case would I be broke. You're just excusing bad decision-making as if it's oppression. NFL players have every opportunity to live a very comfortable existence. If they don't because their failed high school math, that's only on them. And even if you failed math, financial advice isn't that expensive. Neither is a basic book on personal finance.

It's actually surprising the number of people who get drafted into sports teams who get a signing bonus, and actually take the cheque to a check-cashing place, because they don't have a bank account. And whether or not it's a plutocracy, western nations, and in particular the US, have the most social mobility of any society in history. So while I agree that having money gives you a big head start, ignoring the fact that there are countless examples of self-made millionaires in every generation means you're being disingenuous. Homes are not as affordable as in the past, but even if you have to rent, anyone who can set aside 15 to 20% of their income into a tax sheltered retirement fund will definitely be a millionaire by the time they retire. I just did the math... if you work from age 20 to 65 and only make $40k per year, you live with a room mate so you can afford it, and you put away 16% and get the standard market return of 5%, you'll have a million dollars when you retire. Most people who are dedicated can put a lot more away than this ($40k is a pretty meagre salary now). And that's ignoring that anyone with ambition could stop and start their own small business with the 100k they'd already saved 10 years in, and potentially make much better than a 5% rate of return. This is why underachievers hate the US... their underachievement is staring them straight in their face.