A look at media coverage of generative AI over the past six months, as journalists and academics criticize the hype and provide ways to improve reporting
The Tow Center looked at how news organizations have been covering generative AI over the past six months. Tweets: @emilymbender , @emilymbender , @emilymbender , @janebsinger , @emilymbender , @datadhrumil , and @venkatananth See also Mediagazer Tweets: @emilymbender : @geoffreyhinton To the media: Wow is it a bad look that one old white guy comes out belatedly saying “AI is bad!” and you fawn all over him, while failing to connect with the scholars (mostly not white men) who have been documenting the actual problems with “AI”. >> @emilymbender : But more to the point: How is it that media reporting on Hinton's sudden switch to “warning” so often forgets to ask who else has been talking about dangers of this technology and what in particular have they been warning of? >> @emilymbender : You could even use Hinton's “realization” as a hook and then pivot to: @ruha9 @safiyanoble @mathbabedotorg @schock @csdoctorsister @rajiinio @Abebab @mer__edith & ofc @timnitgebru and @mmitchell_ai, who were fired by Google over our paper discussing the dangers of LLMs.>> Jane Singer / @janebsinger : ‘Hype cycle’: US media coverage of generative AI has tended toward the alarmist and the anthropomorphic. Experts say some important issues are being ignored, including those of governance, ethics and training — plus, of course, power and money. https://www.cjr.org/... @TowCenter @emilymbender : The way that the media are fawning over @geoffreyhinton 's supposed “whistleblowing” is just appalling. Here's the latest from @BobbyAllyn at NPR: https://www.npr.org/... & a short dissection: >> Dhrumil Mehta / @datadhrumil : A look at the last six months of chatbot coverage: “It's the Hollywood-ification of the public's understanding of AI,” says @ndiakopoulos “Newsrooms should lay down ground rules, perhaps in their style guides,” suggests @parismartineau https://www.cjr.org/... Venkat Ananth / @venkatananth : a good read on how the media is covering chatGPT six months into its launch. well, chatbots are the new 2021 bitcoin in terms of coverage (hardly surprising, considering we are in a hype cycle!) https://www.cjr.org/... [image] See also Mediagazer