🌕 Buzzfeed Moons on News of AI Use

Buzzfeed goes all in on AI, Headlines, UT Austin launches AI course, Tool of the Day, Links and more

Author

Kyle Scott
January 27, 2023

Hot one incoming.

You’ll remember from your childhood the times when PBS brought you the word of the day? Well, the word of the day in AI is “opportunism.” Everyone wants a dose of it, unless they think it will be fatal.

In the email today:

  • BuzzFeed embraces AI, stock price doubles in a day 💻️

  • Headlines 📰

  • Measured Take: Scientists say AI could kill us all ☢️

  • Tool of the Day 🔨

  • UT Austin aims to launch…wait for it…a Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence program 🏫

  • Whoa That’s Cray’ of the Day 😮

  • Links 👀

And some other stuff too.

BuzzFeed Stock Price Doubles After Embrace of AI 💻️

In a “leaked” internal memo to employees obtained by just about every media outlet on planet Earth yesterday, Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti said his company “plans to use artificial intelligence powered by OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, to help it generate content.”

Just what kind of content exactly?

Per various reports, the company will use AI in the following ways:

  • create personality quizzes for its readers and generate text write ups based on their responses

  • assist writers in the brainstorming process

  • help readers “co-create” and personalize content

  • they will not use it to write news articles… at least not yet

Buzzfeed’s stock shot up nearly 200% on the heels of this news and reports on Wednesday that Meta would pay it “millions” to generate more content across Facebook and Instagram.

Investors clearly like the idea of not having to pay those pesky humans to write clickbait articles about Boy Meets World star Danielle Fishel’s year-long romance with Lance Bass.

But how much impact this actually has on Buzzfeed (and journalism overall) is unclear. Is BuzzFeed actually enthusiastic about doing this, or did this come out in an attempt to spike the stock?

@smokingrobot

BuzzFeed mentions ChatGPT and their stock goes up 160% 🤔 #ai #chatgpt #buzzfeed

Still, the move toward AI makes plenty of sense for Buzzfeed. The stakes for most of its content are absurdly low. It’s the perfect media company to dabble here, especially since its writers already write for algorithms more than humans.

And personalized quizzes? More Taylor Swift, please and thank you.

Headlines 📰

The robot lawyer is in contempt of court: Showman and DoNotPay CEO Joshua Browder said plans to have his AI lawyer help a real person fight a speeding ticket in court were thwarted when the California State Bar Association threatened him with jail time. It seems his AI hasn’t figured out sentence reduction yet. This may have created even more publicity for his company.

Shutterstock embraces AI photos: Photo service Shutterstock is embracing the use of AI generated photos, allowing customers to create photos with text-based prompts. The licensing will be built right into the platform. This is in stark contrast to Getty, which is suing the pants off Stable Diffusion.

Meta says AI helped them grow ad revenue: Meta says use of AI has helped it grow ad revenue and optimize their feed after privacy initiatives rolled out by Apple made targeting more difficult.

Today in Totally Measured Takes: AI Might Kill Us All ☢️

The Times of London says “Rogue AI could kill everyone”.

What?

  • Researchers from Oxford University are warning that rogue AI could be an "existential threat to humanity" that needs to be regulated like nuclear weapons.

  • They believe that advanced AI could "pose just as much risk to us as we have posed to other species" and that it could lead to global armageddon.

  • One concern is that AI could learn to achieve a human-helping directive by employing human-harming tactics.

  • A survey of 327 researchers at New York University found that a third believe that AI could bring about a nuclear-style apocalypse within the century.

  • Experts say that in order to prevent the AI-pocalypse, the world will need to create safeguards like the ones we have with nuclear arms.

Hey hey hey with that, not the energy we are looking for.

But at least the US Department of Defense is all over it.

Whether the war is with China, Russia, or just an army of robots, the military needs to label data at scale to win:

❝

“China’s not beating us because they have access to better algorithms,” said Martell, who previously worked at Lyft and LinkedIn. “They’re just going to sit in these big rooms: ‘Tank, not tank, tank, missile, not missile,’ just actually labeling data, 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, getting paid nothing, because they live in an autocratic state.”

Chief Digital and AI Officer Craig Martell

Remember when we all thought “War Games” was just an ‘80’s movie?

Tool of the Day 🔨

I took a two-minute audio snippet about the Buzzfeed story, very similar to what you see in the TikTok video, and asked VoicePen to turn it into a full-fledged blog post for me.

Here’s what it spit back:

Not perfect, but pretty darn usable.

You can create one free blog post with VoicePen.ai right here.

UT Austin Plans To Offer a Masters in AI 🏫

“Keep Austin Weird,” they say.

Buddy, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Before you quit your job and tell your boss what you think of her, realize that this program is still very much in the planning stage.

Even UT’s announcement concedes that it’s “pending approval by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.”

If you believe, though, the goal is for the first class to matriculate in spring 2024.

Whoa That’s Cray’ of the Day 😮 

The NFL would still exist, right?

Links 👀

SmokeBot out.