back to article Misinformation tracker warns 'new generation' of AI-scribed content farms on the rise

Makers of the content rating tool NewsGuard warned on Monday that "a new generation of content farms is on the way" after it found 49 news sites publishing content that appears to be completely fabricated by AI. Machine learning models capable of generating text from prompts have boomed in recent times. OpenAI released GPT-3, …

  1. TheMaskedMan Silver badge

    "Unfortunately, since services that to generate coherent text with no grammatical errors are now widely accessible, AI-generated content farms are on the rise."

    So I assume chatGPT has yet to infiltrate El Reg. Perhaps someone should make a plugin that randomly deletes words or introduces typos into AI generated text - might be a bit harder to spot:)

    1. druck Silver badge
      Stop

      El Reg better not. It may now be chock full of annoying usaisms, but at least they are then genuine human generated annoying usaisms.

      Buzzfeed, Venturebeat, ZDNet and Cnet have all said AI will be writing some of their content in the future.

      And I'm saying I wont be reading any of their content when that happens, if not before.

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Yeah. It's going to be reading them any less, since I'm already pretty much at zero.

    2. katrinab Silver badge
      Alert

      To be honest I don't think there is much for the El Reg hacks to worry about right now ...

      "Write an article about Artificial Intelligence in the style of The Register"

      AI: The ultimate buzzword or the future of humanity?

      Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere these days. From Google's search engine to Amazon's recommendation system, from Siri's voice recognition to Tesla's self-driving cars, AI seems to be powering every aspect of our lives. But what exactly is AI and how does it work? And more importantly, what are the benefits and risks of AI for humanity?

      AI is a broad term that covers a range of technologies that enable machines to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as reasoning, learning, perception, and decision making. AI can be classified into two main types: narrow AI and general AI. Narrow AI is designed to perform a specific task or domain, such as playing chess, diagnosing diseases, or translating languages. General AI is the hypothetical ability of a machine to exhibit human-like intelligence across any domain or task, such as understanding emotions, creating art, or having a conversation.

      The history of AI can be traced back to the 1950s, when computer scientists such as Alan Turing, John McCarthy, and Marvin Minsky started to explore the possibility of creating machines that can think and learn. Since then, AI has gone through several waves of optimism and pessimism, depending on the successes and failures of various approaches and applications. Some of the milestones in AI history include:

      - The Turing test: In 1950, Alan Turing proposed a test to determine whether a machine can exhibit human-like intelligence by engaging in a conversation with a human judge. The test is still widely used as a benchmark for AI research.

      - The Dartmouth workshop: In 1956, John McCarthy organized a conference at Dartmouth College, where he coined the term "artificial intelligence" and invited some of the leading researchers in the field to discuss the goals and challenges of AI.

      - The expert systems: In the 1970s and 1980s, AI researchers developed systems that could encode human knowledge and rules in specific domains, such as medicine, law, or engineering. These systems were able to provide expert advice or solutions to complex problems.

      - The neural networks: In the 1980s and 1990s, AI researchers revived an old idea of creating artificial neural networks that can mimic the structure and function of the human brain. These networks are composed of layers of interconnected nodes that can process and learn from data.

      - The deep learning: In the 2000s and 2010s, AI researchers made breakthroughs in using deep neural networks that can handle large amounts of data and perform tasks such as image recognition, natural language processing, speech synthesis, and generative modeling. These networks are powered by advances in computing power, data availability, and algorithmic techniques.

      The future of AI is uncertain and controversial. On one hand, AI has the potential to improve many aspects of our society and economy, such as health care, education, entertainment, security, and productivity. On the other hand, AI also poses significant challenges and risks, such as ethical dilemmas, social impacts, job displacement, human rights violations, and existential threats.

      Some of the questions that AI researchers and policymakers are grappling with include:

      - How can we ensure that AI is aligned with human values and goals?

      - How can we prevent AI from being misused or abused for malicious purposes?

      - How can we ensure that AI is fair, transparent, accountable, and trustworthy?

      - How can we balance the benefits and costs of AI for different groups and stakeholders?

      - How can we foster human-AI collaboration and coexistence?

      - How can we prepare for the possibility of superintelligent AI that surpasses human capabilities?

      AI is not just a buzzword or a hype. It is a reality that is transforming our world in profound ways. Whether we like it or not, AI is here to stay. The question is: how will we shape it and how will it shape us?

      1. Bitsminer Silver badge

        what is worse than AI-scribed articles?

        AI-scribed comments.

      2. SB00044

        Your reply brought in a sudden bout of narcolepsy.

        Imagine LLM's trained on texts mainly produced by LLM's in the near future. Texts that resemble Tom Hanks movie scripts. Tip: most crappy texts contain the word "humanity".

        I suspect there will be an increased demand for search engines able to disregard the growing LLM pollution and discover texts that contains some form of original thought.

      3. TheMaskedMan Silver badge

        I guess we can keep the hacks around for a few more weeks:)

        There's still something impressive about software that can spit out something like that from a simple prompt, though, despite its limitations.

  2. Diogenes

    Students doing this as well.

    Some are obviously the product of AI as they contain sentences such as "I am not capable of producing 1500 words…

    We have had 3 incidents at school where the student submits a variation of "I am sorry I can write this assignment for you. You may, however, expand on the following points ...:"

    They wonder why they got caught for plagiarism.

  3. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Always Look on the Bright Side of LOVE ...... Live Operational Virtual Environments

    There definitely be in deed ahead, Katyanna, more than just interesting 0days to exploit and export/import to lay waste the fetid fields of abusive misinformation and deviant disinformation so beloved and required by both the cuckold and cuckoo alike in the feathered nests of easy power and corrupted control.

    And was there ever before a more colourful and ethereal Wild Bunch of Crazy Gang Bangers ....... Renegade Rogues/Private Pirates/Semantic Web Developers/AI Pioneers/CyberIntelAIgent Entrepreneurs .... to claim are to blame .... and/or worthy of their just colossal reward?

    It is indeed, in these novel times and virtually real spaces of strange remote quantum entanglement/spooky action at a distance, an embarrassment of endless riches for both minding and mining.

    Others though, caught within the trap of their own enslavement to a past perverse and rotted to its cores system, may fail spectacularly to escape the chains that have captured their hearts and mind and will not be destined to survive and prosper in ITs Futures with all of their radically revised and fundamentally changed ways and means and memes.

    But such is only natural and fully to be expected if one follows and believes in Darwinism's survival of the fittest, so shed not one tear for the fallen and soon forgotten. It's Life, with the Future as you most definitely will neither know it nor expect it.

    How does that grab you? Which camp do you fit into? Terrified and Petrified or Excited and Enthusiastic?

    1. Wilson_OW
      Happy

      Re: Always Look on the Bright Side of LOVE ...... Live Operational Virtual Environments

      *nods politely*

      *holds intercom button* SECURITY!

      1. J. Cook Silver badge

        Re: Always Look on the Bright Side of LOVE ...... Live Operational Virtual Environments

        Come on, give amanfrommars1 a break; he's worth the amusement value.

  4. Arthur the cat Silver badge

    You now have a choice you didn't have before

    You can choose specious bullshit written by AIs, or specious bullshit written by meatware tabloid journalists(*).

    (*) For example: "Freddie Starr ate my hamster" or similar.

    [There should be an icon for jaded cynicism.]

  5. Andy the ex-Brit

    Fake review sites

    I've seen some bicycle reviews and related articles recently that look to be generated by AI to me.

    www.stringbike dot com /tern-gsd-vs-hsd/

    That article is filled with contradictions and blatant untruths.

    Clicking around the stringbike site, every article looks like it was written by a bad AI, then lightly edited by a teenager.

    Here's some more absolute garbage. It mixes up "10 speed" bikes and BMX bikes within the same article, a mistake I doubt even the laziest person creating a platform for monetizing ads with crappy "articles" would make. Then, of all things, it starts talking about 10-speed vehicle transmissions and fuel economy.

    www.stringbike dot com /10-speed-bike/

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