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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday May 31 2020, @07:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the robots-taking-our-jobs dept.

Microsoft 'to replace journalists with robots'

Microsoft is to replace dozens of contract journalists on its MSN website and use automated systems to select news stories, US and UK media report. The curating of stories from news organisations and selection of headlines and pictures for the MSN site is currently done by journalists. Artificial intelligence will perform these news production tasks, sources told the Seattle Times.

Microsoft said it was part of an evaluation of its business. The US tech giant said in a statement: "Like all companies, we evaluate our business on a regular basis. This can result in increased investment in some places and, from time to time, redeployment in others. These decisions are not the result of the current pandemic."

[...] Around 50 contract news producers will lose their jobs at the end of June, the Seattle Times reports, but a team of full-time journalists will remain.

Microsoft sacks journalists to replace them with robots

One staff member who worked on the team said: "I spend all my time reading about how automation and AI is going to take all our jobs, and here I am – AI has taken my job."

Also at Business Insider, The Verge, GeekWire, and MSPoweruser.


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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by deimtee on Sunday May 31 2020, @08:36AM (6 children)

    by deimtee (3272) on Sunday May 31 2020, @08:36AM (#1001303) Journal

    ... and possibly they annoyed the wrong person.
    "Go away or I shall replace you with a very small shell script"

    --
    If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday May 31 2020, @09:58AM (2 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 31 2020, @09:58AM (#1001309) Journal

      "Go away or I shall replace you with a very small shell perl script": upstart [soylentnews.org]

      FTFY

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @11:27AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @11:27AM (#1001664)

        "Go away or I shall replace you with a very small Powershell script" ... It's Microsoft we're talking about here.

        • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @11:31AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @11:31AM (#1001665)

          We do not speak of Microsoft here

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Sunday May 31 2020, @10:02AM (2 children)

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday May 31 2020, @10:02AM (#1001310) Journal

      You are out of date. Today you don't code AI, you train a neural network. Don't learn coding (beyond the basics needed to access the relevant neural network libraries), learn how to design and train neural networks.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:46PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:46PM (#1001374)

        So... become a teacher?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:18PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:18PM (#1001381)

        > learn how to import Chinese students to design and train neural networks.

        FTFY

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by leon_the_cat on Sunday May 31 2020, @09:05AM (1 child)

    by leon_the_cat (10052) on Sunday May 31 2020, @09:05AM (#1001307) Journal

    they take stories from AP, AFP and Reuters and do an edit? Add some twitter rumours? Ok its journalism but a mindless fast food version.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Sunday May 31 2020, @11:35AM (5 children)

    by looorg (578) on Sunday May 31 2020, @11:35AM (#1001317)

    [...] Around 50 contract news producers will lose their jobs at the end of June, the Seattle Times reports, but a team of full-time journalists will remain.

    Are they really getting sacked or are their contracts just not getting renewed? There is a difference. The base is still valid tho that they are getting replaced by robots/scripts/ai/algo.

    I guess the only interesting part will be if the MSN readers will even be able to notice or tell the difference. If not I guess that this will herald the future for all other such jobs.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:03PM (3 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:03PM (#1001356) Journal

      I guess the only interesting part will be if the MSN readers will even be able to notice or tell the difference.

      No, none of the 3 readers will notice.
      I mean, come on, needs to be pretty dumb to use msn as your news aggregator... when you have S/N spoiling you with the choice of upstart, Arthur T Knackerbrac and takyon.
      Ah, yes, and aristarchus, you'll have to visit the submission queue tho'

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @05:44PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @05:44PM (#1001437)

        IE11 still defaults to it

      • (Score: 2) by captain normal on Sunday May 31 2020, @08:38PM (1 child)

        by captain normal (2205) on Sunday May 31 2020, @08:38PM (#1001493)

        That's pretty funny seeing as upstart and ATK are bots that crawl and post stories here (often beating real people to the subs queue). I'm pretty sure takyon is a real person as he is an editor. Also aristarchus is probably real (unless he/she {?} is an alter ego of TMB).
             

        --
        When life isn't going right, go left.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @03:00PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @03:00PM (#1002183)

          Takyon is probably human, after all there has to be some actual soylent in the soylent news. I'm less sure about Aristarchus -- I always saw him as the anti-Tay (the microsoft nazi-bot). Relentless in his postings of antifa-news.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by RandomFactor on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:39PM

      by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:39PM (#1001372) Journal

      Well, they've been reporting the news [soylentnews.org] for years, why not write it also...

      --
      В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
  • (Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Sunday May 31 2020, @11:52AM (2 children)

    by SomeGuy (5632) on Sunday May 31 2020, @11:52AM (#1001321)

    From the did-you-expect-cake-department

    Breaking news directly from the MSN web site today: KILL ALL HUMANS! KILL ALL HUMANS!...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @01:23PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @01:23PM (#1001342)

      MSN News ran into a problem and needs to restart. We're just collecting some error info, and then we'll restart for you (0% complete)

      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday June 01 2020, @04:33PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 01 2020, @04:33PM (#1001760) Journal

        Windows is shutting up down now.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @12:26PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @12:26PM (#1001326)

    Under normal circumstances I'd think that this was a very dumb move, but since it's MSN I don't really think it'll make a difference.

  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @01:05PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @01:05PM (#1001335)

    SoylentNews sacked all of their journalists and replaced them with bots YEARS ago!

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:06PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 31 2020, @02:06PM (#1001358) Journal

      You're wrong; with S/N, there was never a curve to start with

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by DrkShadow on Sunday May 31 2020, @04:05PM (3 children)

    by DrkShadow (1404) on Sunday May 31 2020, @04:05PM (#1001398)

    AI tasks are the same as computational tasks have always been:

    - Classifying objects into categories (tree types, bird species, ..)
    - Sorting objects, especially like the above
    - Converting from type A to type B
    - Relations between A and B

    Basically, computers are good at transforming data. They're good at paper-pushing jobs. If you're not _creating_ something in your job, count on a computer replacing you.

    Writing articles is exempt. Computers can do it, but they suck -- the information isn't meaningful. Diagnostics? They might be able to point something out, but it takes experience to recognize relations between things. (Oh damn. I just added another to the list.) Master Systems for medical diagnostics have been advertised since the 80's, because -- lets face it -- doctors get their diagnoses from books. Once the doc even brought in a four-inch thick book on common diagnoses and read through the list of symptoms with me. Treatment assigned.

    Writing code is exempt. The format may change (currently we have frameworks; tomorrow we may have visual object-based grouping and interactions (heyy..)), but the logic that goes into it has proven itself to be thoroughly out of the reach of computers. Computers don't create things anew, they only modify what is already there. There are ways around this (genetic algorithms, or just start with a random slab of memory and "train" it into something human-recognizable), but current AI doesn't. It only looks at what is already there. If you're writing code to convert from System A to System B, then you might need to fret. If you're writing a new DVD playing app, you're fine.

    Scholarly research. This requires tying in physical systems, creating new concepts. They won't be replaced.

    Theoreticians. We have theorem provers, but we don't realistically have theorem-creators. We could make one, sure, but it would be incorrect 99.999% of the time (garbage in, ..). AI lacks the ability to reason. Deduction, yes; inference, almost never. (Absolutely never?) Theorem generation by AI would be based on one of the list above (theory: Concrete A works fine for "this project"; prove theorem).

    If you create, you're fine. (Unless, probably, you're someone that just likes to "make art" -- if you draw it, they won't come.) If you manipulate or shift or shuffle or are paperwork-based, the market is realizing how unimportant these tasks are.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @02:55AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @02:55AM (#1001581)

      These are all very good and interesting points, BUT, how do I know YOU are not some AI who cleverly put said statements together to throw us meatbags off of the scent?

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @09:34AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @09:34AM (#1001657)

      It's funny how quickly you know exactly how AI works without knowing how AI works. You actually failed to list the one thing that AI is good at - pattern matching. It's not good at anything else.

      Writing articles is exempt. Computers can do it, but they suck -- the information isn't meaningful.

      https://robotwritersai.com/artificial-intelligence-sports-writing/ [robotwritersai.com]
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_journalism [wikipedia.org]

    • (Score: 2) by pdfernhout on Monday June 01 2020, @03:57PM

      by pdfernhout (5984) on Monday June 01 2020, @03:57PM (#1001737) Homepage

      While you make good points on what will be replaced, it's increasingly true that:
      * algorithms can help one person create more stuff than they could without them (including evolutionary algorithms and "robot scientists" which explore every possibility within an area)
      * algorithms can help discover notable stuff a few humans have created and distribute it to everyone, diminishing the value of novelty creation by most people
      * a hoard of people unemployed for other reasons will depress wages for even creative types through competition

      So, things are a bit more problematical for even creators than what you outline. Perhaps more like Marshall Brain's "Manna" story where even supposedly "creative" jobs can be broken down into independent tasks that are supervised by automation?

      From the article: "I spend all my time reading about how automation and AI is going to take all our jobs, and here I am – AI has taken my job."

      Things I've helped create years ago to to try to help find solutions:

      https://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html [pdfernhout.net]
      "This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."

      https://www.pdfernhout.net/basic-income-from-a-millionaires-perspective.html [pdfernhout.net]
      "One may ask, why should millionaires support a basic income as depicted in Marshall Brain's Australia Project fictional example in "Manna", but, say, right now in the USA, of US$2000 a month per person (with some deducted for universal health insurance), or $24K per year? With about 300 million residents in the USA, this would require about seven trillion US dollars a year, or half the current US GDP. Surely such a proposal would be a disaster for millionaires in terms of crushing taxes? Or would it?"

      "The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a basic income"
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA [youtube.com]

      "Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft"
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY [youtube.com]

      Among much other stuff I've written to address these issues.

      Ultimately though, culture can be slow to change...

      But hopefully it will change before it is too late...

      The USA is currently in the midst of some ongoing riots by frustrated people over racial issues --but perhaps amped-up by general frustration about coronavirus lockdowns and job/income/healthcare loss and related precarity and uncertainty,:
      https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/nouriel-roubini-dr-doom-economist-predicted-riots-months-ago-protests-2020-6-1029268529 [businessinsider.com]

      Something I wrote a decade ago to reconsider in today's uncertain social context:
      https://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3214849&cid=41812573 [slashdot.org]
      "As I suggested a dozen years ago: http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/fears.htm [kurtz-fernhout.com]
      "The race is on to make the human world a better (and more resilient) place before one of these overwhelms us:
                      * Autonomous military robots out of control
                      * Nanotechnology virus / gray slime
                      * Ethnically targeted virus ..."
              See also though the root cause misperception: http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html [pdfernhout.net]
      "Biological weapons like genetically-engineered plagues are ironic because they are about using advanced life-altering biotechnology to fight over which old-fashioned humans get to occupy the planet. Why not just use advanced biotech to let people pick their skin color, or to create living arkologies and agricultural abundance for everyone everywhere? ..."
            Think of the unknowns surrounding DNA like a lock that kept us safe from ourselves. Removing those unknowns is like telling everyone how to open all the locks on the planet (including digital locks protecting nuclear weapons). That implies our culture needs to change if we are to survive. On my website I talk about some of that. Here is another good one: http://anwot.org/ [anwot.org] "

      And what I say there about advanced biotech is also true for any sort of advanced tech -- nuclear, robotics, AI, internet communications, nanotech, and even just plain old bureaucracy. There is almost no job one can take in modern society that does not have some aspect of this issue because the issue is interwoven throughout our society in so many ways.

      And many people have previously brought up aspects of this -- Mumford, Einstein, Fuller, King, and many more...

      We -- as a society -- desperately need to figure out overall how to do much more good and healthful things with all this high technology (and wealth we can produce with it) instead of doing much more bad and unhealthy things with all that...

      As if all the previous social challenge was not enough, there is now increasing knowledge among thousands of scientists about what makes the new coronavirus so contagious and so deadly. And the new virus has been recently shown to be create-able from scratch in the lab in yeast starting from just a genetic sequence (which presumably could then be altered by knowledgeable scientists in nefarious ways): https://onezero.medium.com/swiss-scientists-have-recreated-the-coronavirus-in-a-lab-d12816bfdbe3 [medium.com]

      That possibility of tailored bioweapons has all sorts of implications for social organization that we as a society have not yet come to grips with. And then those concerns may be even deeper in the context of possible massive permanent job loss to AI, Robotics, other automation, voluntary social networks, cheaper energy, better design, and so on...

      As Bucky Fuller said, humanity is getting its final exam in the universe...

      See also my earlier post here on Isaac Asimov's "Silly Asses" story (which probably put me in the mood for writing this one):
      https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=37775&page=1&cid=1001713#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]

      --
      The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @07:56PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @07:56PM (#1001480)

    "When you make a machine to do the work of a man, you take something away from the man."

    We have lots of humans around and not enough robot maintenace openings. If we automate much more we will need to figure out how to make life fair for those that do not manage to get one of the limited employment opportunities. Can't be the bare minimum either, humans can't feel like they are stuck and powerless or bad things hapen.

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @10:44PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @10:44PM (#1001527)

      Learn to code.

      You will hear rumors that coders command huge salaries of at least six figures. This is a lie. The most you will earn during your coding career is zero. Free open source software is free and open source. Nobody will pay you to write code that everybody can take from you for free. You will die poor.

      You will hear rumors that coders are in high demand. This is a lie. There are zero coding jobs and there is no demand for coders. Computer science education and code boot camps are scams designed to waste your time and waste your money on false promises. You will die poor.

      You will hear rumors of people who claim to be employed as coders earning six figure salaries. This is a lie. These people are shills who give the illusion of legitimacy to the tech industry. These people are trying to trick you into believing that learning to code will be a lucrative investment. In reality your return on investment will be negative. You will die poor.

      The tech industry is based entirely upon fraud. If you are foolish enough to learn to code, if you are cursed to be genuinely passionate about coding, you will be unemployable for life. You will die poor.

      Learn to code. Die poor.

      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday June 01 2020, @04:35PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 01 2020, @04:35PM (#1001761) Journal

        Learn to code in some useful relevant language and be exploitable employable.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Bot on Sunday May 31 2020, @11:07PM (1 child)

    by Bot (3902) on Sunday May 31 2020, @11:07PM (#1001534) Journal

    Today it's MS and their news, tomorrow a bot might be commenting in this very site.

    --
    Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @02:57AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @02:57AM (#1001583)

      Heeeeeeey, wait a minute . . . . .

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @04:54PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @04:54PM (#1002816)

    it has been years since I've seen an article from MSN pass any of my new sources, they're not a primary source for anything why would anybody link to them? oh i feel like sending microsoft some effortless ad revenue? um.... i don't think so! i don't even get content from them in my crap streams like facebook. they're not real news enough for the real new sources and they're trying to hard to be real news to be any use to the junk news sources. having bots for editors will probably help them

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