The Washington Post basically calls it a day; "pivoting to AI".

[RoryN]

The Washington Post Tells Staff It’s Pivoting to AI

"AI everywhere in our newsroom."

Already facing scandal, the Washington Post's new-ish CEO and publisher, Will Lewis, has announced that the newspaper will be pivoting to artificial intelligence to turn around its dismal financial situation.

https://futurism.com/washington-post-pivot-ai

 

[Bn2f]

The Washington Post Tells Staff It’s Pivoting to AI

"AI everywhere in our newsroom."

Already facing scandal, the Washington Post's new-ish CEO and publisher, Will Lewis, has announced that the newspaper will be pivoting to artificial intelligence to turn around its dismal financial situation.

https://futurism.com/washington-post-pivot-ai

What is HIS salary?
Never mind, found it.
William H. Lewis made $7,789,898 in total compensation. Let’s all fancy ourselves a WaPo reporter and see if we can all ask him the same next question.

 

[RobDownSouth]

"Belief in AI" is singlehandedly propping up the StocK Market right now. Nvidia, which makes the computer chips that power AI, is white-hot. Cloud storage services, which hold the massive data vaults needed to house AI, are overvalued (Microsoft Cloud, Google Cloud, Amazon AZS, etc).

AI is just not ready for prime-time. Donald Trump has six fingers. There are entire tribes in Kenya being paid $2 an hour to load content into AI databanks for synthesis.

It's a house of cards.

 

[RoryN]

AI is just not ready for prime-time.

You got that right. Google has just infused their search results with it, and quite a bit of what comes back is hilariously inaccurate.

But you can tell that, with a few more development cycles - which will happen very shortly - it will at least appear more up to the task. And that's 3/4ths the battle in marketing it.

The fact that WP is bending over so quickly shows how bad the business is. Even Drudge Report is now taking over browsers with fake Norton "your computer is infected" ads. This is a full-blown crisis for news agencies and journalism.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Remember the "Dot Com Bust" after earnings plummeted in March 2000? I think there will be a "AI Bust" sooner than later. AI prophets keep telling us AI breakthrough and public acceptance is right around the corner. They've been saying this for over a year now. At some point analysts will sour on this snake oil.

We won't see meaningful AI adoption in our lifetime, with the limited exception of very niche industries (anti-virus engines in software for example).

 

[RoryN]

Remember the "Dot Com Bust" after earnings plummeted in March 2000? I think there will be a "AI Bust" sooner than later. AI prophets keep telling us AI breakthrough and public acceptance is right around the corner. They've been saying this for over a year now. At some point analysts will sour on this snake oil.

We won't see meaningful AI adoption in our lifetime, with the limited exception of very niche industries (anti-virus engines in software for example).

My gut a half year ago would be to agree, specifically because I went through dot com in a very tangible way.

But due to many differences between those two times, and developments in the past few months, I don't think history will repeat like that. The dot com bust was a correction, but the affects of COVID, hybrid work, and AI seem to be linear events wherein there's going to be no closing of barn doors or putting cats back in bags.

Example: the jobs AI has taken from programming and artists already aren't coming back - there'll be no persuasive arguments I can see to get buyers looking at a bottom line to revert. Quality of output isn't a top concern any longer in those areas.