> “And that’s the way it is.” At least, that’s the way it was. When Walter Cronkite closed his nightly broadcasts with those words, America was a foreign country. At the height of broadcast news, Americans had differences of opinion but agreed on a basic set of facts about what was going on in the country and the world.
Unfortunately those "facts" were frequently false. Thus fragmentation is an improvement.
I couldn’t agree more, but have yet to hear a compelling attractor that can fight this. All solutions I’ve heard other than Noah Yuval Horari’s vague “treat algorithms as publishers” feel like bandaids and extremely uphill battles. Even this idea to hold algorithms liable for misinformation feels unlikely to address the root problem of individuals being able to become totally detached from the facts on the ground.
Thankfully frontier AI models seem generally factful, there’s an outside chance to me that greater reliance and interaction on LLMs could result in people having greater contact with the truth than the current state?
I agree that LLMs so far are a boon for cutting through some partisan confirmation bias. But deliberate prompting (e.g. “make a the strongest case for [some view I oppose]” or “weigh the evidence for an against [some proposition]”) would go further in that direction and requires a prior inclination/habit both to be skeptical and to value arguments and evidence. What do you think?
I agree with that, I’m just naively hoping that if people get in the habit of using it as an assistant then they’ll get more information through it than through social media, at least relative to the current split.
Understand where you’re coming from with your analysis, but I think you’re missing the bigger point.
Audiences for legacy media are shrinking.
The media companies try to super-serve their remaining slivers.
The AM radio stations where I worked years ago for years gave smaller audiences despite the population increasing. (I left almost 20 years ago….)
Does that matter?
I’ll respond with an emphatic “meh.”
> “And that’s the way it is.” At least, that’s the way it was. When Walter Cronkite closed his nightly broadcasts with those words, America was a foreign country. At the height of broadcast news, Americans had differences of opinion but agreed on a basic set of facts about what was going on in the country and the world.
Unfortunately those "facts" were frequently false. Thus fragmentation is an improvement.
Interesting point! I’d be curious what you see as some of the more egregious errors promulgated during the broadcast days.
Well the reaction to the Tet offensive is probably one of the most consequential.
I couldn’t agree more, but have yet to hear a compelling attractor that can fight this. All solutions I’ve heard other than Noah Yuval Horari’s vague “treat algorithms as publishers” feel like bandaids and extremely uphill battles. Even this idea to hold algorithms liable for misinformation feels unlikely to address the root problem of individuals being able to become totally detached from the facts on the ground.
Thankfully frontier AI models seem generally factful, there’s an outside chance to me that greater reliance and interaction on LLMs could result in people having greater contact with the truth than the current state?
I agree that LLMs so far are a boon for cutting through some partisan confirmation bias. But deliberate prompting (e.g. “make a the strongest case for [some view I oppose]” or “weigh the evidence for an against [some proposition]”) would go further in that direction and requires a prior inclination/habit both to be skeptical and to value arguments and evidence. What do you think?
I agree with that, I’m just naively hoping that if people get in the habit of using it as an assistant then they’ll get more information through it than through social media, at least relative to the current split.