How scary is AI generated text?

Image by Gordon Johnson from PixabaY

As part of my journalism degree, I get to learn a lot about fake news.

OpenAI and other groups have developed artificial intelligence programs that can create automated text on any subject, even strictly academic content.

In February, OpenAI unveiled a language model called GPT-2 that generates coherent paragraphs of text one word at a time. So, I tested it out. While for me, the article it generated, was complete gobbledegook, I wonder how real it would come across to other people, I mean other voters.

Here is what it produced with only minor editing on this heading "The Australian Labor Party will win the 2022 election and here's why".

The Australian Labor Party will win the 2022 election and here's why with exclusive election forecasts.

Labor's odds to win the 2022 election are looking good.

With Liberal Party polling lead falling in the wake of the May budget, this is a time for rethinking the balance between the ALP and crossbench.

Liberal Party polling lead could drop as much as 40 points in the coming six weeks as opinion trends have already turned.

Even more alarmingly for Morrison, the ALP's poll numbers have shifted sharply since October 2019.

The Coalition's election fortunes are mixed at best. Even with the Morrison government's unpopularity and the Labor Party's current political weakness, Morrison’s own numbers are still trailing Albanese by a long way.

If Albanese makes little progress on reforms to pension reforms – which Labor still claims are necessary to "ensure we live better for longer" – the Coalition will still fall a long way short of governing.

This polling is from a slightly wider sample so more precise numbers are needed, but Morrison’s party, with 37 per cent support, would still need about 60 seats at least to have absolute control.

The Job of Journalism

When did journalism go wrong?

From my research of the Canberra Times, my local paper, which began in 1926, editorial opinions starting entering their paper around the 1970s. So editorial opinions have been with us for around 50 years. How this changed people's views and ideas back then we can't know. But today opinions, views, and commentary in newspapers have a major effect on the views of the people who read them.

Opinion columns are one of the most popular parts of a newspaper today. As I have said, I fail to understand the popularity of opinion columns, but it is most likely that their popularity is due to the content of these opinions reinforcing people’s views.

Regardless of whether these views are right, wrong, inaccurate or are just outright lies pushed by editors who want to drive an issue, in my opinion, they have no right being in a newspaper. Opinions are not news. Opinions are cheap, facts are hard but rewarding.

I attended the 2019 Kenneth Myer Lecture on Thursday 15.08.2019 at the National Library of Australia. The speaker was the well-known UNESCO Chair in Journalism & Communication at the University of Queensland, author, and journalist, Peter Greste. 

Peter Greste

He spoke about Press Freedom in Australia: And why it is in Crisis. He also talked about the need for a 'Press Freedom Act' and making sure it contained an appropriate mix of rights for security agencies and the press.

I managed to get to ask him a question after his speech. My question was "With the amount of comment, opinions, and views in newspapers today, do you feel that this has pushed governments towards eroding press freedoms?"

His answer was yes. "This has indisputably helped to erode press freedom around the world.", Greste said.

It does not look like that media outlets are looking at or even thinking about curbing the commentary in their newspapers. So they can probably only expect their press freedoms to be further eroded the more vocal and one-sided they become. 

It's clear that some editorials are balanced and probably do produce positive outcomes. It's also clear that the rubbish that is purported to be editorials and commentary by some is doing nothing but harm and further disrupting a disjointed world.

I hope to one day get a job in a paper where I am allowed to report on security, political and civil matters without hindrance from our government and its agencies. But if newspapers continue to push out so much commentary, there might be no journalists jobs available because governments might restrict their activities to a point where no reporting of issues is possible.

Let's hope that media outlets find a balance and work with governments and vice versa to maintain the continued reporting of the news, which we all know is vital for a democracy.

Can Digital Journalism be Trusted?

If everything is digital today is it reliable?

Today's media environment seems to be complicating matters. We know that almost everything we touch in the digital world, that someone somewhere can see our fingerprints on what we have accessed.

Some media groups are so worried about being spied on that they document their investigations on computers that are not connected to the internet, or in fact, some create their content on typewriters. Certain media outlets tell people to only submit stories and tip-offs through snail-mail and will not speak to informers or whistle-blowers over any sort of phone. 

Are they paranoid? Not in the least. If you've seen the stories from Australia and around the world of governments, criminal and business agencies tracking, finding and harassing, charging and killing journalists, you'll know they are not paranoid.

With the click of a mouse button, anyone can put anything out across the world today. That doesn't mean that people are going to see it or can find it, but the more outrageous it is, the better chance it has of being found.

Where does all this lead to for the consumer? In fact, is the idea of the traditional audience/consumer for media information obsolete now?

Society is dramatically different today than it was 20 years ago. Many traditional businesses and social models have been disrupted, broken and some have even disappeared. Everyone is talking at everyone else, and who is to be trusted? 

The way that technology has advanced and the public's consumption of media has changed, some are even predicting that written content will disappear in the future; when that is, no one is game enough to state. 

In one of my journalism classes, the question was asked, who has a traditional TV in their house? Everyone in the class put their hand up; there were more than 50 students. But then, the teacher asked, who does not watch that TV? About 30% of the students put their hands up. They were getting their news and entertainment on their computers, tablets, and phones.

Our digital news is vastly different from what happens on TV, radio and in print. Is digital news reliable? No, it is not. It cannot be trusted. Someone with an axe to grind, a group with an untested view and even traditional media outlets are pushing out fake, incorrect and unreliable news. It's no wonder people are predicting the death of the written word and traditional media when for the sake of getting the most hits, people are publishing crap.

Digital media is measured and created on how many people are clicking stories. They are not measuring audience engagement, interaction or reactions to stories other than where and how many times stories are shared. 

But, there are groups who are fighting against all the noise of misinformation and outright lies. It looks like that almost nothing you read or see online can be trusted, and I'm of the opinion that today, that is the only thing that can be trusted. Don't trust anything you read, hear or see online. Because the chances are, someone has manipulated it to gain some benefit for themselves.

Unless you fact-check and cross-check everything I have just written, you cannot know what I'm saying is true.

Choose your news wisely

Where do you get your news?

Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus C.55 – 135 AD, said, "[t]he essence of human nature, is the faculty of choice."

How do you choose your news? Are the papers your parents read the ones you read today? For me, the answer is yes. Until the internet arrived, I never thought much about where my news came from. When I got interested in the news, I just bought the paper my parents bought, The Sydney Morning Herald.

Today, we have thousands of choices to read the news from points of views that are so different it can be mind-boggling to sort out who is telling the truth.

Here is the way one person has decided to find their news. What is agreeable is true. What is disagreeable is false; hence fake news. You might guess that person is the current president of America, Donald Trump.

One can assume that what Donald Trump finds disagreeable hurts his views, and or America's views, as he sees it. And what he finds agreeable favours his views, and or American views.

If we only get our news from places that align with our pre-existing opinions, then we are likely never to find anything new in our news. That type of news just adds weight to our biases.

As a normal citizen, the favouring of that "news gathering" technique might cause you harm. Because you only get information that you already agree with and not having all the information will harm you. But as a president of a country who guides millions of people and is in charge of the most powerful nation on earth that is very dangerous. Because not everyone thinks like the president of America, and some of his thoughts may be wrong or misguided.

The radicalisation of people to whatever idea comes from people only accessing one side of the news or information. What is being taught at some universities and schools around the world is how news can be tested and verified. So a student will end up with a more balanced view of subjects. The issue with this can be there is so much opinion, views, and commentary in the news today that the real news is hard to find and difficult to process.

The principle that drives our filtering of the news is based upon our pre-existing views. If schools and universities can teach students how to process the news to find the facts of a story, I'd suggest that societies will end up with a more balanced and empathetic graduate. And not just people who have a one-world view and create policies based on that view.

What can journalism do for me?

Who needs Journalism?

As much as I criticise certain practices of journalism and media outlets, we need them.

Journalism is supposed to mirror humanity. Newspapers report on what humans and nature does. How do we know that journalists are getting it right? How can we know that they are telling the truth?

Our relationships with each other and the trust we put in our governments and the rules they make are based upon them doing the right thing. We trust our partners and friends and our governments to do the right thing. When they don't do what we expect, it lets us down, and we feel betrayed.

Newspapers and journalists have a job that sets them apart from most of us in society. They set out to tell the truth about matters. Few of us will tell the truth if it hurts or inconveniences us or our loved ones. Newspapers have a tradition of exposing and telling the truth. They also have a history of lying, covering things up and not reporting on matters if it sets them or their views in a bad light.

That's one of the major problems with newspapers. They should not have a view. But the reality is they do. Almost every newspaper today takes sides and puts forward their views. Therefore, they should not be trusted.

However, we still need them. Newspapers can't be trusted 100% of the time, neither can anyone on this earth, but they are necessary. Imagine a world without newspapers and journalists. Actually, you don't have to imagine, just look at certain countries or read George Orwell's 1984.

I hate thinking that for every story I read in a newspaper I have to fact-check it. But this is what needs to be done if you want to find out the real truth of a story. In a previous article, I suggest several methods. Should a reader have to fact-check a story? 

We need journalism to be as accurate as possible. There are several groups around the world that are trying to make journalism better and more accountable. The Society of Professional Journalists is one. A few media outlets have set up training centres for journalists, like the Journalism Trainee Scheme by the BBC.

The ABC in Australia has a program that lets people know how their government works. Who Runs This Place? Which, "explores who has real clout in Australia and how power works and how it is changing."

Things like "Who runs this place?" is one of the things that journalism can do for you. For instance, in their program The Lobbyists you can hear how they discover that there are 1700 lobbyists who have security passes that give them access to our elected officials in the Australian Parliament. The fact that there are only 227 members in the senate and the house of representatives, that's a lot of lobbyists. Some lobbyists work for companies who have made donations to our political parties.

It is facts like these that we need journalism for. Good journalism helps hold our democracy accountable. Countries that do not have a free press suffer from a lack of basic human rights. Good journalism can help maintain your rights.

What is journalism for?

What is a newspaper today?

I was born in 1960. Australian newspapers of that time contained almost only news and advertisements. Searching through Trove, I found no commentary, views or opinion on the news from papers back then.

The same newspapers today contain much more than just news and ads. There is basically something for everyone today in a standard newspaper. But there is also opinion columns, views on many news subjects and commentary included in news articles. Why is there a difference between then and now?

Is it that newspapers are trying to emulate the type of discussion that happens on social media sites? I don't think so, because opinion columns in newspapers predate social media as we know it now. Some in America go back to the early 1900s.

While some newspaper articles contain opinions of experts, witnesses, and participants, most newspapers today include comment about leading news stories from their editors. I don't know about you, but I don't buy newspapers to read comments on what an editor thinks about the actions of others. I do not read op-ed columns and never have. But newspapers make them an important section of their publications.

Many newspaper editors are more informed about issues in the world, but their opinions are no more important than the opinions of anyone else. Why the world has bought into the idea that editors can solve the problems of the world better than anyone else remains a mystery to me. Do we want to be directed by someone we don't even know, so, therefore, cannot possibly trust?

I feel op-ed columns and the like is one of the reasons that people have turned away from newspapers today. 

The prime function of a newspaper is to expose and tell the truth. Opinions, no matter how well informed, they only cover one side of the story, unlike factual journalism. 

I find newspapers and media outlets supporting one side of politics or the other to be an immoral use of their function. Newspapers that do this are not newspapers, they are tools of a one-sided and oppressive organisation.

Newspapers and media outlets that support one side of anything have ruined what used to be a fair and free communication tool for the people of the world. 

Newspapers should seek the truth and report on it. Newspapers should balance the publics need to know while minimizing harm and remain within the law. Newspapers should be accountable and transparent and supply ethical journalism that serves the public.

Opinions do not solve problems. Facts and balance help people figure out the issues of the world, and then people can act on fixing problems.