At first glance, the "Calogue Index" looks like the unparalleled achievement of newspaper functions. A "summer wizard" is spread over 50 pages, and the feature has been united over the past week. Chicago Suntime and Philadelphia Inquirercontains "303 must, essential, must raise and must work". Readers are advised to "take a moonlight hike on well-marked trails" in one section and "driving a kite in the afternoon in the breeze". In other cases, they will receive tips on running a lemonade stand and enjoying “accidental frozen snacks.”
However, the guide's readers noticed something was very close. Earlier today Pajamas Marketattributed to Min Jin Lee and The last algorithmattributed to Andy Weir, suggests that the story may be made up of chatbots. It turns out that this is true. Slop is for regional newspapers.
Originally written for King's Features, a division of Hearst's "Hot Index" was printed as a standalone magazine and inserted into Sunshine Timethis Inquirerand perhaps even other newspapers, strengthening publications without staff workers and photographers, must do more of their own. Although many of the elements of "Hot Index" do not have the author's narration, some of them were written by a freelancer named Marco Buscaglia. When we contacted him, he admitted to using Chatgpt for work.
Buscaglia explained that he had asked the AI to help him make book suggestions. He didn't shy away from using these tools for research: "I'm just looking for information," he told us. "Say I'm making a story-10 Summer Drinks for Barbecue or others. I'll find something online and say, hey, according to Oprah.com, Mai Tai is the perfect drink. I'll source it; I'll say where it comes from. "At least this time, he didn't actually check the work of the chatbot.
Kings feature did not respond to a request for comment. Buscaglia (He also acknowledges his artificial intelligence 404 Media) It seems the impression is that the articles read in summer are the only ones in question, although that is not the case. For example, in the section on the “Hammock Hanging Ethics” section, Buscaglia cites “Mark Ellison, resource management coordinator for Great Smoky Mountains National Park.” There is indeed a Mark Ellison who works in the Great Smoky Mountains, not a national park, but he set up a company called Pinnacle Forest Therapy. Ellison told us via email that he had previously written about the North Carolina Tourism Commission’s hammock, which maybe that’s why his name is cited in Buscaglia’s chatbot search. But here's it: "I never serve the park. I never communicate with this guy." When we mention Ellison's comment, Buscaglia said he was surprised and surprised by his mistakes. "I have some major missed stuff," he said. "I don't know. I usually check the source. I thought I'm here: He said this in this magazine or on this website. But hearing this, it was like, obviously he didn't. ”
Another article in the Calorie Index quotes “Dr. Katherine Ferste,” who is said to be a food anthropologist at Cornell University, who actually works there, according to a school spokesman. Such people don't seem to exist at all.
In order for this material to be printed, it should have to be passed through human writers, human editors and human staff Chicago Suntime and Philadelphia Inquirer. No one stopped it. Victor Lim, spokesperson Sunshine Timetell us: "This is a licensing content that is not approved or approved Sunshine Time Newsroom, but it is unacceptable for anything we offer to readers inaccurately. "This should be a learning moment for all journalism," said a longer statement posted on the website on paper (initially hidden behind the paywall). Lisa Hughes, publisher and CEO Inquirertelling us that the publication realizes that the supplement contains “apparently fabricated, thoroughly false or misleading” material. "We don't know the extent to which this is, but are taking it seriously and investigating it," she said via email. Hughes confirmed that the material was united by King's Characteristics, adding that "using artificial intelligence to produce content, it is obvious that certain thermal index materials are in violation of our own internal policies and serious violations." (Although every publication accuses King's Characteristics, Sunshine Time and Inquirer Post the organization's logo on the homepage of the "Calcium Index" and attribute ownership of the content to the readers. )
This story has layers, and all of this is a frustrating case study. The existence of software packages such as the “Castrophic Index” is the result of the local media industry, which has been hollowed out by the internet, plunging advertising, private equity firms, and underinvestment of investment and interest in regional newspapers. In this unstable environment, sparse and underpaid editorialists are forced into troubled publishers who try to stand out in a dying industry amid constant threat of layoffs. It is reasonable to think that some of these victimized employees, as well as any freelancers they adopt (now equipped with automation tools, such as generating AI, will use them to make ends meet.
Buscaglia said he sometimes sees freelancers as low as $15 for 500 words, and he completes freelancing late at night after completing his daily work, which involves editing and proofreading of AT&T. Thirty years ago, Buscalia said he was Park Ridge Times Heralda small paper every week, was eventually engraved into the Pioneer Publishing House, the department of the Tribune Publishing Company. “I love the job,” he said. "I always thought I would retire in a small town (a small campus town in Michigan or Wisconsin) and was just an editor of their weekly papers. It seems impossible now." (A librarian at Park Ridge Public Library visited an archive for us and confirmed that Buscaglia had worked for the newspaper.)
On one level, the “calorie index” is just a small failure of ecosystem support for life. But it is also a template for the future, which will be defined by the embrace of artificial intelligence in every industry – tools that promise to unlock human potential and instead push unmanned races to the bottom. Any discussion about AI is often a permanent conversation around the ability of these tools to pass benchmarks or whether they can have something close to human intelligence. Missionaries discuss their power as educational aids and productivity enhancers. In fact, the marketing language surrounding these tools often doesn’t capture the way that actual humans use them. The AI-powered Nobel Prize has won many campaigns, although the dirty secret of AI is that it is certainly often used to cut corners and produce the lowest dispatched job.
Venture capitalists talk about a future in which AI agents will be classified through daily busy work and free up our best lives. Such a future may pass. However, a proof of a different kind of transformation is now provided, powered by laziness and greed. AI usage and adoption tends to discover weaknesses within the system and exploit them. In academia, generated AI is based on reading, writing and testing, subverting traditional educational models. Instead of providing a new way forward for systems that require modernization, Generative-AI tools break it down, putting teachers and students in trouble, even frustration, and uncertain about their role in a system that can be easily automated.
AI-generated content is often called "ramps" because it is spam and tasteless. The output of generated AI tends to be content in prose, email, article, and books, just like the way packaged peanuts are satisfied in shipping packages. This is the filler - number Lorem very. The problem with Slop is that, like water, it goes everywhere and seeks a minimum level. Chatbots can assist in performing higher-level tasks such as encoding or scanning and analyzing large numbers of spreadsheets, document archives, or other structured data. Such work combines human expertise with calculated weight. But these more elegant examples seem extremely rare. In a recent article, Zach Seward, editorial director of AI Programs, was The New York Timessaid that while newspapers use artificial intelligence to parse websites and datasets to assist with reports, he himself believes that AI is nothing more than "living room skills" and is worthless in most cases when not in the hands of already skilled journalists and programmers.
When talking to Buscaglia, we can easily see how the “Calode Index” errors become part of journalists who are compatible with the synthesis slope, the constantly generated content, and the unrealistic needs of publishers. "I feel like my role has evolved. He talks about finding another job, maybe a "shoe salesman."
The worst of AI looks a lot like the "Calogue Index" shattering-the living room trick won. In the future, we suffer more mundane destruction than artificial revelation. AI tools won't be smart, they just simply Good enough. They are not deployed by people trying to supplement or enrich their work and potential, but by those who want to fully automate. You can now see the outline of that future: In anecdotes about teachers’ use of AI, written mainly by chatbots or AI-generated newspaper inserts sent to families that are primarily used as birdcage linings and ignitions. Living Room Skills Meet the Living Room Skills - Robots talk to robots and write comprehensive words for listeners that they will never read them.