Artificial Intelligence/Genuine Stupidity

And the dubious future of journalism...

So it turns out Sports Illustrated has been using articles generated by Artificial Intelligence which would be bad enough if that’s where it stopped, but they also attributed those fake articles to fake AI-generated writers with fake AI-generated biographies.

And if we’re going to start using fake biographies I’d like to amend mine and add the fact that I once climbed Mount Everest in nothing but a tank top, board shorts and flip flops, accompanied by my then-girlfriend, the Young Morgan Fairchild.

(I stole that Young Morgan Fairchild bit from Jon Lovitz because it always made me laugh and let’s move on as quickly as possible to the fact that I once met Morgan Fairchild in Real Life and she told me she had dated a ballplayer and I’m thinking “Wade Boggs” or “Pete Rose” because the ages would be about right, but turned out the Morgan-Fairchild-Adjacent Ballplayer was Joe Fucking DiMaggio.)

As near as I can tell, someone leaked the existence – or maybe that should be non-existence – of the AI-generated Sports Illustrated stories and writers to a website called Futurism and if you want to read that story, here it is:

https://futurism.com/sports-illustrated-ai-generated-writers

Just in case you didn’t read it (and odds are you didn’t) Sports Illustrated blamed the fake content on a contractor and if that works out for them I’d like to preemptively blame a contractor for inserting the middle name “Fucking” into Joe DiMaggio’s name, although if my parents had the foresight to name me Lee “Fucking” Judge that would have been awesome and I’d change it legally right now this minute, but to be totally honest that sounds like Too Much “Fucking” Work.

(Is there such a thing as Writer’s Tourette’s and is it possible I’m Patient Zero?)

In any case, the SI explanation raises the highly-inconvenient question of how a contractor could post content on the Sports Illustrated website and if they were given permission to do that, why some human at SI (assuming there are any left) failed to ask just who the hell are these writers and why do they churn out bizarre content that seems to be written by Dyslexic Japanese Game Show Hosts, which reminds me we once bought a Made-In-Japan rocking chair that you put together yourself and the final instruction was:

“And now to commence the rocking!”

It also turns out Sports Illustrated is now owned by something called The Arena Group and apparently other Arena Group publications have been doing the same thing with AI-generated articles and writers.

The phony AI writers also generate buying guides which are “monetized by affiliate links to products that provide a financial kickback when readers click them” and I wasn’t entirely sure what all that meant, but don’t blame me because I just copied what I found in the Futurism article and on the internet, so let me finish this section by saying:

“And now to commence the plagiarism!”

As bad as this all sounds (and I’m doing the worst I can) if you read the article it’s even worser and you can partially blame cheap-ass publishers who think they can get away with using Artificial Intelligence instead of Real-Life Humans and now more than a few words about that.

The Pros and Cons of Humans

As anyone who has considered the purchase of a Blow-Up Sex Doll can tell you, actual humans can be a pain in the ass and you might be better off humping an air mattress with lips.

Real-Life Humans might want you to buy them dinner before you get to the “Takin’ Care O’ Bidness” part of the evening or ask for a raise or file expense reports or object to having their stories edited by someone wielding a McCulloch chainsaw, so if you don’t care about the quality of your humping or the content you publish, buying an Inflatable Girlfriend or throwing a bunch of game stats into the AI Blender and having it generate a story are possible solutions to your problems.

But…

Inflatable Girlfriends spring leaks and AI does not develop sources.

And sources add information that can change how you view what you just saw and I’ll give you three examples from my somewhat checkered career (and I was just wondering if you could have a “pinstriped” career, then realized Derek Jeter had one) covering baseball:

1.) A visiting team (that shall remain nameless) came to Kauffman Stadium and stole bases like they were a Black Friday Sale Special (they were something like 5-for-5) off Royals catcher Salvador Perez and after the game I asked a coach on the visiting team (who shall also remain nameless because if you start quoting these guys they’re going to quit talking to you) how they did it because Salvador Perez had the reputation of being a catcher you couldn’t run on.

The coach said they weren’t stealing bases off Salvy; they were stealing bases off the Royals pitcher.

The Royals pitcher in question had a hard time throwing strikes out of a slide step; in a slide step delivery the pitcher barely picks his foot up and “slides” toward home plate, but getting the front foot down sooner can make the arm late and the pitch goes high. So the visiting team waited for a count where the pitcher had to throw a strike – 2-0, 2-1, 3-0, 3-1 and depending on the situation, maybe 3-2 – and stole bases in those counts because they knew the pitcher would use a full windup instead of a slide step and take longer to get the ball to home plate.

So Salvador Perez didn’t have a bad night, the pitcher needed to work on his slide step.

2.) Late in a one-run game Ned Yost sent Jarrod Dyson out to pinch run, but Dyson never attempted to steal second base and after the game I asked Ned why.

Turns out, the opposing team’s pitcher was good out of a slide step so he was too quick to home plate for Dyson to steal, but Ned wanted the threat of a steal so the pitcher would stay in the slide step delivery and throw more fastballs and maybe make a mistake the hitter could handle.

So even though Jarrod never ran, his speed accomplished something.

3.) Another one of those Players-Not-To-Be-Named-Later tried to steal third base and was thrown out on a close play and after the game I asked if he was safe or out and he said:

“If that fat fuck had moved his ass, he would’ve seen I was safe.”

The fat fuck in question was the third base umpire and on close plays slick infielders will move their bodies to block the umpire’s view because generally speaking umpires want to call people out. Calling people out makes games shorter and if they’re not really 100% sure, umpires are more likely to call runners out than safe. (This was before the Constitutional Amendment that apparently requires the use of instant replay a minimum of three times an inning.)

When an umpire’s view gets blocked by an infielder he has to move to get a better view and this umpire didn’t.

When the rest of the media saw me talking to the player they came over to ask the same question – safe or out – but once the cameras and microphones were on the player said:

“It was a bang-bang play and umpiring’s the hardest job in baseball.”

The player and I looked at each other and burst out laughing.

After the other reporters left I asked, “What happened to ‘fat fuck’? That was going to be my headline.” The player said, “That was just for you, Lee.” And while I couldn’t quote him if I wanted to keep getting inside information, I could go back and look at the play and see he was safe and how the infielder blocked the umpire’s view.

(Also, the umpire was a fat fuck.)

So the player had actually stolen the base, but an umpire’s laziness resulted in him being called out.

Having personal relationships with actual humans meant I got insights from the people involved and that improved my stories, but to be honest I’m not sure anyone cared.

As near as I could tell, content was content and if the content was filled with inside information from the people involved or just another game story with regurgitated stats and cliché quotes – “That’s a good team over there, we played hard for 27 outs” – I got the feeling very few people appreciated the difference.   

They think we’re morons…and might be right

Look at what’s on TV (if I counted right there are now 6 CSI shows) and books on the New York Times Bestseller’s List (authors who have been dead for decades have new books written by people who theoretically imitate them and apparently we’re OK with that) and movies in theaters (Fast & Furious 27 which I’d definitely go see) and it’s pretty clear we’re not a nation of Mensa Candidates.

So why go to extra trouble and expense when so few people appreciate it?

(Right about here seems like a good time to mention “producing something you can be proud of” or “educating your audience” or “learning something yourself” – three goals that don’t seem to make too many news corporations’ Top 10 Shit-To-Do Lists.) 

So a lot of sports reporting is lame because who gives a damn if it isn’t?

In a CNN opinion piece written by Will Leitch – founder of Deadspin – he talks about playing sports video games that then generate fake game stories and interviews and Leitch says the fake video game stories and interviews aren’t all that different than the real ones, which doesn’t say much for the real ones.

Leitch also mentions Fox sideline reporter Charissa Thompson who made the huge mistake of being honest and confessing to making up interviews when she couldn’t get people to talk to her, which is pretty shocking, but as Leitch points out, the really shocking part is until Thompson confessed no one noticed or complained.

Now here’s a quote from Leitch’s story:

“Thompson herself said she could get away with it because, as the New York Times put it, “no coach would object to her citing boilerplate comments about the team’s performance.” That’s pretty damning right there, isn’t it? Making up reporting is bad, obviously. But what does it say about the reporting in the first place that Thompson’s (self-alleged) made-up stories were indistinguishable from the empty prattle she usually got out of coaches?

Usually when journalists make up stories, they do so to make them more interesting (and of course, the vast majority of journalists do nothing of the sort). But Thompson knew not to do that, because if she would have made them interesting, they would have sounded fake. Because she—and so many other sideline reporters—so rarely gave us anything worthwhile. Her deception was a sad, empty cracked-mirror image of what she was giving us anyway. If sports journalists can’t give us anything that isn’t obviously different than something made up specifically to be boring and anodyne, well, how much better are we than the robots anyway?”

Because Real Life Standards are so low, sideline reporters can make up quotes or ask lame, but safe questions like:

1. “What does that victory say about this team?”

2. “What does this win mean to you?”

3. “Where does that (home run, touchdown, buzzer-beating shot) rank in your career?”

And these lame questions have been asked so often, I can supply the lame responses:

1. “We have a great group of guys that never give up.”

2. “It means everything.”

3.   “I’m not going to answer that question because it assumes that between the time I (hit the home run, scored the touchdown, took the shot) I’ve been thinking about where it ranks in my career which is a really fucking moronic assumption even for a sideline reporter, so I’ll answer a different question even though you didn’t ask it.

OK, nobody actually answers that last question precisely that way, but they all think some version of it, which is why nobody ever says, “Sixth” although it would be kinda funny if they did and then went on to describe the five plays that ranked higher.

If you want to read Will Leitch’s story yourself, here it is:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/29/opinions/sports-illustrated-ai-controversy-leitch/index.html

Leitch winds up his depressingly-accurate article by saying if reporters don’t want to be replaced by AI they need to demonstrate they can do better and in way too many cases they don’t.

But even when we do better, does anyone care?

I think some people appreciated what I was trying to do (giving players and coaches a chance to explain baseball from their point of view) but generally speaking I think content was content and lame, easy-to-do content was just as valuable as doing it the hard way so why who do it the hard way?

Get an Inflatable Girlfriend and use AI-generated stories and most of the time, nobody’s going to notice or give a damn.

Today let me finish by saying that at no point was Artificial — or Genuine — Intelligence used in the creation of this story. Just ask my girlfriend, the Young Morgan Fairchild.

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/