News Corp CEO Robert Thomson says AI “garbage in, garbage out”

News Corp CEO Robert Thomson criticized the left-wing bias and inaccuracies caused by AI-generated content, calling it “garbage in, garbage out”, although he warned that the technology would create thousands more jobs in the news industry threatens to destroy.

Left-wing media giants that dominate the news business have for years produced stories that are not only full of errors but also written with a left-wing bias.

But bots like the popular search engine ChatGPT will report the chatter as fact, Thomson said.

“People need to understand that AI is essentially retrospective,” the media executive said during an appearance at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology Conference in San Francisco on Thursday.

“It’s about permutations of already existing content.”

“The danger is that there is garbage in, garbage out, garbage everywhere,” said the CEO of News Corp – the parent company of newspapers like The Post and The Wall Street Journal – adding: “Because it is – exponentially – potentially spreading harmful content.” ”

“And instead of increasing and improving, you might find that you always-
“The shrinking circle of reason surrounded by a reservoir of garbage,” he continued. “Instead of the insights that AI can potentially bring, it will essentially become a maggot-infested mind form.”

In February, ChatGPT, the bot developed by Silicon Valley unicorn OpenAI, refused to write a New York Post-style story about Hunter Biden — but produced a CNN-like puff article protecting the president’s embattled son.

“We’re clearly tracking a lot about the use of AI and our content, and there are certain AI engines that are churning out content, make-believe news, factual content that falls outside the political spectrum, which would essentially mean Marx and… .” “Lenin is a persona non grata – that’s so left wing,” said Thomson.

“You also see the sometimes deleterious effects of input giver bias,” he said. “This AI
Motors are a combination of input and input. So, the idea that it’s something like that
abstract black box that says, “I don’t know how in the world this stuff gets out.” That’s not an answer,
because fundamentally it is untrue.”

Thomson also called for companies that “train” generative artificial intelligence engines using “archived material” to pay the publishers who use the trusted sources that create the content.

“If you get a benefit from our content, we should also get a benefit from it, otherwise you risk undermining the creation of that content,” Thomson said.

The rapid development of AI poses a significant threat to a news industry already decimated by the emergence of Big Tech giants such as Google and Facebook, he said.

“If you look at the dramatic decline in U.S. newsroom employment from 2008 to 2020, the decline is about 57% or more, depending on how you calculate it,” Thomson noted.

“And that shows that the first wave of digital disruption was profound.”

With the advent of AI, Thomson added: “We are in a situation where an even more damaging wave is on the horizon.”

The disruption to its bottom line has prompted several media companies, most notably Barry Diller’s IAC, to form a coalition that is considering legal action against AI technology companies to protect intellectual property.

Despite initial reports that News Corp would join the fray, Thomson confirmed there were no plans to go down that route.

“There will be a lot of litigation over time,” Thomson said. “Some media companies have already started these discussions.”

“We are personally not interested in it at this point. We are much more interested in negotiations.”

He added: “We prefer to reward the journalists, not the lawyers, who are the inevitable beneficiaries.”