Business Insider Recommended Nonexistent Books To Staff As It Leans Into AI (semafor.com) 23
An anonymous reader shares a report: Business Insider announced this week that it wants staff to better incorporate AI into its journalism. But less than a year ago, the company had to quietly apologize to some staff for accidentally recommending that they read books that did not appear to exist but instead may have been generated by AI.
In an email to staff last May, a senior editor at Business Insider sent around a list of what she called "Beacon Books," a list of memoirs and other acclaimed business nonfiction books, with the idea of ensuring staff understood some of the fundamental figures and writing powering good business journalism.
Many of the recommendations were well-known recent business, media, and tech nonfiction titles such as Too Big To Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin, DisneyWar by James Stewart, and Super Pumped by Mike Isaac. But a few were unfamiliar to staff. Simply Target: A CEO's Lessons in a Turbulent Time and Transforming an Iconic Brand by former Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel was nowhere to be found. Neither was Jensen Huang: the Founder of Nvidia, which was supposedly published by the company Charles River Editors in 2019.
In an email to staff last May, a senior editor at Business Insider sent around a list of what she called "Beacon Books," a list of memoirs and other acclaimed business nonfiction books, with the idea of ensuring staff understood some of the fundamental figures and writing powering good business journalism.
Many of the recommendations were well-known recent business, media, and tech nonfiction titles such as Too Big To Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin, DisneyWar by James Stewart, and Super Pumped by Mike Isaac. But a few were unfamiliar to staff. Simply Target: A CEO's Lessons in a Turbulent Time and Transforming an Iconic Brand by former Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel was nowhere to be found. Neither was Jensen Huang: the Founder of Nvidia, which was supposedly published by the company Charles River Editors in 2019.
If AI were an employee (Score:4)
It would be fired for incompetence.
Re: If AI were an employee (Score:2)
So would anyone reading Business Insider expecting to find anything useful
Re: If AI were an employee (Score:1)
AI's biggest failure here ... (Score:2)
... is to fail to write and publish the books before recommending them!
I for one welcome our boot-writing, book-publishing, book-recommending AI overlords!
Re: If AI were an employee (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sadly, based on experience I think you are wrong. Employees who screw up are often not fired, or are replaced with employees just as bad.
There's a reason there's a common saying that "You pay peanuts, you get monkeys." It's because it's very common for employers to accept mediocre or even poor work if the employees doing it are cheap enough. I'm not anti AI -- not even generative AI. I think with AI's ability to process and access huge volumes of data, it has tremendous potential in the right hands.
Is that what they are after? (Score:2)
So they want their staff to fake it? Go full Boris Johnson? (He was sacked twice for "inventing" news).
Or do they want BI staff to act as fact checkers for AI-generated stories?
Re: (Score:3)
Most managers have bet their careers on the usefulness of AI - so they NEED their subordinates to fact check AI generated stories - or more specifically, the need their staff to PROVE the value of AI, whether there is value or not.
Re: (Score:2)
Their senior editor was certainly faking it.
Business Insider? (Score:2)
Are you sure that isn't the title of a porn movie?
Asking for a friend.
Danger, Will Robinson! (Score:2)
not authoritative (Score:3)
LLMs are generative and authoritative. Warned my daughter about that and watched as it gave her wrong homework answers. It was a good lesson in not trusting LLMs.
Re: (Score:2)
* meant not authoritative
A preview of future headlines (Score:2)
ChatGPT? It can't even handle simple consumer questions. I gave it a very simple one this morning asking about which present to buy a friend's kid and it recommended stuff that doesn't exist....did
AI Win (Score:3)
Given the current quality of Business Insider articles, AI most certainly *HAS* to be an improvement.
Business Insider was always rubbish (Score:2)
Why do news sites like BI, Gizmodo and The Register, who happily print clear falsehoods but never correct them, get such an easy ride, including here on Slashdot?
Re: (Score:2)
You left out the "Weekly World News". It's my favorite in that mode.
(Actually, does The Register fit in there? I don't follow it, but it's been interesting the times I did read it. BOFH was an occasional treat.)
Re: Business Insider was always rubbish (Score:2)
Humans should vet all final drafts. (Score:1)
Period! If it has problems, it's the human editor's fault.
"Beacon Books," (Score:2)
Were they typed by Mavis Beacon?
Is this the AI you're worried will take your job? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is so much angst these days about AI taking all our jobs. The only reason we have this angst, is because we haven't yet used AI enough that people realize that this Business Insider experience is not an aberration, but the expected behavior of AI. Once people start to realize that AI is a useful too, but can't be *trusted* to always do the right thing, people will start to feel a little more secure in their own future prospects for employment.