Mediaboss Marketing

A new Korean Drama from JTBC is here, and the fans have spoken in the Doctor Cha Episode 13 Twitter reactions. Also known as , this series stars Uhm Jung-hwa, Kim Byung-chul, Min Wook-hyuk, Myung Se-bin, Song Ji-ho, Jo A-ram, Baek Joo-hee, Park Jun-Keum, Kim Mi-kyung, Lee Seo-yoon, So A-rin, Park Chul-min, Kimg Byung-choon, Lim Hyoung-soo and Kim Yea-eun, alongside other cast members.

This Korean Drama series is directed by Kim Dae-Jin and written by Jung Yeo-Rang. This show shows the protagonist making a drastic lifestyle choice. After putting a pause on her medical resident career to become a homemaker, Cha Jeong-suk decides to start her training all over again when her husband, In-ho, a chief surgeon at the university hospital, cheats on her.

This episode was once again chaotic as hell. We start by seeing In-ho passing out and losing his mind about Jeong-suk asking for a divorce. It got so bad that he wasnt even passed out for real. He was just pretending to be passed out so he could get attention. He then decides to prolong this attention by sending the wife gifts that he knows she might have liked under different circumstances. Working twice as hard to make his voice heard with Jeong-suk, he even tells Seung-hi that all his efforts are currently on getting his wife back.

She allows him to do it. In fact, she asks him to give all his efforts into getting his wife back because shell be right there waiting for all of this to blow right back in his face. Fans were so annoyed that In-ho could say something so insensitive in front of his girlfriend. He could have been discreet or, better yet, not felt that at all. However, this is how he navigates through the world. Amidst all of this, Jeong-suk has been thriving. She has been working hard at the job, getting all the lovers and now even her own haters club.

After having a good conversation with her children about custody and understanding that they might have to change places they have to live, Jung-min realises that his dad is essentially the loser who will miss out on everything in life because all he feels is bitter and not responsible for it. Coming to think of it, In-ho never actually apologises to her. He just sends her gifts and partakes in meaningless gestures to get her attention.

Jeong-suks mother has been going through the motions and has a major shoulder issue. Apart from Jeong-suk having to work with Seung-hi, she now has to be okay with the fact that she will be her mothers doctor. Things have officially gotten out of hand. In-ho has decided that the only way he can salvage this situation is by making sure that Jeong-suks mother will be happy. However, at the dinner, his mother gets into a fight with this woman who has been dating In-hos mothers boyfriend.

She knows all about In-hos affair, and soon enough, Jeong-suks mother also finds out about it. She tells the whole restaurant that In-ho has been cheating on his wife and has a child out of wedlock. At the same time, Seung-hi and her daughter Eun-seo walk into the restaurant. Fans cannot believe the serendipitous connection it took to make this happen. They are also extremely excited to see what Roy Kim whips out and how he tries to get with her.

Doctor Cha Episode 13 is currently streaming on Netflix. Do you think In-hos mother is getting duped with the property and everything? Let us know in the comments, and check out our review of the episode below.

Also Read: Doctor Cha Episode 13 Recap and Review: The Road to Redemption is Paved With Bad Intentions

Read more:
Doctor Cha Episode 13 Twitter Reactions: Cliffhanger Over ... - Leisure Byte

After helpline associates at the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) made the move to unionize, NEDAs response was to fire its entire staff and replace them with a chatbot. NEDAs helpline has been in service for 20 years and experienced a boom in the number of calls it received during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even after the COVID-19 pandemic, the helpline is still experiencing an elevated level of calls, with an estimated 70,000 callers reaching out to NEDAs helplines in the past year alone. The confidential hotline provides a source of peer-to-peer support for those struggling with eating disorders. During the isolation of the pandemic, helplines like this were the only kind of human support that some callers had.

In contrast to that high demand, NEDAs hotline has a very small staff. Aside from volunteers, the hotline employs just six full-time staffers and a handful of supervisors. With the helpline seeing staggering increases in demand, staffers began to realize that their current system wasnt sustainable. These staffers were often tasked with training and supervising as many as 200 volunteers at one time.

Meanwhile, not only have the number of calls increased, but the severity has, as well. Staffers reported an increase of crisis-type calls and cases of child abuse or child neglect. Considering that the individuals taking these calls are often just volunteers and not professionals, ongoing training and supervision are vital.

So, four of the helplines staffers decided to unionize to ensure that NEDA provided them with a more safe and effective work environment. NEDAs reaction to that? A chatbot.

One of the staffers who instigated the unionization was Abbie Harper. In a blog post on Labor Notes, she explained the helpline workers reasonable demands and explained, We didnt even ask for more money. She said the union simply asked for better training programs, appropriate staffing, and opportunity for staffers to advance in their careers at NEDA. Four days after the union won an election for official recognition with the National Labor Relations Board, NEDA revealed during a virtual staff meeting that it was ending the helpline. By June 1, all of its staffers will be fired. Many volunteers will be let go, too, while others may be moved to other areas of NEDA.

In place of the helpline, NEDA is introducing a chatbot named Tessa. NEDA has claimed it is not a replacement for the helpline, but an entirely new program. The Tessa chatbot isnt even the same as the more sophisticated ChatGPT that has arisen recently. More sophisticated artificial intelligence, like ChatGPT, uses context to generate responses to allow it to sustain a human-like conversation.

However, a more dated chatbot like Tessa cant generate these more spontaneous responses. Instead, it has a limited number of pre-determined responses. It describes itself as a chatbot immediately and then might walk a user through a specific series of therapeutic techniques about something like body image. It is not a listening ear nor an open-ended tool, and it may not have a response to every question that callers have.

NEDA has reportedly already begun testing Tessa. Of 700 women who tested the chatbot, 375 gave the program an 100% helpful rating. The feedback of the other 325 women is not mentioned, though. Meanwhile, Harper has doubts about the ability of a chatbot to perform the same work that she and her colleagues did. One thing she and her colleagues have that a chatbot doesnt have is experience. Many of NEDAs helpline staffers and volunteers have recovered from eating disorders and have invaluable knowledge, support, and empathy to provide for those experiencing the same things they did.

NEDA VP Lauren Smolar defended the decision to replace its helpline with a chatbot because of legal liability. She explained the risks of having non-professional volunteers deal with crisis calls but didnt touch on the increased risks that come with having a machine potentially take crisis calls. With a chatbot, theres a strong possibility it wont have a response for someone in crisis, while with ChatGPT theres the chance of it going off the rails and potentially spewing harmful information. A chatbot might be a minor resource for people who are waitlisted for the helpline, but it simply cant replace callers who are looking to have a peer-to-peer conversation and are in desperate need of human support.

The rise in helpline demand clearly shows the value of human support, so it seems very strange for NEDA to respond to that by getting rid of its helpline entirely. This is why Harper states the move was merely about union busting and not at all about helping individuals. Chatbots and AI cant feel emotion, and this is where the potential for them to cause harm comes in. Even when callers are told that theyre speaking to a machine, it may feel like being confronted with yet another person who cant empathize with their struggles.

(featured image: Paramount Pictures)

Have a tip we should know? [emailprotected]

Go here to read the rest:
The National Eating Disorder Helpline Replaced Its Staff With a ... - The Mary Sue

As a teenager Brendan Johnston had a fairly common dream, turning his sporting passion into a profession, but what wasn't as common was that he also had the talent and commitment to make a life as a pro-cyclist a realistic proposition. Though, just as the 17-year-old multi-discipline rider hit the stage when he could chase international opportunities in earnest, a cancer diagnosis led to a quick and unavoidable deviation.

I had to mature real quick as a person and also as an athlete, the 31-year-old Johnston told Cyclingnews when looking back to that period of his life. Having your health is taken for granted and I didn't really consider so much that as an athlete you need full health and no one really, I guess, appreciates that until it goes away.

Before he was diagnosed with testicular cancer Johnstons complete focus as a teenager had been on making it as a cyclist, with the rider getting set to represent Australia in the junior category at the cross-country mountain bike race at a home World Championships in 2009. He determinedly went on to race in Canberra, just a couple of weeks after surgery, before then settling into an extended period of fighting the disease.

It was unsurprisingly a perspective-altering experience for the young rider who had been so used to relying on his impressive power and endurance to take him to the front of the field. That stark reminder that something as important as optimum health can't always be taken for granted meant the focused Johnston added another career option. It was one which, as he put it, meant that he could be somewhat set up at least and didnt have to be a high-performing human to do it.

That didn't mean the end of the journey toward becoming a professional cyclist, just a longer more winding path to find the opportunity so he could make it to that same destination.

I'm pretty grateful for the decisions I made at that point, said Johnston who has spent the last 12 years working full-time as an electrician. I kind of did the best I could with what I had and now I've found myself in a position where I can, after however many years 15 or 17 finally call myself a pro.

That realisation of Johnston's teenage dream of riding his bike full-time overseas has come thanks to the evolution of a discipline barely on the radar back when he started out gravel.

Johnston may have deviated from his initial cycling plan of going all out to pursue an international cycling career, either on the road or in mountain biking, but the Giant-Shimano rider never stopped being a ferociously competitive rider on the Australian scene even while juggling so many other demanding facets of life.

Always versatile as a rider, there didn't seem to be much the athlete couldn't do, except perhaps shed his hard-stuck nickname of Trekky even though he has moved on from his early association with the brand and been firmly welded on with Giant for a number of years.

The rider has managed to carve out a strong record of results, all accrued while working full time and also, in recent years, building a family. Those results include five mountain bike national titles, a first place in the National Road Series in 2020 and a win at the prestigious long-running Melbourne to Warrnambool. He also swept up the Australian Gravel National Championships in 2022, along with victory at the first running of the 246km Dirty Warrny.

Those 2022 wins gave Johnston a clear indicator of his gravel potential and the acceptance of his application to become one of the 35 men riding the Life Time Grand Prix series became the turning point which made his long-held aspiration of riding professionally become a reality.

"Now I'm able to give it [cycling] my full attention, which is kind of a relief, said Johnston. I've always had somewhat of a level of ability but you're constantly putting in on the side, to work or whatever. I feel like I owed it my full attention after it being a bit of a side hustle for so long.

The benefit of that full-time focus on cycling seems clear, with an Instagram profile constantly filled with stories of long days out training to build endurance to take on the long-distance gravel races characteristic of the US scene. The positive impact of the full-time focus on bikes has also been revealed in more than just Johnston's training, with an unequivocally successful short test-run trip to the US in April before the long haul of five to six months that starts with the all-important 322km long Unbound on June 3.

For Johnston, the opportunity that the Life Time Grand Prix series presented seemed ideal, and it was more than just the profile, platform and generous prize money the series provided but also what seemed like an almost too good to be true combination of races. The series takes in seven rounds, having started with the Sea Otter Classic Fuego XL mountain bike race in April, moving onto gravel with Unbound and Crusher in the Tushar then back to mountain biking with Leadville Trail 100 and Chequamegon before finishing off with the gravel Rad Dirt Fest and Big Sugar Gravel.

"If I were to create my own series, it would probably be all these races put together," said Johnston. "I'm not saying there aren't other people like that as well but what I am saying is that it intersects perfectly with where I sit because I've probably got a bit more road experience than some of the other mountain bikers, so the endurance is not so much a problem, and I've also got the skill set from mountain biking."

"I just feel like I am right in the middle of all these riders and it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out.

The skill set may never have been in doubt, but what wasn't initially so certain was just how Johnston would stack up in the unexplored terrain of the US gravel community.

"Even until I got there this year I wasn't sure where I'd slot into their scene," said Johnston in a lengthy phone interview from his Canberra home base. "I feel like ok I'm winning things here, I can win most things here on the road I can have good results here, on the mountain bike I can have good results here but can I go there and be competitive? That was something that was pretty unknown for me."

But not any more.

In April at the Belgian Waffle Ride California and the Seo Otter Fuego XL Johnston's testing of the waters turned the unknown into a known. He came fourth in the 128.7 mile(207km) long Belgian Waffle Ride California and then seventh at the 100km Fuego XL, despite having to fight his way back up the field after missing the early split of seven riders.

It was an opening gambit that, despite grappling with a bit of a back injury, left Johnston encouraged that he could fight for a result at the top of the table in the Life Time Grand Prix Series, particularly at Unbound.

"Something like Unbound is really going to be in my wheelhouse and hopefully I can navigate my way through that race to a really strong result, especially in the Life Time Grand Prix field," said Johnston.

In fact, if Johnston had to pick just one race in the series that suited him most, he said that Unbound would be it, with last year's winner Dutch rider Ivar Slik demonstrating that an outsider can make their mark in Kansas.

"I think over that period of time it's a big unknown ... anyone can kind of come in and be competitive in the final if you've done the work so I'm definitely eyeing off the win, that's for sure."

See the rest here:
Brendan Johnston: A 15 year pro-racing quest with a gravel resolution - Cyclingnews

Laois Chamber Alliance CEO, Caroline Hofman, caught up with Paula Byrne, Founder of Apple Blossom Holistic, based in Abbeyleix

I live in Abbeyleix with my cat and my fianc. I love the outdoors and nature and we grow our own veg.

The apple trees in the garden were my inspiration for the name of my business. I trained as a primary school teacher and that was my job for 16 years but I was always doing something on the side like teaching dancing.

I did an M.A. in dance and trained as a Zumba instructor and did some courses in Mindful Movement and Mindfulness too. I always wanted to do something more.

Apple Blossom Holistic is that something more. It is a holistic wellness and education space where I can help others to support themselves to live a life that is more sustainable through the development of holistic habits for life.

I approach all my work through the mindful lenses of awareness, acceptance and compassion.

Apple Blossom Holistic started out as an Instagram page after I began to facilitate online chair yoga, meditation and wellness sessions with Laois, Kildare and Galway Education centres.

I wanted a space where I could stay connected to people and further support them. From there I trained as a professional menstrual cycle coach and facilitator and completed yin yoga teaching. Since then, organically, my Instagram page has grown into my business.

I became really passionate about menstrual cycle education during my training and realised that there is a lack in where and how women and girls can learn about their own bodies in a holistic way and I decided to apply for The Ideas Academy with Social Entrepreneurs Ireland last March and that was the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey.

I have created The Mindful Cycle, a holistic approach to menstrual literacy. I have lived experience of how this approach can literally change your life.

I am hosting a Summer Solstice Self-care Sunday retreat on June 18th at 10.30am in Bloom HQ. This will include candle making, yin yoga, meditation and mindfulness in partnership with S&S Soap Sisters.

I am possibly looking at hosting another in July too, venues and dates to be confirmed so keep an eye on my social media or subscribe to my newsletter via the website to keep up to date.

I have recently opened a new intake of clients for menstrual cycle or stress management, one to one coaching, from May. My calendar is open for school visits for The Mindful Cycle from October 2023, and it is filling up already.

Slow down and ask yourself what is it that you need? Oftentimes we give so much of ourselves to others, to our work, to saying yes to too much even the good stuff. We do what we think we should be doing and end up neglecting ourselves.

You are best placed to give of yourself to others once you are nourished and looked after. That stands for home and for at work, punctuate your day with little things that top you up; screen breaks, movement, air, hot cuppas, your favourite song, say no!

Real self-care isnt fancy, it is about topping up your mind, body and soul with what you need regularly so that you can show up every day and those needs might be different depending on the day, but its about noticing that.

The Cathole Falls, which is located on the Owenass River is one of my favourite places to visit.

Visitwww.appleblossomholistic.ieto find out more.

National Enterprise Awards

The countdown is on for the National Enterprise Awards, taking place on 1stJune.

Ballykilcavan Farm and Brewery will be representing Laois, and will be competing against 30 other county finalists on the day.

Ballykilcavan Farm and Brewery is based on a 13th-generation family farm near Stradbally, and all of their beers are made with water and barley from the farm.

The brewery employs four people and is a leader in sustainable brewing. Ballykilcavan beers are sold locally in France, Italy, and the Czech Republic.

At the recent Sustainable Business Awards, Ballykilcavan were winners on the night in the Agri-food category for their decarbonisation project in the brewery.

Vacant Commercial Property Scheme

Laois County Council launches Vacant Commercial Property Incentive Scheme in Portarlington Laois Today

Rathdowney Town Centre First Masterplan

Have your say on the Rathdowney Town Centre First Masterplan Consultants KPMG Future Analytics were commissioned by Laois County Council in June 2022 to undertake a Town Centre First Masterplan for Rathdowney.

To view the plan and find out how to have your say, click here:Have your say on the Rathdowney Town Centre First Masterplan Laois County Council

2023 National Ploughing Championship

Laois County Council are inviting expressions of interest to exhibit at the 2023 National Ploughing Championships, taking place from the 19thto 21stSeptember. This call is open to all interested Laois businesses, community and service providers who wish to exhibit in their marquee.

The closing date to register for expression is Monday, 31st July at 4pm. Click here to register your interest:National Ploughing Championships 2023 Expressions of Interest to Exhibit | Laois County Council Consultation Portal

The Chambers Ireland Awards

Laois Chamber Alliance has been shortlisted in the Event of the Year category for Shine in Emo 2022. The Chambers Ireland Awards take place in Kildare on Thursday, 1stJune.

Digital Start Programme

Have you heard about the Local Enterprise Office Laois Digital Start programme. This initiative is designed to give Laois SMEs a digital edge, from optimising processes to delivering a seamless digital customer experience with the help of expert digital consultants. Learn more at:https://bit.ly/LaoisDigiStart

Skills for Better Business

The Skills for Better Business Online Assessment is an online resource to helps business owners and managers improve their leadership and management skills. You can access the assessment tool at the following link:Skills for Better Business | Online Assessment

Trading Online Voucher

are a fantastic resource for SMEs looking to develop a digital presence and sell more online. Ask Local Enterprise Office Laois about their funding vouchers which offer financial assistance of up to 2,500 to develop your online trading potential. Find out more here: http://bit.ly/LaoisTOV

Join Enterprise Irelands webinar to hear experienced business panellists discuss how digital technologies increased their companys productivity and delivered a higher level of customer satisfaction.

Register today:https://rebrand.ly/-Digital

Local Enterprise Office Laois have an SEO online course taking place on Wednesday 31stMay!

Learn how to evaluate and adjust your website, and even collaborate better with your web developer.

Join our their free SEO How to Optimise your Website Effectively workshop from 2pm to 5pm.

Book athttps://bit.ly/LaoisSEOMay

A Lunch and Learn Event in collaboration with Local Enterprise Office Laois and Laois Chamber Alliance will take place on Thursday, 15thJune, from 12.30pm to 2pm in The Killeshin Hotel Portlaoise.

Dr. Diane Cooper PhD. will deliver a workshop on S.E.L.F Care for Entrepreneurs and how to care for a strong mind, body and business. Book your free place here:Lunch & Learn Strong Mind, Body and Business SELF Care for Entrepreneurs Local Enterprise Office Laois

SEE ALSO Check out previous interviews on our Business Briefing here

More here:
Business Briefing: Apple Blossom Holistic, business news and ... - Laois Today

With advancements in AI tools being rolled out at breakneck pace,journalists face the task of reporting developments with the appropriate nuance and contextto audiences who may be encountering this kind of technology for the first time.

But sometimes this coverage has been alarmist. The linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky criticized hyperbolic headlines in a New York Times op-ed. And there have been a lot of them.

Bings A.I. Chat: I Want to Be Alive. Godfather of AI says AI could kill humans and there might be no way to stop it. Could ChatGPT write my bookand feed my kids?Meet ChatGPT, the scarily intelligent robot who can do your job better than you.Microsofts new ChatGPT AI starts sending unhinged messages to people.What is AI chatbot phenomenon ChatGPT and could it replace humans?

In order to better understand how ChatGPT is being covered by newsrooms, we interviewed a variety of academics and journalists on how the media has been framing coverage of generative AI chatbots. We also pulled data on the volume of coverage in online news using the Media Cloud database and on TV news using data from the Internet TV News Archive, which we acquired via The GDELT Projects API, in order to get a sketch of the coverage so far.

News reporting of new technologies often takes the pattern of a hype cycle, said Felix M. Simon, a doctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute and Tow Center fellow. First, It starts with a new technology which leads to all kinds of expectations and promises. ChatGPTs initial press release promised a chatbot that interacts in a conversational way. Next, media coverage branches into two extremes: We have people say its the nearing apocalypse for industry XYZ or democracy, or, alternatively, it promises all kinds of utopias which will be brought about by the technology, Simon said. Finally, after a few months, a more nuanced period of coverageaway from catastrophe or utopiato discuss real-world impacts. Thats when the cycle starts to cool off again.

But coverage of generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT seems unlikely to be cooling off anytime soon.

Click to expand.Online news sites started covering ChatGPT significantly about two months after its release. Credit: Media Cloud / Tow Center

OpenAI launched ChatGPT to the public on the last day of November 2022, and within just a few days, the site had over a million users. While the media did take notice early, it wasnt until January and February of 2023 that online news coverage really started to pick up. That was around the time that BuzzFeed announced it would be using ChatGPT for content creation, Microsoft integrated a ChatGPT-powered chatbot into its Bing search engine and Google announced its challenger to ChatGPT, Bard.

For Subramaniam Vincent, director of the Journalism and Media Ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, one recurring issue with media coverage of this technology is that it tends to be led by what the companies say this technology is going to do. Thats a structural problem not tied just to ChatGPT. Moreover, he added, the CEOs of these companies go to Twitter and social media and start making their own claims to control the narrative about AI.

Early 2023 was also roughly when television stations began to air nearly daily stories of the latest developments around chatbots from OpenAI, Google and Microsoft, according to data we pulled from the Internet TV News Archive using The GDELT Projects interface.

Click to expand. On TV, business news is covering ChatGPT more than cable news. Credit: The GDELT Project / Tow Center

Business news channels have maintained a steady clip of stories about these companies activities around generative AI chatbots. CNBC is leading the pack in terms of volume of coverage.

Meanwhile, cable news channels had less coverage of the chatbots relative to business news. Among the big three networks, CNN and Fox News have platformed ChatGPT more than MSNBC. Both CNN and Fox News have looked at the impact of generative AI on education, the workplace and jobs. The latter has also raised concerns about political bias. In one case, a host decried ChatGPT as a woke superweapon. Foxs coverage also frequently mentioned Elon Musk, who has among other comments said that ChatGPT was in danger of becoming woke and later urged a six-month hiatus on developing AI tools.

Click to expand.ChatGPT coverage across business and cable TV news varied by network. Credit: The GDELT Project / Tow Center

According to a Fox News poll of voters conducted in April, about half say they are either not very or not at all familiar with AI programs like ChatGPT, making accurate news coverage all the more important. And some coverage across TV and online news has been nuanced, seeking to inform audiences about how to navigate the new technology, identify hallucinations, and double check statements the AI produces. Reporters have also delved into issues of algorithmic bias, ethical considerations, the spread of misinformation, and possibilities for regulating misuse. Still other coverage continues to feel like science fiction promising everything from the end of work to the destruction of humanityand translating uncertainty into fear rather than understanding.

A hype cycle?

While it seems as if ChatGPT is ushering in a new era, there are also faint echoes of the coverage of Bitcoin and the promise of cryptocurrencies to change banking and commerce as we know it. Data from Media Clouds news database suggests that just six months since launching, ChatGPT is already seeing similar airtime to that given to cryptocurrencies in 2021, when Bitcoin prices peaked, over a decade after it was released to the public in 2009.

Some observers have felt dissatisfied with the media coverage. Are we in a hype cycle? Absolutely. But is that entirely surprising? No, said Paris Martineau, a tech reporter at The Information. The structural headwinds buffeting journalismthe collapse of advertising revenue, shrinking editorial budgets, smaller newsrooms, demand for SEO traffichelp explain the breathless coverageand a broader sense of chasing content for web traffic. The more you look at it, especially from a birds eye view, the more it [high levels of low-quality coverage] is a symptom of the state of the modern publishing and news system that we currently live in, Martineau said, referring to the sense newsrooms need to be covering every angle, including sensationalist ones, to gain audience attention. In a perfect world all reporters would have the time and resources to write ethically-framed, non-science fiction-like stories on AI. But they do not. It is systemic, she added.

Click to expand. Chatbots are getting as much coverage now as Bitcoin in 2021. Credit: Media Cloud / Tow Center

Its possible to get a sketch of how the coverage of ChatGPT compares to other new technologies. As the chart above shows, coverage of ChatGPT is already significantly outstripping a range of other hyped technologies like virtual reality and deep fakes, although coverage of cryptocurrency is much higher (particularly after the collapse of FTX).

Why could it be that the volume of ChatGPT coverage has overtaken that of other new technologies like VR and deep fakes? One thought I have is that because this new tool has direct implications for journalism, that could be one reason why theres been such an overwhelmingly huge amount of attention in the media, said Jenna Burrell, director of research at Data & Society. I would guess thats part of it. Another is that ChatGPT and other generative AI tools have greater potential to upend the creative worlds as we know it.

Perhaps there is an argument that unlike cryptocurrencies, chatbots and large language models wield real potential to change society. Already we can see the ways in which ChatGPT is transforming education and being incorporated into the day-to-day workflows of knowledge workers in a large range of sectors.

But whats concerning for Burrell has been the framing of much of this reporting. Ive taken a lot of [media] requests and have felt that there was a need for some clarity about how these technologies work, and a need to fight some of the really outrageous hype, she said. Theres been an anthropomorphic tendency towards attributing, thinking, knowing, writing, and innovating to this non-human tool, for instance the story by the New York Times claiming Bings chatbot wanted to be alive.

One concern with this framing is that the public gets the science-fiction version of the AI storylike some of the follow-up coverage of AI pioneer Geoffrey Hintons interview on its dangersand the public ends up being cut out of the important discussions around ethics, usage and the future of work.

Its the Hollywood-ification of the publics understanding of AI, said Nick Diakopoulos, associate professor in Communication Studies and Computer Science at Northwestern University. We have an image of active robots from movies. You would hope that the news coverage wouldnt simply just bolster that kind of entertaining view of the technology that it would take a little bit more of a critical look.

Towards better coverage

How could we imagine better media representations of generative AI going forward? For Burrell of Data & Society, who thinks were still in the hype phase of the cycle on generative AI chatbots, more sober coverage is needed to cover the issues that matter. One story that seems to have gotten lost is the incredible consolidation of power and money in the very small set of people who invested in this tool, are building this too, are set to make a ton of money off of it. We need to move away from focusing on red herrings like AIs potential sentience to covering how AI is further concentrating wealth and power.

More sober reporting about what these tools do and how they work is needed to cut through the fog of science fiction. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, trained on immense amounts of data, are skilled at guessing the next word in a sentence sequence but dont think in the ways humans do. So its literally just walking down the line statistically, looking at the statistical distribution of words that have already been written in the text, and then adding one next word, Diakopoulos said. More reporting should outline how these technologies actually workand dont.

That means who gets to train these modelsand what flaws and biases will be potentially baked inare questions newsrooms need to be covering. Moreover, editors need to reevaluate whose comments on generative AI are considered newsworthy.

Sensationalized coverage of generative AI leads us away from more pressing questions, Simon of the Oxford Internet Institute said. For instance, the potential future dependence of newsrooms on big tech companies for news production, the governance decisions of these companies, the ethics and bias questions relating to models and training, the climate impact of these tools, and so on. Ideally, we would want a broader public to be thinking about these things as well, Simon said, not just the engineers building these tools or the policy wonks interested in this space.

Newsrooms should lay down ground rules, perhaps in their style guides, to work out coverage strategies moving forward, said Martineau, of The Information, for example: no anthropomorphising chatbots. This parameter-setting could help cool the fires of this hype cycle, she said.

The rest is here:
How the media is covering ChatGPT - Columbia Journalism Review