The 143rd Block: An AI-hosted podcast sounds like a good idea

The "next big thing," but I'm too jaded to do anything

Jan 30, 2023

This week…

A larger than usual selection of top stories on my radar—no surprises, ChatGPT makes another appearance, but also, a smaller bit on what’s up with podcasting—a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.

CNET’s AI journalist appears to have committed extensive plagiarism

Jon Christian for Futurism:

The prominent tech news site CNET’s attempt to pass off AI-written work keeps getting worse. First, the site was caught quietly publishing the machine learning-generated stories in the first place. Then the AI-generated content was found to be riddled with factual errors. Now, CNET’s AI also appears to have been a serial plagiarist — of actual humans’ work.
The site initially addressed widespread backlash to the bot-written articles by assuring readers that a human editor was carefully fact-checking them all prior to publication.
Afterward, though, Futurism found that a substantial number of errors had been slipping into the AI’s published work. CNET, a titan of tech journalism that sold for $1.8 billion back in 2008, responded by issuing a formidable correction and slapping a warning on all the bot’s prior work, alerting readers that the posts’ content was under factual review. Days later, its parent company Red Ventures announced in a series of internal meetings that it was temporarily pausing the AI-generated articles at CNET and various other properties including Bankrate, at least until the storm of negative press died down.

It’s not going to stop Buzzfeed, though.

BuzzFeed will start using AI to write quizzes and other content

Sarah Scire for Nieman Lab:

In the memo, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti wrote AI will play a role in both editorial and business operations at BuzzFeed within the next year.
“For example, a quiz to create a personal romantic comedy movie pitch might ask questions like, ‘Pick a trope for your rom-com,’ and ‘Tell us an endearing flaw you have,'” the [WSJ’s] Alexandra Bruell reported. “The quiz would produce a unique, shareable write-up based on the individual’s responses, BuzzFeed said.”
But, hey! Humans will still provide “cultural currency” and “inspired prompts,” according to Peretti’s memo.

BuzzFeed’s share price doubled on the back of this news.

Science journals ban listing of ChatGPT as co-author on papers

Ian Sample for The Guardian:

The publishers of thousands of scientific journals have banned or restricted contributors’ use of an advanced AI-driven chatbot amid concerns that it could pepper academic literature with flawed and even fabricated research.
ChatGPT, a fluent but flaky chatbot developed by OpenAI in California, has impressed or distressed more than a million human users by rattling out poems, short stories, essays and even personal advice since its launch in November.
But while the chatbot has proved a huge source of fun – its take on how to free a peanut butter sandwich from a VCR, in the style of the King James Bible, is one notable hit – the program can also produce fake scientific abstracts that are convincing enough to fool human reviewers.
ChatGPT’s more legitimate uses in article preparation have already led to it being credited as a co-author on a handful of papers.

How unsurprising.

Podcast exclusivity quickly becoming an outdated strategy

Tyler Aquilina for Variety:

…The tide is turning as we enter what many observers project to be a difficult year for the podcasting industry. As in the streaming video space, the major audio players are reportedly reining in their spending amid economic pressures, bringing the booming market of the last several years toward a close.
This sea change has huge implications for the platform-exclusive model, which was never a great business proposition to begin with but will only become less attractive as economic conditions worsen.

Or a maturing market, if you are an optimist.

Where did all the new podcasts go?

Joshua Benton for Nieman Lab:

Roughly everyone launched a podcast in the COVID-19 pandemic’s nadir, and a big part of the decline is an aftereffect of that fact. All that time stuck in your house had to be put to use somehow, after all. The 2020-21 spike in cognitive surplus was always destined to recede.
Still…the decline is even detectable within calendar year 2022. There were 67,000 new podcasts launched in Q1, 54,000 in Q2, 53,000 in Q3, and 44,000 in Q4. That’s a drop of one-third in 12 months’ time. (So far in 2023, Listen Notes counts 7,026 new podcasts launched; at that pace, Q1 2023 would decline to less than 30,000 — a more than 50% drop year-over-year. But it’s still too early in the quarter to invest much meaning there.)
This feels…odd. Podcasting has had periods of boom, and it’s had periods of slower growth. But it hasn’t seen anything like this.

TL;DR: The number of new shows created dropped by nearly 80 per cent between 2020 and 2022.

What I read, listen, and watch…

I’m reading ‘The Meaning of Democracy in Southeast Asia,’ a paper by Diego Fossati and Ferran Martinez i Coma (free download through Feb 6).
I’m listening to ‘The Secret Algorithms That Control Your Love Life,’ an episode of Land of the Giants.
I’m watching BBC’s 2020 drama miniseries, Life. I don’t know if I can watch another TV series in a while; it is so good.

Reviews, opinion pieces, and other stray links:

Disarming transphobia by Quinnehtukqut McLamore for Aeon.
“Died suddenly” is anti-vaxxers’ new favourite phrase by Lizzie O’Leary for Slate.
La difficile diversité des salles de nouvelles by Peter Uduehi for Le Devoir.
El racismo también es un problema sanitario by Quan Zhou for elDiario.es.

Chart of the week

Taken from Benton’s piece above, a chart from Edison Research’s Infinite Dial report shows the percentage of Americans who said they had listened to a podcast in the past month declined from 41 per cent in 2021 to 38 per cent in 2022.