Artificial Intelligence Brings Artificial News

What if the trending news story in your social media feeding was all story and not news? Recently Facebook announced that it would trend toward automated algorithms rather than humans to generate its trending news feed. Facebook deleted its entire editorial staff responsible for writing the descriptions for its Trending Topics. What could possibly go wrong?

How about a totally fictitious story about Fox News’ MegynKelly supposed support for Hillary Clinton causing Kelley to be fired. Any reasonable human would have looked at the source of the story, (End the Fed) and realized that the story was not from a real news source.

One of the challenges facing us today is staying informed about the complex world in which we live. Throughout the 20^th century most people relied on the journalists and the established news media to act as gatekeepers to filter the news they consumed. On the one hand people could have a reasonable expectation that what they saw on the network news or read in a mainstream paper was reasonably true. On the other hand minority viewpoints had a tendency to be stifled. Now anything is possible. Personally I do use a news aggregator (Google News), but I find the results less than satisfying. To make up for it I read two daily newspapers and several magazines.

Where do you get your news? Do you curate your own news feed, or rely on machines? Here is a short list of News Aggregators.

Wait a Minute

Can I have a minute of your time? That will cost you close to 10 million dollars. I am not a math major, but at nearly 5 million for thirty seconds of time during Super Bowl 50, that adds up to almost $10,000,000 a minute. What does that mean? It means you and your eyeballs are valuable. Without you watching the Super Bowl the advertisers would not be paying that exorbitant sum for access to your hard earned money. Even if the networks are lying about how much money they get, (why would television lie to you) there is still an enormous amount of time, money and energy involved in getting at your wallet or purse. Let’s say CBS gets as little as 4 million per thirty second advetisment. By my count there were 82 ads in the last Super Bowl. That adds up to almost one quarter of a billion dollars, or enough money to buy 1,217 average houses in Frederick County, Maryland.

With all that money spent did it have any effect? Are you going out to buy that Audi R8 Coupe for $115,000? Me, I’m a sucker for Christopher Walken, and I always wanted a Walken Closet, so I guess it’s the $21,000 Kia Optima for me.