- mawarannahr
- May 21, 2019
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lol owned
VOA faces internal backlash over newsroom guidance on use of generative AI to voice news reports
fedscoop.com - Fri, 22 Dec 2023 posted:
Journalists at VOA have pushed back on newsroom leadership’s AI policy regarding “synthetic voices,” documents obtained by FedScoop show.
Dozens of journalists and staff at Voice of America are strongly opposed to the state-owned news organization’s plan to use AI-generated synthetic voices, documents obtained by FedScoop show, with employees expressing concerns that the tool could breed mistrust with its audience, cause misinformation to spread and potentially eliminate jobs within the newsroom.
VOA, which has a weekly worldwide audience of approximately 326 million, is the largest and oldest of U.S. government-funded news networks and international broadcasters.
The news organization released internal guidance on the use of artificial intelligence in November, following months of discussions with journalists and labor representatives that stirred up backlash and controversy within the news organization.
FedScoop obtained the new AI guidance as well as a letter of opposition — signed by dozens of journalists within the news organization — that was sent to VOA leadership in October and has not been made public until now.
“We are deeply concerned that a portion of the Artificial Intelligence guidance that the agency is preparing to issue will do more harm than good,” the signed letter said. “Specifically, we object to language that would allow Artificial Intelligence to be used ‘for voicing scripts.’”
“We are also concerned that guidance that permits Artificial Intelligence to voice news reports and other products, even with the caveat that ‘a human being retains full control over the journalistic content,’ will allow for VOA to begin to replace on-air journalists with AI,” the letter continued.
Two VOA employees who asked to remain anonymous to avoid internal backlash told FedScoop that the newsroom is already experimenting with using AI-generated synthetic voices in its broadcasts.
The two employees said that the U.S. Agency for Global Media, VOA’s parent agency, told union representatives that AI usage at VOA was not something they could bargain over. The two employees also said that VOA leadership rejected all proposals put forth by staff to change the AI guidance released in November.
The VOA AI policy guidelines state that AI “may be used for voicing scripts, so long as a human being retains full control over the journalistic content. Furthermore, synthetic voices should never be used to impersonate or duplicate any individuals, including agency employees or public figures. This includes AI-generated content using an individual’s or employee’s likeness, image, and character.”
Furthermore, the AI guidelines state that “if generative AI is used to research, develop ideas for, voice, or review VOA content, it must be acknowledged in a credit, tagline or ender or otherwise attributed in a script.”
Some editorial staffers at VOA say they are concerned that the newsroom’s AI guidelines are ambiguously written, making it unclear the extent to which AI-generated synthetic voices could be used within news broadcasts sent to its audience of hundreds of millions of people.
“We’re not luddites,” a senior VOA journalist said. “This isn’t a knee-jerk opposition to AI, but if all of a sudden someone reading the news for a TV package with a voiceover or a radio report is not a real person, then how would anybody believe that what the rest of what we’re doing is real? That’s our main objection.”
“It’s going to blur the line between what is real and what is fake,” the journalist continued. “Our competitors are state broadcasters from Russia, China, Iran, and that’s what they do. They engage deliberately in misinformation and disinformation, blurring the line between real and fake.
“And if we’re putting on the air AI voices that aren’t real, why would people trust that the content is real? I think there should be a real person behind every story, and my colleagues share that concern as well, the overwhelming majority of the primary correspondents of VOA, which is dozens and dozens of us.”
In the objection letter sent to leadership by VOA staff and in interviews conducted by FedScoop with organization members, employees expressed frustration with management’s handling of AI policy in its guidelines and in private conversations, and worried that maintaining high journalistic standards was not the top priority.
“A lot of the journalists at VOA are upset about this and have expressed this to management,” said Paula Hickey, a VOA employee and president of AFGE Local chapter 1812. “They feel VOA management is not doing anything about their concerns, management is not talking about it or saying how they’re going to use the synthetic voices or if someday it will replace employees with it. It’s all very confusing and unsettling.”
“Voice of America already has many detractors — foreign governments around the world — that accuse it of being propaganda,” Hickey continued. “And VOA has worked very hard over the years to battle this image. These AI-generated synthetic voices create a lot of concerns and risks about maintaining our integrity and could damage trust with our audience. If that happens, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”
Some journalists at VOA are concerned that the new use of generative AI outlined in the guidelines could lead to job losses in the near future. The senior VOA journalist said those concerns have been relayed to and rebuffed by management.
“I would say a number of us believe they are making decisions not based fundamentally on concern for journalism. They see this as an efficiency move, and in the future it may be a way to significantly reduce the number of personnel, which would save them money.”
The senior VOA journalist added that the organization’s newscasters, “especially in Africa and in Asia, have a personal relationship with their audiences. A number of our broadcasters have been on the air for many, many years, through good times and bad. And there’s an emotional connection, a two-way emotional connection. You’re not going to have that with AI voices and newscasters.”
VOA leadership responded to the concerns of its journalists and staff by highlighting the limited scope of AI usage that they envision for the newsroom.
“Regarding the use of AI in voicing scripts, our briefings about the guidelines have made it clear that VOA will only narrowly use AI to add synthetic voicing to text-only copy that appears on our news and Learning English websites,” acting VOA Director John Lippman
said in a statement to FedScoop. “That’s a practice that the Washington Post and many other news organizations have been doing for years.”
Lippman and VOA leadership also said that the opposition letter signed by dozens of journalists in October was “represented by one of the three unions and constitute fewer than 30 of the more than 1,500 VOA broadcasters.”
The VOA leadership highlighted that the AI guidelines emphasize the need for employees to “be judicious and be transparent” when using generative AI tools.
Journalists at VOA say they are unlikely in the long run to win the fight to restrict the use of AI within their newsroom, given the explosion in demand for the emerging technology. But the senior VOA journalist said there’s a feeling among some colleagues that they need to keep fighting for as long as they can.
“Are we fighting a losing battle here over a period of 50 or 100 years? Probably,” the journalist said. “I don’t know that any of us can control what’s going to happen decades from now. But we certainly can voice our concerns now for contemporary journalism and for our current broadcasts.”
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Dec 27, 2023 01:48
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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Jun 10, 2024 12:25
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- ikanreed
- Sep 25, 2009
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I honestly I have no idea who cannibal[SIC] is and I do not know why I should know.
syq dude, just syq!
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VOA management: "oh no please don't breed mistrust and misinformation. That sounds sooo bad. Don't throw us in the briar patch brer AI"
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Dec 27, 2023 02:12
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- Palladium
- May 8, 2012
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Very Good
✔️✔️✔️✔️
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how weird next to nobody knows who they are despite their weekly 326 million viewers
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Dec 27, 2023 02:26
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- Centrist Committee
- Aug 6, 2019
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how weird next to nobody knows who they are despite their weekly 326 million viewers
it’s traffic from the Department of Totally Authentic Views
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Dec 27, 2023 05:38
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- Best Friends
- Nov 4, 2011
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it should be an AI voice reading off coded strings of numbers
reading the menus of various burger chains.
actually no wait that might get people listening
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Dec 27, 2023 07:09
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- Orange Devil
- Oct 1, 2010
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Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!
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Voice of America should be an AI voice directly translating the vibes of the American people as a whole into speech, no filter.
That’s just Call of Duty voice chat.
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Dec 27, 2023 09:35
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- The Oldest Man
- Jul 28, 2003
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quote:This month, the city’s spending board agreed to a $225,000 contract to kick off an effort to use blockchain technology to record the city’s vacant properties. Over the three-year pilot, Medici Land Governance will input records for the city’s roughly 13,600 vacant properties into a blockchain, building a database more secure than the system currently used by the city and also more efficient.
The system will contain an immutable record of the chain of custody for each property, eliminating the need for subsequent title searches, explained Ebony Thompson, Baltimore’s solicitor and self-appointed blockchain specialist. With fewer title searches needed, Baltimore’s most demanding properties can zip much more quickly through changes in ownership, getting into the hands of the developers needed to rehabilitate them and eventually the city’s residents.
How the gently caress does blockchain help solve this exactly? I've got shared Excel sheets bigger than th-
quote:
Because the information contained within the blockchain is decentralized, that makes it much more difficult to hack than traditional databases. Blockchains have multiple nodes. Even if a hacker gains access to the database via one of the nodes, it can’t be changed. Alterations would be immediately recognizable when compared to all other copies of the chain and rejected.
ah yes, blockchain, crypto, very secure, its right there in the names you see
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Dec 28, 2023 05:58
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- Toplowtech
- Aug 31, 2004
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Was someone even hacking the Baltimore Vacant Property database ?
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Dec 28, 2023 09:26
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- Clark Nova
- Jul 18, 2004
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Isn't voice of america an internship/incubator for a certain type of DC establishment careerist? I think that's the real reason anyone is mad about turning it into chatbot spam
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Dec 28, 2023 18:59
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- mawarannahr
- May 21, 2019
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Isn't voice of america an internship/incubator for a certain type of DC establishment careerist? I think that's the real reason anyone is mad about turning it into chatbot spam
Radio Free Asia is run through the USAGM, like the rest of the Radio Frees, and is under the State Department, fully separate from the CIA. There's plenty to attack about it, but you're wrong on the basic facts. You representing that the source should be disregarded because of something untrue about its current status doesn't validate your criticism. Knowing things isn't pedantry. It’s a perfectly serviceable source and story.
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Dec 28, 2023 19:15
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- shimmy shimmy
- Nov 13, 2020
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Radio Free Asia is run through the USAGM, like the rest of the Radio Frees, and is under the State Department, fully separate from the CIA. There's plenty to attack about it, but you're wrong on the basic facts. You representing that the source should be disregarded because of something untrue about its current status doesn't validate your criticism. Knowing things isn't pedantry. It’s a perfectly serviceable source and story.
lol is this dv
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Dec 28, 2023 19:21
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- gradenko_2000
- Oct 5, 2010
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HELL SERPENT
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Lipstick Apathy
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Isn't voice of america an internship/incubator for a certain type of DC establishment careerist? I think that's the real reason anyone is mad about turning it into chatbot spam
I recall there was a dispute late during the Trump administration because of VOA having to contradict / correct White House statements and this pipeline getting hosed with as a result
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Dec 28, 2023 19:27
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- Kitfox88
- Aug 21, 2007
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Anybody lose their glasses?
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How the gently caress does blockchain help solve this exactly? I've got shared Excel sheets bigger than th-
ah yes, blockchain, crypto, very secure, its right there in the names you see
These people need their heads shoved in a toilet until the loving bubbles stop coming up
(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 28, 2023 19:30
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- tristeham
- Jul 31, 2022
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yup
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Dec 28, 2023 19:48
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- Centrist Committee
- Aug 6, 2019
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i love all these posts about how the kids are actually plenty educated and because social media fried their attention span they’re immune to academic/expert scolding techniques
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Dec 28, 2023 21:54
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- Truga
- May 4, 2014
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Lipstick Apathy
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lmao @ reader context. SK knows that despite US bombing every single building in NK 70 years ago, the moment they leave SK, it ceases to exist
but yes it's an independent nation
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Dec 28, 2023 22:59
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- H.P. Hovercraft
- Jan 12, 2004
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one thing a computer can do that most humans can't is be sealed up in a cardboard box and sit in a warehouse
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Slippery Tilde
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isn't reunification polling really well there too
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Dec 28, 2023 23:08
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- mawarannahr
- May 21, 2019
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contrast to nytimes 
Opinion | TikTok’s Influence on Young Voters Is No Simple Matter
www.nytimes.com - Wed, 27 Dec 2023 posted:
Zeynep Tufekci
## Avert Your Eyes, Avoid Responsibility and Just Blame TikTok
We’re in a season of hand-wringing and scapegoating over social media, especially TikTok, with many Americans and politicians missing that two things can be true at once: Social media can have an outsize and sometimes pernicious influence on society, and lawmakers can unfairly use it as an excuse to deflect legitimate criticisms.
Young people are overwhelmingly unhappy about U.S. policy on the war in Gaza? Must be because they get their “perspective on the world on TikTok” — at least according to Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat who holds a strong pro-Israel stance. This attitude is shared across the aisle. “It would not be surprising that the Chinese-owned TikTok is pushing pro-Hamas content,” Senator Marsha Blackburn said. Another Republican senator, Josh Hawley, called TikTok a “purveyor of virulent antisemitic lies.”
Consumers are unhappy with the economy? Surely, that’s TikTok again, with some experts arguing that dismal consumer sentiment is a mere “vibecession” — feelings fueled by negativity on social media rather than by the actual effects of inflation, housing costs and more. Some blame online phenomena such as the viral TikTok “Silent Depression” videos that compare the economy today with that of the 1930s — falsely asserting things were easier then.
It’s no secret that social media can spread misleading and even harmful content, given that its business model depends on increasing engagement, thus often amplifying inflammatory content (which is highly engaging!) with little to no guardrails for veracity. And, yes, TikTok, whose parent company is headquartered in Beijing and which is increasingly dominating global information flows, should generate additional concern. As far back as 2012, research published in Nature by Facebook scientists showed how companies can easily and stealthily alter real-life behavior, such as election turnout.
But that doesn’t make social media automatically and solely culpable for whenever people hold opinions inconvenient to those in power. While comparisons with the horrors of the Great Depression can fall far off the mark, young people do face huge economic challenges now, and that’s their truth even if their grasp of what happened a century ago is off. Housing prices and mortgage rates are high and rents less affordable, resurgent inflation has outpaced wages until recently, groceries have become much more expensive and career paths are much less certain.
Similarly, given credible estimates of heavy casualties inflicted among Gazans — about 40 percent of whom are children — by Israel’s monthslong bombing campaign, maybe a more engaged younger population is justifiably critical of President Biden’s support of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government? Even the Israeli military’s own estimates say thousands of civilians have been killed, and there is a lot of harrowing video out of Gaza showing entire families wiped out. At the same time, the Committee to Protect Journalists reports that at least 69 journalists and media workers have been among those killed in the war; Israel blocks access to foreign journalists outside of a few embedded ones under its control. (Egypt does as well.) In such moments, social media can act as a bypass around censorship and silence.
There’s no question that there’s antisemitic content and lies on TikTok and on other platforms. I’ve seen many outrageous clips about Hamas’s actions on Oct. 7 that falsely and callously deny the horrific murders and atrocities. And I do wish we knew more about exactly what people were seeing on TikTok: Without meaningful transparency, it’s hard to know the scale and scope of such content on the platform.
But I’m quite skeptical that young people would be more upbeat about the economy and the war in Gaza if not for viral videos.
Why don’t we know more about TikTok’s true influence or that of YouTube or Facebook? Because that requires the kind of independent research that’s both expensive and possible only with the cooperation of the platforms themselves, which hold so much key data we don’t see about the spread and impact of such content. It’s as if tobacco companies privately compiled the nation’s lung cancer rates or car companies hoarded the air quality statistics.
For example, there is a strong case that social media has been harmful to the well-being of teenagers, especially girls. The percentage of 12-to-17-year-old girls who had a major depressive episode had been flat until about 2011, when smartphones and social media became more common, and then more than doubled in the next decade. Pediatric mental health hospitalizations among girls are also sharply up since 2009. Global reading, math and science test scores, too, took a nosedive right around then.
The multiplicity of such findings is strongly suggestive. But is it a historic shift that would happen anyway even without smartphones and social media? Or is social media the key cause? Despite some valiant researchers trying to untangle this, the claim remains contested partly because we lack enough of the right kind of research with access to data.
And lack of more precise knowledge certainly impedes action. As things stand, big tech companies can object to calls for regulation by saying we don’t really know if social media is truly harmful in the ways claimed — a convenient shrug, since they helped ensure this outcome.
Meanwhile, politicians alternate between using the tools to their benefit and rushing to blame them but without passing meaningful legislation.
Back in 2008 and 2012, Facebook and big data were credited with helping Barack Obama win his presidential races. After his 2012 re-election, I wrote an article calling for regulations requiring transparency and understanding and worried whether “these new methods are more effective in manipulating people.” I concluded with “you should be worried even if your candidate is — for the moment — better at these methods.” The Democrats, though, weren’t having any of that, then. The data director of Obama for America responded that concerns such as mine were “a bunch of malarkey.” No substantive regulations were passed.
The attitude changed after 2016, when it felt as if many people wanted to talk only about social media. But social media has never been some magic wand that operates in a vacuum; its power is amplified when it strikes a chord with people’s own experiences and existing ideologies. Donald Trump’s narrow victory may have been surprising, but it wasn’t solely because of social media hoodwinking people.
There were many existing political dynamics that social media played on and sometimes manipulated and exacerbated, including about race and immigration (which were openly talked about) and some others that had generated much grass-roots discontent but were long met with bipartisan incuriosity from the establishment, such as the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis, America’s role in the world (including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) and how international trade had reshaped the economy.
As we head into the 2024 elections, in some ways, little seems to have changed since Obama’s victory in 2008 — the first election dubbed the Facebook election. We’re still discussing viral misinformation, fake news and election meddling, but there’s still no meaningful legislation that responds to the challenges brought about by the internet and social media and that seeks to bring transparency, oversight or accountability. Just add realistic A.I.-generated content, a new development, and the rise of TikTok, and we’re good to go for 2024. If Trump wins the Republican nomination, as seems likely, only one candidate’s name needs updating from 2016.
Do we need proper oversight and regulation of social media? You bet. Do we need to find more effective ways of countering harmful lies and hate speech? Of course. But I can only conclude that despite the heated bipartisan rhetoric of blame, scapegoating social media is more convenient to politicians than turning their shared anger into sensible legislation.
Worrying about the influence of social media isn’t a mere moral panic or “kids these days” tsk-tsking. But until politicians and institutions dig into the influence of social media and try to figure out ways to regulate it and also try addressing broader sources of discontent, blaming TikTok amounts to just noise.
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Dec 28, 2023 23:37
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- hadji murad
- Apr 18, 2006
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the US has top level control of the military too
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Dec 28, 2023 23:53
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- Harik
- Sep 9, 2001
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From the hard streets of Moscow
First dog to touch the stars
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Plaster Town Cop
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this thread suddenly isn't fun anymore. NYT trying to outdo their best hits (hitler, iraq) by putting out an absolutely disgusting propganda piece for their owners.
here I'll quote the important bits
quote:
And The Times interviewed several soldiers and volunteer medics
Four [unidentified] witnesses described in graphic detail seeing
The Times also viewed a video, provided by the Israeli military,
Investigators with Israel’s top national police unit, Lahav 433, have been steadily gathering evidence but they have not put a number on how many women were raped, saying that most are dead — and buried — and that they will never know. No survivors have spoken publicly.
[rambling and incoherent torture porn story probably dredged up from the alt.sex.stories archives Yes, this is the "sliced off breast soccer game" you've probably heard psycohpaths masturbating to lately. published in the paper of record as a real thing that totally happened]
Raz Cohen — a young Israeli who had also attended the rave and had worked recently in the Democratic Republic of Congo training Congolese soldiers [lol]
Jamal Waraki, a volunteer medic with the nonprofit ZAKA emergency response team
Eight volunteer medics and two Israeli soldiers told The Times that
A paramedic in an Israeli commando unit said that .... he kept moving and did not document the scene.
The Israeli military allowed the paramedic to speak with reporters on the condition that
Shari Mendes, an architect called up as a reserve soldier to help prepare the bodies of female soldiers for burial, said
Captain Maayan, who worked at the same identification center, said that
Mr. Fintzy said Israeli security forces were still finding [places to create] imagery that shows women were brutalized. [early sources, such as kurdistan, proved problematic when people discovered the original]
Sitting at his desk at an imposing police building in Jerusalem, he swiped open his phone, tapped and produced the video ... which he said was recorded by Hamas gunmen and recently recovered by Israeli soldiers.
A colleague sitting next to him, Mirit Ben Mayor, a police chief superintendent, said she believed that the brutality against women was a combination of two ferocious forces, “the hatred for Jews and the hatred for women.”
Many volunteers working for ZAKA, the emergency response team
according to Gil Horev, a spokesman for Israel’s Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs.
“Many people are looking for the golden evidence, of a woman who will testify about what happened to her. But don’t look for that, don’t put this pressure on this woman,” said Orit Sulitzeanu, executive director of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel. “The corpses tell the story [we want them to tell]"
Lol. Three months later their evidence is entirely "the IDF says" and "ZAKA" and "of course they did it, they're animals"
We're supposed to take this seriously because it's in the new york times.
Harik has issued a correction as of 07:10 on Dec 29, 2023
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Dec 29, 2023 06:53
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- Palladium
- May 8, 2012
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Very Good
✔️✔️✔️✔️
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The Republic of Korea is a sovereign nation with its own government system independent of the United States government.
i can't believe todd howard is doing advertising for starfield again
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Dec 29, 2023 07:00
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- mawarannahr
- May 21, 2019
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this thread suddenly isn't fun anymore. NYT trying to outdo their best hits (hitler, iraq) by putting out an absolutely disgusting propganda piece for their owners.
here I'll quote the important bits
quote:
quote:
And The Times interviewed several soldiers and volunteer medics
Four [unidentified] witnesses described in graphic detail seeing
The Times also viewed a video, provided by the Israeli military,
Investigators with Israel’s top national police unit, Lahav 433, have been steadily gathering evidence but they have not put a number on how many women were raped, saying that most are dead — and buried — and that they will never know. No survivors have spoken publicly.
[rambling and incoherent torture porn story probably dredged up from the alt.sex.stories archives Yes, this is the "sliced off breast soccer game" you've probably heard psycohpaths masturbating to lately. published in the paper of record as a real thing that totally happened]
Raz Cohen — a young Israeli who had also attended the rave and had worked recently in the Democratic Republic of Congo training Congolese soldiers [lol]
Jamal Waraki, a volunteer medic with the nonprofit ZAKA emergency response team
Eight volunteer medics and two Israeli soldiers told The Times that
A paramedic in an Israeli commando unit said that .... he kept moving and did not document the scene.
The Israeli military allowed the paramedic to speak with reporters on the condition that
Shari Mendes, an architect called up as a reserve soldier to help prepare the bodies of female soldiers for burial, said
Captain Maayan, who worked at the same identification center, said that
Mr. Fintzy said Israeli security forces were still finding [places to create] imagery that shows women were brutalized. [early sources, such as kurdistan, proved problematic when people discovered the original]
Sitting at his desk at an imposing police building in Jerusalem, he swiped open his phone, tapped and produced the video ... which he said was recorded by Hamas gunmen and recently recovered by Israeli soldiers.
A colleague sitting next to him, Mirit Ben Mayor, a police chief superintendent, said she believed that the brutality against women was a combination of two ferocious forces, “the hatred for Jews and the hatred for women.”
Many volunteers working for ZAKA, the emergency response team
according to Gil Horev, a spokesman for Israel’s Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs.
“Many people are looking for the golden evidence, of a woman who will testify about what happened to her. But don’t look for that, don’t put this pressure on this woman,” said Orit Sulitzeanu, executive director of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel. “The corpses tell the story [we want them to tell]"
Lol. Three months later their evidence is entirely "the IDF says" and "ZAKA" and "of course they did it, they're animals"
We're supposed to take this seriously because it's in the new york times.
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Dec 29, 2023 08:06
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- Tankbuster
- Oct 1, 2021
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i can't believe todd howard is doing advertising for starfield again
todd howard is a truth teller compared to the rules based liberal international order.
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Dec 29, 2023 10:24
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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Jun 10, 2024 12:25
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Dec 27, 2023 01:48
