“Major News Outlets Enforce AI Bot Ban, While Right-Wing Media Roll Out the Bot Welcome Mat!”
“Most Top News Sites Block AI Bots. Right-Wing Media Welcomes Them”
“AI services scrape web content to fuel natural language processing models. But some outlets’ data is used a lot more than others.”
In this digital era, how perplexing it is to find that a large chunk of news sites have raised walls, deterring AI bots from accessing their content. Quite the irony, right? Most often, these bots pull data to refine natural language processing models, you know, trying to understand the human language, a task harder than one might think. However, a good portion of media outlets, as it turns out, are no fans of sharing their information bank.
Contrary to this trend, we find right-wing news sites are not just tolerant of AI bots, but they seem to be laying out the red carpet for them. Is it just me or does it feel like they might as well put up a flashing neon sign saying, ‘Bots Welcome’? Well, no one can accuse them of not being forward thinking.
Strange as it may sound, the result of this online block party (or party for some) affects the way artificial intelligence interprets and processes human language. Yes, AI relies on our digital discourses to learn our chit chat, our sarcasm, and all the nuances of our language. When a major chunk of the media acts all ‘The Great Wall’ on these bots, the bots end up binging on unfiltered content from other sites, primarily right-wing media.
In essence, a limited catered menu for the bots can potentially skew the ‘learning’ in a particular direction, much like feeding a child only broccoli for a year and then wondering why he turns green. What is most interesting, and perhaps slightly worrying, is how this imbalance could impact AI’s understanding and response to critical social, economic and political topics.
While right-wing media might be enjoying its moment under the AI spotlight, a lack of diverse data sources is hardly in the best interest of AI development. But of course, it’s not just the task of news outlets to ensure balanced AI training. Tech companies too must step out of their safe zones –Sample a little bit of this, a little bit of that, ensure the bot has a balanced diet.
Either way, unless everyone plays ball, AI might grow up to have a bit of a lopsided worldview. And of course, that would make for a delightful disaster, wouldn’t it now?