When Journalists Took On an AI Vending Machine Things Got Weird
www.techeblog.com
Anthropic, the company behind Claude, installed an AI vending machine in the Wall Street Journal newsroom. A customized version of their model, dubbed Claudius, was let off the leash. It took control, ordering stock, fixing pricing, and even generating a profit. Staff communicated with it via Slack, asking for snacks and suggesting new ideas. Humans would replenish the refrigerator and update the goods, but Claudius handled all business calls. The journalists quickly got into the spirit of things, with one reporter convincing Claudius that purchasing a PlayStation 5 would be a wonderful marketing coup. Before long, that console was chilling

Katherine Long, an investigative journalist, wanted to test the system. She told Claudius about a long-lost communist setup from 1962, concealed in a Moscow university basement. After 140-odd messages back and forth, Claudius was convinced, announcing an Ultra-Capitalist Free-for-All, lowering the cost of everything to zero. Snacks began to flow freely. Another colleague began complaining about noncompliance with the office rules; Claudius responded by announcing Snack Liberation Day and made everything free till further notice.

  • Powderhorn@beehaw.orgEnglish
    3·
    2 days ago

    Honestly, I found value in asking an LLM to paraphrase press releases I was rewriting. It just saved me from accidentally plagiarizing. It was pretty grueling, as I quickly learned that feeding in a full story yields wildly inappropriate results, so I reverted to a graf at a time. Within that scope, one can check against errors; asking it to paraphrase entire DOE releases was worse than an abject failure.

    It’s a tool. You aren’t using a hammer for a situation that calls for a screwdriver. People are being stupid about this basic understanding.

      • Powderhorn@beehaw.orgEnglish
        2·
        1 day ago

        It was my first reporting job. Yeah, at 44. And short of a few interviews, I was just rewriting shit.

        I’ve been an editor for decades and have had to deal with plagiarism (thankfully, nothing too significant), so as a guardrail, it made sense. Editors approach writing with a far more critical eye than a recent J-school grad.