This is peak AI: Bot to guest edit Radio 4's Today programme The BBC has confirmed that Radio 4's Today programme will conduct an interview with a politician via an AI bot "modelled on Mishal Husain". The flagship current affairs show draws the station's biggest audience – and at Christmas brings in several celebrity "editors" as a gimmick. The AI bot will "guest edit" and interview a …
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So who are all those other people in the guest lineup?
Prince Harry - red-headed stepchild of notorious London family dependent on state handouts
Baroness Trumpington - peer of the realm, close personal acquaintance of Cuthbert, Dibble and Grubb
Tamara Rojo - Former "It" girl and heiress to a confectionery empire
Ben Okri - Large hill in Scotland
Main issue is lack of a clue about so many subjects by the interviewers (Stares at John).
You need a minimum amount of knowledge to ask sensible (or awkward questions if going that route) - and without basic knowledge, when the interviewee lies, R4 folk typically cannot call out their BS as they don't know enough to know.
Among the usual establishment figures, it's clear that they've selected one of the guest editors purely to represent a minority group. This is pretty obvious : political correctness for the sake of it. There always has to be at least one Ginger in any BBC line up these days......
Was listening to several professors of dinosaurology on Radio 4 the other day.
One of them was lead researcher on a paper on some of the interesting fossils being found in China. And he was able to study their skin, and "proto-feathers" - including the shape, and therefore colour) of their skin pigment.
Turns out that not only did lots of dinosaurs have feathers, but also lots of them were gingers!
It's no wonder they couldn't cope with all that bright light when the asteroid hit...
Interviewer: Minister, this X is a serious problem,right?
PolitBot: That is not accurate, one thing we always focus on is Y and we have made excellent progress on that.
Interviewer: but this report just proves X has not been fixed.
PolitBot: again, one thing we always focus on is Y and we have made excellent progress on that.
Interviewer: why don't you answer the question.
PolitBot: I love questions and the thing we always focus on is Y and I've just heard we have made excellent progress on that.
Interviewer: yes, from you!
PolitBot: I'm glad you agree.
Interviewer: thank you, Minister.
PolitBot: thank you, i love answering questions.
That's a malfunctioning bot it needs to use the phrases:
Let me be clear about this ... (followed by something very unclear)
The real question you should be asking ... (followed by a self promotional question)
The will of the people
I can't answer hypothetical questions
I can't comment on individual cases (err, why not?)
...
Could simplify the whole process if the interviewer and the politician were bots.
You could just have a new set of http error codes:
401 - not answering the question
402 - redirect to another question
403 - re-asking the previous question
there are lots of optional extras in addition to the phrases module.
- Diane Abbot Maths Module
- Theresa May Personality Module
- Micheal Gove I'm a hammer everything is a Nail Module
- Boris Johnson (TM) Joke Module, has a random Latin and poetry glitch, not fixable
If I recall the joke correctly, Humph described Today as, "30 minutes of news and comment packed into an exciting 3 hours of trailers and time-checks." Or something like that.
With the time now coming up to 8:32 and 23 seconds, it's time for Thought for the Day. With the Rabbi Lionel Blue 2.0.
Have you never heard of the Grope-Bot 1000?
Silicon Valley's answer to the problem of having to sack execs caught sexually assaulting their staff. With fewer execs available, it's either reduce female staffing levels, or automate...
I'm still not sure if this is a sign that my humour and cynical heart are becoming ever blacker with age - or just that my opinion of much of the technology giant's attitude to the people around them is lowering every time I read El Reg...
What did anyone expect the result of the hostile questioning and striving to make headlines through an interview comment would be, the truth? ROFL. The problem is that anyone at the sharp end is being sent on media courses (run by ex BBC staffers) to learn how to deal with this shit. Most current BBC (or other) interviewers haven't got around to changing their questioning tactics. Except Brillo.
Part of the problem is that a politician being honest about anything is immediately pilloried. Ask an MP is they'd like to be leader of the party and they say YES, watch the media fireworks, regardless of the context of what they said.
We have the press and politicians we deserve...
I'd suggest that the *only* proper response to a repeated failure to answer a direct question might be to terminate the interview...
I think the problem is that there is essentially a pre-planned media agenda for the day: politicians have a set of talking points they want to get out, carefully phrased to side-step potential criticism. Equally, their opponents will have a set of refutations, carefully phrased, to avoid drawing attention to their own failures. Those politicians will only agree to appear if there is a tacit understanding that the journalists will play along with the carefully-choreographed "I put it to you" ritual. If a journalist were to ask questions that strayed too far from the day's agenda there would be noone available the next time that programme requested an interview.
It's probably time to abandon the idea that the pinnacle of journalistic achievement is to interview senior policiticans - they won't tell you anything enlightening and if they did it would merely illuminate briefly the chasms in their understanding.
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