alt Hacker NewsWhat I'd really like to see is a label on original reporting.
Even beyond AI, the vast majority of news is re-packaging information you got from somewhere else. AI can replace the re-writers, but not the original journalists, people who spoke to primary sources (or who were themselves eyewitnesses).
Any factual document should reference its sources. If not, it should be treated skeptically, regardless of whether AI or a human is doing that.
An article isn't automatically valueless just because it's synthesized. It can focus and contextualize, regardless of whether it's human or AI written. But it should at the very least be able to say "This is the actual fact of the matter", with a link to it. (And if AI has hallucinated the link, that's a huge red flag.)
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Just like we want to know where the food we eat comes from, we want to know where the information comes from. Of course there's the limit of journalists having to keep their sources secret in many cases. But original publisher I think should be possible.
There's already such a label: "exclusive!"
A common reaction I get to https://forty.news is that the stories “need sources” which I always find funny. I don’t hear the same demand of sources from every other news outlet (I find it extra weird because all FN’s stories are 40 years old, simple to verify, and can’t push an agenda the same way).
Totally agree with you: all newspapers should cite sources. What’s silly to me is how selectively people care—big outlets get to hand-wave the “trust me” part even when a piece is basically a lightly rewritten press release, thinly sourced, or reflecting someone’s incentives more than reality.