Here at The Autopian, we have some very stern rules when it comes to the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the content we produce. While our crack design team may occasionally employ AI as a tool in generating images, we’ll never just use AI on its own to do anything – not just for ethical reasons, but because we often want images of specific cars, and AI fundamentally doesn’t understand anything. When an AI generates an image of a car, it has no idea if that car ever actually existed or not. An AI doesn’t have ideas at all, in fact – it’s just scraped data being assembled with a glorified assembly of if-then-else commands.
This is an even bigger factor in AI-generated copy. We’ll never use it because AI has no idea what the hell it’s writing about, and so has no clue if anything is actually true, and since ChatGPT has never driven a car, I don’t really trust its “insights” into anything automotive.
These sort of rules are hardly universal in our industry, though, so if we ever wanted confirmation that our no-AI-copy rule was the right way, we’re lucky enough to be able to get such reassurance pretty easily. For example, all we have to do is read this dazzlingly shitty article re-published over on Yahoo Finance about the worst cars people have owned.
Maybe it’s not AI? Maybe this “Kellan Jansen” is an actual writer who actually wrote this, and in that case, I feel bad both for this coming excoriation and about whatever happened to them to cause them to be in the state they seem to be in. The article is shallow and terrible and gleefully, hilariously wrong in several places.
I guess I should also note that we don’t use AI because the 48K Sinclair Spectrum workstations we use here don’t quite have the power to run any AI. Well, we do have one AI that we use on them, our Artificial Ignorance system that we employ to get just that special je ne sais quoi in every post we write. Oh, and our AI (Artificial Indignation) tools help with our hot takes, too. So, two.
Okay, but let’s get back to the Yahoo Finance article, titled “The Worst Car I Ever Owned: 9 People Share Which Vehicles Aren’t Worth Your Money,” which is a conceptually lazy article that is just taking the responses to a Reddit post called “What’s the worst car you have personally owned?” which makes this story basically just a re-write of a Reddit post. It seems like the Reddit post was fed into whatever AI half-assed its way through generating the article, based on these results.
The results are, predictably, shitty, but also still worthy of pointing out because come on. There’s this, for example:
2023 BMW BRZ
BMWs are a frequent source of frustration for car owners on Reddit. Just ask user “Hurr1canE_.”
They bought a 2023 BMW BRZ and almost immediately started experiencing problems. Their turbo started blowing white smoke within two weeks of buying the car, and the engine blew up within 5,000 miles.
The Reddit user also had these issues with the car:
- Air valve
- Computer software and control module
- Transmission
Other users mention poor experiences with BMW X3s and 540i Sport Wagons. It’s enough to suggest you think carefully before making one of these your next vehicle.
The fuck? What is a BMW BRZ? This is such a perfect example of why AI-generated articles are garbage: they make shit up. Maybe that’s anthropomorphizing the un-sentient algorithm too much, but the point is that it’s writing, with all the confidence of a drunk uncle about to belly-flop into a pool, about a car that simply does not exist.
And, if you look at the Reddit post, it’s easy to see what happened:
The Redditor had their current car, a 2023 [Subaru] BRZ in their little under-name caption (their flair), and the dumb AI processed that into the mix, and, being a dumb computer algorithm that doesn’t know from cars or clams, conflated the car being talked about with the one the poster actually owns. You know, like how a drooling simpleton might.
There’s more of this, too. Like this one:
Ah, yes, the F10 550i. So many of us have been burned by that F10 brand, have we not? Or, at least, we would have, if such a brand existed, which it doesn’t. What seems to have happened here is the AI found a user complaining about a “2011 F10 550i” but didn’t know enough to realize this was a user talking about their BMW 5 series, and yes, F10 refers to the 5-series cars made between 2010 to 2016, but nobody would refer to this car out of context in a general-interest article on a financial site without mentioning BMW, would they? I mean, no human would, but we don’t seem to be dealing with a human, just a dumb machine.
Even if we ignore the made-up car makes and models, the vague and useless issues listed, and the fact that the article is nothing more than a re-tread of a random Reddit post, there’s no escaping that this entire thing is useless garbage, an unmitigated waste of time. What is learned by reading this article? What is gained? Nothing, absolutely nothing.
And it’s not like this is on some no-name site; it was published on Yahoo! Finance, well, after first appearing on GOBankingRates.com, that mainstay of automotive journalism. It all just makes me angry because there are innocent normies out there, reading Yahoo! Finance, maybe with some mild interest in cars, and now their heads are getting filled with information that is simply wrong.
People deserve better than this garbage. And this was just something innocuous; what if some overpaid seat-dampener at Yahoo decides that they’ll have AI write articles about actually driving or something that involves actual safety, and there’s no attempt made to confirm that the text AI poops out has any basis in fact at all?
We don’t need this. AI-generated crapticles like these are just going to clog Google searches and load the web up full of insipid, inaccurate garbage, and that’s my job, dammit.
Seriously, though, we’re at an interesting transition point right now; these kinds of articles are still new, and while I don’t know if there’s any way we can stop the internet from becoming polluted with this sort of crap, maybe we can at least complain about it, loudly. Then we can say we Did Something.
(Thanks, Isaac!)
AI is a good tool in the hands of a clever bulshitter. It works wonderfuly for coding, provided you know its limitations and correct for them. If you understand a little on how it is trained and how it composes the answer, ChatGPT is a perfect sifting machine for stackoverflow, saving you four hours of actually learning something,
Need to code in a language you don’t know enough to create but can at least understand the logic? AI will provide a valid syntax most of the time, but that doesn’t mean it works, only that it follows the formal structure. If you are clever enough to compensate and actually iterate the code, you go from plausible looking bullshit to functional prototype real fast.
I guess you could poke and prod it to generate the structure of a mediocre article, iterate it a bit and then fill in actual facts. Or, alternatively, you could input the facts and ask for it to format it in a more engaging way. None of it will replace an actual, competent writer, but for most publications the bar is so low that anything above “coherent” will gain traction.
I wonder how easy it is to generate either outragey or fanboy-y listicles based on the dumb things Musk or Trump spew in a regular basis. But if I ask for fiction on a tail light themed bar, I’m sure it will lift verbatim from these parts 🙂
I asked Bing Copilot to write a short article using the exact headline as the Yahoo article. I got a word-for-word copy of the Yahoo article. AI? Looks like plagiarism to me.
GOBankingRates.com is a crap clickbait website that is likely primarily AI generated. Yahoo, like many web sites these days just copies and re-runs word for word the articles posted instead of coming up with their own content. That’s why if you search a given headline, you often find 5-10 websites with the exact same content.
GBR has real people working for it. I know, because I’ve interacted with them in the course of my day job.
You often find 5-10 websites with the exact same content because the freelancer who wrote it didn’t get paid for exclusivity, so they’re making extra money by selling it to other sites, or because the site the freelancer sold it to in the first place has sharing agreements with other sites.
Freelancers who get paid $100 for a full, researched article are on the high end of the pay scale these days. If they can get that $100 for 3 hours of work with a finished product that’s pretty lousy, they’re going to do that versus spending the 6-8 hours it should really take because $800/week pre-tax and having to buy your own health insurance simply doesn’t cut it.
If the outlets were really interested in solving this problem, they’d stop paying stringers shit. But they’re not – they’re only interested in getting clicks and, hey, it works.
My favorite recent AI sidebar ad was the one with a photo of the P&O Aurora in livery that has not existed in 10 years, & the text “Empty Alaska Cruises Departing From Indiana That Seniors Can Book For Dirt…”
I’ve been on many cruises – some to Alaska – and I’ve never found any ships leaving from Indiana – Empty or otherwise…
As my one data processing professor always said over 45 years ago: “Garbage in, garbage out.
AI is bad I agree but I am just as upset at the sites and the people putting their names and likeness’ on these pieces of garbage like they really wrote them.
A lot of the names and likenesses are also AI-generated, FWIW. Sports Illustrated got busted not too long ago for staffing a bunch of bots on their writing team.
Write me a short article (3 to 4 paragraphs) lamenting the rise of AI used to generate terrible clickbait content:
Title: The Bane of AI-Driven Clickbait: A Lament for Meaningful Content
In the ever-evolving landscape of online media, the proliferation of AI-generated clickbait stands as a stark reminder of the darker side of technological advancement. As algorithms become increasingly proficient at crafting attention-grabbing headlines and thumbnails, the quality and authenticity of online content suffer. What was once a tool to enhance efficiency and creativity has morphed into a vehicle for the dissemination of shallow, misleading, and often sensationalized information.
The rise of AI-driven clickbait represents a troubling shift in priorities within the digital realm. Where genuine engagement and meaningful discourse were once the benchmarks of online success, they have been overshadowed by metrics centered on clicks, views, and shares. As a result, content creators and publishers are incentivized to prioritize shock value over substance, perpetuating a cycle of misinformation and superficiality that undermines the integrity of online discourse.
Furthermore, the prevalence of AI-generated clickbait not only erodes trust in online information sources but also contributes to the polarization and divisiveness plaguing contemporary society. By capitalizing on human psychology and exploiting sensationalist tropes, these algorithms fuel confirmation bias, deepen ideological divides, and perpetuate echo chambers. In doing so, they undermine the very foundation of informed democratic discourse, leaving us grappling with the consequences of a digital landscape devoid of nuance and critical thinking.
Ironically, that’s probably the best AI-generated article I’ve read. It would know, I suppose!
Hate to say it, but this is no worse than some of the pre-AI articles I have seen from non-automotive magazines and newspapers. I seem to remember one particularly bad article about new F1 cars from a decade ago.
Yeah, there was such garbage being written by online “journalists” for years before this. The AI learned to write trash from watching them!
AI *Yet*. AI blah, blah, blah *Yet*.
Anyone reading articles on Autopian is going to immediately smell the AI BS. “Normies” definitely won’t though. I was putting my 4yo in her car seat in the back of my ’09 RX-8 the other day (an activity made very surprisingly easy with the door arrangement), and an older lady getting out of her SUV in the parking spot adjacent was in awe of the suicide door, and took note that it was a Mazda. No one here would bat an eye or have any question what the car was, but this woman was genuinely amazed and acted as if she was off to the dealer that very afternoon.
I wonder if BMW doesn’t have a case for libel against (whichever publisher) given that the information is clearly false and somewhat defamatory. That lady would undoubtedly be just as deterred from a BMW dealership as she was compelled to the Mazda dealership, and if she was actually in the market for a car, BMW could be losing out on a sale.
AI=Artificial Stupidity
Skynet is coming for us all!
Hasn’t anyone watched Terminator?
Yup, this AI junk is absurd and I’m already sick of hearing about it in mainstream media like it’s so great and is going to change everything.
It boggles my mind how much people actually believe that it’s so amazing and can do everything for you when it’s actually the complete opposite…it’s trendy and the worst part of it I think is trying to force it on us…no thanks- I don’t want your misinformation of made up things using stuff that’s already there that I can already look up myself!
Look how much time and resources is wasted on this junk…I guess they enjoy wasting their life on pointless things and missing out on things that are actually meaningful
I was surprised that Yahoo is still going, let alone offering financial advice with a vroom vroom side order.
Mind you they will be experts on how to turn down multi-billion dollar offers and then be forced to accept ones which struggle to climb over the million mark.
Maybe Elon Musk will buy them and use all his communication skills with motoring journalists to improve things.
My 12-year old daughter saw a sign yesterday with an @yahoo email address, and asked what Yahoo was. She had never heard of it. I thought about the various permutations that the name has been through, from internet phonebook to whatever it is now, and just told her that it’s just an email company. Seemed easier and not exactly inaccurate.
This isn’t just AI, this is shit AI. AI can do better than this, the lazy fuck didn’t even give it a good prompt or they are using a shit model. I just put the reddit post in chat gpt with “write an article about this” and it gave me something way more coherent (still insipid and pointless granted, but not this bad)
In the early 2020s, robots started writing on the internet to create “content” that drove in human readers. That created ad revenue for companies hosting such websites.
A few years later, some CEO ordered an AI that read those articles to increase revenue artificially, eliminating the need for actual content in the first place.
Seeing the success of his AI blog reader, he then decided to cut costs on the first AI that had become useless, and replaced all the blog posts by the random latin sentences Word spits out to fill a page. Many other publications followed.
It’s now the year 2038, 97,5% of the internet is Lorem Ipsum, and that number keeps growing. Humans aren’t welcome anymore, forcing them to interact “IRL”.
Sadly, no one remembers the lost art of conversation. Every exchange of words is awkward, every encounter uneasy. The natality rates are plummeting.
And so our species disappears, every individual locked in how own loneliness, staring blankly at his now barren computer screen.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi ac eros non sapien mollis auctor quis ultricies purus. Quisque aliquet fringilla pharetra. Morbi feugiat velit id ante rhoncus, vel pharetra augue imperdiet. Donec imperdiet, tortor non imperdiet luctus, nulla odio aliquam dui, et semper ex nulla id diam. Curabitur dictum pretium nulla at volutpat. Nullam at felis a quam molestie fringilla sed in lectus. Pellentesque pharetra efficitur magna, ut vestibulum dolor imperdiet ut. Nam dapibus nisi vel libero mattis imperdiet. Suspendisse non mollis eros.
We’re living in a time when people seem more susceptible to bullshit than ever. The advent of a bullshit machine was inevitable. It’s basic supply and demand.
Another worst thing is those “journalists” who copied and pasted the same articles without doing the proofreading or fact verification. Many of them “reported” that Mullin Automotive Museum had the largest Bugatti collection without checking the fact. When I wrote the comment that this distinction went to the Cité de l’Automobile, my comments were promptly deleted.
As a proud Alsacian, that hurts me.
Well, Yahoo just fired a bunch of their writers, so I guess this is really to be expected.
You’re welcome. Amazing analysis of this AI garbage.
One scroll or Facebook is all you need to be convinced the dead internet theory is real.
Ah, but I bet they got clicks, which is all they really wanted.
This is only a problem if you have something like, oh… journalist standards, or some such nonsense.
“full of insipid, inaccurate garbage, and that’s my job, dammit.”
You do an amazing job at supplying insightful, sometimes insipid, always entertaining and accurate, definitely not carbage, content for our bemusement, and I greatly appreciate it!
AI: “Note to self: Kill Jason Torchinsky…”
bold move assuming that we won’t snap and take a hammer to the chatbot server first
I think a chainsaw would be a better choice. I hear Torch already has one for electronics.
he’s in on the plan
Now I have a mental image of Torch with a chainsaw and boomstick fighting chatbots a la Bruce Campbell in Army of Darkness.
If you can find it…
Well, if I smash everything, one of those things is gonna be the chatbot kill shot.
That might take quite a while. Besides its probably living the good life in the NSA’s data center out in Utah. Good luck smashing that.
I know some Utahns with big hammers. TIME TO GET ON A WATCH LIST, FOLKS.
AI: “What are you doing, Jason?”
I might have told this story before:
My boyfriend is an author. Once, as a joke, I put his name in the AI prompt. It invented a book series he not only didn’t write, but didn’t exist.
AI article mined from reddit comments from sub reddit that was not automotive and were mistakenly mined by AI Bot :
My 2013 Big_Boner was the worst Dickup truck that I ever owned. The ride was hard and it would only start if it was kept in a warm enclosure and It was always leaking fluids. It refused to start in cold temps as well.
I am so upset, I always wanted a Big_Boner and now I can’t stand the sight of one.
😉
Well, this one is surprisingly accurate.
You missed that the F10 550i is referred to as a truck…
The bot had it confused with the F15500i