Already facing scandal, the Washington Post’s new-ish CEO and publisher, Will Lewis, has announced that the newspaper will be pivoting to artificial intelligence to turn around its dismal financial situation.
I’m watching this play out in real time where I work. I was hoping that what it meant was they would train a neural net for making automated, semi-intelligent optimizations on our utility systems based on known inputs and usage patterns, but in reality it probably means a bunch of customer service people are about to get laid off for six months and then rehired or replaced when the magic bean[i]s don’t pan out as expected. The CTO will get a golden parachute and move on to greener pastures, and we’ll get some new asshole who is even more backwards than the last two, and rates will go up anyway because Texas will be too hot or too cold for a week, so everyone else must suffer.