[CodingJeebus]

I personally think the fact that it's an indie reporter like Ed Zitron diving into this says a lot about the state of tech media broadly. Reminds me a bit of how sports journalism works nowadays: nobody wants to call out industry leaders for fear of losing access, because losing access is career suicide.

[simianwords]

False. The current mainstream media outlets are by far the more anti technology than pro. It is unclear why you think journalists fear losing access when the status quo is opposing tech.

[CodingJeebus]

Respectfully disagree. Frontier lab CEOs have had incredible media access the last 4 years, making huge claims to the press without a lot of pushback or difficult questions. There's obviously no way to give some quantifiable metric on it, and reasonable people can disagree.

But Zitron frequently points out the inconsistencies in these data center deals, noting that companies like OpenAI and Anthropic make these announcements without a formal contract in place, companies like Oracle get a stock bump off of the news, and then we all find out from the mainstream press months later that the deal was never done and in fact may not even be happening anymore.

That's not really behavior you'd expect to see from a vehemently anti-tech press. They're happily making news to boost stock prices short-term, essentially acting as mouthpieces for large shareholders.

[keeda]

The sibling comment is dead, which is unfortunate because it's accurate, and brings at least some data that matches what I've anecdotally observed. I can't find a single article in my news feed that is overwhelmingly positive about AI. Any article that is even slightly editorialized mentioning anything positive about AI typically follows it with any of the same litany of risks -- hallucinations, jobs, deepfakes, environment, energy, that MIT report or that METR study, etc. etc.

It is not surprising that media is largely biased against AI, considering they see this technology as a) disintermediating them, and b) built by stealing their content. And since AI is doing this across a large number of professions, like artists and engineers, they find a willing audience for engagement.

[josefritzishere]

I disagree. I find popular media to be grossly negligent in their lack of skepticism. They love regurgitating pie-in-the-sky claims for clicks.

[array_key_first]

If you watch any interviews with anyone who has power in tech, they're exclusively asked the most soft ball questions imaginable to make them look better.

The media DOES occasionally say negative things about tech. But of what they say, they scratch, like, 1% of the bad stuff. And they make excuses and let people off easy.

It's very similar to how the media is overly sympathetic to Trump. Yes, Trump is critiqued - but everything he says is interpreted in the least crazy way possible, even though he is a lunatic. MSNBC and co will even go as far as fabricating reasoning for Trump's actions when he doesn't provide any - and it's good reasoning!