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AI Democrats

California Newspaper Creates AI-Powered 'News Assistant' for Kamala Harris Info (sfchronicle.com) 154

Posted by EditorDavid from the articles-into-AI dept.
After nearly 30 years of covering Kamala Harris, the San Francisco Chronicle is now letting ChatGPT do it. Sort of...

"We're introducing a new way to engage with our decades of coverage: an AI-powered tool designed to answer your questions about Harris' life, her journey through public service and her presidential campaign," they announced this week: Drawing from thousands of articles written, edited and published by Chronicle journalists since 1995, this tool aims to give readers informed answers about a politician who rose from the East Bay and is now campaigning to become one of the world's most powerful people.

Why don't we have a similar tool for Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president? The answer isn't political. It's because we've been covering Harris since her career began in the Bay Area and have an archive of vetted articles to draw from. Our newsroom can't offer the same level of expertise when it comes to the former president.
The tool's answers are "drawn directly from decades of extensive reporting," according to a notice toward the bottom of the page. "The tool searches through thousands of Chronicle articles, with new stories added every hour as they are published, ensuring readers have access to the most up-to-date information." Our news assistant is powered by OpenAI's GPT-4o mini model, combined with OpenAI's text-embedding-3-large model, to deliver precise answers based on user queries. The Chronicle articles in this tool's corpus span from April 24, 1995, to the present, covering the length of Harris' career.

This corpus wouldn't be possible without the hard work of the Chronicle's journalists.
Questions go through OpenAI's moderation filter and "relevance check" — and if it asks how to vote, "we redirect readers to appropriate resources including canivote.org..."
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California Newspaper Creates AI-Powered 'News Assistant' for Kamala Harris Info More

California Newspaper Creates AI-Powered 'News Assistant' for Kamala Harris Info

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  • Her actual life ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Saturday October 12, 2024 @06:03PM (#64859879) Journal

    ... is interesting indeed (Willie Brown, etc.) A journey through public service indeed.

    Certainly more interesting than the hopey, changey, newly sprung from the head of Zeuss story that we get instead.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Rujiel ( 1632063 )

      Yeah, eerything that was so interesting from the 2020 cycle has been memory holed. Her playing the "I was that little girl" card to jab at Biden as a racist, only to gladly become his VP at the drop of a hat. Even now after all the drama it's still clear they don't even like each other, to put it mildly.

      The dems no longer even pretend to represent the working class.. they are now proudly a party that caters to college-educated white people, and are hoping they can cling back that majority of white women who

      • it's still clear they don't even like each other

        She whipped out the race card at the first debate.

        Then Biden appointed her "immigration czar", the worst possible assignment. That was a knife to the kidneys.

        After that, they seemed "even" and got along okay.

        Biden is helping her reelection campaign by keeping a low profile.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Rujiel ( 1632063 )
          There has been plenty of acrimony still, Biden resisted for weeks stepping down even saying it would take an "act of God" to make him step down from the race. Even after doing it, his regret over it made headlines as well. Then you have the democratic party's final "f*ck you" to him, putting him on Monday night of their convention at 11PM. Rarely does the public get to see this kind of inter-party disdain. IIRC him and Jill didn't even stick around for Kamala's speech. So yeah, they still hate each other.

      • The dems no longer even pretend to represent the working class

        Indeed. That's why I'm voting for the person who shits in a gold toilet.

    • Certainly more interesting than the hopey, changey, newly sprung from the head of Zeuss story that we get instead.

      What on earth are you talking about? All anyone talks about is how she slept with Willie Brown, you included. And yet somehow you think no one talks about that? Turn your brain on.

    • AI is quite a versatile acronym - Absolute Ignoramus comes to mind when thinking of this non-blond

  • So, a SF Chronicle search-engine then? (Score:3)

    by ClickOnThis ( 137803 ) on Saturday October 12, 2024 @06:06PM (#64859887) Journal

    If it's "trained" from articles in the Chronicle about Kamala Harris, then presumably it reflects the editorial stance of the publication over the time starting in 1995. Sounds useful, but like all things in the media, you shouldn't get your info from just one source.

    • Ground level truth (Score:5, Informative)

      by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Saturday October 12, 2024 @07:04PM (#64859977) Homepage Journal

      If it's "trained" from articles in the Chronicle about Kamala Harris, then presumably it reflects the editorial stance of the publication over the time starting in 1995. Sounds useful, but like all things in the media, you shouldn't get your info from just one source.

      Getting news from both sides is no longer sufficient, I'm finding that I have to literally go to ground level truth.

      An example from this morning's news, the article on the left says: "Lawsuit says Virginia is illegally purging legitimate voters off the rolls" [AP]

      Sounds pretty bad, eh?

      And the article on the right says: "Biden-Harris DOJ Sues Virginia For Removing Noncitizens From Voter Rolls" [TGP].

      Well, that sounds like a douche move from the DOJ, doesn't it?

      Right now (about 12 hours later) some of the news sites are using more informative headlines, but this morning there was a stark divide between what the right said and what the left said.

      The truth, found only by going to ground level this morning, is that Virginia has connected their voting registration to the driver's license database, and automatically removing people who identify (on their driver's license) as non-US citizen.

      The National Voter Registration Act (Section 8(c)(2)) states that there's a "quiet period" of 3 months before the election, voters can't be removed during this period. That's what the DOJ is complaining about.

      Virginia responded by saying that a Virginia state law requires that they purge non-citizens from the voting rolls.

      (There's also some claim that the driver license database is full of erroneous information and the purge will drop lots of legitimate voters.)

      (Additionally, the constitution says that voting is controlled by the states, so it's not clear to me that federal law can override a state law like this. Most of the federal control over voting was made explicit by constitutional amendment: women voting, ex-slave voting, 18 year old voting, and so on. Can someone with law experience fact check this for me?)

      It's clear to me that this is a contentious issue and there are arguable points on both sides...

      ...but boy! The rhetoric this morning made it look like both sides were being complete assholes! Oh, the outrage! That really grinds my gears! That other side is just completely unhinged...

      Be sure to go to ground level truth before you come to a decision.

      We're all living in Plato's cave here.

      • Re:Ground level truth (Score:5, Insightful)

        by PPH ( 736903 ) on Saturday October 12, 2024 @07:19PM (#64860005)

        The National Voter Registration Act (Section 8(c)(2)) states that there's a "quiet period" of 3 months before the election, voters can't be removed during this period.

        That's a loophole which needs fixing. It's legal in some states to register up to 30 days prior to the election. In a few, registration on election day is possible.

        So, all the non-citizens (and felons, etc.) need to do is to wait until the 90 day period is up and then register. Uncontested.

        • Obviously non-citizens cannot vote legally. But felons can in many states. Here's some info regarding the effect of federal convictions on voting rights. [uscourts.gov]

          • Sure, not legally, but they found hundreds of people that did anyway. May not be a big difference for the national level, but locally, elections often hinge on 10 or less votes.

        • Is so small it doesn't even count as negligible. It's painfully obvious that the only reason to do any of this is to disenfranchise perfectly valid voters. Mostly a mix of college students and immigrants who recently got citizenship.

          The problem you're describing literally does not happen. We know it doesn't happen. Donald Trump spent tens of millions of dollars and had 67 court cases and couldn't come up with a single viable example of it.

          I get what you're doing. You don't like the fact that people

        • So, all the non-citizens (and felons, etc.) need to do is to wait until the 90 day period is up and then register. Uncontested.

          Interesting. So no documents demonstrating citizenship ever need to be presented when registering to vote? Why not merely robo-create trillions of voters then?

          Have you ever registered to vote? I had to provide a birth certificate, a social security card, and proof of residency. I am uncertain how all of those immigrants, legal and illegal, are registering to vote without those documents. Let me know, so I can influence the elections myself.

      • What do you mean by going to "ground level truth?" Do you mean this site? [ground.news] Or something else?

        I think you're right in general that the individual states control voting, not the feds. However, I assume that the Federal DOJ sued Virginia in Virginia State court, no?

        • It means that both "sides" are absolute liars and you shouldn't listen to them. You need to go and actually investigate yourself if you want to know the truth. If you don't have investigation skills, then you will never know the truth.

          • If you don't have investigative skills, you can obtain information from sites that do. These, for example:

            https://www.snopes.com/ [snopes.com]
            https://adfontesmedia.com/ [adfontesmedia.com]
            https://ground.news/ [ground.news]

            And I don't think that both sides are "absolute liars". Even the worst disinformers (you know who I mean) sometimes insert portions of the truth to make their claims seem credible. And sometimes people get things wrong without meaning to deceive.

            Again, as you say, you must investigate. Investigative skills are nice to have, but you can

            • And I don't think that both sides are "absolute liars". Even the worst disinformers (you know who I mean) sometimes insert portions of the truth to make their claims seem credible.

              Hmmm. This is an argument about the definition of a word, but point taken, thanks.

        • What do you mean by going to "ground level truth?" Do you mean this site? [ground.news] Or something else?

          I think you're right in general that the individual states control voting, not the feds. However, I assume that the Federal DOJ sued Virginia in Virginia State court, no?

          What do you mean by going to "ground level truth?"

          No specific site, such as the one you mentioned.

          What I meant is that when some news article talks about a lawsuit or supreme court decision, I have to go to the actual document and read it. If they say "Trump said *this*" or "Kamala said *that*", I have to see/hear the actual video. When something becomes an internet meme, I look up the actual image.

          I've found that local news reports are usually a good source of ground-level facts. The local report talks about what happened, who died, why police were called

      • Of those two snippets/headlines, the article of the left is more accurate.

        "Lawsuit says Virginia is illegally purging legitimate voters off the rolls"

        This is true. I guarantee there are people who either haven't updated their drivers license since becoming citizens or are dual citizens who want want to identify as their other citizenship.

        Biden-Harris DOJ Sues Virginia For Removing Noncitizens From Voter Rolls

        This is false. They are suing about removing legitimate voters. While they are using the Nati

  • Oh, yeah... (Score:3)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday October 12, 2024 @06:31PM (#64859919)

    There's no way THIS could go south...

    Think I'm gonna run to the store and stock up on extra popcorn.

  • Everything we're dying to know about Harris (Score:4, Funny)

    by davide marney ( 231845 ) on Saturday October 12, 2024 @06:34PM (#64859923) Journal

    "Not a thing comes to mind."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Pretty much the way I feel. Harris would need to be *extremely* bad before I wouldn't vote for her. I really despise Trump. I do wish we had instant runoff, though. Then I might consider whether Harris is worth a vote...in other than 3rd or 4th place.

    • Well it's a step up from the other candidate and his sofa loving running mate we wish we knew less about. ;-)

  • ...useless crap generator in order to show that they are fully and completely onboard the AI hype train

    • It gave a surprisingly honest answer to a question about how her policies could influence inflation. I expect they'll pull the plug or retrain it to spin facts to their advantage.

      Critics argue that Kamala Harris' policies could lead to increased inflation due to several factors. For instance, her proposal to provide a $500 monthly tax credit to families earning less than $100,000 has been criticized for potentially adding to the national deficit, which is already projected to exceed $1 trillion annually. Economists caution that such measures could cost the economy over 800,000 jobs and may not be sustainable without significant revenue generation

      Additionally, an analysis by the Tax Foundation indicated that Harris' tax credit plan could reduce economic output by 0.7% and result in approximately 825,906 fewer full-time equivalent jobs. This reduction in workforce participation could further exacerbate inflationary pressures by decreasing overall productivity

      Moreover, her broader economic agenda, which includes ambitious spending on healthcare and housing, has been labeled by opponents as potentially leading to "communist price controls," suggesting that such interventions could distort market dynamics and contribute to inflation

      Overall, while Harris argues that her policies are investments aimed at addressing wealth inequality and supporting the middle class, critics maintain that the financial implications could lead to inflationary pressures in the economy

  • A New York newspaper could do this about the local history of Trump and his father.

  • SF Chronicleâ(TM)s ChatGPT answer to my question:

            âoesince September 2024, in Kamala harrisâ(TM) own words and ignoring media opinions, what are Kamala Harris â foreign policy regarding israelâ

    32 words, just thirty two words of rambling.

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