The way this article presents it, "Google's AI is going to mulch up original work and provide a distilled version of it to users at scale, without ever connecting them to the original work." This "involves cutting digital publishers off at the knees." The risk, writes Maggie Harrison, is that without financial support, the original work will disappear. "If the company doesn't figure out a way to compensate publishers for the labor it'll be gleaning from the journalists, the effects on the public's actual access to information could be catastrophic." But the publishers aren't exactly saints here either, having fought a decades-long rearguard campaign to inhibit open access to information. Yes, we need to link back to the source. Yes, sources should be compensated (real sources, not churn journalists who rewrite press releases and expect to be paid for it). There's a lot to work out here.
Today: 4 Total: 94 [Direct link] [Share]
