Formula E team fires its AI-generated female motorsports reporter, after backlash: “What a slap in the face for human women that you’d rather make one up than work with us.”

3 years ago by L4sBot to c/technology

Formula E team fires its AI-generated female motorsports reporter, after backlash: “What a slap in the face for human women that you’d rather make one up than work with us.”::px-captcha

Empricorn 190 points 3 years ago

Even this headline is spin! They fired no one, they just turned it off.

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Zonetrooper 70 points 3 years ago

Really glad I'm not the first to come here and say this. We're "firing" programs now? Come on.

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nonailsleft 23 points 3 years ago

It's 2024.

Whenever there's a controversy the company can just 'fire' a few AI generated 'employees' and half of the dumdums reading the news will feel satisfied

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variants 10 points 3 years ago

Does the ai get a severance

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bitwaba 3 points 3 years ago

They probably pay residual electrical bills to keep the server on. Not sure if that counts.

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uriel238 2 points 3 years ago

Maybe they spent a lot of money hiring her and are sore about it?

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surewhynotlem 18 points 3 years ago

Murder!

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HeyThisIsntTheYMCA 10 points 3 years ago

Reporter tries to respect new robot overlord. Is SLAMMED in comments.

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RagingRobot 8 points 3 years ago

Ai unemployment is at an all time high!

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Empricorn 4 points 3 years ago

Well, I suppose >0 technically an all-time high for AI...

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TrainsAreCool 7 points 3 years ago

The affected hard drives were burned in a fire.

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Just_Pizza_Crust 67 points 3 years ago

As a fan of Formula E, I can say with certainty that it's the most faux-progressive sport I've ever seen.

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atp2112 37 points 3 years ago

I love the actual product, but loathe the attempts at feigning some sort of progressivism that always manages to put on blast the fact that its founder was a center-right Spanish politician.

Also, Hazel Southwell is literally right there.

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Just_Pizza_Crust 23 points 3 years ago

Yup. FE is about fast cars racing down narrow streets. "Racing to save the planet" is such lame marketing with no real substance, especially considering that each FE car produces more emissions throughout the season than F1 or NASCAR due to expensive manufacturing. And the real potential for innovations has been crushed by blocking development of batteries and powertrains.

Hazel is actually the main person who's made me so critical of FE since 2020ish. I'd love to see her in a full time position for the sport, even for one of the teams. However she has stated several times that she loses money by going to FE events, even when it's paid for. It's fuckin sad, but the only motorsport that makes me feel included and welcome is rally.

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blackn1ght 5 points 3 years ago

FE car produces more emissions throughout the season than F1 or NASCAR due to expensive manufacturing

Are you able to expand on this? What's unique to FE's manufacturing that it could be more impactful than F1? I can only assume it's something to do with the batteries, but F1 also uses batteries for the hybrid system, albeit smaller than FE's.

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Just_Pizza_Crust 5 points 3 years ago

Correct, it's the batteries and powertrains. F1 uses hybrid powertrains, but at the end of each year cars 'transferrable parts' are often sold from one team to another, put in car museums, or scrapped.

FE has a similar process, except nobody wants to put a big dumb battery in a museum, and nobody wants to buy a used battery for their cars (I think they're not allowed to). So whenever a part isn't being used, it's always scrapped. This can include buying a brand new battery for each race, as any depletion may cause a driver to become disqualified for going over the 600kw limit. A new battery every race, even if recycled, is still incredibly wasteful. In comparison, F1 batteries can be used for a whole season.

They're lying about reusing tyres too. Teams often purchase extras and get fined for it, because it's really dumb to race a whole season on 4 sets of tyres.

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AnneBonny 2 points 3 years ago

In the sense that it tries too hard to be progressive?

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Just_Pizza_Crust 37 points 3 years ago

In the sense that it uses progressive language, without actually being progressive in action. It's advertised as being socially progressive while racing in Dubai, eco friendly while transporting supplies on oil burning ships, and being innovative despite blocking battery development.

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driving_crooner 5 points 3 years ago

What do you mean by blocking battery development?

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Just_Pizza_Crust 11 points 3 years ago

Okay, so motorsports have always been considered an innovator in automobile development. Disc brakes, seatbelts, headlights, and anti-lock braking all come from motorsports, and thus the claim put forward by car manufacturers "motorsports innovations make regular driving safer/better" has merit.

In FE, the cars have regulations saying what parts can be modified and improved, and what can't. One of those things that can't be modified on the racecars are the batteries (and powertrains). So no smaller batteries, or more powerful batteries, or different battery casing, or different material components. Every car on the track has been using the same type of 600kw lithium batteries since the beginning of Gen-3 cars.

Manufacturers want to use motorsports as a test bed for trying out new parts and ideas too expensive or risky to put into a production car, so the FIA choosing to block manufacturers from making more efficient batteries for FE means that there's no real innovation going on, despite FE writing the word "innovation" on tons of articles and promotional material.

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andrew 1 point 3 years ago

It's kind of hilarious as a sport. There's so many Mario Kart inspired rules and, not even sure what to call them, but things like the boost when you drive over the special spot on the road.

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Max_P 56 points 3 years ago

We all know the sole purpose was that the fanbase can sexually harass her freely without actually having to deal with handling the misogyny.

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DragonTypeWyvern 24 points 3 years ago

I think the motive was money, but also that, sure.

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hglman 3 points 3 years ago

Motive is still money

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Thorny_Insight 16 points 3 years ago

That is the most cynical take I've read all month

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TwilightVulpine 7 points 3 years ago

It's not unlikely though. In my country there is a retailer that has a CG female mascot with a chatbot and it has been reported that a lot of people try sexting with it.

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uriel238 22 points 3 years ago

People are often hard to work with. They need lunch breaks. They poop. They get tired and cranky. They get sick and break limbs skiing. They need home and family time.

So if every job wasn't also starvation insurance (because as a society we don't care much about our unemployed human population) every automated job would be a good thing.

So all we need is robust UBI and guarantees to everyone their basic needs will be met and met well (e.g. a home rather than a cot in a bunker) and then we can automate away.

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Scotty_Trees 11 points 3 years ago

Slightly off topic, but the fact that I'm now seeing some Formula One/E news make it's way onto Lemmy is a good sign to me that this place is starting to grow more and more.

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ghostpony 6 points 3 years ago

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HeyThisIsntTheYMCA 4 points 3 years ago

Worst part is, now whoever they hire...

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werefreeatlast -17 points 3 years ago

Trump vs Niki Hayley.....20:6? Trump vs AI Super Niki...2:98!

Yey! All hail first woman president Super Niki! I mean Jail! Not hail!

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Gestrid 10 points 3 years ago

If this comment were a map, I'd be lost.

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GONADS125 6 points 3 years ago

I don't know.. looks like a clear path to insanity to me...

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dangblingus 6 points 3 years ago

Good thing you tried your joke out here before bombing in front of a live audience.

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ArbitraryValue -30 points 3 years ago

you’d rather make one up than work with us

Yes? It's nothing personal, human women, but once "having a pleasant feminine voice" is something that machines can do more efficiently than humans, why shouldn't those machines be given the job?

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SkyNTP 52 points 3 years ago

You've got bigger problems than labour relations when "having a pleasant feminine voice" is the success criteria you use to measure the performance of a reporter.

I dunno, this logic sounds exactly like the fucked up logic that went on in the conference room that dreamed up this shitty idea only to have it face reality and be pulled on day one.

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ArbitraryValue -18 points 3 years ago

We're not talking about replacing Bernstein and Woodward here...

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RobotToaster -20 points 3 years ago

What else does a racecar reporter have to do? There's only so many ways you can say the cars are going round in circles.

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Warl0k3 15 points 3 years ago

Never really watched racing, have you....

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DowningBad 3 points 3 years ago

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baronvonj 9 points 3 years ago

Such a Brave Little Toaster.

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dangblingus 2 points 3 years ago

So should be pretty easy for a human to do then right? A lot easier than training an AI model to be able to spontaneously describe what's happening on the race track at any given moment.

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Lmaydev 10 points 3 years ago

Cheaper too I bet.

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dangblingus 1 point 3 years ago

Sure, you just have to hire a team of AI engineers who's job it is to train the AI on thousands of races and test it and test it and test it. Definitely cheaper than just hiring one human to be an announcer.

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Lmaydev 1 point 3 years ago

Not really. The real power of these LLMs is their ability to understand the written word, context and emotion then generate text based on it.

Bing AI uses search to get its sources and its training to summarise them. It doesn't need to be trained on the specific things it's generating off. It just needs to understand them.

Anyone who used ChatGPT to get information and not generate text was using it wrong. This is a very common misconception.

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saltesc 6 points 3 years ago

Not on TV. Female AI is for house and assistant chores only, like Siri and Alexa. At least no one's ever complained about that before...

Worst part is if they made it a guy, they'd get more flack. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

It's clear they need to make it a golden retriever with subtitles and the project can keep going.

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dangblingus 2 points 3 years ago

It's not reasonable to expect regular people to all have executive assistants. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. We're talking about a job that a real person could perform, working for a multi-billion dollar company, not an AI that can mark stuff in your calendar for you.

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nonfuinoncuro 1 point 3 years ago

It's not reasonable to expect regular people to all have executive assistants.

Jared doesn't think so https://youtu.be/B-aJ83eb2BQ

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PipedLinkBot 1 point 3 years ago

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GregorGizeh -4 points 3 years ago

You do realize those voice assistants have male voices too? Just switch it over.

As for the reason why they are female by default, iirc they did some studies on it and it turns out people subconsciously trusted them less and especially men were likely to disregard their advice.

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blackn1ght 4 points 3 years ago

As a fan of F1, and I casually watch FE, I'd much rather have human commentators, thanks.

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dangblingus 0 points 3 years ago

Brutal take.

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lightnsfw -1 points 3 years ago

What about all the dudes that don't get a shot either way because they're not an attractive woman? Is it a slap in the face to them?

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Thorny_Insight -3 points 3 years ago

I feel like AI haters really struggle to grasp the concept of an actually competent AI that can do something better than a human would. The counter-arguments always seem to come from the assumption that this will never be the case but that's changing the subject.

If there is an AI doctor that has a proven track record of being better at diagnosing illesses than any human doctor then I'll rather consult the AI. I'm fully aware how "unfair" it is for the human doctor but I don't want to have to deal with misdiagnosis just because I wanted to show my support for human doctors and knowingly going for the inferior option.

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dangblingus 4 points 3 years ago

Because we haven't seen an AI yet that can do what a human can do but better.

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bitwaba 2 points 3 years ago

The flip side is that the company that owns the doctor AI doesn't want you to use it because their 95% successful diagnosis means every 1 in 20 cases they have the opportunity to get sued.

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Thorny_Insight 1 point 3 years ago

Well presumably they would be using it to replace a doctor with even worse success rate so I'm not sure why wouldn't they want me to use that instead.

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dangblingus 3 points 3 years ago

Why do you think you know what's happening in a hypothetical doctor's mind?

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bitwaba 2 points 3 years ago

Legislation is always 2+ decades behind technology. Legal protections are in place for doctors making wrong decisions with the information they have on hand as long as it's to the best of their ability. The same protection doesn't extend to someone's brand new AI doctor.

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Eheran -18 points 3 years ago

Indeed, absurd argument (rather feeling) that should have no place in such a discussion. But it was no discussion. It was feelings making them cancel it because they want zero potential for bad news, regardless of how right they would be.

Image if translators argued the same about the various apps. Laughable.

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dangblingus 3 points 3 years ago

Why are you even on Lemmy if you're pro-AI-taking-people's-jobs? Lemmy is a socialist forum.

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Eheran 1 point 3 years ago

Ah, sure sure.

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