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

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..."

Re:

[Rujiel]

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

Re:

[Rujiel]

Swing and a miss. I voted for Kamala for California AG per the ACLU's recommendation.. and I regret it. She's a neocon and repubs calling her a communist are very confused

Re:

[DrMrLordX]

It's expensive. The value of some degrees is cratering. Many perceive universities across the US to be hostile to certain political persuasions.

Re: Her actual life ...

[saloomy]

It is a poor value for money because they have become a business of milking taxpayers, and not so much an institute built to aspire as they used to be. They have spent their good reputations poorly.

Re:

[Rujiel]

I was talking about the motivations of parties and who they cater to, but here you're talking about the motivations of individuals. That question has many answers, but at the root of it, the democratic party has abdicated the throne of fighting for working class people. That died along with Bernie's "revolution" (not to mention MeToo, also killed by the democratic party), and the actual left in the US is no longer welcome or represented in the federal legislature or executive branch. Instead we get some pri

Re: Her actual life ...

[saloomy]

More tax and spend policies on the left move the country further up the scale towards communism. It has nothing to do with Pride flags. That conflation falls on deaf ears. If at $6T the government can not solve the countries problems, it wont at $9T

Re:

[Rujiel]

It's not the fault of the hypothetical ignorant masses for playing in the ridiculous bounce house (or hall of mirrors) that has been prepared for them. Anticommunism has been the mindstate of the US since WWII, so it's always been useful to keep the level of intelligence around talking about communism pretty low.

Re:

[PPH]

The trades pay better. And there is a group of software practitioners (particularly on the dev/coder side) who believe that college is next to useless. OTJ training or picking stuff up as a hobby is where it's at. And industry tends to agree with them.

The other point is that lumping college attendance together tends to hide the huge political chasm between STEM professions and the liberal arts/climate science groups. There are quite a few Trump supporters in engineering and similar schools.

Re:

[quonset]

Still far better than the clueless [imgur.com] idiot [imgur.com] .

Re:

[ClickOnThis]

Wow. I shudder to think of what ChatGPT would make of the word-salad in the second example you gave. It would turn AI into a gibbering fool.

For context, Trump was saying something about pollution from China. And then he went on to rail against windmills and push for coal-mining and oil-drilling.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/tru... [yahoo.com]

Re:

[quonset]

Wow. I shudder to think of what ChatGPT would make of the word-salad in the second example you gave. It would turn AI into a gibbering fool.

For context, Trump was saying something about pollution from China. And then he went on to rail against windmills and push for coal-mining and oil-drilling.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/tru... [yahoo.com]

And yet, it's just one of many unhinged [tumblr.com], stumbling [snopes.com], bumbling [imgur.com], rambling [imgur.com] nonsense [imgur.com] he spouts. A clear sign of age related mental senility.

Re: Her actual life ...

[memory_register]

So after he wins the election, is there a support group for liberal midwits, or do you all plan to just scream impotently at the sky again?

Re:

[Valgrus Thunderaxe]

They're all going to leave the country like they do every time they don't get their way in an election.

Re:

[Entrope]

They're going to refuse to certify [axios.com] his re-election, except it won't be called insurrection when they do it.

Re:

[quonset]

They're going to refuse to certify [axios.com] his re-election, except it won't be called insurrection when they do it.

If Republicans can do it [nbcnews.com], why not Democrats? And it's not an "insurrection". It's a bunch of whiny crybabies who who don't like democracy.

If you're trying to decide between Trump & Har

[rsilvergun]

go read some quotes from Trump. I don't mean the sanitized ones the NY Times prints with all the ellipsis, I mean when somebody transcribed word for word what Trump said at a speech. Start with his answer to "what will you do about Childcare" below:

"Well, I would do that and we're sitting down, you know, I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio and my daughter, Ivanka was sooo..uh..impactful on that issue. It's very important issue But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking abou

Re:

[phantomfive]

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.

Re:

[DrMrLordX]

Nobody in the MSM talks about her connection to Willie Brown.

Re:

[phantomfive]

Nobody in the MSM talks about her connection to Willie Brown.

You are a liar and wrong:

https://www.foxnews.com/politi... [foxnews.com]
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news... [msn.com]
https://www.newsweek.com/megyn... [newsweek.com]
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]

So, a SF Chronicle search-engine then?

[ClickOnThis]

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

[Okian Warrior]

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:

[PPH]

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.

Re:

[ClickOnThis]

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]

Re:

[ClickOnThis]

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?

Re:

[phantomfive]

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.

Ground level techniques

[Okian Warrior]

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

There's nothing contentous about it

[rsilvergun]

if this was about voter roll accuracy Virginia would've done it months ago.

It's stupidly obvious that this is a purge designed to eliminate likely democrat voters.

How do I know? Because the citizenship laws target college kids who are out of state and don't have access to the paperwork needed to register. That's what all this "non citizen" nonsense is about. It's about denying college kids who want to register to vote the right to vote.

Of course none of that is in your sources, so your points st

Oh, yeah...

[93 Escort Wagon]

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

[davide marney]

"Not a thing comes to mind."

Re:

[HiThere]

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.

Re:

[Entrope]

Spoiler alert: She's worse than you think. It's why she dropped out of the 2020 race well before the first primary. Like Tim Walz said, we can't afford four more years of 5+% inflation (average), wars breaking out across the world, massive increases in crime (taking us back to levels last seen when Bill Clinton was president and Dems had to tack hard to hard-on-crime rhetoric), record-setting levels of borrowing and spending, a terrible job market, and more.

California newspaper creates...

[MpVpRb]

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

A NY newspaper could do this about Trump & fat

[Anonymous Coward]

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

When can I finally ban Trump from my feeds?

[Eunomion]

Sick of this Russian-owned pedophile polluting my news for a decade running.

Re:

[phantomfive]

10 more years.