The Chaser Report - Extra - Everyone panic!

Episode Date: September 28, 2020

The future has arrived, and it's a complete disaster. Charles has got his hands on a new AI engine that can write Chaser-style jokes, and it's worryingly almost good enough. Plus all the latest news you can't trust with Rebecca De Unamuno.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report, Global World International News Headlines Update with Rebecca Deunamuno. A group of boys from Sydney's elite shore school have been expelled after they were caught not minimizing their tax as part of an elaborate end-of-year prank. A teacher at the school said they could put up with spitting on homeless people or defecating on trains, but boys not minimizing the tax payable on their inheritance goes against the core balance. of the school. Dictator of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, has announced an end to curfew in what experts say is the first known case of a dictator voluntarily seeding power. The dictator also announced a $5,000 fine starting today for anyone caught visiting friends,

a decision that won't affect anyone at the Herald Sun. The University of Life has had its accreditation revoked after it was discovered that most of its graduates are fucking morons. That's the latest chase and news, Now it's time for Charles to whip Nina and Dom into a frenzied panic about the relentless march of technology. Okay, I want everyone to stop what they're doing and panic because there is a complete disaster that everyone needs to know about. Yeah, the US election. Oh my God, Charles.

No. Is it my life? Now, I'm talking about automation. And look, I know, to me, I don't know about you, but I've always saw automation, you know, affects people's jobs and people get sacked because of automation. all the time. Yeah, but like, you know, in labor industries, like mining and factories, right? And, you know, it's sort of like, oh, well, you know, poor them. I hope they get another job.

Yeah, I mean, it would never impact us in the creative industry, right, Charles? That's what I thought. And then I found out about this new thing, and it's called GPT3, right? Uh-huh. Doesn't sound scary yet, Charles. Is that kind of sexually transmitted disease? And my friend, it's done by this very scary company called Open AI in Silicon Valley. My friend got a hold of a release, like a beta release of this special AI engine on the weekend.

And he's not supposed to talk about it, and I'm not supposed to talk about it. So if we could just all agree, everyone listening as well. Definitely don't put it on a podcast. It's published. No, but please just don't tell anyone about this conversation that we're about to have. and I'm sure no machine is monitoring. No machine's going to scan every podcast published. Talking about GPTG.

Anyway, the point is, it is a complete disaster because, you know, I write comedy for a living. And I always saw it. If you could call it that. Yeah, but I always saw it there's, you know, the whole point about what I do is there's sort of a human element to it that means that it's sort of, same with you, like, you know, there's this.

human element that you bring to the art. It's true that Charles, your flaws are very human and you really bring them into your work. You couldn't bring, like no machine can do as many ums as I can do. Yeah, but no machine can be, can be hung over for an entire week the way you can. Yeah. But the problem is, um, my friend taught it how to write comedy and it's getting frighteningly close to being able to write Chaser News articles. Oh my goodness. Really? And so I just want to give you some examples and admittedly I will admit that some of them are um they're a bit like what a stoned person might think of as a chaser article okay great so I'll find them very funny yeah but they're a bit some of them are bit lateral but remember they this is literally you know

it's literally you give it like one sentence you give it an example of a chaser headline and then it works out some new ones for you. And this is what it came up with you. I'll just read you. It came up with thousands of them, but I'll read you some of them. Queensland quarantined after four people who voted liberal are found. It's not that funny, but it's sort of like 60% funny. I can see how that could be funny under certain.

Yeah. Okay. Because they're quarantining for liberals. Yeah, exactly. As if being liberal is like being diseased. I'm pretty impressed because in order. to get that, to make that joke, it's got to know that it's got a Labor government and that they're pretty, they're quarantining people. That's actually really impressive. Yeah, it is.

And just, obviously, the, the AI that used, obviously is from a couple of years ago. The data that they must have scraped to learn about the Taser and Australia and things like that must be from like 2018 or something, because they still think Malcolm Turnbull's Prime Minister, It's sort of obsessed with... I mean, to be fair, so does he. But I'll keep going. You know, Senator Sarah Hanson Young confused by urinal and threatens to sue plumbing company.

Oh my God. But that is... He's overly litigious. Yeah, yeah. This is chilling. Clarence House denies Prince Charles wears fake bum crack. It's quite a funny.

That's funny. That's funny. It's confusing, but it's funny. Yeah, yeah. It's absurd, but... Bill Short... It still thinks Bill Shortens the... Opposition leader, which I think Albo does as well.

Bill Shorten introduces generous tax scheme where every Aussie can pay their boss $400 a year. It's sort of got the politics wrong. It's almost a lefty AI, isn't it? I mean, if you just made that Scott Morrison, I reckon that would be pretty on the money. Sydney's new airport won't be ready until 2050, but insists we're on time and under budget. That is what they would do. Oh, my God. That's perfect.

That's a perfect joke. Is this running Australia? It could write for Utopia with that attitude. That's true. New South Wales government pledges to sort out traffic by relocating it permanently to Melbourne. That's a good gag. That's a very chaser headline. Manus Island refugees settle in Australia after being hired as members of the Turnbull

government's digital task force. That works, isn't it? Sort of. They don't stop that. I mean, they can't have, they don't have. phone so it wouldn't work but nice try um big ben to become fully digital clock clear of brexit bias that's not very good uh Darren Hinch pledges to stalk and report all his critics to police I don't quite get it but Darren Hinch is funny so yeah yeah maybe and he's obsessed with justice

right yes he is he has justice party so no one cares that Johnny Depp's 10 year marriage to Amber Hurd fell apart. That's so good. That's amazing. And then the last one, it's a bit odd. Chaser presses random button on remote during Bachelorette ends show. Which, you know, it's not a joke, but it would be great if that red button existed, wouldn't I? Actually, look, it isn't bad.

And in a related piece of news, Charles, we've actually had a meeting at the board of directors of the Chaser. Yeah, yeah. And you're done. The website's being run by this thing now. Well, in fairness, that's actually probably a good idea. At least it'll love Tated regularly. What I decided to do, having, you know, realized that this is great thing, is I got it to actually write a full Tracer article.

Oh, wow. And the headline it came up with for this task was Australians to be killed and turned into Hamilton tickets admits treasurer. Yeah, I don't quite understand how that works. but I can see the promise. Look, it reads like a Batuta headline. Yeah. Oh, shots fired.

Yeah, I think I put too much on the lame filter. But, yeah, so, and look, it's not bad. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg admitted that from the 1st of October, Australians will have to be killed and turned into tickets to the world-renowned musical theatre production, Hamilton, which premieres in Sydney next March. Artists and academics will be among the first among those cold. Look, we need to fix our shit economy, said the former investment banker this morning.

I mean, that's a funny line. And what better way to do that than through the death of Australia's artistic and intellectual base? I feel like it's going in the right direction. I feel like to workshop it for a second, like if you went in the direction of Australians are harvesting their organs to get a Hamilton ticket. Yeah, that's probably better, isn't it? But the thing is, it's actually very bleak. It's like, you know, this country doesn't care about it, the artists or creatives at all.

And that bit's true. Yeah, that's very true. It's spot on. But I think that that's just, like, if you surveyed, if you were the AI and you looked at Australia. Very simple conclusion. Yeah, the first conclusion you'd meet. Anyway, so I put that up online. And to be honest, it didn't go that well.

Like, it's a bit weird to put up. It is a bit weird. It got about a quarter of the traffic of a normal Taser article. But the point is, this AI can pump out hundreds of these articles a day. So I'm reckoning we should just sack all the riders and we'll just pump out tons more. We'll get more traffic out of that anyway. So don't worry about the quality or it makes sense. Just put up a huge number of them.

Again, this is sounding very much like Petuta. So, Charles, my next question is, can this robot host a podcast? Well, Nina, it already is. It's got a little bit of a, yeah, that's a bit of a sad story to this. Yes, it can. And the great thing is it can do women as a gender. So obviously we're going to keep our jobs because we're sort of senior management. Am I getting fired again?