The LA Times' new AI tool sympathized with the KKK. Its owner wasn't aware until hours later
The Los Angeles Times' billionaire owner, who unveiled an AI tool that generates opposing perspectives to be displayed on opinion stories, was unaware the new tool had created pro-KKK arguments less than 24 hours after it launched — and hours after the AI comments had been taken down. The incident presents a massive hurdle for the Times, which looks to win back old subscribers and woo new ones with a new suite of offerings.
During an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Patrick Soon-Shiong, the Times' executive chairman, admitted he had seen neither the piece nor the AI response. But he said the content's removal showed that there are operational 'checks and balances' to the recently introduced system, pegging the moment as a learning opportunity.
'(The incident is) a good lesson to show that at least artificial intelligence is not fully there yet (…) it's in an attempt to understand that,' Soon-Shiong said.
On early Tuesday, the new AI tool generated counterpoints to a February 25 column from Times columnist Gustavo Arellano. Arellano's column argued that Anaheim, California, ought to not forget the Ku Klux Klan's role in its past — calling the white supremacist group 'a stain on a place that likes to celebrate the positive' — and connecting it to today's political landscape. But the divergent views generated by the Times' AI produced a softer vision of the far-right group, which it called ''white Protestant culture' responding to societal changes rather than an explicitly hate-driven movement.'
While the AI-generated comments have since been removed from the piece, and Arellano chimed in to say the 'AI actually got that right' since 'OCers have minimized the 1920s Klan as basically anti-racists since it happened,' the newspaper owner's lack of awareness about the controversy is a glaring issue.
Arellano's piece is not the only one to have contained an AI-generated error or misleading comments within 24 hours of the AI tool's introduction. An op-ed from Scott Jennings about President Donald Trump's response to the Los Angeles wildfires came under scrutiny after the Times' tool labeled the piece as centrist despite its right-leaning talking points. The story's AI-generated counterperspective also failed to note that Trump had threatened to withhold federal aid to Los Angeles unless its leaders complied with specific demands.
The AI tool, which is dubbed 'Insights,' is part of a suite of announcements unveiled by Soon-Shiong on Monday. In addition to the Insights button that appears alongside all opinion stories — a section that has now been rebranded as Voices — Soon-Shiong also debuted a bias meter and live-stream programming from LA Times Studios.
The changes come several months after the Soon-Shiong announced his intention to add AI tools to the website, part of the publisher's push to appeal to younger audiences and conservatives. They also come after months of turmoil have rocked the outlet, including an exodus of readers and editorial board members following a blocked op-ed, mass layoffs, voluntary buyouts, a botched edit that reversed a writer's position and comments from Soon-Shiong that undermined his own reporter.
Voices and Insights
Despite the immediate alarming results, Soon-Shiong told CNN that Insights' AI-generated pieces do not seek to create divisive responses but, rather, inclusive ones.
'It's actually trying to say, 'OK, this is what this piece is trying to say with (…) all the references from,'' Soon-Shiong said. 'And then, if you don't agree with what this piece is saying — because it's a voice, it's not news — this is the opportunity for us to share with you an alternative view that somebody else would look at tied to its references.'
If readers disagree with a Voices piece, the Insights button should provide an alternate view, he said. He added that the new Voices hub stems from that inclusive inclination and a desire to clearly separate the opinion section from the newsroom.
Insights deploys the Times' in-house Graphene AI content management system to determine a story's bias, running a word-by-word analysis to generate an alternate view. Graphene was trained by partnering with external AI models and using decades of Times content and historical pieces, all of which were validated using machine learning and an editorial review process to establish a bias scale, Soon-Shiong said. In his Monday letter to readers, Soon-Shiong described the tool as 'an experimental, evolving technology.' But he told CNN that a team spent months continuing to develop the tool after he initially teased it in December. Like other AI platforms, the tool will continue to learn as it ingests more Voices.
AI-generated perspectives are accompanied by sourcing so that readers can learn more about a particular position. But a blistering Nieman Lab review found several problems with the sources and even the way they're cited. On some occasions, the AI tool cited mediocre or less-than-reputable sources, while on other occasions it duplicated sources in citations. Elsewhere, the AI tool used citations to misleading effect, articulating a point missing in the cited source.
To correct errors, Soon-Shiong says there is some level of human oversight but it's hard for the team to validate all responses in real-time given the scale at which the tool is being applied. Beyond the team in charge of overseeing the tool, readers who encounter AI errors are encouraged to report issues on the Times' Insights page or in the comments section.
The Times is hardly the first publisher to imbue its website with AI tools, and most newsrooms or news tools that have added AI to writing or reporting have yielded disastrous results. Two years after OpenAI launched ChatGPT, even the most sophisticated AI chatbots remain plagued by accuracy and reliability issues.
There are, of course, streamlining benefits to AI in the newsroom: AI tools can expedite newsgathering and, with human oversight, catch problems in articles. But publishing unvetted content penned by AI is a massive gambit — it risks delivering inaccuracies that misinform readers and undermine trust.
LA Times Studio and LA Times Next
The live-stream element — a project dubbed 'The Stream' from LA Times Studio, the Times' production studio that's behind the outlet's TV, film and audio projects — was also introduced Monday. Under the venture, the studio will produce 12 hours of original live-streaming per day spanning news, entertainment, food, business, culture, lifestyle and true crime. To fuel the massive undertaking, LA Times Studio is working closely with the newsroom, Soon-Shiong said, but it's also onboarding studio engagement staff to handle the technical aspects of streaming, shooting and producing.
Absent from Soon-Shiong's list of announcements on Monday was any mention of LA Times Next, a project the billionaire has been quietly developing alongside the others.
In February, Status described LA Times Next as 'a new entity that will prominently feature digital-first personalities, many of whom will appeal to the MAGA base.' But Soon-Shiong dismissed that description as 'speculation.' While he declined to clarify what the project will entail, he told CNN that LA Times Next will be located in Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Nashville and several other places nationwide.
Soon-Shiong also declined to comment on Status' report that Jennings is attached to the project and that there have been conversations about adding Candace Owens and Ana Kasparian.
'We do things in a very thoughtful way to involve the community and, when we release LA Times Next, we will then 'inform the truth' rather than have so-called journalists write speculation and then ask us to respond to speculation,' Soon-Shiong said.
Times readers can expect to hear more about LA Times Next in three to six months, he said.
The editorial board
The billionaire's other project for the Times is rebuilding the paper's editorial board, an especially urgent task given Carla Hall, the Times' last remaining editorial board member, accepted a buyout last week after 32 years with the company.
Hall's departure follows her peers' exodus after Soon-Shiong blocked an op-ed endorsing then-Vice President Kamala Harris for president at the 11th hour in October. The move has been publicly critiqued by Times readers and staffers alike, many of whom ended their subscriptions or left the paper over allegations that the Times owner preemptively bent the knee to Trump.
The Times owner has previously said that the old editorial board 'veered very left' and that a new board should 'have somebody who would trend right, and more importantly, somebody that would trend in the middle.' While the billionaire still won't say who will staff a new editorial board, he said that 'it's time for a rebirth and reinvigoration of a next generation of editorial members who recognize the new world as we see it.'
The changes are an attempt to regain old subscribers while courting new ones at a difficult time for the news industry. Like Soon-Shiong's Times, Jeff Bezos' Washington Post has lost subscribers over his involvement, hemorrhaging 250,000 subscribers in October after a pro-Harris endorsement was blocked and at least 75,000 in 48 hours last week over his opinion section overhaul. The Times lost more than 7,000 readers in October, almost 2% of its total subscription base.
Bezos' Wednesday shakeup of the Post's opinion section has similarly left staffers in a state of rebellion, possibly worsening the low morale that has for months precipitated several staff resignations and departures at the Post. But Soon-Shiong, whose last few months have resembled the billionaire Post owner's, applauded the move on X: 'Welcome to the club Jeff!'
Already, Soon-Shiong claims he's received calls from old subscribers looking to resubscribe.
'It's only one day, but, again, I think engaging all Americans, and the opportunity to have engagement with the young — the younger readers — and to create a platform that allows interactivity, connectivity is the best that we can try,' the billionaire said.
But what a day it was.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
"He should be deported": Bannon warns Trump to "get ahead" of Elon before he can "steal" 2028 race
Former White House aide Steve Bannon is proposing a dramatic escalation in the intra-MAGA feud that burst into public view on Thursday. Bannon, still a close ally and informal adviser to President Donald Trump, called on the president to kick his adviser-turned-rival Elon Musk out of the country. 'They should initiate a formal investigation of his immigration status, because I am of the strong belief that he is an illegal alien, and he should be deported from the country immediately,' Bannon told the New York Times on Thursday. Bannon also told the Times that the Trump administration should suspend Musk's security clearance, pending an investigation into the Tesla CEO's alleged heavy drug use and his reported effort to obtain a classified China briefing from the Pentagon. Speaking on his War Room podcast on Thursday, Bannon elaborated that Trump had to 'get ahead' of Musk, because otherwise the billionaire would work with Democrats to impeach the president, 'steal' the 2028 election from him and put him in prison. Bannon has often made the case that Trump should and will run for an unconstitutional third term in office. 'As sure as the turning of the Earth, if those progressives rub up on him and say, 'Hey, they're never going to buy the Teslas' – they rub up on him, he'll write a $500 million check for Hakeem Jeffries,' Bannon said on War Room. Bannon also suggested that the federal government should temporarily seize Musk's businesses. Bannon has long-running animosity toward Musk. In a February interview, he called the South African tech mogul a 'parasitic illegal immigrant.' Watch Bannon's remarks here:
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
Fusion Energy May Be The Key To World Hegemony
What would it take for the United States to lose its hegemony to a rising power like China? Right now, America appears to be ahead economically and militarily. However, there is a stark difference between America's national strategy (insofar as one exists) and China's. The US under President Trump calls for regression. It seeks to restore a manufacturing economy that peaked in the 1950s—like an elderly man trying to restore hair where it hasn't grown for decades. It is doubling down on domestic oil, gas and coal. Through tariffs, disparagement of NATO and aggression towards allies like Canada and Denmark, the administration has alienated partners that long supported a US-led world order. China, meanwhile, has a tremendous lead in developing the economy of the future. It has a near monopoly on rare earth minerals, which are needed for electronics, renewable energy systems, defense technologies and more. China leads in solar, wind and batteries, the energy systems growing at the fastest rate. It is ahead in electric vehicles, industrial robotics and drones as well. It probably has achieved parity in artificial intelligence and may surpass the US soon. If China were to take Taiwan, it would control the global market for advanced chip manufacturing. In the background, but probably most importantly, China may be on track to commercialize fusion energy before the US or its disgruntled allies. Unlike the US, China has no domestic energy industry with vocal lobbyists (and purchasable politicians) to slow progress. It is funding fusion as a national strategy while private fusion companies in the West are at the mercy of investors that, for the most part, chase low risk and quick returns. Fusion promises cheap, plentiful, baseload energy without carbon emissions. AI, data centers and industrial robotics powered by fusion would produce goods and services at much lower costs than value chains dependent on fossil-fired electricity. Militaries built on swarms of small, cheap, electronic drones and robots—powered by small, distributed fusion facilities deep underground, safe from attack—would have an edge over competitors using large, expensive, petroleum-powered vehicles with vulnerable supply chains. I cannot overstate the ramifications of China developing fusion first. As an analogy, imagine if Japan and Germany had uncovered vast reserves of oil at home in the 1920s. American and Soviet oil gave the Allies a strategic advantage over the Axis powers. Had the situation been reversed, World War II could have ended differently. While private fusion companies in the West have raised about $8 billion total, China is investing at least $1.5 annually into fusion projects—double what the US government spends. Japanese and German investments in fusion don't even come close. Canada, for the record, has no fusion funding strategy. Moreover, the government of British Columbia, home of industry leader General Fusion, seems not to understand the value of this crown asset.* On all fronts nuclear, China is leaping ahead. In April, its scientists added fresh fuel to an operational thorium molten salt reactor—a first. The thorium reserves found in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of China, could theoretically meet Chinese energy demand for thousands of years. The kicker: this reactor design originated in the US. As project lead Xu Hongjie put it, 'The US left its research publicly available, waiting for the right successor. We were that successor." Moreover, in January, China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) sustained a fusion reaction for 1,066 seconds, setting a new record. Its Burning Plasma Experimental Superconducting Tokamak (BEST) fusion reactor could come online by 2027 and is expected to produce five times the amount of energy it consumes. When BEST announces this milestone, Western fusion companies may be announcing that they've run out of funding. To China, fusion is not a startup project—it's a matter of national interest and security. Its scientists are patenting more fusion-related technologies than any other single country and graduating more doctorates in fusion-related fields. And because China is the top refiner and exporter of the critical minerals needed in fusion reactors (e.g., for magnets), no external force is going to slow their progress. In the meantime, China has a cheap gas station next door—Russia—supplying all the fossil fuels China could need in exchange for support in its war with Ukraine. That support includes critical minerals needed by Russian arms manufacturers. Is fusion energy, along with other Chinese-dominated technologies, enough to end US hegemony? In 1988, historian Paul Kennedy published The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, a book that tried to explain the relative success (and failure) of powerful states. According to Kennedy, their rise and fall '…shows a very significant correlation over the longer term between productive and revenue-raising capacities on the one hand and military strength on the other.' Essentially, states must balance economic prosperity with strategy. Technological breakthroughs are vital to both. Innovation creates wealth, which enables the state to invest in defense and win wars. While underinvestment in defense leaves the state vulnerable to other powers, overextension and overspending on defense can run an economy into the ground, leaving it unable to sustain a strong military. Now, picture a great power—China—with a military to rival the US and fusion reactors that provide virtually unlimited energy. Imagine the clout China would have in establishing ports, military bases and consumer markets around the world if it could license that fusion technology. A China that exceeds the US in energy, industry, intelligence, mobility and defense is positioned to usurp it. Of course, China could bungle its advantage. Authoritarian regimes have a habit of mismanaging internal dissent, falsifying reality and making preventable mistakes. The rise of China is inevitable, but the self-inflicted decline of the US and its allies isn't. Rather, it's a choice reflecting how societies invest their resources and envision their future. *Disclosure: The author is an investor in General Fusion and sits on its board of directors.
Politico
an hour ago
- Politico
The AI lobby plants its flag in Washington
Top artificial intelligence companies are rapidly expanding their lobbying footprint in Washington — and so far, Washington is turning out to be a very soft target. Two privately held AI companies, OpenAI and Anthropic — which once positioned themselves as cautious, research-driven counterweights to aggressive Big Tech firms — are now adding Washington staff, ramping up their lobbying spending and chasing contracts from the estimated $75 billion federal IT budget, a significant portion of which now focuses on AI. They have company. Scale AI, a specialist contractor with the Pentagon and other agencies, is also planning to expand its government relations and lobbying teams, a spokesperson told POLITICO. In late March, the AI-focused chipmaking giant Nvidia registered its first in-house lobbyists. AI lobbyists are 'very visible' and 'very present on the hill,' said Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) in an interview at the Special Competitive Studies Project AI+ Expo this week. 'They're nurturing relationships with lots of senators and a handful of members [of the House] in Congress. It's really important for their ambitions, their expectations of the future of AI, to have Congress involved, even if it's only to stop us from doing anything.' This lobbying push aims to capitalize on a wave of support from both the Trump administration and the Republican Congress, both of which have pumped up the AI industry as a linchpin of American competitiveness and a means for shrinking the federal workforce. They don't all present a unified front — Anthropic, in particular, has found itself at odds with conservatives, and on Thursday its CEO Dario Amodei broke with other companies by urging Congress to pass a national transparency standard for AI companies — but so far the AI lobby is broadly getting what it wants. 'The overarching ask is for no regulation or for light-touch regulation, and so far, they've gotten that,' said Doug Calidas, senior vice president of government affairs for the AI policy nonprofit Americans for Responsible Innovation. In a sign of lawmakers' deference to industry, the House passed a ten-year freeze on enforcing state and local AI regulation as part of its megabill that is currently working through the Senate. Critics, however, worry that the AI conversation in Washington has become an overly tight loop between companies and their GOP supporters — muting important concerns about the growth of a powerful but hard-to-control technology. 'There's been a huge pivot for [AI companies] as the money has gotten closer,' Gary Marcus, an AI and cognitive science expert, said of the leading AI firms. 'The Trump administration is too chummy with the big tech companies, and basically ignoring what the American people want, which is protection from the many risks of AI.' Anthropic declined to comment for this story, referring POLITICO to its March submission to the AI Action Plan that the White House is crafting after President Donald Trump repealed a sprawling AI executive order issued by the Biden administration. OpenAI, too, declined to comment. This week several AI firms, including OpenAI, co-sponsored the Special Competitive Studies Project's AI+ Expo, an annual Washington trade show that has quickly emerged as a kind of bazaar for companies trying to sell services to the government. (Disclosure: POLITICO was a media partner of the conference.) They're jostling for influence against more established government contractors like Palantir, which has been steadily building up its lobbying presence in D.C. for years, while Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft — major tech platforms with AI as part of their pitch — already have dozens of lobbyists in their employ. What the AI lobby wants is a classic Washington twofer: fewer regulations to limit its growth, and more government contracts. The government budget for AI has been growing. Federal agencies across the board — from the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy to the IRS and the Department of Veterans Affairs — are looking to build AI capacity. The Trump administration's staff cuts and automation push is expected to accelerate the demand for private firms to fill the gap with AI. For AI, 'growth' also demands energy and, on the policy front, AI companies have been a key driver of the recent push in Congress and the White House to open up new energy sources, streamline permitting for building new data centers and funnel private investment into the construction of these sites. Late last year, OpenAI released an infrastructure blueprint for the U.S. urging the federal government to prepare for a massive spike in demand for computational infrastructure and energy supply. Among its recommendations: creating special AI zones to fast-track permits for energy and data centers, expanding the national power grid and boosting government support for private investment in major energy projects. Those recommendations are now being very closely echoed by Trump administration figures. Last month, at the Bitcoin 2025 Conference in Las Vegas, David Sacks — Trump's AI and crypto czar — laid out a sweeping vision that mirrored the AI industry's lobbying goals. Speaking to a crowd of 35,000, Sacks stressed the foundational role of energy for both AI and cryptocurrency, saying bluntly: 'You need power.' He applauded President Donald Trump's push to expand domestic oil and gas production, framing it as essential to keeping the U.S. ahead in the global AI and crypto race. This is a huge turnaround from a year ago, when AI companies faced a very different landscape in Washington. The Biden administration, and many congressional Democrats, wanted to regulate the industry to guard against bias, job loss and existential risk. No longer. Since Trump's election, AI has become central to the conversation about global competition with China, with Silicon Valley venture capitalists like Sacks and Marc Andreessen now in positions of influence within the Trump orbit. Trump's director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy is Michael Kratsios, former managing director at Scale AI. Trump himself has proudly announced a series of massive Gulf investment deals in AI. Sacks, in his Las Vegas speech, pointed to those recent deal announcements as evidence of what he called a 'total comprehensive shift' in Washington's approach to emerging technologies. But as the U.S. throws its weight behind AI as a strategic asset, critics warn that the enthusiasm is muffling one of the most important conversations about AI: its ability to wreak unforeseen harm on the populace, from fairness to existential risk concerns. Among those concerns: bias embedded in algorithmic decisions that affect housing, policing, and hiring; surveillance that could threaten civil liberties; the erosion of copyright protections, as AI models hoover up data and labor protections as automation replaces human work. Kevin De Liban, founder of TechTonic Justice, a nonprofit that focuses on the impact of AI on low income communities, worries that Washington has abandoned its concerns for AI's impact on citizens. 'Big Tech gets fat government contracts, a testing ground for their technologies, and a liability-free regulatory environment,' he said, of Washington's current AI policy environment. 'Everyday people are left behind to deal with the fallout.' There's a much larger question, too, which dominated the early AI debate: whether cutting-edge AI systems can be controlled at all. These risks, long documented by researchers, are now taking a back seat in Washington as the conversation turns to economic advantage and global competition. There's also the very real concern that if an AI company does bring up the technology's worst-case scenarios, it may find itself at odds with the White House itself. Anthropic CEO Amodei said in a May interview that labor force disruptions due to AI would be severe — which triggered a direct attack from Sacks, Trump's AI czar, on his podcast, who said that line of thinking led to 'woke AI.' Still, both Anthropic and OpenAI are going full steam ahead. Anthropic hired nearly a dozen policy staffers in the last two months, while OpenAI similarly grew its policy office over the past year. They're also pushing to become more important federal contractors by getting critical FedRAMP authorizations — a federal program that certifies cloud services for use across government — which could unlock billions of dollars in contracts. As tech companies grow increasingly cozy with the government, the political will to regulate them is fading — and in fact, Congress appears hostile to any efforts to regulate them at all. In a public comment in March, OpenAI specifically asked the Trump administration for a voluntary federal framework that overrides state AI laws, seeking 'private sector relief' from a patchwork of state AI bills. Two months later, the House added language to its reconciliation bill that would have done exactly that — and more. The provision to impose a 10 year moratorium on state AI regulations passed the House but is expected to be knocked out by the Senate parliamentarian. (Breaking ranks again, Anthropic is lobbying against the moratorium.) Still, the provision has widespread support amongst Republicans and is likely to make a comeback.
