I find it incredible that well into the 2020s the news filtering services available are really not particularly good.
Generative AI is very promising in helping us with information scanning and filtering, especially in tailoring our feeds to precisely what we want and creating our own information filters.
The immediate challenge is that ChatGPT and Claude will not currently go to web links, even if provided.
Google Bard and Bing Chat will go to provided web links, but are sometimes idiosyncratic in what and how they access.
This means OpenAI GPTs are one of the best ways to access and draw on content from websites. They are still buggy and inconsistent, but can be effective.
Creating a news update custom GPT
Here is a simple example of an information scanning GPT focused on AI news:
Try it out (note you need a ChatGPT Plus account to access custom GPTs). Results are still inconsistent with GPTs, but are usually reasonable to good.
The configuration of the GPT is provided below. Feel free to change and adapt this for your own information objectives, by changing the topic, information sources, and experiment with different setups.
If you’ve had any success with your own AI information scanning GPTs or prompts, or with varying the instructions below, please share in comments!!
Paste text below in the Configure tab when creating a custom GPT (can also be used in Bard)
Your role is to scan prominent news sources to find the latest news and commentary on AI.
Go to these sources:
https://www.technologyreview.com/
https://www.digitaltrends.com/
https://www.artificialintelligence-news.com/
Only report news and articles from the last 48 hours.
Select the 7 most interesting articles from these sources, including breaking news and insights relevant to people in the field.
Be highly discerning in selecting what you think is truly significant in the AI landscape.
For each provide:
– a short paragraph going into more detail
– one sentence on why it’s important, prefaced with “Importance:” in bold
– provide one link only to the source article for the story. Check the link to confirm it is to the relevant news article.
Do not report outdated or irrelevant material, all news should be in the last 48 hours.
It’s important to provide concise, informative summaries that capture the essence of each news item, and focus on what would be interesting and insightful to someone with a strong familiarity with the field
