/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25522359/wapo_climate_answers.png?w=696&resize=696,0&ssl=1 "The Washington Post has created an AI-powered chatbot that answers climate questions.")
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25522359/wapo_climate_answers.png?resize=1200,628&ssl=1&description=The+Washington+Post+has+created+an+AI-powered+chatbot+that+answers+climate+questions.){kind=link}
The Washington Post is embedding a up-to-date climate-focused AI chatbot on its homepage, app, and articles. The experimental tool, called Climate Answers, will utilize a wide range of reports to answer questions about climate change, the environment, sustainable energy, and more.
Some of the questions you can ask the chatbot include things like, “Should I buy solar panels for my house?” or “Where in the U.S. are sea levels rising the fastest?” Like other AI chatbots we’ve seen, it will provide a summary using the information it’s trained on. In this case, Climate Answers uses articles in The Washington PostClimate section – was established in 2016 and its aim was to provide answers to questions.
“We have a lot of innovative and original reporting,” said Vineet Khosla, The Washington PostThe CTO said in an interview with Edge“Somewhere in the years and years of data-rich reporting we’ve done, there’s an answer hidden in one of the things we’ve written.”
Below the answer, you will find links to the articles the chatbot used to generate its answer, along with the relevant fragment from which it pulled the information. The tool is based on a enormous language model from OpenAI, but The Washington Post is also experimenting with AI models from Meta’s Mistral and Llama.
Asked about the potential for misinformation, Khosla said Climate Answers will not generate answers to questions that are unanswered. “Unlike other answering services, we really weave that into verified journalism,” Khosla said. “If we don’t know the answer, I’d rather say ‘I don’t know’ than make up an answer.” But we plan to test the tool when it launches today to get a feel for its security features.
The Washington Post isn’t the only news outlet that’s leaning on its news archive to power an AI chatbot. In March Financial Times began testing Ask FT, a chatbot that subscribers can utilize to get answers to topics related to the service’s reporting. Meanwhile, other publishers, such as News Corp, Axel Springer, Dotdash Meredith and Edge‘S parent company, Vox Media, has entered into a licensing partnership with OpenAI.
The Washington Post It was gradual based on the use of artificial intelligence; according to Khosla, the portal has also introduced AI-based summaries of some of its articles. Although The Washington PostThe up-to-date chatbot is currently only able to answer climate-related questions, but Khosla didn’t rule out the possibility of expanding it to other topics covered by the outlet. “We definitely expect this experiment to expand and scale to everything The Washington Post “Yes,” Khosla said.
