Taxi Driver Online

Here's an example from Taxi Point on the probable AI angle. I've remarked upon this kind of thing before, but only in the sense that it basically pads out/embellishes a very short tweet into something more substantial. And then, right at the end, it states the text of the actual tweet, so in effect you're reading the same thing twice, plus the padding

Anyway, this is the Greater Manchester Police Traffic tweet posted very early yesterday morning (presumably just an hour or two after the operation ended late on Friday evening):




For what it's worth, this is a high-res version of the photo, and the word 'Manchester' can just be read on the plate that's been removed, and the expiry date looks like 31 July 26

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G8AsENFW8AE ... name=large

Anyway, this is how Taxi Point rehashed the tweet:


Taxi blitz hits Manchester as police arrest one and pull dozens off the road in late-night crackdown

https://www.taxi-point.co.uk/post/taxi- ... -crackdown

Greater Manchester Police carried out a large-scale taxi and private hire enforcement operation in Manchester city centre, stopping and checking more than 174 licensed vehicles in a single evening.

The operation resulted in one arrest, 24 licensing suspensions, five vehicle defect notices and two immediate prohibitions.

The checks were conducted as part of a proactive road safety and compliance exercise, according to a statement published by GMP Traffic on social media. Officers worked alongside licensing teams to assess vehicle condition, documentation and driver compliance.

Police said the action was taken to prioritise passenger safety, even though the operation caused disruption to some customers whose journeys were delayed or cancelled as a result of vehicles being removed from service.

Police checks on more than 170 taxis in Manchester city centre result in enforcement action as authorities target passenger safety.

Immediate prohibitions are typically issued where vehicles are found to be unroadworthy, while licensing suspensions can relate to documentation, insurance, vehicle standards or driver conduct. GMP has not published a breakdown of the specific offences identified during the checks.

The arrest made during the operation has not been detailed, and police have not confirmed whether it was directly related to licensing, vehicle compliance or a separate criminal matter.

Taxi and private hire enforcement activity has increased in several UK cities in the lead up to Christmas, with police forces and local authorities looking to demonstrate robust oversight of passenger transport, particularly during night-time economy hours.

A GMP Traffic spokesperson said: “As part of a proactive operation, GMP officers checked over 174 taxis in Manchester City Centre, resulting in 1 arrest, 24 licensing suspensions, 5 vehicle defects and 2 prohibitions.

“Keeping passengers safe remains our priority, even if it led to a few unhappy customers tonight.”

No point in going through every word of that with a fine tooth comb, but compare these two bits, for example:



So although to an extent it's just padding it out, where is the evidence that customers had *cancelled* trips because vehicles were 'removed from service'?

I'd guess that's just supposition - the GMP tweet implies that some of the cars stopped did indeed have passengers in them, but I can't see any concrete evidence that any of the suspended or prohibited cars had passengers in them at the time

Or, for example:


Where's the evidence it was both taxis AND private hire? The tweet just uses the generic t-word, so it could potentially be all PHVs (to be fair, there is an HC in one of the photos, which looks like it's been pulled over. But no definitive evidence in that regard, and by the looks of the photos it looks mainly PHV, which of course numerically would be expected).

And where's the evidence 174 were checked in a 'single evening'?

That certainly could be the case, but 174 is quite a big number, so it could have been on of those ops straddling several different evenings, or even encompassing the daytime. (The GMP wording "even if it led to a few unhappy customers tonight" perhaps suggests it did all happen on a *single* *evening*, but again it's more a strong supposition rather than a definitive fact

So there may be a couple of what might be called minor or low-level 'hallucinations' there

To be fair, that's to an extent what the media have always done, and there are tons of similar examples in the mainstream press of a tweet or Facebook post rehashed by the media into something more padded out, but it's normally a bit more straight bat (except, perhaps, for a more sensationalist headline and intro), and largely rearranging the wording a bit, if not just a straight copy and paste job.

Then there's the like of this, which is typical Taxi Point-style slight embellishment and supposition, and the kind of thing that a mainstream media report wouldn't so readily do:


So it's all pretty harmless in a way, and informative enough in another way. But, particulary as regards a specialist audience, it's really just stating the obvious, and while that may be useful to a more mainstream/generalist audience rather than to members of the trade, how many times does Taxi Point have to rehash the basic issues in relation to the cross-border thing, say? Useful enough as an explainer to a member of the public, but to the average reader of Taxi Point I'd guess it's just the latest iteration of something they've read dozens of times.

And another thing about the Taxi Point approach to this kind of stuff is that it's just doing the job of the powers-that-be for them, in that it simply reinforces their PR approach, and then some. Although that's useful enough from a basic 'news' perspective, maybe a better approach would be to interrogate and critique some of the official claims and figures. For example, why no metion of Manchester City Council, since presumably they must have been involved, and it looks like LOs in the photos. And nothing about any cross-border angle, particularly given the constant official Manc moan about the number of Wolves cars in the Greater Manchester area?

By contrast, historically PHTM has taken a simple rehash approach, either just copying and pasting stuff from local press sources, or just rehasing local press stuff slightly. The comment, critique and interrogation stuff is largely in separate and easily identifiable articles. (Obviously Taxi Point does that kind of thing too, but I'm talking more about the basic 'news' angle here.)

By the way, I had a look round to see if GMP or Manchester City Council had posted anything else about the op, but couldn't find anything. And, indeed, the Taxi Point piece simply restates the GMP Traffic tweet at the end of the article, suggesting that's the only source.

And I fed the whole Taxi Point piece through that AI checker, and it flagged all but two paragraphs up as AI-produced. No prizes for guessing which paragraphs were flagged as AI-generated, and which two were marked as written by a human

Anyway, I should have checked Taxi Point before drafting the stuff above, because Wolverhampton were involved in the op, and did issue an official tweet about it, and Taxi Point has published another article

Which is covered in a separate thread...

Another AI detector takes quite a different approach to the Taxi Point piece, and the narrative analysis is as follows (in terms of numbers, it says 30% AI detected):

That's maybe an indication of the kind of stuff I see in Taxi Point's output, which at a very intuitive level reads to me like it's a tad artificial

And the 'repetitive moral framing' thing is maybe just the way it replicates the 'safety is paramount' sort of stuff churned out in council press releases


Which indeed is what I normally notice about Taxi Point as opposed to the local press stuff. Which obviously has its pros and cons

Of course, the AI analysis/detector tool suffers from the same shortcomings it's actually critiquing - the narrative it throws up is all 'flawless grammar', 'smooth structure' and 'overly eloquent' etc

aww spoilsports

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector