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Stocks A to Z / Stocks B / Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A)
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Author: mungofitch 🐝🐝🐝🐝 SILVER
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Number: of 15059 
Subject: Anybody read BRK-B.com?
Date: 12/23/2023 1:43 PM
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The site describes itself as "a fanpage created by shareholders, for shareholders."
Sounds like my cup of tea, and I love the choice of domain name. (at the time I am writing this, BRK-A.com is not yet taken...go for it!)

At first blush it seems to be a large collection of largely boosterish articles about Berkshire and its subsidiaries.
There are quite a few articles, divided into sections for Headquarters, Subsidiaries, and Investments, a useful and sensible division.
It appears to be around an article a day since March.

Having read a bit more, I begin to suspect a lot of (all of?) the content may have been written by ChatGPT.
All of the illustrations seem to be AI generated, too, and not by one of the better AI systems.
Not that this conclusion is necessarily bad, but it's hard to spot much in the way of insights, so the time spent reading doesn't seem to be particularly well spent.

Other comments?

Jim
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Author: tedthedog 🐝  😊 😞
Number: of 15059 
Subject: Re: Anybody read BRK-B.com?
Date: 12/24/2023 6:53 AM
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A clear sign of text like that being AI generated would be some confidently written mistakes (hallucinations).
I haven't read much of this site, have you noticed any howlers?

I've asked an AI to summarize some research work in other areas (e.g. Nobel prize winning work where there's a ton of papers on the original work and papers that follow up on the original work), and the AI often makes (bad!) mistakes.
I concluded that if it's an area in which I'm a domain expert then I don't need a mistake-prone AI to summarize something for me, and if I'm not a domain expert then I don't trust anything the AI says.
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Author: mungofitch 🐝🐝🐝🐝 SILVER
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Number: of 15059 
Subject: Re: Anybody read BRK-B.com?
Date: 12/24/2023 12:02 PM
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A clear sign of text like that being AI generated would be some confidently written mistakes (hallucinations).
I haven't read much of this site, have you noticed any howlers?

No, no hallucinations spotted.
But the repeated recapitulation of the obvious, and ending each section with a generalized disclaimer-like paragraph with pros and cons, seemed giveaways.
Bits have somewhat backwards reasoning, too.

Consider this article.
https://brk-b.com/berkshire-hathaway-japanese-adve...
This is about Berkshire's yen bonds. It includes an unneeded, perhaps even off-topic, broad generalized background on the Japanese bond market, with a focus on government debt.
It goes on:
"Yen bonds have gained popularity among international investors for several reasons. First, they offer diversification benefits, as they are often less correlated with other major bond markets. Second, Japan's historically low interest rates have made yen bonds an attractive option for investors seeking to take advantage of the so-called "carry trade," where investors borrow in low-interest-rate currencies, like the yen, and invest in higher-yielding assets. "

Note how it shifts from describing the advantages of yen bonds to the purchaser, to the advantages of the issuer, while seeming to make it a list of overall benefits to one crowd. Plus, of course, most carry trade is not done by issuing bonds, but by borrowing from financial institutions. Berkshire is a relative exception there.
Sounds like a bot to me. Lots of grammatically correct sentences not really capturing or conveying a firm underlying meaning.

Jim


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Author: Tarti   😊 😞
Number: of 15059 
Subject: Re: Anybody read BRK-B.com?
Date: 03/12/2024 5:47 PM
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Hey everyone,

thanks for the heads-up!

It's my page, so I presume it's ok I answer - and I'm not a bot :)

TLDR:
Initial Article generation is done with the help of gpt-4 based on certain information / resources, then manually edited.
For shareholders studying the annual report themselves, checking out BHE's, BNSF's and other subsidiary pages regularly there is probably little value added.
For other people interested in Berkshire there might be something they did not know already.


Long Version:
For this site I am using an approach to outline my line of thought based on different sources (like the annual report). Afterwards gpt-4 is formulating the initial text.

That gives me a first version of an article and I go over it, add some further information here and there to (hopefully) improve the article. Note: I have outlined usage of AI on the about page.

Why this approach? It enables me to get much more resources into one article. Like general statements of the economy, how the insurance industry is doing, information like these.

This is good as I simply could not do this in this exhaustive manner and with such elaborate English (not native speaker here). And it is, to my mind, much more interesting than the "Berkshire has moved 1.37% today, why" or "What could you have won if you would have invested in Berkshire in 1987" kind of articles.

I was simply looking for a site on Berkshire focusing more on the subsidiaries and not the investment portfolio. And I think there is not much out there. Hence I might be able to provide some value with my approach.

The downside is of course that things can go wrong twice: my understanding of something (thought wrong) or gpt-4 getting my correct thought wrong. (I think the article on the yen bond strategy is one example for me outlining the idea wrong and gpt then just outlining a general argumentation)
And, of course, articles tend to be longer than needed.

Note that I am trying to provide the direct references to the used sources in the text. That's a bit more effort but it is easy to verify certain facts. So even if I'm wrong everyone can find their own interpretation.

Generally it's a question of effort vs. result. There is no Pulitzer Prize waiting for me, I want to just provide some (hopefully) useful information, I am not a journalist. I believe the quality of writing enabled by my approach is much higher than if I would write the articles myself. This is a general AI phenomenon.

On the AI images thing: I don't have access to stock fotos and I simply like it. It's (mostly) some comic images transporting some basic information what to expect in the article. Nothing complicated, nothing offensive.

These are my 2 cents, I hope they were somewhat clear.

If you have any suggestions on how to improve the quality of the content, just let me know. I will be happy to adapt.

Take care

Robert
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Author: unquarked   😊 😞
Number: of 15059 
Subject: Re: Anybody read BRK-B.com?
Date: 03/12/2024 8:37 PM
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Interesting to hear from someone who is thoughtfully attempting to optimize his use of AI in the production of written articles intended for general consumption.

Tom
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