Having been in a newsroom for more than twenty years, I’ve seen editors and publishers react pretty much like an ostrich in the face of danger long promised and delivered by the internet age. In line with the popular myth, they’ve buried their heads in the sand in the hope that the threat passes them by. (In reality and to be fair to the dinosaur-like bird, I understand when an ostrich senses danger and can’t run, it flops to the ground and remains still in the hopes of blending into the terrain.)
Both reactions for the most part is how I’d most cynically describe South African publishers’ response to the changes we’ve seen over the past 20 years plus. Their response, justified by the fact that we are a third world country, means changes to the modern publishing world would be less severe for us than they’ve been for the first world. How wrong they were and what a price this industry has and continue to pay for it.
I thought about this last week, as a friend and one of the smartest minds in matters relating to software developments in Silicon Valley talked me through artificial intelligence text generators and in this case – ChatGPT. As he talked it through, my simplistic mind replayed one of Al Pacino’s less popular movies, Simone, to get a fuller understanding of just what he was explaining. If you haven’t watched the 2002 movie, I think for us mere mortals, it provides a bit of an explainer of what or where AI can potentially take us.
Anyway back to the present, in practice I was shown what ChatGPT could do in my life at the Mail & Guardian. I’ve linked a video where I asked the AI to write me a short story in Mail & Guardian style on the South African economy. In less than a minute, it drafted a story, in a manner that maybe a junior reporter would. It’s mind boggling. To have further fun, I asked the bot to pen a Valentine’s letter in the style of Ernest Hemingway, it was a damn impressive letter.
I now truly understand the “ostrich” behaviour of years past.
This AI technology is a game changer not only for Google, which has held a monopoly over search since 1998, but for virtually every sector in any economy across the globe. It’s something schools and universities across the globe – basically the entire education system – should be sweating bullets over. How will they test
This AI is not just a chatbot, it generates articles, essays and code in a matter of seconds. The students who already understand its promise can use ChatGPT to do their school assignments and examinations. We know how fast this realisation is going or has already spread amongst students in our more affluent universities.
As a Harvard Business Publishing piece written a couple of weeks ago warned that if used unethically, there’s a growing concern that it’s a technology that could diminish learning process and objectives. The question the Ivy League school poses is whether academia adapt or resist?
What do publishers like Mail & Guardian and our peers do? Do we as the current custodians of these important institutions of our democracy, hope these developments simply pass us by and leave us standing. Given the restructuring the media space has been through, it’s rather tempting to behave like publishers of old. It would however be irresponsible. But exactly, what we do – I have no clue. What I know is that we can’t fold our hands.
Digitisation in the global and local economy has accelerated significantly in the wake of the Covid-pandemic, it has seen the online economy explode in our backyard – in manners we never knew were possible. In supposed more job secure sectors like our still high growth financial sector, jobs are being shed at an alarming rate. ChatGPT will only pose further challenges.
What an exciting and frightful time to be alive. Oh and by the way, Happy Valentines Day, I suppose a simpler concept to understand.
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