Having been in a newsroom for over twenty years, I have seen publishers react like an ostrich to the danger promised and delivered by the Internet age. According to popular myth, they have buried their heads in the sand in the hope that the threat will pass them by. (Actually, and in fairness to the dinosaur-like bird, I understand that when an ostrich senses danger and can’t run, it will drop to the ground and stay still, hoping to blend in with the terrain.)
Both reactions for the most part is how I would most cynically describe the response of South African publishers to the changes we have seen in the last 20+ years. Your answer, justified by the fact that we are a third world country, means that the changes in the modern publishing world would be less severe for us than they have been for the first world. How wrong they were and what price this industry has and continues to pay.
I thought about this last week, when a friend and one of the smartest minds in software development in Silicon Valley spoke to me via AI text generators and, in this case, ChatGPT. As he spoke, my simplistic mind played one of Al Pacino’s less popular movies, Simone, to better understand what he was explaining. If you haven’t seen the 2002 movie, I think for us mere mortals it provides a little explanation of what or where AI can take us.
Anyway, coming back to the present, I was practically shown what ChatGPT could do in my life in the mail and guardian. I have linked a video where I asked the AI to write me a short story in mail and guardian style in the South African economy. In less than a minute, he wrote a story, just like a beginning reporter would. It’s amazing. For even more fun, I asked the bot to write an Ernest Hemingway style Valentine’s letter, it was an awesome letter.
Now I truly understand the “ostrich” behavior of years past.
This artificial intelligence technology is a game changer not just for Google, which has had a monopoly on search since 1998, but for virtually every sector of any economy around the world. It’s something that schools and universities around the world (basically, the entire education system) should be sweating their butts off. how are you going to try
This AI is not just a chatbot, it generates articles, essays and code in a matter of seconds. Students who already understand their promise can use ChatGPT to do their homework and exams. We know how quickly it is catching on or has already spread among students at our most prosperous universities.
As a Harvard Business Publishing article written a couple of weeks ago warned that if used unethically, there is growing concern that it is technology that could diminish learning process and goals. The question the Ivy League school poses is whether the academy adapts or resists.
What do publishers like? mail and guardian and our companions do it? We, as the current custodians of these important institutions of our democracy, hope that these developments will simply pass us by and leave us standing. Given the restructuring that the media space has undergone, it’s quite tempting to behave like the publishers of yore. However, it would be irresponsible. But exactly, what we do, I have no idea. What I know is that we can’t cross our hands.
Digitization 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 ways we never knew were possible. In so-called sectors with greater job security, such as our financial sector, which continues to have high growth, jobs are being shed at an alarming rate. ChatGPT will only pose more challenges.
What an exciting and terrifying time to be alive. Oh, and by the way, Happy Valentine’s Day, I guess an easier concept to understand.
