Having been in newsrooms for more than two decades, I have seen editors and publishers react like ostriches in the face of long-promised and delivered dangers of the internet age. In keeping with popular myth, he buried his head in the sand in the hope that the threat would pass. (In reality and to be fair to birds like dinosaurs, I know that ostriches sense danger and cannot run away, they fall to the ground and keep hoping to blend into the terrain.)
Both reactions are generally how the most cynical way to describe the response of South African publishers to the changes that have been seen in the last 20 years. The response, justified by the fact that we are a third world country, means that the changes in the modern publishing world will be easier for us than in the first world. How wrong they are and what is the price of this industry and continues to pay.
I thought about this last week, as a friend and one of the smartest minds in matters related to software development in Silicon Valley talked to me through an artificial intelligence text generator and in this case – ChatGPT. As he spoke, my simplistic mind replayed one of Al Pacino’s less popular films, Simone, to figure out what he was explaining. If you haven’t seen the 2002 movie, I think for us only humans, it gives an explanation of what or where AI can take us.
Anyway back to now, in practice I showed what ChatGPT can do in my life Mail & Guardians. I have linked a video where I asked AI to write me a short story Mail & Guardians trends in the South African economy. In less than a minute, he created a story, the way a junior reporter can. It’s mind boggling. For more fun, I asked the bot to write a Valentine’s letter in the style of Ernest Hemingway, it’s a very impressive letter.
I now really understand the behavior of the “ostrich” last year.
This AI technology is a game changer not only for Google, which has held the search monopoly since 1998, but for almost every sector in any economy around the globe. This is something that schools and universities around the world – most of all education systems – should be defeated. How will they try
This AI is not just a chatbot, it creates articles, essays and codes in seconds. Students who already know their promise can use ChatGPT to do their schoolwork and exams. We know how quickly this awareness or has spread among students in more prosperous universities.
As a Harvard Business Publishing piece written a few weeks ago warned that if used unethically, there is a growing concern that technology can reduce the process and purpose of learning. The question for Ivy League schools is whether academics adapt or resist?
What publishers like Mail & Guardians and our friends do? Are we the current custodians of the important institutions of our democracy, hoping that this development will just pass us by and leave us standing. Due to the restructuring of the media space that has taken place, it is more fun to act like the publishers of the past. But that would be irresponsible. But exactly, what we do – I don’t know. As far as I know, his hands can’t fold.
Digitization in the global and local economy is accelerating due to the Covid-19 pandemic, so the online economy is exploding in our backyard – in ways we don’t understand. In sectors that are supposed to be safer to work in like the financial sector which is still high, jobs are being lost at an alarming rate. ChatGPT will only present more challenges.
What an exciting and scary time to be alive. Oh and by the way, Happy Valentines Day, I think it’s an easier concept to understand.