AI is coming for us all
Dale Owens is a communications professional with Town Hall and is a former reporter and producer for TVNZ, Three, The Listener, ABC Australia, SBS World News and the BBC.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT burst onto the scene late last year and has grown so quickly and moved so invasively into my thinking, that when my 13 year old daughter said she had to prepare a speech on how ’big business was destroying the environment’, my first thought was; ‘why don’t you chuck it into Chat GPT? I bet a few in your class will.’
What this development in Artificial Intelligence has done is hang a carrot for all those looking for a quicker less taxing way to get shit done. Have any of you tried to help your 13 year old with her homework recently? A quick fix was welcome.
Chat GPT is really cool. But what I really want to know is, will it take my job? So I asked Chat GPT this exact question, it replied quickly:
“While I can certainly help with various communication-related inquiries and provide suggestions, I cannot replace a human in a communication job. I can be a useful tool to support your work or help you explore different ideas, but the human element and expertise are crucial in fields like communications.”
I was pleased that the robot still recognised that us humans have something tangible to offer. As a member of a growing communications consultancy in Auckland, I’m always on the lookout for ways to improve my content creation skills and writing capacity. What I wasn't counting on this time last year, was an actual robot that could write the stuff for me.
According to Bill Gates, AI is as big as the computer chip, the internet, and the PC. Scarily, loose cannon, Elon Musk is advocating for caution and wishes to slow down its development. Meanwhile, Warren Buffett has already drawn a comparison between Artificial Intelligence and the atomic bomb.
In the developer space, CEO of GitHub, Thomas Dohmke, predicted 80% of the code is going to be written by Copilot, an AI application for that industry. Leaders in tech however say developers aren't going to be replaced altogether, they’ll just now have extra help and output would increase.
Apple is reportedly restricting employees' use of ChatGPT however, joining the growing list of employers that are prohibiting staff from using artificial intelligence tools. It’s not the first time that workplaces grimaced at the emergence of a technological breakthrough. When I worked at Television New Zealand back in the first decade of this century, and Facebook first came out, I remember clearly that it was banned for all employees to use. Now it is the place of work for many of us. I expect AI to follow a similar path, we will all use it to its fullest and take our chances too.
So what about communications; writing, subbing, strategic planning, managing, networking and collaborating with colleagues, clients and all those in between. Will it be able to do all that?
Will AI be able to construct bespoke communications plans, will AI be able to foster real and lasting relationships with reporters, politicians and key stakeholders? Will it work late or get up early to smooth a client's policy advisor’s first appearance on Breakfast Television by jumping in an Uber at 5am in the morning to go with her and reassure her that she was going to do a fab job?
There is a big risk that using AI software to fast track or skip getting communications professionals in to do the job, could quickly lead down a road to ruin, where reputations are put at unnecessary risk, and hard earned capital such as public trust and social licence are damaged.
We all have to accept that AI is here to stay and sorry to tell you, but it will take some of our jobs. Goldman Sachs concluded that AI will disrupt more than 300 million jobs worldwide. Ouch. Supporters however say it will create many more.
New Zealand universities are so worried about AI, they’re using software that can detect AI-generated material with 98 percent accuracy. Some students are complaining on Reddit that they have been told they will need to sit modules again after they were found to have downloaded OpenAI on a university account. One punter said he was offered a way out if he showed the university his entire chat GPT back history, sadly he’d deleted it.
My daughter gave her speech at school. In the end, she wrote most of it herself with a little bit of help from an old comms adviser she knows. A massive sense of pride washed over me, as she trotted off to school to deliver her masterpiece. She'd not even once thought about using Artificial Intelligence to do her mahi for her. Instead trusting her own intuition, instinct and authenticity to see her through. Maybe we’ll all come that full circle, just because there is a shortcut to take, sometimes it’s just best to put in the hard yards yourself and know that you’ll actually get there.
