There has been something of an apocalyptic awakening of late when it comes to artificial intelligence. The dawn of ChatGPT-3 in late November 2022 brought about a frenzy of both excitement and fear of what this language learning model could achieve. It isn't to say that artificial intelligence hasn't been around until now. There have been plenty of fictional movies like 'The Matrix' (1999) or 'The Terminator' (1984) that have highlighted the potentially life-threatening impact that the future of artificial intelligence could hold. I have serious doubts that fiction will be quite so prophetic, but with the developments in just the last few months, there are certainly grounds to be fearful of our friendly neighbourhood language model. The landscape of many industries, particularly in media, are changing forever with simpler tasks or junior roles already being completely replaced by the work of AI as it gives opportunities to improve and speed up different processes, such as data entry, customer service and copywriting. So, whilst we aren't talking about AI escaping the confines of its digital and metaphorical box (yet), we can certainly talk about whether AI is here to help us or replace us.
Publishing Industry By this I mean the publishing of traditional books, newspapers and magazines, a definition that has evolved in just the last decade. It's an ever-changing industry and the last few decades have seen monumental changes in the transition from print to digital publishing. This of course paves the way for artificial intelligence to enter the frame, and in many ways, for the better in an industry in need of revival. Many book readers have migrated to a screen in the shape of e-books or even audiobooks for the more indolent and lethargic type 'readers', which means that instead of heading to your local bookstore or library, you type 'amazon' into a search bar. How are books going to be recommended to you? How might the publishers attract the perfect audience for a niche genre? How should magazines and newspapers be advertised to optimise customers? All the answers lie in the hands of artificial answer. Collaborator • Targeted advertising: AI can analyse huge amounts of data and identify patterns and trends far better than any human possibly could. This information is crucial to publishers when knowing how to advertise their content to the right people. If you have ever wondered why if you search for something online and you start seeing adverts for it everywhere, then that is the work of an AI algorithm. • Content creation: AI powered tools can generate content such as news articles, product descriptions and social media posts, meaning it is a valuable tool for publishers. This saves plenty of time so that publishers and editors can focus on other tasks. • Saving costs: In an industry that is having to adapt to survive, reducing costs is critical. AI can replace the roles of more straightforward jobs so that publishing companies are employing less people. • Translation: Books, magazines and newspapers can be read in almost any language with the help of AI, massively improving the potential global reach of a publication. Competitor: • Churnalism: AI offers the opportunity for publishers to produce content at an astounding rate by using language models such as ChatGPT. This could lead to a flood of content that is void of creativity, expression, and nuance. • Loss of jobs: One of the biggest fears for those involved in the publishing industry is that their job is at risk. With the power of AI growing everyday how long will it be before writers and artists become obsolete? • Fake news: The 2017 Collins word of the year isn't going to disappear anytime soon. As powerful as these AI language models might appear, they actually get a lot wrong! If we begin relying on them for regular content, it won't be long before fake news is circulating the internet again. • Plagiarism and copyright: Where do language models get their knowledge from? About 60 trillion words from various sources on the internet, meaning that the chances of unintentionally plagiarising somebody else's work is pretty high. The real fear, however, should be the future of AI. I alluded at the beginning of this blog to fiction that paints AI in quite a terrifying manner, when in fact those realities might not be too far away. Recently, Stanford University professor Michal Kosinski found the new ChatGPT-4 model wanting to "escape". https://twitter.com/michalkosinski/status/1636683810631974912?s=20 Perhaps this a tad extreme, but we must remain cautious of artificial intelligence and how it could affect many industries, including publishing. There's no doubt that AI can help improve the publishing industry, but it must be utilised properly so that the quality of the publishing does not decline, and writers do not lose their jobs. AI will never get tired, bored, or unmotivated which in itself offers competition to human writers. But creativity is something artificial intelligence will never be able to replace and is far more valuable than AI ever will be. So, as we stand on the brink of an AI revolution, we must fight to ensure it remains a collaborator to the publishing industry. Soon, the reality will be that every time you read an article or book you will ask yourself, did a human write this or a robot? The answer is: you will never know.
*Whether you made it this far or just scrolled straight to the bottom, hello again. It's been a while for Undefined and chances are you had forgotten we existed. This is a piece of work submitted as part of my media and communications degree, that I felt would be worth sharing to Undefined as it serves as a portfolio of works for myself, Ollie and everyone else who contributed over the years. And apologies if there are any formatting errors, I'm trying to do this from my phone in Spain!
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