The robots are coming FOR OUR JOBS

“The robots are coming for our jobs!” is a phrase that has been bandied about for many years, but increasingly so in recent months –thanks, in large part, to the release of AI models such as ChatGPT that have many people worrying just how secure their once ‘plum position’ actually is.

Having considered trying to prove my point by getting ChatGPT to write this month’s column for me, I instead decided to ask it if the robots really are coming for our jobs, to which, at the end of a very long, diplomatic sounding answer, it said: “Many experts believe that there will always be a need for human workers to perform certain tasks that cannot be easily automated, such as those that require creativity, emotional intelligence, or physical dexterity.” So that’s a relief!

The use of AI models can make a lot of things easier, for example by handling a lot of the ‘busy work’, analysing complex datasets or years and years of case law, or analysing medical images and other data to accurately diagnose conditions such as cancer, heart disease and neurological disorders, among other things.

In terms of news (which is what I do) AI offers many ways of making life easier, such as using ChatGPT to rewrite stories in various different styles, suggest interview topics, or provide background information on a topic or person in much the same way as an online search would, but in a more user friendly, summary form. Other types of AI models can also be used for transcribing audio into text, translating stories, or creating summaries and newsletters of the previous week’s stories. There are AI models that can clean up audio faster than sound technicians would be able to, and others that can learn to speak in a specific person’s voice (which could come in handy if I ever want to fool people into thinking I’m in the studio when I’m actually out riding my bicycle).

In what I was told was a threat to my job, and indeed the entire ‘business’ of journalism, there are even companies like NewsGPT or Artifact that claim to offer “unbiased and factbased news” that is “personalised to your interests.” Ignoring for now the echo-chamber effect this kind of content can end up creating in consumers, these companies’ claims also ignore the fact that AI models and the algorithms that run them are created by people – people who have unconscious biases they can transfer to the AI model despite their best intentions. Added to this is the fact that the news stories these services deliver to their readers were not created by their AI models but instead written by a person employed by a media house that has its own editorial policy and guidelines. Even ChatGPT, when I asked it if it would sooner trust AI-generated news or a real-life newsroom, told me: “AI-generated news may lack the nuance and context that human journalists can provide, and AI algorithms may perpetuate bias or produce inaccurate or misleading content.”

I’ll spare you for now my rant about plagiarism, attribution and the loss of revenue suffered by newsrooms when their content is ‘recycled’ and presented by AI models, but you can probably guess that I spend a lot of time reading and thinking about where the technology is taking us and what the future is going to look like. I am reassured, though, because while AI can, without a doubt, be used to make our lives a lot easier and our workdays less stressful, we still have the edge through the fact that AI doesn’t actually think – though some may say many humans they have met don’t really seem to think either...

When AI does begin to think for itself (the so-called ‘singularity’), experts believe we will see a massive leap forward and the development of technological innovations outside of the bounds of human understanding. This in turn will lead to either the type of society envisaged by Iain M. Banks in his book The Culture, where AI is known as Minds, highly intelligent and benevolent beings that oversee the running of society and ensure that all citizens have access to food, shelter, and other necessities, or a future in The Matrix style in which the machines have enslaved us and use our combined electrical impulses to power their ‘civilisation’.

Either way, while futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that the singularity could occur as early as 2045, many other experts believe it could still be hundreds or even thousands of years away, so you can sit back and enjoy your flight, safe in the knowledge that your pilots are still human. At least I think they are...

Until next month: enjoy your journey.

Follow David's monthly column - A news editor's view