Here’s a semi-Doubting Diego series of thoughts about AI, which is generally hated by people in my demographic (really, every demo) and journalism. The complicated topic’s impossible to escape, overwhelming the Iran War and its effect on the economy, trivial events like the Oscars, rote political commentary (from the left and right) and Venezuela’s win over the United States for the World Baseball Classic championship. (The WBC apparently was a huge draw, but I didn’t watch a minute of it, and am glad than no Red Sox players were injured.) It’s by far the biggest story of this era. Every week brings news of layoffs from huge companies (Dell laid off 11,000 employees last week in favor of AI, which puts The Washington Post’s recent “bloodbath” of 350 people in perspective) and it won’t stop soon.
Like other writers/editors, the proliferation of ChatGPT and the like—at high schools, colleges and journalism itself—horrifies me and leads to probably-not-paranoid questions about articles that’re read every day. At Splice Today, we’ve conducted a few tests on raw copy submitted for publication and thankfully—although maybe it’s beyond our skills to ferret our “cheaters”—haven’t found a single instance of what I consider subterfuge. That’s not “old-fashioned,” just a rational reaction to a technology that’s, in my view, cheapened the profession.
But last week I read a brief comment on LinkedIn—teeming with AI “prophets,” cheerleaders and naysayers—from my old friend and New York Press colleague Andrey Slivka, one of the brainiest men or women I’ve ever had the pleasure to work and spend time with.
He wrote: “There’s a lot of talk (and anxiety) about what AI means for art and artists—can AI create satisfying versions of the former, and if so, what happens to the latter? But it seems like this conversation has happened before. The nineteenth century saw the rise of photography, which led to anxiety on part of painters… who, in France and elsewhere, responded by creating impressionism, to this day probably the most beloved and popular school of painting in the history of art. It wasn’t a coincidence either: Impressionism was directly driven by the era’s advances in optical science, which let people perceive the world in new ways.” (In a subsequent message, he briefly continued, focusing on business “solutions,” some that’ll work, some that won’t. He added, in his caustic way, “I could see it making a huge impact in journalism, too. ‘Writing is thinking,” so it will never take over real writing (or art, etc.), but most journalism isn’t thinking.”
That level-headed perspective makes some sense. You can draw parallels in the 20th century with the beginning of film, and then radio and television, the latter which put a huge dent in the newspaper industry, as evening newspapers and multiple editions of dailies fell off, at the time occasioning predictions that the newspaper was dead. That was eventually correct, but it wasn’t TV but rather the internet that did it in. In fact, offset litho presses (“cold” type replacing “hot”) proliferating in the early-1960s made it affordable not only for big companies to speed up production, but also anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit and the willingness to bet on a long shot, to create weekly newspapers, whether “underground,” “alternative” or “community” that sometimes flourished.
In the late-1980s desktop publishing allowed owners, such as myself, to streamline production costs—gone were a battery of “paste-up artists” replaced by already-corrected copy spit out by laser printers. Those savings allowed for more expenditures on editorial and sales staff. That’s a very tiny similarity to what AI’s doing today, although it wasn’t as draconian.
The recent death of late-20th century Cassandra Paul Ehrlich is a warning about no-ifs-ands-or-buts predictions. Ehrlich, whose 1968 book The Population Bomb sold over three million copies, was discussed widely, often on college campuses, and some took his warning as gospel and didn’t have children. I was a young man then, and didn’t give it much credence (same with “Earth Day”), thinking I’ll do whatever I want, and that includes procreation, which, happily for my wife and me, worked out. As noted by (among other scathing obituaries) Jack Butler in The Wall Street Journal, Ehrlich pushed the idea of involuntary sterilization, in conjunction with his belief that the world had too many people. Butler: “’The battle to feed al of humanity is over,’ he wrote. Humanity had lost, he thought, and hundreds of millions of people would soon starve to death. This didn’t happen… Hunger has collapsed.”
When AI shakes out—some companies making billions, others out of luck, like the “dotcom” boom and bust and boom not so long ago—and is integrated into most facets of life, taken for granted by those very young or not yet born, maybe it’ll still be a heated topic. I’ll miss out on those discussions, given my age, but as non-religious (not atheist) people like me like to say, usually in jest, WHO KNOWS?
The accompanying photo—not AI-enhanced, just picked out of a box in my office—shows my mom and Uncles Joe (annoyed at something!) and Pete near their home in the Bronx. It was a pre-TV time, but all the dailies kept the family informed about Prohibition Madness.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: Margaret Mitchell begins writing Gone With the Wind; William Faulkner’s Soldiers’ Pay, Sylvia Thompson’s The Hounds of Spring, A.A. Milne’s Winne-the-Pooh and Bertolt Brecht’s Man Equals Man are published; Amy Lowell wins the Poetry Pulitzer; Julie London is born and Robert Todd Lincoln dies; U.S. Congress the Air Commerce Act; a necrophiliac serial killer’s on the loose in San Francisco; Bing Crosby cuts his first record; Gene Austin’s “Bye Bye Blackbird” is a big hit; Bubbling Over wins the Kentucky Derby and Gene Tunney wins the heavyweight boxing title.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023