The rise of AI

Paul Berton and Anne Bokma examine the pros and cons of ChatGPT

“The rise of artificial intelligence has been nothing short of revolutionary, and it is having a profound impact on a wide range of industries, including journalism.”

That is the first line of a column produced by ChatGPT when asked to write an article in the style of Paul Berton about the impact of artificial intelligence on journalism.

There is nothing wrong with that sentence, or indeed the entire column written by ChatGPT, which describes itself as “a large language model trained by OpenAI.”

You tell it what to write and it obeys — and it is getting better all the time. But while there is nothing wrong with the column it wrote for me, there is nothing very good about it either.

It’s too long and boring, but I suppose that’s how some readers might describe all my columns. (And maybe the chatbot’s results are merely a reflection of that?)

The writing is more than competent, but it’s not much fun.

That last phrase — “it’s not much fun” — is more “in the style of Paul Berton,” if I do say so myself, than something like this: “the role of journalists goes beyond just reporting the facts,’’ which ChatGPT wrote.

The AI column talks about how it can be used for a variety of tasks, “including customer service and even creative writing.”

While the former may be true, the latter seems oxymoronic.

Computers and artificial intelligence can be many things, but can they be creative?

The chatbot column says many people, including journalists, see this technology as a threat, but insists it can actually be a help. I agree.

Of course we’re afraid of it. Humans have been wary of technology since the invention of the arrowhead. We resisted electricity, telephones, cars and microwave ovens until it was impossible to do so.

I still use a notebook and a pencil when I report, but most of the young journalists who work in the Spectator newsroom today use a recorder and a keyboard to take notes.

I don’t use the backup camera on my car, and can’t imagine letting it parallel park itself, but lots of people are comfortable with automobiles that drive themselves at 100 km/h. I do, however, appreciate some spelling and grammatical suggestions word-processing programs provide.

Like most technologies, chatbots can free up journalists from mundane tasks so they can do more value-added work. Human work.

In fact, if artificial intelligence makes human journalists work harder and write better to distinguish themselves from machines, that’s probably a good thing. And these days, we can use all the help we can get.