AI is coming for journalism, among other jobs. Enjoy us while you can

I’m somewhat obsessed by AI. That’s hardly remarkable. It’s so dominant in our lives that you are probably a bit obsessed too. Because it’s both terrifying in potential and somewhat incomprehensible in the science, it’s the elements around AI that fascinate, as much as what the technology itself does.

The growing volume of stories in financial reporting about a correction coming in the traded value of AI stocks are like catnip at present. I get Google alerts about the bubble bursting. That’s AI for you. Though I also get Google alerts for stories with headlines like Tinned Soup Will ‘Taste Better’ If You Add 1 Unlikely Ingredient To Your Saucepan. (No idea why ‘taste better’ is in quotation marks, as if the headline is sarcastically judging. Incidentally, it’s parmesan. Or cream. Or oregano – not really one ingredient in fact. And I heat tinned soup in the microwave, so in your face AI!)

I also had an alert last week that said Scotstoun Pool In Glasgow Closed Amid ‘Unfortunate Incident’. And yes, it’s EXACTLY the sort of ‘unfortunate incident’ you’d imagine would shut a pool. No idea what made AI think I’d appreciate something that leant hard into juvenile, puerile humour.

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I’m also drawn to the lists of jobs that are not under threat from AI. They’re fascinating, as we report this week. They include dredge operators, bridge and lock tenders and logging equipment operators. Put together this sounds like a Philip Larkin verse, ironically if that had been a Larkin verse constructed by AI.

Obviously, one of the jobs most under threat is journalist. So, enjoy us while you can. This is clearly A VERY BAD THING. More journalists are needed, not fewer. If we didn’t exist, who would second-tier TV dramas have as prying bogeymen!? 

The benefits of AI are obvious. Astra Zeneca, not exactly a small organisation (they’re worth around £260 billion) happily shout about the value of AI to their growth. “AI now gives us speed, scale and insights that were previously not possible, accelerating and enhancing the creation of potentially life-changing medicines,” they say. If AI helps cure some of the most deadly diseases we face, then that is good. But humanity needs something else.

I’m reading Dan Brown’s new book The Secret Of Secrets at present. It’s a good yarn, very much a definitional page turner, though it gets a little lost in itself. At nearly 700 pages, Brown could have used an editor. But then, I suppose, if you’ve sold more than 200 million copies of your books you’re afforded a little latitude in what makes it to print. 

Romping around Prague, the novel deals with the study of consciousness, and asks some big questions about the big questions. As I’m reading about a converted lab in a former Soviet bunker under Prague, full of machines that take people close to death so their consciousness escapes and can be used for nefarious spying operations, all while a contemporary golem is haunting the place and getting ready to do in some baddies, I’m thinking – this is ludicrous, total bunkum. But completely compelling, and not something that AI could create. AI could get close, but not all the way there.

It is very much both about human consciousness and only possible because of human consciousness. You could feed elements of the story into a machine, but it wouldn’t have an intrinsic human heft to it. Or the element of chance that an author will allow for a weird change of gears or plot. My thesis is not simply AI couldn’t create a Dan Brown novel. It could give it a go. But, as Dan is nudging towards, where is the soul of it?

We’re told that AI will make lives better and easier. But often it feels that AI is a means for the wealthy to do more with fewer people to increase their wealth. To what end? So they can be very rich preppers and live in underground bunkers come the apocalypse? Hold on – there is a plot for a ripping piece of pulp fiction here. I’m off to feed these elements into an AI generator.

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