I think I recall you asking readers for our take on AI journalism. Not just with your Roundup, but wherever I find articles authored by AI (even, as in your piece this morning, when it is supervised by a journalist) I skip the article. It is an almost automatic response on my part. Why? The answer may lie in some reflections I had yesterday on how I would feel seeing a play that was AI written. I love live theatre, but I am certain I wouldn’t bother going to such a play. I realize that in the theatre or in reading texts I like engaging with another human mind at work. For me, and I may be a tiny minority, reading AI-generated texts or seeing an AI-generated play is like bending over to smell a rose only to find it is without scent. Somehow the product seems inherently stale.
Thanks, Penny. As someone who once hoped to be a professional theatre critic, I too, would be mighty hesitant about an AI-written play. That said: A Parliament Hill reporter is deluged every day with all kinds of text: committee evidence, committee reports, transcripts of every press conference on the Hill; and Hansard itself. AI tools, it seems to me, are an invaluable way to process all that text and, in the case at hand, provide a decent summary which may prompt one to either read the whole report or, for Parliament Hill newsrooms, help decide where to deploy scarce reporting resources.
I think I recall you asking readers for our take on AI journalism. Not just with your Roundup, but wherever I find articles authored by AI (even, as in your piece this morning, when it is supervised by a journalist) I skip the article. It is an almost automatic response on my part. Why? The answer may lie in some reflections I had yesterday on how I would feel seeing a play that was AI written. I love live theatre, but I am certain I wouldn’t bother going to such a play. I realize that in the theatre or in reading texts I like engaging with another human mind at work. For me, and I may be a tiny minority, reading AI-generated texts or seeing an AI-generated play is like bending over to smell a rose only to find it is without scent. Somehow the product seems inherently stale.
Thanks, Penny. As someone who once hoped to be a professional theatre critic, I too, would be mighty hesitant about an AI-written play. That said: A Parliament Hill reporter is deluged every day with all kinds of text: committee evidence, committee reports, transcripts of every press conference on the Hill; and Hansard itself. AI tools, it seems to me, are an invaluable way to process all that text and, in the case at hand, provide a decent summary which may prompt one to either read the whole report or, for Parliament Hill newsrooms, help decide where to deploy scarce reporting resources.