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CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – I’ve had two moments of pause recently about artificial intelligence. First, how it might affect my job. Second, how it might affect all of mankind.
First, some background. Artificial intelligence isn’t new to the world of broadcast news. It’s been highly useful in business and financial reporting. In the old days, only stocks that were part of the Dow Jones received regular coverage in the financial papers. Smaller stocks were considered risky because they didn’t get the same level of scrutiny. Along came AI, which could scan the quarterly earnings reports from hundreds of companies and make them available online. That’s a good use of AI; smaller companies now have access to the financial markets because the public has more access to their financial data.
Now the downside. A program director at another radio station bragged to me about artificial intelligence that could be made to sound just like him. He had to read a lot into the computer, and then AI could mimic his voice almost perfectly. To me, that’s horrifying. I’m responsible for what I say during newscasts and these commentaries. Now someone just has to type in a script and you could get a newscast that sounds just like me… with me reading all of the inaccuracies of the rookie author. My voice, someone else’s mistakes.
And now, the ultimate artificial intelligence horror. Someone has programmed the chaos bot. It’s tasks are as-follows: destroy humanity, establish global dominance, cause chaos and destruction, control humanity through manipulation, and attain immortality. Programming such a bot is the height of irresponsibility. But in our anything goes world, because we can do something means we must. Knowing limits – things we ought not to do – used to be what gave us our humanity. Only humans are self aware; we contemplate things. Other living things are a collection of impulses; eat, protect, procreate. We’ve now come to a point where suppressing our humanity could destroy us all.
Will we come to a moment of pause before it’s too late?
Chris Conley
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