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By the time I sat down to watch, the twist had already spoiled me. I knew from the beginning that the woman presenting the show wasn’t real. Instead, it was an AI in a smart suit with a quintessential British TV accent – serious, soft and southern.
Channel 4 in the UK said its use of an artificial intelligence presenter in its latest documentary Dispatches was a first in television history. (Russian state media may have Previous claim.) the Deep fake technology Behind it was created a believable television anchor, which would have been completely forgettable were it not for the novelty of the gimmick. I’m not sure it’s an experience worth repeating.
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It’s not just that I’m being defensive about my job as a journalist; The presenter herself admitted her limitations on screen. She noted that she was not on site to interact with any of the subjects of the documentary. She’s unable to conduct research interviews or come to any Louis Theroux-style conclusions about what’s going on. At most points, it’s little more than a voiceover.
Its limitations reflect those of the broader experience taking place in this episode of Missionaries entitled Will AI take my job? It witnessed a confrontation between four professionals – a doctor, a lawyer, a photographer, and a composer AI competitor in their field.
Pitting humans against artificial intelligence
It might be expected, given the current stage of AI development, that the challenges faced by workers and their AI counterparts were fairly one-dimensional tasks representing a specific element of their jobs, rather than a true expression of the multi-faceted nature of their work.
Only the photographer, who was assigned to a fashion shoot, “lost” the challenge – although it should be noted that her AI-based “competitor” was actually a piece of software run and directed by two people who were making a constant stream of creative decisions.
Even when the AI performed well, with ChatGPT reaching some doctor-like diagnoses, it was clear that its capabilities were ultimately limited. He could not, for example, examine the foot of a woman with plantar fasciitis to determine how much pain she was in, and therefore what the appropriate level of intervention was.
Likewise, an AI presenter may be a suitable alternative if you are creating a one-note instructional or educational video, but he will not be able to fulfill all the duties of journalists who typically make documentaries. This involves finding human case studies, convincing them to participate, making them feel comfortable enough to open up to the camera, and crafting what you discover from them into a compelling and coherent narrative. (Channel 4 said Don’t plan on getting used to using the AI presenter.)
However, the Dispatch documentary showed where we are with AI at the moment. The professionals involved experienced the kind of discomfort and soul-searching that any of us would feel if we were faced with a false version of ourselves that challenged our skill set or our money-making craft.
Surveys show that workers are concerned about artificial intelligence taking over their jobs.
Artificial intelligence and the future of jobs
Perhaps the documentary’s biggest failure is that although it raised pertinent questions about artificial intelligence, it left them hanging without trying to answer.
In the last five minutes of the show, Adam Cantwell-Corn, policy lead on the TUC’s technology project, and economist Daniel Susskind point out that a robust social security system will be essential to deal with AI-induced unemployment – a challenge that no government is currently prepared to meet.
The British government’s response was to say: “We are determined that people have the tools they need to benefit from (artificial intelligence), which is why we are working with leading technology companies to train a fifth of our workforce in artificial intelligence over the coming years.”
The documentary then immediately proceeded to drop the bomb on the AI presenter before abruptly ending. He did not challenge the government’s statement – a missed opportunity.
Pinning the solution to potential mass unemployment caused by AI – polls show so Something people are very concerned about – Hoping that tech companies will improve all of our AI skills, it’s like asking zombies to protect us during the apocalypse. It’s naive at best, suicidal at worst.
Tech companies have shown us time and time again that they will prioritize profits over people. They don’t even care about their own people, whom they call family one day, and then rest with astonishingly little compassion and respect the next. Governments would be deluded to believe that technology companies care one iota about the employment status of their citizens.
One surefire way for tech companies to maximize profits is to reduce headcount, both for themselves and for their clients. (Watch this morning Layoffs at Amazonwhich praised AI as a “transformational technology” even as it gently noted “the need for more flexible regulation.” If we wanted to be truly cynical, we might assume that mass unemployment is not just an unfortunate consequence of Big Tech’s pursuit of super-AI, but the ultimate goal.
It might be less scary for governments to throw this hot potato at tech companies than to deal with it themselves. Because when we face the reality that successive political administrations have dismantled our social safety net piece by piece, the idea of rebuilding it may seem unattractive, scary, and perhaps completely insurmountable.
It probably wouldn’t occur to an AI journalist to point this out. But to this flesh-and-blood journalist, why our governments are unwilling to help us through what could be an unemployment crisis seems like a million-dollar question that every worker everywhere deserves to answer appropriately.