Before our very eyes, the world is rapidly undergoing a significant period of transition. A future powered by Artificial Intelligence has always been a potential future, but in the last year alone, we have simultaneously seen the monumental capabilities of this technology, and its accompanying downsides, particularly in creative fields. This year’s historic almost 5-month WGA Writers Strike was these downsides in action, with creatives globally protesting against the use of AI in writer’s rooms.
From ChatGPT to Imagen, our technological landscape seems to know no bounds — but how can we reconcile with such a massive amount of knowledge and change?
Our newest episode on Blocks2Bags aims to bridge that gap. With our guest Georgia Lewis Anderson, a broadcast journalist turned AI consultant, we discuss the future in light of such rapid change. For Georgia, who has transitioned between numerous different industries and developed the personalities of AI assistants for Google and Microsoft, she occupies an in-between, where creative pursuits and the tech world can perhaps live a little less at odds. On Blocks2Bags, she shared with us her belief in the powerful potential of AI to work with creatives, and why demystifying it is paramount for our tech-driven future.
KEY BLOCK GEMS FROM GEORGIA LEWIS ANDERSON
Artificial Intelligence Creating Positive Change: AI is only as scary as we make it – instead of working against it, we should work with it to reshape the future of our various industries.
Creativity Vs Tech – There Is A Middle Ground: Creative fields are incredibly important, and while things like the Writer’s Strike are warnings of AI going too far, there are ways for us to mesh these interests to create a more efficient workspace.
The Importance of Curbing Misinformation: Fake news is rife in today’s day and age, so make sure that you’re not getting stuck in the echo-chambers of the algorithm and looking to multiple perspectives and sources in research.
Content Creation Is The Future: New as it is, content creation is only on the rise, and it doesn’t look like it’s stopping anytime soon. Adapting to this shift means seeing how we can integrate it into our workspaces, and use it to revolutionise the future.
TRANSITIONS IN THE WORKING WORLD AND TECH VS. CREATIVITY
She might be an AI consultant now, but Georgia’s journey to that has been anything but linear; with her Mum’s musician work and Dad’s job making computers, she carried a tech/creative middle-ground into her professional career. Starting off as a grime music journalist for SBTV, she experienced a 180° career shift when working for Microsoft with their virtual assistant, Cortana – a job that now, doesn’t even exist. Continuing down that path, she was approached by Google to write the personality for their Google Assistant, before leaving when offered to stay longer and making strides in the tech and creative worlds.
“We don’t have a job for life anymore”, she commented, discussing the shift between the mentality of just security and stability for older generations, to our now more independently charged ambitions. And for creatives, some of the biggest changes of all have been due to technological developments; we’ve seen our consumption of content change significantly, with social platforms like TikTok completely transforming the current landscape. With her past as a journalist and current tech role, she acknowledges the benefits and downsides of this shift, saying that AI is “almost like the new wave of when camera phones came out”, what with its capacity to cut things such as research in half and even curb creative blocks. However, she also laments on the rise in misinformation due to TikTok, discussing the way the app has changed journalism. She adds that to preserve the value of knowledge, we need to we consume content consciously and try to challenge the echo chamber of opinions algorithms create.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: WORKING WITH US, OR AGAINST US?
AI has been a buzzword for the ages this decade. We are both wary of its power, and, seemingly excited about the way it could bring ease to several industries. Calling it a “heavy acronym”, Georgia acknowledges that these fears aren’t unfounded and largely hinge on worries related to job security and the unknown. “The utopian dream is that AI is the antidote to this capitalist society”, she says. With these fears in mind, how then can we accept this new normal?
For one, demystifying AI may seem little, but is in-fact a necessary start. Firstly, Georgia mentions, we need to know that these fears may be hiding incredible potential. For example, in exploring the intersections between music and tech for her panel, she found a study where AI could predict whether a song would be a hit by measuring people’s heartbeat in reaction to a song. Here, AI acts as, a link between audience and artist in a way, which has incredible potential for the future of the music industry. However, AI and tech are not necessarily full replacements for physical, human touches to various projects; AI’s insistence on logic can oftentimes be at odds with our natural human disposition. With this in mind, AI won’t necessarily take all of our jobs, but that we can work alongside it in several different ways.
IS CONTENT CREATION THE NEW JOURNALISM?
Is content creation the new journalism? Maybe this is a divisive statement, with some lauding the move to short-form content as revolutionary, and others arguing that the online influencer trend is much more harmful than helpful.
Our hosts and Georgia think there are nuances to the issue. As we discussed in a previous B2B episode, TikTok can act as a search engine, especially in the vein of cutting down research time and making knowledge far more accessible for the masses than it used to be. Beyond this, for content creators who report on news and the like, we discussed how mingled with the classic elements of journalism, online creators who are conscious of the power of words in today’s world can actually cement themselves as journalists who want to provide an accurate portrayal of events to an audience.
As long as care is taken to curb misinformation and look at multiple sides, the future of journalism could look like working with content creators to produce different types of news bites for social media to help keep people informed.
PREDICTIONS ON THE CREATOR ECONOMY IN 2024
With all of this discussion on the dominating force that is the tech industry, where do we go from here? Our B2B team predict massive growth on an unprecedented scale, something that we discussed in a previous episode on the £100B potential of the creator landscape. And that’s not all; the shift to finding knowledge through short-form content could prove permanent, with tips and payment from platforms becoming a real and true job for these online journalists.
Georgia also comments on the way that the rate of growth for things like the creator economy is at an incredibly accelerated scale compared to the past; with the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ steadily underway, she points out how AI platforms are developing much faster than inventions such as the printing press. The revolutions of our time are both exciting and scary due to such speed, but armed with the care that Georgia recommends, we think navigating it will be much easier.
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