Why Tech Leaders Hate the Media, and Why AI Won’t Save Them

In the war between truth and technology, both sides forgot who they were fighting for.

(Photo by Fabio Sasso via Unsplash)

I’ve been waiting to write this post, but I think now is the time: I cover AI, but nothing here is written by AI. All of the written work on MARS Magazine is created by a human. Farm fresh, organic, non-GMO, 100% Nishiki rice-fed human text. Why is it important to say this Now?

Because some of the largest media orgs, like Business Insider, are now posting stories written by AI and edited or augmented by human staff (despite protests from the journalists’ union). And there are even Substacks written by AI. Some disclose their AI use, but most do not. I know this because I’ve run a few high-profile Substacks through the best AI detection software, and you’d be surprised to discover that some of the highest subscriber count newsletters are publishing essays that register as at least 75% AI-generated.

I’m not casting aspersions on those newsletters (although I think they should disclose such AI use). I mention this because, through my monitoring of a number of top-tier news sites and newsletters, I’ve discovered that AI text published under the byline of humans has become increasingly common (kudos to Business Insider for its practice of disclosing its AI use, by the way).

I knew this day was coming as far back as 2022. It was then, after experimenting with open source AI tools, that I fully grasped what was probably going to occur. AI text wasn’t just coming for graphic designers, it was coming for journalists as well. The revelation prompted a brief bout of existential dread. By brief, I mean for almost two weeks, I ended each day by attempting to sleep, but usually found myself staring up at the ceiling for hours, imagining a thousand different what-if scenarios, pushing my predictive powers to the limit. I finally settled upon what I believed were a few of the most likely scenarios and settled in to learn as much as I could about AI as rapidly as possible.

Part of that process involved bringing one of OpenAI’s chief researchers, Mark Chen, into my then newsroom (Quartz) to brief our staff on the state of AI and what it could mean for journalism. I had already been quietly agitating with some staffers and editors that we needed to be more urgent about educating everyone on AI. I even spoke to our union, the Writers Guild of America East, about rapidly bringing the organization up to speed on AI and its implications for journalists. But it was 2022, and the AI mania hadn’t quite taken hold of the public yet, so my entreaties had limited effect. So I brought in the big gun from OpenAI, and he seemed to make an impression, at least for a moment.

Outside of the newsroom, I fully embraced investigating the inner workings of AI through research and testing of its abilities to effectively generate imagery, video, and human-level text in various styles. Toward the end of 2022, I went on to work at an AI startup, an environment that afforded me unique access to AI scientists who helped me peel back more of the mysteries surrounding this rapidly evolving technology.