This piece originally appeared as a biweekly member-exclusive newsletter, where the four owner/editors talk shop with Racket readers. The response was so enthusiastic we decided to publish it as a proper article. Seeing it for the first time? Became a Racket member today.
Is AI destroying your industry?
I ask this because, after writing 4,500 words on a proposed hyperscale data center outside of Duluth, I’ve been thinking about AI a lot. And because journalists won’t shut up about it. (We control the means of publication, thus the surplus navel gazing.)
Over on Twitter (bad place, I know), Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle continues to get dunked on after tweeting, “For a journalist, IMHO, think of your chatbot as a combination of an intern, a first-pass editor, and a fact-checker. It's [sic] job is to do grunt work and help you turn in cleaner copy, not to ‘inspire’ you.” Outsourcing editing and fact checking to hallucinating chatbots, folks are rightly pointing out, isn’t a great look when you’re representing the newspaper that broke Watergate. (“The way to ‘turn in cleaner copy’ is to simply miss your deadline like an adult,” New Yorker staffer Vinson Cunningham rightly observes.)
But I hesitate to single out individual dopes. Media bosses everywhere, the very strata of dopes who've spent the past 35 years cratering their own industry by chasing shiny micro trends, appear to be lapping up this Silicon Valley snake oil like parched lapdogs.
Racket is a staunchly anti-AI shop. OK, OK: We do use the tech for transcription assistance, but it fucks up every single proper noun the audio presents, so heavy emphasis on “assistance.” Overwhelmingly, however, we reject AI on the grounds that “AI-written slop insults readers, mangles facts, and dehumanizes journalism,” per our About Us page. “Don't even think about using AI to write your pitch or your potential story,” warns our How to Write for Racket page. We’ve written and reported with maximum incredulity on NFT hype festivals, “AI-driven networking” conferences, and, most recently, that power-guzzling Google server farm that might teeter above the Twin Ports. Before publishing this rant, I checked with my colleagues to confirm we're all on the same page. "I'm not ceding an inch to those fuckers," responded Em, who even refuses to let the bots transcribe for her.
Are we boxing ourselves into a Luddite corner? Possibly, but I’m fine with that and I have a hunch our readers are, too. (Please prompt Claude to yell at me if I’m wrong!) Me, personally? I like the position writer/Know Your Enemy podcaster Sam Adler-Bell recently elucidated via Embedded:
AI is super helpful for transcription. I understand there must be other harmless things that other writers use it for. But I am very hesitant to become reliant on it for anything. I don't mind missing the boat. It's okay. I am not good at what I do because I am very efficient or optimized. Inefficiency and friction is a big part of thinking, in my opinion.
Inefficiency and friction is a big part of thinking—ding, ding, ding.
The sweaty, FOMO-tinged salesmanship of the AI revolution puts a massive premium on how much more you’ll be able to get done when computers handle all the tricky stuff for you. Well, I like the tricky stuff! Inspiration, execution, refinement: That’s what writing is in totality, a magical process that becomes something else—something much worse—when you put your brain on autopilot. And I don’t want to be any more productive. I produce enough! You didn’t even ask for this rant, but here I am, producing it.
Maybe AI can be hyper-trained on, I don’t know, optimizing backend code or fine-tuning shipping logistics or possibly an even more boring third thing. But writing, music, film, and art? Those are things I value. They’re things I’m teaching my daughter to value. And I’ve only seen AI produce vulgar simulacrums of those beautiful elements of humanity, the sort that human minds have been churning out since the petroglyph craze of the Neolithic era.
Anyway, setting all that aside, I believe it’s unwise to become a cheerleader for the thing that’s threatening to eliminate your job. (Until ChatGPT can conduct real-life interviews with real-life people about their real-life passions and problems, I feel semi-safe about being replaceable.) We’ll continue to dig deep for our own words at Racket. Thank you for helping support that inefficient, frictional process.
