Waking up on Saturday, December 16, Frenchwoman Morgane Soulier wondered how artificial intelligence anticipated the key topics of the approaching new year. She therefore questioned the conversational robot ChatGPT, star of this expanding digital world: “I want to create a special magazine to know what to expect in 2024,” explained the human to the machine. What are the sections of this magazine and the different articles to be included in it? “.
The developed responses now occupy 37 pages of the publication called Now Futures, with this headline: “2024, understanding the year that comes”. All images were also composed by Midjourney, another generative artificial intelligence program (IAG). Now Futures even analyzes what will mark the new year in food with the example of four recipes based on major trends, including one for Asian-American fusion tacos, to be garnished with meat or tofu of your choice.
“ChatGPT offered me standard, logical sections concerning politics, economics, climate, science and technology, culture, cuisine,” explains M.me Shoe in interview. From there, subject by subject, I made prompt [des commandes écrites] complementary by asking, for example, the important topics in politics in the coming year. The AI then told me that half of the world’s population, more than three billion people, will be called to the polls in around forty countries in total. »
This would be the first magazine produced entirely by IAG, at least in French. But everything moves very quickly in this world. A new network called Channel 1 revealed plans a few days ago for a television news program produced entirely by the IAG, hosted by an avatar. At the same time, a collaborator of the excellent new online media Semafor explained that she had put robots to work to support her journalistic work, for example to get the most out of information from reporters’ notebooks.
The assisted writing, editing and layout work took five hours of Ms.me Soulier the weekend of December 16 and 17, “between the theater and three episodes of the series The Crown “, she explains. Photos and texts appeared at lightning speed. Laying out the information took up the most time for the desk clerk, a novice in the field.
“I am passionate about several things, including innovation and encounters, and I am convinced that they feed each other,” she explains. I love identifying emerging subjects that will transform society, trying to understand them, make them my own and then teach about them. […] With the magazine, I wanted to see how far we could go in communication with artificial intelligence tools. »
I love identifying emerging subjects that will transform society, trying to understand them, make them my own and then teach about them. […] With the magazine, I wanted to see how far we could go in communication with artificial intelligence tools.
Mme Soulier designed and hosted the first Facebook page of the Orange group, a multinational telecommunications company. She also led Netflix’s integration strategy on the French market. She founded an online support community for eating disorders (Feeleat). She writes for various magazines and scholarly journals and will publish an essay on the metaverse in February with Grasset.
The avant-garde explains that to refine the editing and writing work of the chatbot (dialoguer), she had to guide him and be wary of his answers. When the robot mentioned the upcoming elections around the world, it omitted from the list the Russian election campaign where Vladimir Putin will run to succeed him for the fifth time. Asked about this error, the dialoguer replied that ultimately the holding of elections in Russia was not guaranteed. It’s defensible.
The AI, on the other hand, always writes without mistakes, but without originality either. His turns of phrase remain very literary and need to be energized.
The preaching machine also surfs on the evidence to watch out for regarding the global economic slowdown, inflation, monetary policies, and the vulnerability of supply chains. Other sections deal with technological advances (including in AI), the conquest of space, genetic therapies, 3D bioprinting, major upcoming exhibitions on Rothko, Marina Abramović, Joan Jonas and even the TV series dedicated to Harry Potter and the second part of the diptych Dune by Quebec director Denis Villeneuve.
The exercise also confirmed the importance of verifying all the sources provided with reference to the AI which feeds on the Web and therefore at the same time the countless falsehoods found there. The experimenter explains that ChatGPT even cited a supposedly scientific study that could not be found. The IAG finally admitted to having invented the source since it could exist…
” Be careful. You have to be careful. We have to check everything,” summarizes Mme Shoe.
The big lesson of its exercise therefore points to the essential revaluation of the work of verifying humans. Doubt is the salt of the spirit and the lifeblood of science. A motto of journalism says it well: check, check, check, even if your mother says she loves you, check!
“I see these tools as a way to save time and obtain a common thread for the work,” summarizes Morgane Soulier. The journalist, the marketer or the communicator remain essential to verify the source, explore the subject and validate the final result. »