By the point I sat down to look at Channel 4’s newest Dispatches documentary, the twist had already been spoiled for me. I knew from the get-go that the lady presenting the present wasn’t actual. As an alternative, she was AI wearing a wise swimsuit with a pitch-perfect British tv accent – critical, tender and southern.
UK broadcaster Channel 4 claims its use of an AI presenter was a primary in TV historical past. (Russian state media might have a prior declare.) I am undecided it is an experiment price repeating. The deepfake expertise used within the documentary generated a extremely plausible tv presenter, who would have been totally forgettable if it had not been for the novelty of the stunt.
That is not simply me being defensive; the presenter herself acknowledged her personal limitations on display. She’s not on location to work together with any of the documentary’s topics, she factors out. She’s not in a position to conduct looking out interviews or attain any Louis Theroux-style conclusions about what’s going down. At most factors, she’s little greater than a voiceover.
Her limitations mirror these of the broader experiment that befell on this episode of Dispatches, titled Will AI Take My Job? It noticed 4 professionals – a physician, a lawyer, a photographer and a composer – pitted in opposition to an AI rival of their line of labor.
Maybe predictably, given the present stage of AI growth, the challenges doled out to the employees and their AI counterparts have been pretty one-dimensional duties that represented a particular factor of their job, relatively than being a real expression of the multifaceted nature of their work.
Solely the photographer, who was tasked with a style photograph shoot, “misplaced” the problem – though it ought to be famous that her AI “rival” was in actual fact a chunk of software program operated and directed by two individuals who have been making a gradual stream of artistic selections.
Even when AI carried out nicely, with ChatGPT reaching some diagnoses much like these of the physician, it is clear that its capabilities are in the end restricted. It couldn’t, for instance, look at the foot of the lady with plantar fasciitis to find out how a lot ache she was in and due to this fact what stage of intervention could be acceptable.
Equally, an AI presenter could be an acceptable stand-in in the event you have been making a one-note academic or educational video, but it surely would not be capable of fulfill all the duties of journalists who normally make documentaries. These embrace discovering human case research, persuading them to participate, making them really feel snug sufficient to open up on digicam and crafting what you discover out from them right into a compelling and cohesive narrative. (Channel 4 has stated it would not plan to make a behavior of utilizing an AI presenter.)
Nonetheless, the Dispatches documentary did seize the place we’re with AI within the right here and now. The professionals concerned skilled the form of discomfort and soul-searching that any of us may really feel if we have been confronted with a deepfake model of ourselves who challenged our money-making talent set or craft.
AI and the way forward for jobs
Maybe the largest failing of the documentary was that whereas it raised pertinent questions on AI, it then left them hanging with out making an attempt solutions.
Within the last 5 minutes of the present, Adam Cantwell-Corn, coverage lead for the Commerce Unions Congress Tech Undertaking, and economist Daniel Susskind level out {that a} sturdy social safety system goes to be essential to take care of the unemployment attributable to AI – a problem for which no authorities is at the moment ready.
The British authorities’s response was to say: “We’re decided folks have the instruments they should benefit from [AI], which is why we’re working with main tech corporations to coach a fifth of our workforce in AI over the approaching years.”
The documentary then instantly segued into dropping the bomb concerning the AI presenter earlier than ending abruptly. It did not problem the federal government’s assertion – a missed alternative.
Pinning the answer to potential AI-induced mass unemployment – polls present it is one thing individuals are very apprehensive about – on the hopes that tech firms will upskill us all in AI looks like asking the zombies to guard us in the course of the apocalypse. It is naive at finest, suicidal at worst.
Tech firms have proven us again and again that they’ll prioritize earnings over folks. They do not even care about their very own folks, who they name household in the future, then lay off with breathtakingly little compassion and respect the following. Governments can be delusional to suppose tech firms care one iota concerning the employment standing of their residents.
One surefire manner for tech firms to maximise earnings is by minimizing headcount, each for themselves and their shoppers. If we have been to be actually cynical, we’d assume mass unemployment isn’t just an unlucky consequence of Huge Tech’s pursuit of AI superintelligence, however their final objective.
Maybe it feels much less scary for governments to toss this sizzling potato again on the tech firms than to grapple with it themselves. As a result of when confronted with the fact that successive political administrations have been dismantling our social security web piece by piece, the thought of rebuilding it most likely appears unappealing, intimidating and possibly even utterly insurmountable.
Possibly it would not happen to an AI journalist to level this out. However to this flesh-and-blood journalist, why our governments aren’t getting ready to assist us navigate what could possibly be an unemployment disaster feels just like the million-dollar query for which each employee in all places deserves a correct reply.