Commentary: AI Is (a) Useful, (b) Frightening, (c) Empowering, (d) Disruptive, (e) All of the Above

Emotions are high as artificial intelligence is poised to upend work life.

AI’s potential threat to democracy and human society scares me, but I’m experimenting with it anyway – and finding it useful and exciting. If that seems contradictory, it’s the reality many of us are navigating.

AI may be taking over some jobs but based on a recent experiment, mine is not yet in danger. I asked ChatGPT to “Write a column about AI in the style of Steve Petranik, editor and executive publisher of Hawaii Business Magazine.”

The result, headlined “Navigating the Pacific Wave: AI’s Voyage in Hawaii’s Business Seas,” clumsily overused ocean metaphors and actually included the phrase, “In the aloha spirit of embracing new technologies.” It was full of cliches and glib ideas, BUT, it was well-organized, made good word choices and built a coherent argument for AI’s positive role today and in a brighter tomorrow. Clearly, ChatGPT has a pro-AI bias, even when trying to speak in my voice.

Don’t worry that Hawaii Business Magazine will use AI to write our articles. We won’t. But we are using it to support our reporting. The grunt work of journalists used to include transcribing the recordings of our interviews. Now we use Otter.ai – one of many AI transcription services – and save many hours, which now can be invested in further reporting and writing. You too may be using AI to transcribe meetings and conversations. Thank you, AI, for making that part of our work easier.

AI sometimes transcribes words incorrectly – it almost always screws up Hawaiian words – so we have to double-check its output, but if the recording is excellent, Otter’s AI transcription error rate is sometimes lower than the typical human error rate, maybe because it doesn’t get tired or bored by the mundane work.

Challenges for Creatives

AI challenges the principles of creative people like writers and designers, but we can look to the past for guidance. At the advent of personal computers, some illustrators and designers felt the new technology inhibited their creativity, while others embraced it. Today, most such creatives find tech tools to be an essential part of their kit, along with more traditional tools.

Digital photography was also a contentious technology when it first appeared, but decades later most professional photographers have voted with their cameras – the advantages in capturing the exact moment and time saved in the darkroom are just a few of the irresistible attractions. Creativity in photography is greater than ever, while those who love film are free to keep using it.

One of my favorite authors, John le Carre, wrote and revised his complex novels by hand – until his death in 2020 at the age of 89. Stephen King does most of his writing on a computer and that’s my method too.

Useful Start Points

The AI platform Midjourney played a role in this issue’s cover and Gen Z feature. Hawaii Business Creative Director Jeff Sanner had many ideas for illustrations, but instead of spending hours sketching them all out, he prompted Midjourney for about 40 starting points. He tinkered with those outputs that intrigued him, further refining the ideas and illustrations.

Then over two days, Jeff personally modified a few select illustrations to create what he wanted. The result is a personal creation using a combination of new and old tools and Jeff’s creative mind.

A good analogy for writers is Hamlet, Shakespeare’s crowning creation, which many scholars believe the playwright based on a Norse legend and on previous literary archetypes. Those were his starting points – the rest is Shakespeare.

Here are some of my initial principles as Hawaii Business experiments and works toward a fully formed AI policy:

• The AI we use should reduce our mundane, time-consuming, repetitive and uncreative work or improve it so we serve our readers better.
• A thoughtful human with good judgment should review AI’s work to ensure it is accurate, fair and of good quality, and to guard against bias.
• New uses of AI should be introduced with caution, with each staff member (including me) discussing them with at least one HB leader and preferably more – sometimes including outsiders.

I recommend creating your own business and personal AI policy and experimenting with AI. If you need further persuasion, consider this quote from Karim Lakhani, a professor at the Harvard Business School: “AI won’t replace humans – but humans with AI will replace humans without AI.”