In an era when a field is changing rapidly, you learn things about that area more rapidly. Annual report writing? Annual Reports have stayed the same. A tweet has gotten shorter but the formula for writing one is relatively set. Then there’s AI. Every quarter for the past year, I feel like I’ve had new conversations, made baby steps in my learning, and tried to keep up with new developments, tools, and perspectives. Hence a new feature for me: my quarterly AI post. Here’s what’s new
My learning journey
In my own learning, I’ve tried using AI for places like writing headlines and continued to brainstorm topics. I still write my own material for these content posts. I’m thinking about using AI as an editor for my own work, and mulling over how to fit that into my process. I still wouldn’t use AI for client work as I’m a little paranoid about inputting content into a machine learning tool whose job it is to incorporate that content (does adding content mean it’s still available to the tool as practice material? I would think so). Also, I wonder about the ethics of that integration.
My conversations
I’ve had conversations about the way that AI has made my job easier, mainly around transcription. Also, about how it makes work easier for other creatives. For example, a graphic designer contact was telling me that it’s now easier to orient a horizonal photo vertically, as AI can insert elements drawn from the image. I feel like every conversation I have also brings me to a new tool recommendation, so my list to try out is long.
My interviewing
I’ve also done interviews on how AI is making other professions easier. In the past few months of writing science stories, it’s come up a lot in scientific experiments. Especially those that have a lot of calculations to do, for example, to identify molecule pairings that would create a new drug. Or image sorting when identifying an invasive species. I’ve learned that we have six supercomputers in Canada and that each has a lineup for time on them, and that computing space for all the AI tasks we need done might be our next cause for worry in tech.
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