My Interview with ChatGPT is my third book, after The Bachelors of Egypt and Enlightened Populism: Reflections on the News Cycle of a Pandemic. In this book I answer questions provided by ChatGPT on my writings, and then ChatGPT answers my questions on its current status and its future as an AI tool and I pass back some of the questions it asked me.
Here is an excerpt from the book:
Questions asked by ChatGPT:
Answer:
The rise of short-form content creates challenges for content creators; they need to grab your attention and deliver a certain message or a number of messages in a matter of seconds, on one side this means that they will sometimes need to sacrifice accuracy just to get the message delivered with fewer words.
An interesting example from journalism that happened long before the recent technological breakthroughs is that articles mention the name of the country instead of mentioning the government, they would say for instance France said or France did instead of saying the French government said or did so and so.
One might argue that the French government is supposed to be the official representative for the French people, and I would say that is inaccurate because it is impossible that 100% of any given population would agree to a certain statement issued by their government or a certain action taken by the mentioned government.
If this happened in the age of newspapers, imagine what could happen in an age with an apparently increasing demand for short-form content.
Which brings us to the second point, why is there a demand for short-form content?
People who need short-form content nowadays are usually bored, scrolling through their smartphones and certainly not looking for something specific; they are just there for entertainment. This does not necessarily imply that content creators cannot provide value through the content they are publishing, above all, content whether long-form or short-form must be entertaining in order to maintain the interest of the audience.
A healthy example is when the media platforms allow content creators to link short-form content to longer versions that members of the audience can view if they would like to learn more about a certain topic, just like linking YouTube Shorts to longer videos on the same platform, in such case the short video just needs to grab the attention of the viewer and provide content that the audience may actually care about learning more about… “Content is King”.
So, in the age of short-form content, the level by which the truth may breakthrough will mainly depend on the creative abilities of those telling the truth.
As for AI-driven algorithms, they are currently well-advanced, advanced enough for me to choose to have a conversation of questions and answers with ChatGPT as an idea for a book, yet until now artificial intelligence is not better than human intelligence, which means that these algorithms even when they are AI-driven they are still being moderated and/or controlled by human beings and the algorithms will do whatever these human beings would like them to do.
This has to do with the idea of the new media helping create, maintain and widen the gaps between bubbles; most of the social media platforms rely on advertising as a main source of revenue.
In order to keep generating money from advertising, they have to increase the number of engaged users as much as possible, and to do that they will need to personalize the experience of each user to mainly show them content they already showed interest in and content that builds on a
perspective that this user may appreciate, over time this helps create bubbles for users with similar interests and widen the gaps between these bubbles.
Not to disregard the idea that those running the social media platforms may choose to intensify content with certain messages and downplay other content.
The recent conflict between Israel and Palestine can serve as an example as there have been accusations from one side for most of the social media platforms, and accusations from the other side for one prominent platform.
The best idea here is to bridge the gap between the bubbles by penetrating one of them; by communicating with content creators on the other side and launching debates, or using other means of communication through which a content creator can deliver their ideas through the channels that provide content consumed by other bubbles.
This happened with the Palestinian cause when Piers Morgan hosted Bassem Youssef and the interview had tens of millions of views.
So, in the age of AI-driven algorithms, the level by which the truth may breakthrough will mainly depend on our ability to communicate together as human beings.
2- Across your works, questions of identity, society, and truth recur. What do you see as the underlying thread that unites these themes?
Answer:
Each person can choose how to identify themselves, other people can choose whether to accept them based on how they would like to be identified or stop dealing with them on the same basis, the way a person chooses to identify themselves is not always the truth of who they are. The
same can be said about societies, they do not always present themselves for who they really are.
Truth-telling requires courage and strength at times, so when you dig deeper you might be able to measure the quality of a society through measuring the amount of lies being told within it, same goes for a human being, the more courageous they are the less likely they will need to tell lies.
3- In The Bachelors of Egypt, solitude and belonging emerge as central motifs. How do these concepts reflect broader social realities?
Answer:
I consider myself a citizen of the world, so I would rather answer your question from a global perspective.
A human being within any society needs both solitude and a sense of belonging, some may choose to belong only to a certain family, others believe in belonging to a certain tribe, whether it is a nation state in the contemporary meaning or any other forms of tribes, while there are some who can maintain a sense of belonging to the human race in general… these senses can be combined together or adopted individually, yet in all cases solitude is not the opposite of belonging, a person may need some time alone to reflect on certain incidents or thoughts, or for any other reason while still maintaining a sense of belonging.
In The Bachelors of Egypt for instance Karim only had this sense of belonging toward his own family members and after his parents passed away he only cared about his own brother, while his brother Ali cared for him, but also cared about making a positive impact in the world.
Both characters had what they adored and what they hated about the society in which they lived, yet they did not have moments of complete isolation from their society.
4- Enlightened Populism critically examines the role of media during the pandemic. How do you conceptualize the relationship between narrative and political reality?
Answer:
The current political reality is that the same set of billionaires who own the big corporates own politicians around the world, along with traditional media channels and the new media platforms.
Through agenda setting, the narrative of the media focuses primarily on trivial issues or non-existent threats instead of tackling the systemic issues of tribalism, cronyism, polarization, toxic competitiveness, systemic bigotry…
For instance there were fictional stories about accusations for Republicans to have been bought by Russian officials and for Democrats to have been bought by Chinese officials, when in fact the same set of billionaires own members of both parties.
Media organizations focused on this nonsense when in fact a real threat like COVID-19 was already killing hundreds of thousands of people in the US.
Also, there is always a sense of grouping for citizens in how the news is sent out, for instance you can see at least one headline for discussions on students’ loan forgiveness in the book, which is an important issue for a certain group of people, yet one can rarely find news on discussions for a Universal Basic Income for all citizens or real discussions on climate change, advocating for net-zero emissions by 2030 instead of 2050 as claimed by the US government or 2060 as claimed by the Chinese government.
There is also a big focus on social issues that have a political angle, stuff like abortion, treatment of LGBTQ+ communities, you may also see headlines about “Black Lives Matter” all over the news, but it is often portrayed as a
“Black Problem”, a problem for this certain group of people, not a humanitarian crisis that people around the world should care about.
These are the topics discussed and this is how they are being tackled, yet it would be extremely difficult to find a single article tackling the idea of “getting money out of politics”.
The media has a casual relationship with political reality, one that is based on a streak of superficial encounters.
5- Your articles often interrogate the tension between fact and perception. Do you believe narrative has now eclipsed truth in shaping public opinion?
Answer:
The two dominant behavioral patterns of communication in today’s world are “Blind Elitism” which involves following the “Elites” or “Experts” blindly on any given matter without asking questions or investigating issues and “Ignorant Populism” which involves relying on feelings to form opinions, attitudes, beliefs… without investigating the relevant information.
Enlightened Populism is presented as a healthy alternative to both behavioral patterns of communication; it involves listening to multiple experts in all fields and investigating the information provided to discern the truth.
The main issue is how we deal with the superficial narrative often provided through traditional media and/or social media.
Let us apply these theoretical words on a real world issue like vaccination, there are people around the world who are willing to accept any kind of vaccine offered to them as long as “Elites” or “Experts” approved it and there are people around the world who reject all vaccinations because of fear and mistrust of the system. These are the “Blind Elitists” versus the “Ignorant Populists”.
This is not the first batch of vaccines and there are plans for many other vaccines in the future. That is why it is important to tackle questions of development, accountability and profitability.
1- Development: corporations should not be allowed to monopolize vaccines.
All vaccines should belong to the public & this is why scientists in all countries should work together to develop vaccines, collaboration ensures efficiency in terms of quality & timing.
Following the development process, companies in all countries shall be ready for implementation, which ensures accessibility.
2- Accountability: under the PREP Act, pharma corporations have total immunity from liability, also the FDA cannot be sued for authorizing a vaccine for emergency use and employers cannot be held accountable if they mandate inoculation as a condition of employment.
The best way to solve this problem is for corporations to express willingness to send their own executives to prison if health issues occur because of their vaccines.
Accountability is generally the best way to maintain trust.
3- Profitability: corporations in general, including pharma corporations are using tools like Donald and Joe to take huge loads of the people’s money, instead of taking a reasonable amount; that is money taken from hospitals, schools, housing projects...
No comments:
Post a Comment