Media also grapples with new, emerging technology

F or 150 years, the Nebraska Press Association has been functioning in the State of Nebraska. Several members of newspapers from across the state were able to celebrate this milestone last weekend in Lincoln, including members of The Imperial Republican and Grant Tribune-Sentinel. It was an exciting milestone to share with peers, even as our collective industry, and free-speech mediums across the spectrum, are looking at ever-increasing challenges to free and open speech in general.
    A panel from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s College of Journalism was present during the convention to give insight into one of these new and developing technologies called Chat GPT, a new capability in the world of Artificial Intelligence that is causing quite a bit of concern across the gamut of society, not just in the media industry. (Look up Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Elon Musk to really heighten your concerns)
    There are many technical ways of describing Chat GPT, but in a nutshell, it’s a computer system that has been interfaced with so much data that it is now capable of having something like a human-to-human conversation with those who are using it. The system also has the ability to create such things as music, art and literature­—including news articles and school term papers. Yes, the journalism professors were pretty concerned about those last two abilities, as were the participants in the room.
    Two suggestions were given by the professors for us news media Luddites in the room. One, don’t be afraid of Chat GPT stealing the one ability that it could never have, which is connecting with other humans like only humans can.
    The second bit of advice wasn’t given specifically as a suggestion, but was gleaned from a comment that one of the professors made.
    One way the  professor is ensuring her students are actually writing their own papers, and not having their new best friend Chat GPT write them, is going back to good old fashioned pencil and paper for essay writing and tests. Brilliant!
    So, for you fellow Luddites, here is my suggestion to steer clear of wondering whether or not your current news is being written by a real human with real facts, or a chat bot with whatever it can pull out of its database—stick to real paper newspapers and get away from the electronics.
    Who knows? Instead of taking over the world like Terminator, maybe Chat GPT will actually be the catalyst that will push us all back to real human-to-human interactions and out of cyberspace.