By Shachi Kurl, President
I wrote all these words myself.
It shouldn’t be revolutionary to declare this, and truthfully, given my many years of column writing, asking ChatGPT to write a column in my style probably would have been a lot easier than trying to bang it out on a float plane.
But can an AI chatbot really be trusted to make a case for the value of humans doing journalism? Regardless of what Google Gemini “thinks”, I think not.
Such is the speed and proliferation at which information is now created with artificial intelligence that its products are not only treated by some with skepticism and credibility (“Is this true and accurate?”), but even more alarmingly, that real, true, accurate information is undermined as “fake,” or AI-generated, by those who don’t like what they see.
We’re watching the gaslighting impact of this in real time.
As if things hadn’t been chaotic enough, Canada-U. S. trade negotiations took another a turn into the ludicrous and petulant after Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government ran TV spots in American markets during World Series games between the Toronto Blue Jays and L.A. Dodgers.
The ads featured late American President Ronald Reagan, the politician they used to call the “Great Communicator”, criticizing tariffs.
U.S. President Donald Trump and his coterie threw a collective tantrum, calling the ad “fraudulent” and “fake,” and claimed it was a product of AI use, and then said they were slapping 10 per cent tariffs on Canada. The Reagan Foundation, choosing to cover itself in a slimy sheen of sycophancy, piled on, claiming the video misrepresented what Reagan said.