No One Knows Anything about AI
And other lessons learned from the Darden Leadership Communications Council meeting
Before I launch into this week’s newsletter - a recap of what I learned at the recent Darden Leadership Communications Council annual meeting - I wanted to thank you, my loyal readership, for helping to get “The Ethical Technologist” off the ground. In just a few weeks, we’ve passed 60 subscribers and maintained an open rate of over 50%. In other words, you’re sharing the newsletter with your friends and reading it every week. To quote President Biden: thank you, thank you, thank you.
Please let me know if you have any thoughts on what I should cover or questions about anything at the nexus of tech, ethics, and democracy. Please also share with your friends and keep up the momentum! Looking forward to building out “The Ethical Technologist” with you.
Now, onto this week’s edition: a recap of lessons I learned during my visit to the Darden Leadership Communications Council (DLCC) annual meeting. The DLCC is a group of communications professionals and practitioners in related fields that gathers to discuss top trends in their industry. This year’s topic was the evolving media landscape. I had a blast.
Some of the lessons I picked up were ethics-related, but most of them were just interesting. I presented on a panel about media innovation and disruption in my capacity as a marketing leader at SmartNews. More importantly, I met people who are at the top of their craft from publications including Axios, USA Today, NBC News, ABC News, Morning Brew, and CNN. There were about 80 of us there this year.
Without further ado, the top insights I gleaned from the conference:
No one knows anything about AI yet. Whether they were journalists, communications professionals, or MBA types, no one, not even the Chief Communications Officer at Microsoft, has a full intellectual grasp on AI’s implications for their industries. Everyone has fresh takes on how AI could potentially be helpful or harmful. Most of the speakers had a sense of tests they want to run with AI to help their businesses, be they to create content, simplify workflows, or generate stories to tell in the media. However, everyone is far away from actually comprehending how AI will fit into — or disrupt — their lives.
Journalists agree that although AI will likely bring about changes in the newsroom, there will always be a role for journalists. The argument mirrored mine from last issue. I felt pretty good about that.
Panelists from all industries thought that AI should not be deployed if it cannot be deployed ethically. However, they are looking for guidance on how best to do so, especially since many of them were not particularly technical.
Developing a strong subscription media business involves creating trusted relationships with readers. People pay money for content, in part, to demonstrate appreciation for the relationship they have formed with a publisher. For example, Axios: they have built a free local newsletter business that readers love. When they asked subscribers in their various cities for $5/month to attend special events it was an easy sell - devoted readers were all over it. However, if a company is only using their newsletter to generate clicks for their website or some other business objective, readers will check out. Some good advice, perhaps, when I decide the Ethical Technologist should have a paid tier…
There’s strong demand for local news, but no one has any clarity on the right business model, other than nonprofit models or small-scale operations (see: Axios) to make it work. There was a lot of discussion about great nonprofit efforts in local journalism, such as the Baltimore Banner. However, in a world where news is consumed on social platforms, no one knew of a sustainable business model, beyond a nonprofit model, for local newsrooms with more than four reporters. However, as articulated well by the Publisher of Axios, Nick Johnston, “Given all the money sloshing around this space right now, someone will figure it out.”
The skills that will be most valuable in a future with AI are likely people skills —communication, writing, storytelling — that are hard to quantify, hard to identify, and are certainly underappreciated. Perhaps the lack of appreciation of people skills is due to the fact that most people think they are good storytellers and writers. Perhaps it is due to the fact that it takes time and judgment to review work samples to determine whether applicants have those skills. However, in a world where many technical tasks are automated away, businesses will need to learn how to recruit the soft skills they will need to compete.
Next year, I bet the DLCC gathering will cover some of these same topics. I wonder what we will have learned by then and what progress we may, or may not, have made. Regardless, looking back, I’m sure each of the panelists will recall something they said that will sound ridiculous in the eyes of history.