Are you – as our opinion writer, Brett Morris, asks today – nothing better than a “squirrel on crack” as you bury your face in your device and soak up social media’s intellectual candy floss?
We would like to think that because you are reading this on a genuine news platform – whether in print or online – that you have a bit more discernment and want real facts and real stories.
Morris – an award-winning local advertising industry executive – warns about the dangers of “AI slop“, because artificial intelligence doesn’t have taste and is no replacement for a human storyteller.
His most telling observations about artificial intelligence are that it will not make the mediocre any better, “it will just make it easier for them to be mediocre”.
We are cheered by his belief that, sooner or later, the pendulum will swing back: “Just like we limit our sugar intake when we feel ill, we will hopefully start to limit, or stop, our slop intake.”
Audiences for advertising – and, we would add, for news – will want less, but better content and won’t want to read or watch anything “unless it comes from a trusted, slop-free source”.
That’s exactly why you’re here, isn’t it?
