Samir Shukla
By Samir Shukla
Ok. It’s decided. We may be fighting against a brewing hurricane, a tornado of inevitability, but I want human intelligence, not generative fakeness, aka AI, to create content that Saathee publishes. Notice I said create, not generate. Original, human-created content. Yeah, I know, Artificial Intelligence is already lurking and slowly marking everything that is touched and felt by humans. It is inevitable that this technology will become all consuming. If we are smart, we will put brakes and regulations on this beast called AI. Once we have a handle on its unknowable tentacles, and we are able to use its awesome technological potential to do good in the world, we can take the brakes off and reduce regulation.
In the meantime, in something I can control, I hereby post the first rule and regulation for Saathee magazine and all its digital incarnations in the incoming AI age. No content will be generated using AI. It will be written, drawn, and photographed by humans. It will be filmed by humans. Yes, this will be tricky as AI consumes more and more bandwidth.
This obviously doesn’t mean we don’t use all means available to conduct factual research or cross-reference sources. This doesn’t mean we can’t tweak photos a little for contrast or brightness. It doesn’t mean we don’t use spell checkers and grammar software, use technology to increase productivity and efficiency.
We use software for magazine design, operate our website and media platforms, and I’m sure AI lurks in these, but that is the backend. It’s sort of like using an alarm clock to wake up in the morning. I’m talking about content, stuff you read, watch, and listen to, this will be created by humans, the old school way. Analog, real, maybe even cut and paste, with all its human emotions, anxieties and joys.
Tech companies and search engines are piling on top of each other, jumping over each other, pushing the limits of copyright laws in their rush and flush to implement AI. It’s all about market share. If one company doesn’t do it, another certainly will.
The bottom line is that Generative AI is already ripping off publishers, writers, filmmakers, musicians, artists, photographers and other content creators. There are slew of lawsuits against Tech companies using AI to steal content. This is a good thing. Stealing copyrighted material and intellectual property is the same as stealing physical stuff at your local stores. There’s no difference. Deepfakes are also troubling AI generated content we must deal with.
Musicians, writers, poets, filmmakers, and others have given away their creations in the past. This is done by choice. AI simply finds content, copies, aggregates and spits it back out. This is essentially stealing. Three-year-olds with the ability to speak into a phone can ask ChatGPT to make fake stuff. Anything that AI generates should come with credits, sort of like the credits that roll after a movie, where even the smallest participant gets a shoutout.
Excitement and the potential benefits of AI are palpable. Spreading disinformation, misinformation and fakeness, stealing content generated by humans, these are the darker aspects of AI.
The world will become more artificial, but Saathee’s content will be created by humans, as much as, well, humanly possible.
Samir Shukla is the Editor of Saathee Magazine.
Contact: samir@saathee.com
Twitter/X: @ShuklaWrites
Newsletter: ShuklaWrites.Substack.com
