Greetings vegans everywhere. In light of the new developments with AI-generated content replacing human-written prose, I want to assure my readers (all three of you), that this blog will always be written by a fallible and flaw-ridden human: me. I also will do my best to keep this blog updated and full of content that will make great bedtime reading. 

I keep reading (see this article in The Byte about Sports Illustrated laying off their staff) about respected and well-known publications turning to AI to write articles even though these publications do little to check content for inaccuracies and lies. These venerable publications are laying off experienced journalists to increase profits and lower expenses. Why don't they lay off the highly-paid executives running these publications? Instead, they chose to fire journalists and editors, the very people who make sure the content is both accurate and entertaining. And online news outlets are following their lead. Is this the final death knell for independent, high-quality journalism that we academic librarians have encouraged our students to seek out when writing research papers? Probably.

Years ago, my parents warned me against following my dream of studying journalism in college by saying that it was too competitive. What they nor anyone in the mid-1980s didn't know was that the competition would come not from other humans but from machines (cue music from "The Terminator"). 

Strangely enough, while I was in library school about 20 years ago, we read articles that predicted the end of libraries, too, but here we are going strong in the third decade of the 21st century. Yes, we've adapted and even teach students and the public how to evaluate sources. Thankfully, there are people much more intelligent than I am who will help us through this new era of AI-produced content. 

I wonder how the animal ag industry will use AI to spread lies against veganism? Or how the climate-change deniers will use AI to "prove" that climate science isn't real? Or any number of groups who will use AI to create more misleading disinformation? AI-generated content is a hacker's, disrupter's, and fake news creator's dream.

And sadly, those are most read and spread by the public. 



 



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