Revelations that Sports Illustrated published stories written by artificial intelligence and authored by an artificially contrived writer with a phony name and thumbnail portrait were astonishing evidence of the degradation of some segments of the media in the era of AI.
Sports Illustrated was at one time a venerated publication. As a teenager, I subscribed, and I cut out and kept photos of my various sports heroes (quarterback Y.A. Tittle, kneeling in the mud, blood running down his face). In the same vein, I learned to appreciate great sports writing by those who knew the drama behind the competition on the field. To this day, if Dan Shaughnessy is writing about the Red Sox for The Boston Globe, I pay attention.
As a journalist for many years in Vermont, it was the human story that mattered. At the Rutland Herald, candidates for governor and other offices would come to us seeking endorsements, and we heard them out on the issues, but we also took their measure as people. Howard Dean, running for governor, was bursting with confidence and ideas. Phil Scott was measured and decent. We could see it. Maybe we were part of some kind of deep state, but I think we were just people participating in democracy.
One thing is for sure: AI was not writing our stories or editorials. These days there is so much information out there and so many places to obtain it that it’s often hard to tell the wheat from the chaff. There’s a lot of chaff. And the more remote readers or viewers are from the human origins of the news they read or view, the more cynical they are likely to become.
For a time in the 1980s, I wrote stories from Vermont for The New York Times, and the editor who handled my work suggested that sometime I should visit the newsroom. I did so one Saturday afternoon and was struck mostly by the fact that the august New York Times was doing basically the same thing we did at the Rutland Herald. There was the editor on the phone with his reporter, going over the story with questions about facts and how best to present them. These were conscientious people doing their job, zeroing in on the truth embedded in the news. As local media outlets have atrophied in recent decades, community members in many places have lost the capacity for conversation among themselves. The voices that fill the void are sometimes toxic or, in the case of Sports Illustrated, robotic.
The whole field of AI now threatens the human element, which to me is what is interesting in any human endeavor. I remember how astonished I was when I learned that some rock groups were using drum machines. Drum machines! Since when did we rely on machines to make music? Why would that be fun or interesting? Sampling and all kinds of electronic effects now dominate popular music, and most of it is beyond me. I was always a jazz fan, and when I saw sweat appearing on the brows of Ella Fitzgerald or Oscar Peterson, I understood it was because of the intense artistic effort that was under way. Drum machines don’t sweat. I preferred recordings of live performances rather than studio recordings because they included the groans and the mistakes.
The astonishment of any great accomplishment is that an individual man or woman has actually carried it out. That goes from Simone Biles’ flights through the air to the inspiring oratory of Barack Obama.
The human drama is what we are involved in every day of our lives, and if technology undermines our appreciation for the reality of the human story, then we are the poorer for it. When a terrible event happens, it helps to feel the pain. When three students of Palestinian descent were shot in Burlington shortly after Thanksgiving, Vermonters were appalled in part because of the engaging photo showing the three of them, lifelong friends, arms draped around each other, full of good humor and life. Images from Israel and Gaza have shaken all of us, though we have also heard warnings about images that might have been faked.
One of the methods of the fascist elements at work in our country is to create confusion and doubt, to deflect opposition by undermining confidence in a sense of shared truth. Thus, Alex Jones, the online provocateur, alleged that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax. For Donald Trump, everything is a hoax except the hoaxes he propagates. By alleging fake news he creates fake news.
One of the assertions made by Holden Caulfield, hero of the novel “Catcher in the Rye,” is that he likes a novel if he comes away with the feeling that the novelist could be his friend. The human voice behind the fiction is what connects us.
The most consequential and dramatic historic chapter in my time as a journalist in Vermont happened when the whole state found itself wrestling with the question of whether to create civil unions for same-sex couples. It’s old news now, but that was before gay marriage was legal, and it was a pioneering step that alarmed many people. The issue was thrashed out by Vermonters themselves, in person, speaking the truth of their beliefs on both sides of the issue. The discourse was not polluted by tweets from unknown people chiming in from afar, even if national media and personalities had their say. What it came down to was hundreds of people on both sides speaking their minds, including dramatically on the floor of the Vermont House — real, actual people, nervous, tearful, angry, inspired, hopeful. We saw it all, and the state as a whole participated in the decision.
Media outlets that sell out by farming out the creation of stories to fraudulent “content providers” pollute the media landscape. That’s why readers and viewers must be discerning, looking for the truth beyond the spectacle or the angriest sound bite.
Discerning the human reality among our political leaders is also important, as even Republicans learned when they found that George Santos, then a member of the U.S. House, was a pathological liar and a fraud. As one columnist noted, Santos was the perfect embodiment of Trumpish Republicanism. If the news media constitute a filter, we have seen in this instance how important it is to filter out the sludge. It’s important to recognize that it was a local paper on Long Island that first revealed Santos’s lies.
Democracy is a human endeavor, and one trait of democracy’s foes is their lack of respect for their fellow citizens. To be lied to is to be disrespected, but for would-be authoritarians, truth is the enemy when it becomes an obstacle to power. Phony posts, fake content, and Trump’s flood of mendacious accusations are the drum machines providing the menacing rhythm of a burgeoning fascism. We have to listen for the human beat.
