What's on your mind lately?

I saw a couple of things that really grabbed my attention: The first, from Gartner, points out that when it comes to AI, most companies are investing in efficiency plays, the low-hanging fruit — but these are simply table stakes to remain competitive and rarely pay off because returns really depend on scaling and adoption. (I see this every day at news brands, and I hear the tales from the trenches about how hard adoption is as well.) What companies should do instead is focus on deploying AI for use cases that create new products that boost revenue or profitability, because that is where they will see real ROI.

The second is an investigation which points out that AI answer engines can provide pretty good summaries of paywalled content — not by breaking the paywall but by cobbling together the contents of the article from what is visible on social media posts and similar sources on the internet that bots are allowed to crawl. That really made me think about the impact on future business models at news media brands. Here we are, thinking that subscriptions will help at least partly pay for the loss of search traffic — and here is an easy way for people to circumvent the paywall to get the gist of an article.

What's one fact about AI that everyone should know?

Despite the rapid pace of change and astonishing new models, GenAI is not going to replace a first-rate reporter or columnist. If you get wind of big breaking news, are you going to ask the machine to call well-placed sources — or are you going to ask your beat reporter, who has spent years building a relationship of trust with those sources? If there is a natural disaster, are you going to get the bot to make calls — or are you going to ask a reporter who knows how to ask questions with sensitivity and empathy and also knows when to stop pushing for answers? Human connection and human judgment are real things. When I want a trustworthy opinion on a topic, I want to see what my favourite columnist has to say about it, not an AI summarisation. You can use AI to get commodity information — but not as a source for the kind of journalism that wins awards and has a real impact on communities.

What's a good hobby to pick up?

Singing! It’s an immersive, meditative experience because it forces you to focus on your breathing while you are reading both music and words — it is incredibly hard for your mind to wander. It releases all kinds of endorphins. It feels good to learn something new, and it’s good for your brain as well. And it gives joy to both the singer and the people around them. If you sing in a group, you are collectively producing a beautiful sound that none of you could produce individually. Pick a genre, find a teacher or a choir that you can sign up for, and do it.