This text belongs to 'Artificial', the newsletter that Delia Rodríguez sends every Friday. If you want to receive it, sign up here.
Of all the stories of digital media companies, my favorite is that of Gawker, later converted into the Gawker Media blog network, then Gizmodo Media Group, and later G/O Media. We owe them the culture of professional blog writers of the 2000s and a good part of the publishing habits of independent media. It all started with Nick Denton's funny, goofy media gossip blog written by Elizabeth Spiers in 2002; It almost ended in 2016 when the wrestler Hulk Hogan bankrupted them with a lawsuit for posting a porn video of him; and after a couple of bizarre changes of hands, it still continues today, preserving some great brand such as the technological publication Gizmodo. I don't think I said that the person who financed Hogan's lawsuit was the tech ultra-millionaire Peter Thiel, who was against Gawker for outing him.
In that house they have the luck and misfortune of living the sign of the times.
For reasons that would be long and difficult to explain, since 2012 the conglomerate maintained a medium written mostly from Spain, Gizmodo in Spanish. It was his only experiment in our language. Successful, fast, friendly and with its own character, it continued to be one of the best technology blogs focused on the Hispanic public, even though the golden age of these publications has long passed. Part of the trick was a well-established team: five experienced, reasonably paid writers who had been working together for a long time and knew the industry and their readers well. For example, the editor, Carlos Zahumenszky, had been with the company for ten years, and Matías Zavia and Eduardo Marín, eight. Miguel Jorge and Julio Cerezo have also completed the squad for years.
I speak in the past tense because, although Gizmodo in Spanish has not officially closed, since July 29, all of its employees have been replaced by an AI that automatically translates and publishes the contents of the blog of the same name in English. The clue was given by Zavia with this tweet, heir to the best Gawker spirit: “Hello, friends. On Tuesday they closed @GizmodoES to turn it into a self-publishing of translations (an AI literally took my job). Soon I will start looking for a new job. If you know of an offer in line with my 13 years of experience, I will greatly appreciate the help ????.”
In American corporate style, G/O cut off access to Slack and corporate email to its employees in Spain ten minutes before the videoconference meeting where they were going to be fired without much explanation. A couple of hours later, they began to see translated information being published on the page automatically and quite botched. At the bottom of the news this note now appears: “This content has been automatically translated from the original material. Due to the nuances of machine translation, there may be slight differences. For the original version, click here.” The posts in Spanish appear without a signature, so the authors have lost the archive of their work. Shocking even for a company that has seen it all.
American media such as Ars Technica or The Verge have published the news citing Zavia and causing a stir. The union that represents some G/O workers, based in New York and so far from that handful of forgotten editors in Europe, issued some tweets last Wednesday in support of their fired colleagues, confirming what happened: the Spanish workers had been replaced en masse by a machine translation service, despite repeated promises from management that “the company's AI experiments were intended to complement human writing, not replace it.” The company had been testing automatically generated content since July, due to the discontent of the workers. The union even asked readers not to click on those articles.
While the former GizmodoES negotiate their dismissals, Spanish-speaking readers cannot believe what happened, and some have shared the most aberrant translations on social networks, like this one or this one. In many cases, the pieces are illegible.
Returning to Zavia (who is not lacking in job offers after his viral tweet), it is paradoxical that someone who specializes in technology (and who co-hosts the excellent podcast on artificial intelligence Monos Stochastics, in addition to three other programs, including one dedicated only to Elon Musk) is one of the first people we can identify with a first and last name as a labor victim of AI. "At first it was funny," he tells me. “I think he is not even a good AI. It is a lack of respect for Spanish and the work we have been doing, a lack of respect for quality”.
After the Gizmodo story in Spanish, I hope not to hear again that “an AI will not leave you without a job, but a person who knows how to use AI.” In this industrial revolution, it seems that knowing everything about it is not going to be enough.
What else has happened this month
So much has happened since the last newsletter sent before the holidays that I've been tempted to declare news bankruptcy, pretend these weeks never existed, and move on with my life. I certainly haven't. This is a small summary:
- This summer some media have blocked access to ChatGPT: The Guardian, The New York Times, CNN, Reuters or Bloomberg in the United States and French media such as Radio France, France24 and TF1, for example.
- Two interesting profiles: one, by Francesc Peirón, about Jensen Huang, the particular co-founder, president and CEO of Nvidia who went to a reform school by mistake and is one of the fortunes of the moment. Another, by Helena Ortega about Alexandr Wang, the very young billionaire son of Chinese nuclear physicists who founded the AI company Scale.
- After many sensible companies banned its use, OpenAI has introduced a version of ChatGPT for corporate environments that promises to respect privacy and trade secrets.
- Home appliances are beginning to incorporate AI. For example, there is an oven that identifies what you have put inside and seeks life to cook it.
- Great, great, fabulous news: Google announced at the end of August that it was adding to its Meet meeting program the “attend for me” function that will take notes, participate and create summaries.
- The Hollywood screenwriters' strike has been going on for four months now. Spanish professionals look to them to distrust the use of AI in their sector.
- More good news: brain implants that translate impulses into words thanks to AI can help those who have lost that ability to speak.
- Let us remember that in mid-August Laura Escanes reported that someone had manipulated her images with artificial intelligence to show her naked and that those photos were available on the internet. The list of young women affected by non-consensual artificial porn continues to grow.
- Alberto Granados, president of Microsoft in Spain: “AI is a Gutenberg moment.”
- A handful of new novels to read about technology, artificial intelligence and networks.
- Mushroom hunters warn that there are automatically created mycological guides on Amazon and that, well, that is a danger for obvious reasons.
- The more sophisticated an AI is, the more bullshit and the more it proves you right. Carlos Prego in Xataka.
- Author Jane Friedman came across five books apparently written by AI for sale on Amazon under her name.
- A Contra starring Kate Darling, the robotics expert: "We prefer to interact with robots rather than with people."
- Google, like Adobe, continues to work on its technology for a new generation of watermarks. At the moment SynthID only works with its tools.
- The Canela Party is a Malaga music festival where on one of its days attendees compete to wear the most sarcastic costume. One of the organizers dressed up as the first great AI fake, the Pope with a Balenciaga-style feather, and the actress Ingrid García-Jonsson was herself generated by AI.
AI Anxiety level this week: as if in Spain they were beginning to replace journalists specialized in technology with AIs.
Photo: Matías, during one of his podcasts.
