A.I. – it has some good

In April, I had the distinct honor of speaking to a Human Flourishing Class at Avonworth High School taught by my friend, Mr. Scott Tuffiash. It’s based on a college curriculum taught at schools like the University of Pittsburgh and others. Taught at the high school level it seems to prepare students for how to achieve success and how to circumnavigate the “potholes” that try to swallow their “cars” on the journey, to use a Pittsburgh theme.

Every student had the opportunity to ask me a question that day – and the topics ranged from my working in radio to my health with Parkinson’s and how the two related. Several of the students used my story in their end-of-year video projects for the course. It was quite an honor and I’m looking forward to next year.

There were several questions as it related to A.I. (periods used so you don’t think I am talking about a person named Alvin.) used in radio. My answer at the time (just a few months ago, mind you), was something to the effect of, “I think there are some viable uses for the technology, but I also feel there is nothing more satisfying that accomplishing things on your own.”

Some people have started to use A.I. voices to voice commercials for radio and TV. Heck, they’ve started to use A.I. to host radio shifts and host promotional videos. That’s awful. But we’ve used artificial automation (for lack of a better term) for audio and video programming for TV and radio for years. If it makes a human job easier like that, I’m all for it. But taking away the human element is still not my thing.

Since April, I have been using ChatGPT for various things. I’ve used it to prepare my fun (likely unamusing) segments for Smooth, Relaxing & Easy. It helps save time… that is once I’ve learned how to word things so I get exactly what I want. Things are a little more scripted, yes, but I still throw in my own wit. But the music programming is still mine, and the hosting is done by a human – me – live on tape.

The other day, I put a few of my seemingly outdated station descriptions from this website into Microsoft’s Co-Pilot. (It has a button on my computer, I might as well use it.) I asked Co-Pilot to check the descriptions for grammar and see if it could find any updates… within seconds, Co-Pilot had taken what I had written, fixed up the language and punctuation and added fairly accurate facts – some enhancing the ones I wrote; others adding new information – from various sources… including right here at PBRTV! As long as the information is factual, I find this a useful tool. (The descriptions will be updated soon… but not without my human mind verifying a lot of it!)

Like everything else, A.I. isn’t bad if you use it properly.

Full disclosure: No A.I. was used in writing this article! And nobody named “Al” contributed to it.