AI and my job

I have come to the realisation (truth be told, I have been politely informed) that my job is transitioning. Thank you, ChatGPT!

This month has been mind-blowing for me exploring how advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) is when it comes to the day job of being a professional shipping newshound.

We’ve been trying out all the main platforms to see what works and what does not, culminating with somewhat of a landmark for us at Splash last Thursday when we got AI to skim through a YouTube video of a recent conference in Oslo on all things AI and then write a 1,000 word article about AI, published on site, with due acknowledgement to the two platforms that made it possible. No author’s name was attached.

I’ll admit the 1,000 words were not quite perfect, and I had to spend a quarter of an hour skimming through it, finessing and tightening little bits. It did come up with some phrases that I’d have been proud of, discussing, for instance, how AI is “already actively redefining the contours of modern shipping”.

We’ve never done this before, and we’re unlikely to do it again anytime soon – it was more for the topic, and the sensation that we did it as a one-off.

Do take a look at the article, and let me know what you think.

We are actively looking at how AI is changing our business and our daily working lives. For instance, Splash was built with a pretty strong grasp of search engine optimisation, something that we now think is old hat. Traditional search was built on links; generative engine optimisation – that’s basically letting the machines crawl all over your site – is built on language.

However, one thing that I’ve come to believe is that AI risks making media all too same, same in the future, something maritime media is already suffering with. Original content will be vital going forward, as will what I term as the ‘Dear Reader’ element, explaining why such and such is important to you and your business.

As for me, come next year, I will cut my daily reporting commitments a little to focus more on our events side of the business.