AI Takeover: Gizmodo's Bold Move to Replace Spanish Editorial Staff

0:00So the news story here really is that GeoMedia, which is a parent company of Gizmodo has made a major shift in its editorial strategy right so we mentioned they're shutting down the whole language that the spanish language section of gizmodo this gizmodo on espanol and they are laying off the entire editorial team so all of those editors are completely gone it's interesting because i feel like um you know there's like the writers guild that is striking there's like these big writer strikes saying like hey we don't want ai to replace us yada yada it's interesting because right now in a in an economy that is tightening i really don't see that strategy as being incredibly beneficial um resisting the ai is i think gonna be essentially what is you know seen as being like a modern day luddite especially for writers and i know it's like hard and they have their craft and they love what they do but at the end of the day like the economy is contracting um it may be happening for a while based on what the fed is planning on doing with rates which it looks like if they don't want to repeat uh what they did um what happened in the 70s that these rate hikes are going to stay a lot longer than we were planning you know initially i was fairly bullish on i was like oh man you know these these rates are going to start turning around you know q1 of 2024 but um i'm not sure if you've looked at this this is uh a really this is actually i think relevant so bear with me on this economic uh concept because i think this is very relevant to what was going to see mass layoffs from ai um but essentially right now we're following the exact pattern you can overlay a chart of our inflation spike that the united states and i know a lot of other countries around the world has seen um the fed started raising rates we've seen this the interest rates curbing and coming down a lot of people are excited and thinking like great um inflation's coming down so we're going to be able to start curbing interest rates soon this pattern is exactly what happened in the 70s in the united states our pattern of the spike and our pattern of the curve is exactly the same the way that the fed back then also um raised interest rates to curb inflation now the only difference is that we saw about two quarters of it flatlining at the bottom.

2:05And then in the 70s, they started loosening up the interest rates again. And all of a sudden, the interest rates spiked twice as high as the previous balance. So pretty much the peak of our inflation that we saw a number of months ago, double that is what they saw in the 70s. And it took a very long time, it was very hard for them to fight it back down. So all of this to say the Federal Reserve does not want to repeat what happened in the 70s. If they start loosening up interest rates, you know, Q1 of 2024, I believe we're going to see that runaway inflation again. And they know that, or at least historically speaking, that's like our precedent to follow.

2:39And so due to that, I really don't think that we're going to see interest rates, like I'm not sure if they raise or they flatline, they'd stop raising rates or they freeze them, but they're definitely not lowering rates for, I think, at least one to two years. I know it sounds crazy, but quote me on that. In any case, I think that's relevant because that inevitably, those higher rates is very difficult for companies to survive. They can't get the venture. They can't get the debt that they need. Essentially, the debt becomes very expensive that they have to take on. And because of that, it's going to lead to a lot of layoffs due to, I think, what the solution is going to be is you can't raise money to run your company or you can't raise funds at low enough interest rates.

3:20So essentially, you're going to have to become a more lean company, you do that by laying off workers or cutting other costs. But one of the most obvious ways to cut costs is to replace workers with AI and ways that AI can do it. So you're seeing this from Gizmodo right now, the entire Spanish editorial team has completely been laid off, they're just going to use AI to replace them. And I know a lot of people are going to criticize that saying like, Oh, man, like, this is really bad. We can't let AI replace humans. But like at the end of the day, if the company is going to go bankrupt, or the company is going to lay off their employees and use AI, they're going to lay off their employees, use AI to survive.

3:54And maybe that helps them get into a healthy position where they can go and hire back people in the future, right? Like it, maybe there's a, there's a positive silver lining to this, but at the end of the day, I believe with the quantitative tightening we're seeing in the economy right now, this 100 % is, this is just the beginning. And we're going to see this in a lot of different industries. I've spoken on this a lot, so I won't harp on it too long, but there's a phrase that everyone at this AI conference I recently went to was saying, and that is, you're not going to get replaced by AI, but someone that knows how to use AI, you're going to get replaced by someone that knows how to use AI.

4:23And the concept is like, don't worry, AI is not going to replace you. People that are really good with AI will. So you become the person that's really good with AI, you won't get replaced. Okay. I actually think a lot of people are just going to get replaced by AI, whether you know how to use chat, whether these Spanish editorial team knew how to use chat GPT or not, they all got completely replaced by AI. So not to say, you know, don't learn AI. I think you can learn AI, but inevitably a lot of jobs will go away. and the only way to protect yourself still is to learn AI, but you might be removed from your company, but you'll find another company.

4:54Become an expert at AI and it's your best bet to have long-term stability, but I really do believe AI is gonna have a lot of mass layoffs. Now, what does that look like in the future? Do we have to do universal basic income? Is everyone gonna be unemployed? Is everyone gonna become entrepreneurs and be forced to start their own companies? Or are we just gonna see a trickle-down approach where people from a lot of the biggest firms are getting laid off moving to smaller companies, right? And actually, if you think about it, in the last couple of years, specifically 2021, when the market was super frothy, there was tons of money, it was actually really, really hard for startups.

5:28I specifically was in the startup space running a software company, and it was very hard to entice my CTO or some of my top engineers, they're working part-time for us on the project. It was really hard to get them to want to commit to our startup full-time because they had these massive, super, super juicy salaries over at these Fortune 500 companies that they were working at, and getting them to try to come and work in our startup was super hard. So I actually think that there is a silver lining in the sense that with a lot of these Fortune 500 companies kind of tightening their belt, and you were seeing these kind of layoffs, now a lot of those people that are being laid off, they have the opportunity, while startups will have the opportunity to hire some of these really talented developers, that they were not able to get to before.

6:13And I know like you can have empathy for the developers because they're getting laid off from a big company. But I think overall for the overall economy, the overall GDP, like a lot of where GDP is created and a lot of where the economy has grown is in startups. It's in new companies and new innovations. And so having a system like this that is cutting the fat, I think it's really helpful for the economy. Developers are really talented people will be able to work in smaller companies. but when you have more talent, like think about it, there's so much bureaucracy in some of these big companies and I know a lot of listeners come from big companies so I'm like not 100 % bagging on it but you all know what I'm talking about with bureaucracy.

6:51I've worked in these companies before and sometimes you have a really innovative idea and it just never sees the light of day because bureaucracy and your manager didn't like it and whatever, right? When you're working in a small startup, you have a good idea. A lot of times you're able to just run with it. You're able to do it or you do it yourself and you can make some really creative, innovative things that did not exist before happened. So I do think that we're going to see mass layoffs from a lot of companies. I think we're going to see some big shifts there, but I think that it's actually going to be these top companies and a lot of the engineers will trickle down and we'll see a lot of innovation.

7:21A lot of growth will happen in the economy because of it. I think it's healthy. It's not fun. Change is never fun. I understand that. I empathize with that, but like it's inevitable. And so, yeah, I think this is really interesting. Specifically, we're kind of seeing this with Gizmodo right now, but a lot of companies are going to be going through this. So back to Gizmodo, Matias S. Xavier, who is a former writer at Gizmodo en Espanol, he was the one, I think, that kind of revealed the whole platform had been discontinued. So instead of human-crafted content, the site now offers articles automatically translated from the original version.

7:55So they're just taking their, you know, Gizmodo English, and they're having that all just translated with AI. I think the problem was, you know, if you just try to use Google Translate, it's not perfect. But I think AI does a really good job of reading the article and actually like saying the same thing, but correctly. So a disclaimer on their Spanish site has now been added at the bottom of all articles, warning readers that due to the intricacies of machine translation, there can be slight differences. I think that's interesting. The switch to automated translation hasn't gone without hiccups.

8:26there's a bunch of people that you know were like on on x or twitter or whatever and they were like saying that there was some sort of like halfway through an article it switches mid read to spanish and like i guess they have some hiccups and they're like i don't know it's funny because it would appear that these people are saying see like it was a bad idea to do the switch but it's like just a technical glitch so get it figured out in a day or two that's not like i don't know that's not a big a big deal um in any case um az alderstone who's a which is a spanish website reported that the Gizmodo in Spanish team was informed about the change via video call.

9:01When reached for comment, Gizmodo Geo Media didn't respond. And I think what's interesting, this isn't their first attempt to integrate AI into their editorial process. The company began posting AI-generated articles on the main Gizmodo platform as early as July. However, those initial trials contained some factual inaccuracies that a lot of people, again, and, you know, trumpeted as being like, see, you can't use AI, when in reality, you can, you just have to get someone to fact check it. And it's still a tenth of the cost of getting 100 % written by a human. And it can be just as good, in my opinion.

9:34In any case, a lot of different staff members said they were, quote unquote, blindsided by the decision to publish AI written content. I don't see how they could be blindsided, read the writing on the wall, this is the direction that the entire economy and the market is moving, love it or hate it, it's going to happen. But anyways, a lot of their editors were claiming that they were only informed shortly before the articles went live, and this led to widespread discontent among journalists at GeoMedia's various outlets. So GMG Union, the union representing these journalists, even urged readers not to engage with AI-generated content.

10:07It should be noted that GMG Union is part of the Writers Guild of America, and so is Vox Media's editorial group. In any case, there's a bunch of different ones that are part of this so the writers guild of america that was striking um and also like what do you expect you go on strike and say we're doing a strike so that no one can use ai to write their content okay well we need the writers so if you're all on strike we're just going to use ai and once we use it and find out that it's pretty much as good if you have a you know a human journalist go and fact check and review everything which you have to do anyways for an article like when a journalist writes something you have to get the editorial board to go and review and fact check it anyways.

10:45So it's kind of, yeah, I don't know. I don't think they're really helping their case. In any case, the closure of Gizmodo on Espanol marks the end of what was Gawker Media's first international venture. Gawker now, which is now defunct, had acquired the site, gonna be in 2012 to launch the Spanish language platform. I'm not sure why they did that. They should have just launched it without having to buy another company that they then changed the name, whatever. I guess they wanted the journalists or the team. So, okay, makes sense. As media organizations kind of continue to look at AI-driven journalism, GeoMedia's recent decision will certainly have a lot of controversy, I think, about ethical implications, accuracy, and whatever.

11:27There's a lot of different complaints people have about this. But you know my opinion. I've explained it well on this podcast. This is the direction of the economy. And so companies are going to do this, love it or hate it. This is what's happening. the other thing is um originally like just think about this this is just what i want to leave you with is originally they did some ai written content on the english one and they're like we're not replacing journalists we're just like okay so we saw this from cnet earlier this year and it also got a lot of criticism and of course where does the criticism come from the criticism usually comes from journalists why are journals journalists criticizing this obviously there's a bias to this so also take that with a grain of salt the criticism but um cnet did the same thing earlier this year where they did some ai art generated content um there was some like math in there because they were doing a con an article about like interest rates and the math of course by chat gpt isn't perfect so there the math was wrong and then everyone said see look ai is bad it got the math wrong on the interest rates okay so the whole article's like information though was perfectly sound so all the information on that article perfectly sound they could just have like a journalist go in and correct all of the math so that the interest rate the amortization table pretty much on the article is correct whatever and then once that's done the the article would be a perfectly great article in any case they started doing those that ai content um they got criticism by journalists of course because it's replacing journalists and i think what's interesting here is just the fact that if your company is starting to replace you in a small way with ai and they're like don't worry it's just like a small thing okay well that's what uh gizmodo was saying and just because like it because the entire spanish side of gizmodo has been shut down i think the english editors really need to be looking at what they're doing now do i think that gizmodo is going to shut down all their english editors no but what i do think is that their english editors really do need to start leveraging ai to help them write their articles i know that's a man it's a craft and ai could never possibly do it as good as you but actually it could because you know what you can do you can literally take five articles you've written post them into chat gpt and say based off of these and not specifically chat gpt because of the context window but um you get the idea you could use an api there's lots of ways you could do this you could train your own model on your own self i think that would be really smart if i was a journalist i would have an ai model trained on myself anyways this is my exact style this is how i write articles this is my type of content um and then based off of that you can give it all the facts for your new content for your new article all of the information the interviews use the quotes you've done, paste it all in there and say, write me a thing, but a bing, but a boom, it's going to do it.

13:59You could probably put out 10 times as many articles. Now, if you put out 10 times as many articles, there's no way I think that your employer after seeing a 10x increase in productivity would probably cut you like at the end of the day, you will like Gizmodo is going to need journalists and editors to number one, review everything written by AI and number two, put together the content, right? Because AI isn't going to go out and do interviews, AI isn't going going to go out in the field and do investigative journalism. So there's all of the data gathering aspect that I think journalists are still needed for, data gathering, and then fact checking after the fact.

14:32But putting the article together itself, 100%, I think you got to start leveraging AI if you want to be relevant. And this isn't just for journalists. This is your company blog. This is your company's social media. This is anyone working in any field. Just use AI to augment yourself and get embedded in the process.