The Morning Meeting with Al Tompkins is a daily Poynter briefing of story ideas worth considering and other timely context for journalists, written by senior faculty Al Tompkins. Sign up here to have it delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.
I want you to experience some artificial intelligence applications that I have been trying recently. You will see some jaw-dropping potential in these apps to disrupt, create and even cheat. Let’s start with ChatGPT, which, with just a little prompting, can write an essay or even a TV script. I asked it to create a Seinfeld scene in which George decides to become a journalist. In 10 seconds, the script appeared:
(OpenAI.com)
The New York Times can’t seem to rave enough about ChatGPT saying, “ChatGPT is, quite simply, the best artificial intelligence chatbot ever released to the general public. It was built by OpenAI, the San Francisco A.I. company that is also responsible for tools like GPT-3 and DALL-E 2, the breakthrough image generator that came out this year.” In case you were wondering, GPT stand for “generative pre-trained transformer.”
I asked it how I could know if a racehorse would become a champion:
(OpenAI.com)
I asked ChatGPT to write a sermon that a United Methodist minister might deliver about lotteries. I asked it to explain quantum physics at a fourth-grade level. After it gives a response, you can ask for another response, and it will compose a new answer. And, according to the Times, “It can write jokes (some of which are actually funny), working computer code and college-level essays. It can also guess at medical diagnoses, create text-based Harry Potter games and explain scientific concepts at multiple levels of difficulty.”
Recently, an essay in The Atlantic suggested that artificial intelligence technology makes it easy for a program to produce a logical, conversational article or essay. One student who was caught using AI to produce an essay said it was not unlike using a spellcheck program.
They don’t feel like they’re cheating, because the student guidelines at their university state only that you’re not allowed to get somebody else to do your work for you. GPT-3 isn’t “somebody else”—it’s a program.
The world of generative AI is progressing furiously. Last week, OpenAI released an advanced chatbot named ChatGPT that has spawned a new wave of marveling and hand-wringing, plus an upgrade to GPT-3 that allows for complex rhyming poetry; Google previewed new applications last month that will allow people to describe concepts in text and see them rendered as images; and the creative-AI firm Jasper received a $1.5 billion valuation in October. It still takes a little initiative for a kid to find a text generator, but not for long.
Kevin Bryan, an associate professor at the University of Toronto, tweeted in astonishment about OpenAI’s new chatbot last week: “You can no longer give take-home exams/homework … Even on specific questions that involve combining knowledge across domains, the OpenAI chat is frankly better than the average MBA at this point. It is frankly amazing.” Neither the engineers building the linguistic tech nor the educators who will encounter the resulting language are prepared for the fallout.
Hyperwrite is another interesting program that includes templates. Look at all of the options just under “marketing”
(HyperWrite)
Hyperwrite allows the user to build documents step by step. I asked HyperWrite to explain World War 2 in language that a 5-year-old might understand. Here are three possibilities it offered:
(OpenAI.com)
And I built a 322-word essay about the importance of submarines from World War II to today in 30 seconds. Here’s part of a finished essay:
(HyperWrite)
Here are some other places you can go to learn how AI is moving into journalism.
- The future of content creation with AI is closer than you might think – Poynter
- A news photo editor’s nightmare is an art director’s dream – Poynter
- These projects are using AI to fight misinformation – Poynter
- How news organizations used automated news to cover COVID-19 – Poynter
- What is the future of automated fact-checking? – Poynter
- Here’s how publishers around the world are using automated news – NiemanLab
- “Look at the robot as your new colleague”: what automation can do for sports reporting – Journalism.co.uk
- How a local paper in Argentina uses AI to publish hundreds of sports pieces a month – Reuters Institute for Journalism
- Runway – an example of text for video editing. This is their latest trailer for 2023.
The battle over today’s vote for Speaker of the House
Let’s keep in mind that this has to do with one of the most powerful and important positions in U.S. government, and hours before the House of Representatives is to vote on who holds that position, the outcome is uncertain. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has the backing of almost all his Republican colleagues, but 15 Republicans don’t back him and that is enough to send the leadership vote to a second round, which hasn’t happened in a century.
Since today’s vote will not be the formality it usually is, you should know the rules. PBS explained some of the details that you might not expect, including that the speaker does not have to be a member of Congress, and to be elected, the speaker does not have to get 218 of the 435 House votes (a majority.) The vote only requires a majority of those who are present and vote by name.
All candidates for speaker must be nominated by members of the House, but they don’t need to be elected lawmakers of the House. Article I, section II of the Constitution says only that the House “shall choose their Speaker and other officers.” So far, the chamber has only chosen its own members as speaker, but a non-lawmaker is possible. Earlier this year, former Secretary of State Colin Powell received a vote for speaker, as did Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.
To be the next speaker, a person needs a majority of the votes from House members who are present and voting. (See this useful Congressional Research Service (CRS) report for more detail.) That means that while a majority is 218 votes in the House, a person could become speaker with fewer votes if several members do not attend the vote. That happened in 2021 when Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., won with just 216 votes after three members voted “present.”
The House has been deadlocked 14 times before. The House historian traces the floor fights back to 1793 when it took three ballots to choose a Leader.
Most House Speaker floor battles happened before the Civil War. But for sheer drama, read about the House Speaker vote from 1917, or the nine ballots required to elect Rep. Frederick Gillett of Massachusetts to be speaker in 1923.
In 1855 and 1856, it took 133 separate votes for Rep. Nathaniel Banks of Massachusetts to be elected, again by a plurality and not a majority.
The process stretched over more than a month and included a sort of inquisition on the House floor of the three contenders. They answered questions about their view of the expansion of slavery. Read more from the House historian’s website.
It’s also interesting to read about Banks; his official House biography notes he was elected to office as a Republican, an independent, a member of the America Party and as a Democrat.
The Congressional Institute explains the House meets today:
- Establish that there is a quorum. If a member in attendance declines to vote, they do not count toward the quorum.
- The clerk calls for speaker candidate nominations.
- Chairs of the Republican Conference and Democratic Caucus make short speeches on behalf of their parties’ nominees.
- The clerk then asks for any other nominations.
- The clerk then appoints tellers to record the votes, and the voting begins.
- Each member-elect has the opportunity to vote when the clerk calls his or her name. Typically, the member-elect responds by calling out the last name of the person they wish to be speaker. They may also answer “present,” which does not count as a vote but does contribute to a quorum. Or they could decline to respond at all.
