Earlier this week, technology stocks in the United States lost billions of dollars, namely those related to AI. One company, NVIDIA, which makes computer parts used to develop AI, lost over $600 billion in market value on Monday. According to CNBC, this has been the largest single-day market drop in American history. The cause was a new AI model called DeepSeek, which claims to be as advanced as ChatGPT – the most famous AI model today – while only costing $5.6 million to train. Reports vary on how much money it took to train ChatGPT, but no matter which report one reads, the answer can be summed up in a few words: much, much more than $5.6 million, hence the panic in the market this week. The Griffin does not profess to be experts in the AI market, or technology and economics in general. But this much is clear: what happened in the stock market this week put a shock in the AI world.
Speaking personally, upon hearing of the development, admittedly my first response was one of laughter. I do not wish anybody any ill will, but after spending a year dealing with ChatGPT generated bots on social media, completely-AI-generated slop on TikTok and a general dislike of Big Tech executives, I felt a moment of satisfaction to see them in a panic and questioning the apparent invincibility with which they have carried themselves over the last few years. However personal such a reaction is, now is a good time to reflect on the role AI plays in our actual lives beyond personal qualms, and we will endeavor to do so from the perspective of editors from a college newspaper.
We at The Griffin are a weekly student newspaper. Talking to other school newspapers who we have had contact with has shown us that that seems to be a rarity. To be printed on paper every week is even more of a rarity, and an opportunity we are grateful for. In short, what we do is old school. Perhaps we are stuck in our own heads and egos, but we at The Griffin operate under the assumption that the old-school nature of our paper is what gives it some of its charm, and to have the opportunity to work on a weekly printed school newspaper is a privilege. We also like to think that our readers feel the same way, that part of what compels one to read and support a newspaper like ours is an appreciation of an almost bygone era that it represents. (If that is not how you feel about us, please do not let us know.)
Those of us who have considered journalism as a career path (many of us on The Griffin staff have at least considered it, quite a few are actively pursuing it) have heard for years that AI will make journalists obsolete. Some news organizations, most infamously Sports Illustrated, tried to quietly replace some of its writers with AI generated articles. They stopped the practice because people noticed, which brings up the main point.
If you, dear reader, have used ChatGPT to try to write something, you will know that the product ChatGPT will give you is – fine. Or to use modern slang in our old-school, printed, weekly newspaper – mid. It might not have any imperfections, but it can never have anything particularly extraordinary either, like you could find in a great painting or book or poem. Flawlessly mid would be an apt term. As fast as AI has been growing, it seems as though the quality of its writing has not substantially improved. A world where we accept flawlessly mid as the standard would be one of intolerable boredom. If we let machines take over the most human parts of the world – our art, our writing, our decision making – we lose a major part of our humanity.
As far as DeepSeek goes and the jolt it put into the US Stock market, particularly surrounding AI, it probably does not change much about AI, at least according to people who know more about the issue than we do. But that does not mean that we cannot individually consider how we let AI seep into our lives. DeepSeek, probably the biggest bump in the road of the American AI industry so far, affords us the opportunity to take a second and consider what AI should be in our lives. It seems inevitable that we will have to use AI in our future no matter what profession we go into. We do not have to let it fully dominate us, however. If you are reading our old-fashioned newspaper for pleasure, I can say with some confidence that you appreciate the humanity of it. We may not be flawless, like AI writing is, but we are also capable of doing better than mid, unlike AI. Remember how important our humanity is as we continue on into an AI-generated world.
- JPD
Comments