Is it? My job as a frontend dev is similarly threatened by OpenAI, maybe even more so than journalists'. The very company I usually like to pay to help with my work (Vercel) is in the process of using that same money to replace me with AI as we speak, lol (https://vercel.com/blog/announcing-v0-generative-ui). I'm not complaining. I think it's great progress, even if it'll make me obsolete soon.
I was a journalism student in college, long before ML became a threat, and even then it was a dying industry. I chose not to enter it because the prospects were so bleak. Then a few months ago I actually tried to get a journalism job locally, but never heard back. The former reporter there also left because the pay wasn't enough for the costs of living in this area, but that had nothing to do with OpenAI. It's just a really tough industry.
And even as a web dev, I knew it was only a matter of time before I became unnecessary. Whether it was Wordpress or SquareSpace or Skynet, it was bound to happen at some point. I'm going back to school now to try to enter another field altogether, in part because the writing is on the ~~wall~~ chatbox for us.
I don't think we as a society owe it to any profession to artificially keep it alive as it's historically been. We do it owe it to INDIVIDUALS -- fellow citizens/residents -- to provide them with some way forward, but I'd prefer that be reskilling and social support programs, welfare if nothing else, rather than using ancient copyright law to favor old dying industries over new ones that can actually have a much bigger impact.
In my eyes, the NYT is just another news outlet. A decent one, sure, but not anything substantially different than WaPo or the LA Times or whatever. How many Pulitzer winners have come and gone? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_Prize_for_Breaking_Ne...
If we lost the NYT, it'd be a bit of nostalgia, but next week life would go on as usual. They're not even as specialized as, say, National Geographic or PopSci or The Information or 404 Media or The Center for Investigative Reporting, any of which would be harder to replace than another generic big news outlet.
AI, meanwhile, has the potential to be way bigger than even the Internet, IMO, and we should be devoting Manhattan Project-like resources to it.
I was a journalism student in college, long before ML became a threat, and even then it was a dying industry. I chose not to enter it because the prospects were so bleak. Then a few months ago I actually tried to get a journalism job locally, but never heard back. The former reporter there also left because the pay wasn't enough for the costs of living in this area, but that had nothing to do with OpenAI. It's just a really tough industry.
And even as a web dev, I knew it was only a matter of time before I became unnecessary. Whether it was Wordpress or SquareSpace or Skynet, it was bound to happen at some point. I'm going back to school now to try to enter another field altogether, in part because the writing is on the ~~wall~~ chatbox for us.
I don't think we as a society owe it to any profession to artificially keep it alive as it's historically been. We do it owe it to INDIVIDUALS -- fellow citizens/residents -- to provide them with some way forward, but I'd prefer that be reskilling and social support programs, welfare if nothing else, rather than using ancient copyright law to favor old dying industries over new ones that can actually have a much bigger impact.
In my eyes, the NYT is just another news outlet. A decent one, sure, but not anything substantially different than WaPo or the LA Times or whatever. How many Pulitzer winners have come and gone? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_Prize_for_Breaking_Ne...
If we lost the NYT, it'd be a bit of nostalgia, but next week life would go on as usual. They're not even as specialized as, say, National Geographic or PopSci or The Information or 404 Media or The Center for Investigative Reporting, any of which would be harder to replace than another generic big news outlet.
AI, meanwhile, has the potential to be way bigger than even the Internet, IMO, and we should be devoting Manhattan Project-like resources to it.