Is AI Making Communications Better or Worse?
Frank X. Shaw says the effect is a little bit mixed, because AI is a tool. Brad Smith, in a book a couple of years ago, talked about tools and weapons: every tool can be used for good or used as a weapon. Shaw calls a weapon a powerful word. His own restatement is that you can use something to build and you can use something to destroy or hurt. AI has that attribute. You can do amazing things with AI that help people do things they could never do before, and adding capability is a wonderful thing.
Shaw can build a website or an app now, and the only reason is new agents, large language models, and the work that has gone into them. Adding capacity is a good thing, and his communications work has added capacity. They use AI to automate repetitive processes, to get to higher-order work more rapidly than before, and for translation, which had been hard. Reaching international markets more rapidly, and with higher fidelity, had been a holy grail.
Misinformation and disinformation were already a problem. Shaw says they are a bigger problem today than two years ago, because creating them is easier and the barrier to entry is lower. Everybody is chasing the problem. It reminds him of the spam battles and early viruses, a cat and mouse situation where each side keeps getting better.
