The Russian Winter Festival

And how A.I (Large Language Model) is making some of y'all dumb as hell

AUDIO VERSION AT BOTTOM OF PAGE for PAID SUBSCRIBERS! Audio versions have Director’s cut type additional thoughts!

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For a while I was a journalist. Not a journalist, journalist, but I was the Arts Intern at a Hearst Paper called the Times Union in Albany, NY and I sat at among three other journalist journalists. One was a food critic and my former professor, Steve Barnes. One was a brilliant movie critic and arts/culture journalist named Amy Biancolli and the Arts editor, the kinda boss of the section, was Michael Janairo. All three felt a little legendary to me. They were real writers and they worked on writing every day. Even if it wasn’t exactly the kind of writing I was looking to do, I imagined in the interim before writing a book maybe I could be a journalist, exploring the city, doing interviews. Besides teaching, it was the best job, job I’ve ever had. Three days a week I drove a friend’s car into a building and became a writer.

Even then, this is like 2013, the conversation around print journalism was bleak, but that little team felt fresh with energy. They were all so smart and welcoming and every single day I felt I learned something from them. And that is why I feel particularly terrified about this story of the Chicago Sun Times publishing a thing written COMPLETELY by a large language generative A.I program like CHAT-GPT.

Here is the Sun Times themselves explaining and apologizing.

Even through my role was intern, I got to write my own stories and even made A1 once! (More on this in audio version but A1 is the front page). And as a writer I was held to the standard of the paper. The standards of a professional journalist. And it didn’t matter if I was writing about the fact that Marc Maron was going to be into town and literally just making sure the date and times were correct

The article didn’t “matter.” If it were a text message to a friend it’d read “Yo this is happening, come thru, if you want.”

And I was still terrified to submit it. This was the TIMES UNION. A real paper. And both my standards and the paper’s would be reflected in anything that went to print. It’s worth noting that I was a journalism minor. (I had like 3 minors) And as a journalism minor I had learned of the almost, not almost, but straight up sacred commitment to the truth. In ALL contexts. And I’d internalized that sacred responsibility, or at least I thought I had. That first piece was accepted after a pretty thorough reading over by Michael and I felt shot full of pride when it printed. By Nana Adjei-Brenyah there in small bold. Proof I was a writer, which was all I wanted to be.

A couple weeks later and I was rolling. I’d had a few more pieces printed and I loved the vigilance and terror I felt submitting every one. But then came the Festival piece. It would be my most substantial it was about the, then, fifth annual, Russia Winter Festival in the Capital region. It was around the time the semester started really going and I was actually in the first ever writing contest of my own at the time. (Future post about this maybe) I was feeling myself and I remember writing up a piece and starting with the idea that it was one of the coldest winters in recent memory. I thought that was true cause it had been cold as shit that year and also I felt it tied into the Russia thing… I submitted the piece which was always sent to Michael before he sent it to copy editing. That is to say there are several editorial layers between submissions and publication.

I think less than 20 minutes after submission Michael looked at me with a kind of strange look on his face. His expression looked like the lovechild of disappointment and exhaustion. He asked me to come with him into one of the meeting rooms. It had never happened before. The only other time I’d been in the room was for the initial internship interview.

For the next, it felt like hours, but could only have been maybe 30 minutes, Michael explained to me all the different kinds of fuckery I’d submitted. And there was fuckery abound. For example, I’d said it was one of the coldest winters in recent memory to start. To that he’d said a quick search of weather history had proved that in fact that was not true and it had been a relatively mild winter. I think he might have printed out the proof of such. I sat there. He pointed out typos, and other things that were not true. I felt flung into a bog of shame. And I’ve always, always been a typo-lord but to have my lack of precision pointed out to me so directly. It was hard. It felt brutal. And I am forever grateful for it.

Michael reminded me of journalisms sacred oaths. Even on a preview for a Russian Culture festival, this mattered. He explained my standard had to be better that it would be a shameful thing if he had not been vigilant and kept my slop from the world. I spent hours rewriting that piece so it could go out that day at deadline. It was tiny and in that moment it was the whole world to me. I promised to never need to be corrected that way ever again. And I succeeded in that front. I don’t think I had to go into any of the meeting rooms again until a little later when they did a little birthday thing for me, I think. I could be making this part up but I feel like it happened? It feels almost too neat but I’m going with it. And that’s okay because this is a personal blog and not a fucking NEWS PAPER!!!!!

Growth and difficulty are closely related. What I fear most about the adoption and integration of large language generative A.I is how it presumes that difficulty is our problem. How it presumes that if only things were easier everything would be alright. How it asserts problem is that you have too much minutia, in your life. If you could just outsource the little things, the grand picture would come into beautiful focus.

I disagree with this premise fundamentally. Life happens in the minutia. Life is in the details, that maybe don’t matter on their own. The previews of the Russian Winter festival. The sitting there and struggling, in the realizing you’ve let your standard fall.

The idea that someone who considers themselves a professional journalist wrote an ENTIRE ARTICLE using A.I and then did not think to check it AT ALL and then SUBMITTED IT. Is baffling to me as a proud holder of a minor degree in journalism, but also as a critically thinking human. It speaks to the idea that there has been a general adoption of an outsourcing of standard to a program that you probably barely understand. It means that someone who’s professional life hinges on upholding a sacred standard of truth has grown more interested in the final product than the creation. And not for nothing, I don’t care if it’s an article about the ten hottest flip-flops this season. If you are a writer of any kind or merit, the job is realize this idea into language. To develop and conjure language, not merely deliver it after it has been forged from the stolen parts of the collective. Struggling to understand shape and structure IS writing. Working through roadblocks armed with your own intellect and that which you discover is writing. If you are a writer that uses things like Chat GPT , and this is less important and more egoic, I personally believe you can’t fuck with me as a writer. And that, again isn’t the most important thing, but like, where’s your pride? Your honor. And if you have any do you think Open AI does as well?

To me this means that that editorial integrity has been diminished to the point that copy editors are probably also just computer programs because HOW THE FUCK is this possible? Michael Janairo woulda chewed my ass up!!! And he’s a super nice guy. I would have lost the internship.

In general, I am suspect of our willingness to sacrifice our ways to the alters of ease. I know that the most meaningful pieces of my life come from meeting difficulty and conquering it. I am certain there are useful application of A.I I do not think most of us are using it in ways that do much but atrophy our standards and appetite for difficulty. Like to submit an article like the one in question suggests a true atrophy in critical thinking on the part of the journalist in question. It suggests an absolute faith in the machine. And that is something I hope you are extremely concerned about. So in short. Fuck A.I large language models. Every time you use that shit to write a paper or whatever send me 2 dollars cause you stealing from me lowkey.

All love though.

-N

Here’s the article if you wanna glance a preview. In the audio version I’ll read the whole thing.