I recently talked to James Marriott about the future of writing and journalism in the age of AI. James was quite worried about how good the chatbots have got at writing and wondered if it spells doom for human writers, especially journalists. So I thought it would be good to follow up with a conversation with Jasmine Sun, a very talented young tech journalist and thinker from San Francisco. Jasmine writes for publications including the Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Standard. She has a Substack - read her notes on AI and writing here - and is collaborating with the NYT’s chief tech columnist Kevin Roose on a book about the race to AGI.Jasmine worked in tech - for Substack, actually - before taking the leap into freelance journalism. It’s a slightly counter-intuitive career move and one I was keen to hear more about. Jasmine explains why she has faith in the future of journalism and human writing. We get into what LLMs can and can’t do; the human skills they can replicate, and those they can’t; why automation is often harder than people in tech think; whether there will be successful AI influencers; why people still seek a human connection; the importance of struggle in creativity. (At one point I mention Will Storr’s AI experiment - see here). As you can tell, while the conversation is centred on writing it’s about more than that.
Jasmine was a brilliant guest, bubbling with insight and ideas, and great company. Since she was in London for a few days so we took the chance to record our chat in person. We used Westminster Podcast Studio, a small but perfectly formed studio in Kennington which I recommend. The audio pod is on all the usual platforms, and the video version is below. This is Part 1. In Part 2, for paid subscribers, we get into the nitty-gritty of how to get the most out of LLMs, Jasmine has some excellent tips on that. That’s coming soon.Enjoy!
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