The potential impact and benefits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) dominated the presentations made by regional leadership figures on Monday evening during the opening ceremony of the 54th Annual General Assembly of the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) at the Royalton Hotel in Antigua.
The opening of the event, being held from August 14 to 16 under the theme “Celebrating the Contribution of Media to Caribbean Development”, was attended by a slew of regional media and business professionals, including President of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) Dr Hyginus ‘Gene’ Leon, who delivered the keynote address.
“We want to suggest that media houses begin to prepare, not only their businesses, but the rest of the region for the impact of AI on industries, opportunities for upskilling to different areas, and to determine what tasks are best left for AI, such as research in digitized news libraries,” he remarked during his address.
The use of AI is growing at a record-setting pace across a number of different sectors and media is certainly no different. In fact, some consider AI to be the ‘future of media’, despite the inexperience of many practitioners with the use of the technology.
That inexperience is partly fuelled by fear, as many worry that – like automated factories and other types of computer-managed machinery – AI is ‘coming to steal people’s jobs’.
However, Dr Leon says we should not necessarily be fearful of AI’s growing importance, but be bold enough to accept it and incorporate it as best as possible into our daily lives.
“I think the challenge is to harness that research capability and access that AI produces while using the human thought to engineer value addition to the output produced by AI, which in principle becomes a win-win situation.
“So, it is not about saying ‘let’s not embrace AI’, but let’s use AI to get us as much as we can as quickly as we can, but now we need to use human ingenuity, analysis and purpose to be able to add value to that which the AI can actually do.”
Meanwhile, CBU President and Deputy CEO of the RJR/Gleaner Communications Group, Dr Claire Grant, emphasized the importance of managing the use of AI in such a way as to ‘protect fact’ and avoid the spread of misleading information, which has proven to be a real challenge in recent months.
Several video clips, created using AI, have made the rounds on social media, portraying global leaders including former US Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and while those videos have not yet had any detrimental impact on global affairs, it is a genuine concern that ‘fake imagery’ could be utilised to sway elections, disrupt the stock market or even scam regular people out of their hard-earned money.
Addressing these issues, according to Dr Grant, is a new objective for the global media community, and one the CBU is intent on taking on.
“As I and my directors have been reminded in recent months, the Caribbean media landscape continues its dynamic evolution because of technology, and this I might add is a global reality for all media, we are not unique in that.
“The impact of recent advances, for example in Artificial Intelligence – fondly called AI – is real, and this is a development that has implications for the business of media, [both] public and private. The business of media, I might add, is not only about the people who transmit, broadcast [and] print, but there are other stakeholders that Artificial Intelligence will also impact – our advertisers for example.
“We cannot overstate the significance of misinformation and disinformation. While with the support of UNESCO much work has been done by CBU members to build the capacity in media information and literacy, the battle is far from over”, Dr Grant explained.
Alongside the aforementioned speakers, Antigua and Barbuda’s Acting Prime Minister and Attorney General, Steadroy Benjamin, and Information & Communication Technologies Minister, Melford Nicholas, are also scheduled to address the CBU’s Annual General Assembly.
