I saved you a Google Search. You’re welcome.

On 30 June, Ornico - in collaboration with World Wide Worx - launched the 2023 Social Media Landscape Report. For the past few years, YOUKNOW Technologies has been integral in supplying social and market data through our technology partner platforms, adding to the dataset that brands and agencies use as the de facto ‘source of truth’ when it comes to what’s going on in the South African world of social data. Just watching the shareability of the report in marketing channels we’re a part of shows the value the report brings to our peers.

Each year YOUKNOW also offers our view in the report, through a written article, aligned to that particular year’s theme. 2021 had Meghan Holmes talking about “Going beyond social listening”, 2022 saw Ryan Brunyee sharing his thoughts on “Who really understands the Metaverse”, and this year I was tasked to answer the question: “Is Social Media still social?”. The theme was heavily focused on the balance of human touch, AI, algorithms and if, essentially, we’re helping the robots take over our jobs and the world.

So, I went straight to ChatGPT (most people’s preferred executive assistant with all things copy- and research-related) to get the answer.

To prove a point, though, I tried to get as human as possible - as quickly as possible - with the service by asking if I can call it by another name. It failed dismally. Check this out:

Extremely disappointed in ChatGPT's ability to 'get human', I moved the conversation to Google Bard, which was far better, and by asking a few questions and having a conversation (if we can really call it a conversation) I managed to get insights and get the original question answered, following up with some key tips and tricks on how we as a society can “stay social” in a world that’s moving more and more towards an AI-created environment.

Thanks to Jessica Haasbroek at Ornico, who was kind enough to share the exact exchange (screenshots) in the report. Why? Well, because I didn’t do much, at all, and attributing these insights to myself as a written article would be completely incorrect and unfair to the people who created the content originally, as well as Bard (or Bradley) who summarised the key points at my request. To be honest, having “Written by Don Packett” under the title would have haunted me for years to come. I still feel terrible for a silly comment I made about a girl in Standard 3 (sorry Fiona, I was a boychild, and an ass).

A few notes on these exchanges that I wanted to highlight:

1. Content generated to answer briefs should be attributed correctly, and ‘curated’, not ‘written’ by the person collecting the data. You’re the gallerist, not the artist.
2. While Bard was able to learn quite quickly that I wanted to engage in a different way - purely by calling it by another name - the information delivered was still by no means developed by someone or something who thinks for itself or has an opinion, it’s solely based on existing content created originally by humans.
3. In a race of “Which platform ‘feels’ more human than the other?”, Bard wins.
4. Probably one of the most important things though is that the article gives you nothing about how I feel about AI, the state of humans’ sociability, or how the robots may or may not take over the world. I offered zero opinion, only Google-able content condensed into some words that are easy enough to read. Heck, I even asked Bard to summarise and do the heavy lifting for me.
5. On that, my personal opinion on the matter is quite simple: There are things being built in dark corners of large buildings that we haven’t even begun to understand or come to terms with. Whether you like it or not, everything is listening and building more and more of a concise profile of who you as a human are, so help it along. Train it, let it learn, work with the robots, not against them.

What’s your view on AI and getting the robots to do your job? Excited? Scared? Would love to know.