I had started writing about compassion, which, generally, is in the news far less than ruthlessness and chaos… sad to say.
But as I was writing, A.I. (artificial intelligence), popping up in a newsfeed on my phone, got me thinking about something I’d written several years ago in the Las Vegas Business Press.
Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO, said in Fortune magazine, that “he can hardly keep up with how quickly A.I. technology like ChatGPT is being deployed, and he thinks the tech sector must confront how to use the technology so that it does more good than bad.”
In the Business Press, I’d written about disruptive problems plaguing disruptive businesses. The deployment of artificial intelligence in the tech sector, I’d imagine, ought to be quite fascinating.
Actually — I’m not entirely sure — but maybe I was impacted by a little artificial intelligence, in one of the search engines I’ve been using to check things out… when I need to get the correct spelling of some word, or definitions of words in online dictionaries, for instance. Or, to be sure I’m accurately quoting someone… usually some newsmaker… or for this article, to see, out of curiosity, if that story I’d written, in the Nevada business publication, still shows up in online search results.
And it did. But as I was typing search words in the search box, someone, or something, was adding their own words to my words, which frankly was getting annoying.
Was it artificial intelligence, trying to help me out?
As I was typing my name and the publication’s — Harvey Radin and Las Vegas Business — someone, or something, kept adding the word ‘release’ to my search words, so it would be… ‘Harvey Radin and Las Vegas Business press release’.
C’mon, now! It’s ‘Las Vegas Business Press’… not ‘Las Vegas Business Press release!’
This wasn’t the first time extraneous words were being added to my search words. Having to interrupt my typing to delete the damn extra words, and sometimes losing my train of thought, as a result, the prose I have in mind, for my articles, can get terribly screwed up.
But if it was A.I. trying to help out, and maybe sensing my angst… which is kind of scary!… all of a sudden, A.I. was eager to help… a little differently, this time, by telling me things I already know about the article I’d written back in 2018.
Like magic, a pop-up box that materialized on my computer, started telling me someone or something had found “an article on Las Vegas Business Press that talks about how disruptive businesses can face problems that spiral out of control if they don’t address them properly.”
And there was more — about me, for God’s sake! — which I already happen to know… that “Harvey Radin, a crisis communication expert, says that companies should evaluate how new business models might be perceived outside their customer base and attempt to address problems before they spiral out of control.”
And after all that, maybe it was artificial intelligence asking me… “Is there anything else I can help you with?” And I’m thinking, “Heavens no! I’ve had more than enough help than I can handle.”
Anyway, I’m going to include, in this article, what I initially started writing about, before A.I. reads my mind and beats me to the punch.
‘Compassion,’ and some other words, like ‘benevolence,’ define the word ‘humaneness.’ And in this crazy world, right now, I’m wondering if even top PR and marketing professionals would be able to publicize humaneness sufficiently, to get it as mainstream — in folks’ minds — as ruthlessness and chaos.
There was in the aftermath of one of the tornadoes that struck a number of states recently, including Mississippi, some news about a small town there, where one of many homes had been totally destroyed. Neighbors, and others, some of them complete strangers, were, as I recall one of the storm victims saying, putting their hands to the task of helping out.
“That’s what we do, out here,” I believe he went on to say.
Sometimes, oddly enough, it takes a disaster to get us thinking, some, about humaneness, even as strife, ruthlessness, and such, keep grinding on.
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.