I spent last Tuesday realizing that although I have weathered the constantly changing storm of technology that has swirled around Gen-X since we were out of elementary school, AI may be my endgame.
I am happy to say that with my 52nd birthday lurking, I have a healthy curiosity about the world, the generations that came after me, and what they’re up to both in culture and technology. But I have exactly zero interest in the world of artificial intelligence. I am a bit sad I can’t find that gear. Using it for my work as an editor at ESPN doesn’t seem necessary — or burgeoning — in the world of accuracy and facts.
Enter the story that really messed with my head Tuesday — but I have to back up to the prior Saturday night.
ESPN had some technical difficulties at halftime in the Ohio State-Texas game, and Texas was trailing in the game. The issues caused Longhorns coach, Steve Sarkisian, to be delayed getting back to the locker room, and the coach wasn’t happy. When the game was over — and Sarkisian was fired up about a huge comeback win over the No. 1 team in the nation — he was still a bit ticked at ESPN, and very curt with our sideline reporter, Holly Rowe.
Side note: Holly is a legend. A longtime boots-on-the-ground reporter. She’s a mom and a cancer survivor as well. She once called me from former Texas coach Mack Brown’s car to discuss some rumors about his career that she’d asked him about directly. She has also known Sarkisian for a long time.
The incident should have ended right there and been done with. But college football fans are who they are. Texas fans, I’m assuming, rallied around their coach — who has no idea they exist — and one of these geniuses made an AI video recreating the postgame interview, except at the end, it showed Sarkisian backhanding Holly, knocking her to the ground.
In a Monday press conference, Texas quarterback Arch Manning was asked if he’d seen any good social media content after the game. Manning — nephew of two NFL greats, Peyton and Eli Manning — volunteered the AI video as an example, and called it “hilarious.”
AI or not, the video is vile. I’ve seen it in my social media timeline going on 24 hours now, and every time I see it, I’m grossed out further.
Arch, to his credit, apologized. Holly accepted, said she and Arch had a private conversation, and closed the book on it. Neither Texas, nor Sarkisian, has yet to issue a statement.
The clear line of delineation I see here is that those under age 25 think it’s much ado about nothing. Why should Arch have to apologize for reacting to an absurd, fake video? But those of us who scale a bit older remain grossed out, because even though we know it’s just a bunch of computer programming, it still depicts awful violence against women.
The younger folks I work with were perplexed by the uproar. I asked one if she would be OK if it was her mom in the video and Arch laughing at that.
“I didn’t think about it that way,” she said.
How? How did you not?
Because that generation apparently has the innate ability to laugh at the absurdity of it all. They know it’s fake — better than us. Perhaps that’s a skill this generation will have. Perhaps AI will not rise up and overtake us all, because Generation Alpha can actually see through it.
It’s the older generations that don’t understand it at all. And if we misuse it, all bets are off.
What I have learned this week is that maybe I don’t need to be an AI genius. Perhaps I can sit this round of technology out, and rely on my ability to research and sus out information for myself.
Because I can’t live in a world where someone tells me I’m supposed to be OK with this kind of grossness — and I believe Arch’s apology was warranted.
Sarah Hart is a news editor for ESPN. A Muskogee native, she is a former news editor for the Tahlequah Daily Press.