Are bloggers (content creators) valuable in our GenAI world? As Greg Buckles discusses, human curators are still needed in that GenAI world.

When Greg asks questions like the one above in his latest post in eDiscovery Journal (Curation – the Human Meaning behind the AI Facts, available here) and uses the phrase “existential angst”, you know that I’m going to take notice. In the post, Greg discusses an article by Joan Westenberg titled Curation is the last best hope of intelligent discourse and how it “answered my existential angst with marvelous clarity.”

Greg references excerpts from Joan’s article, such as this one: “The current state of AI technology lacks the nuanced understanding and ethical judgment necessary to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the content it produces.”

To which Greg adds this: “My translation: AI can generate well formed information without understanding the meaning or impact of that information. Predictive AI can summarize content without relation to context. Time after time I have found minor statements buried in source technical documentation that have serious eDiscovery impact that would never have surfaced in an AI generated summary. The consultant’s cliché, “It depends” reflects the impossibility of a credible answer without full context.”

Greg also references this quote, which I love: “In the Large Language Grift era, we need more visibility into source provenance and credibility signals.”

(Side note: “The Large Language Grift era”! Wow. Tell us how you really feel. 😉 )

How do we get that? As Greg discusses (quoting Joan’s article), human curators are still needed to “distinguish between nuanced arguments, recognise cultural subtleties, and evaluate the credibility of sources in ways that algorithms cannot.”

There is so much information out there that it’s difficult to know what’s important. As Greg says: “I try to start every post with a ‘why should you care’ statement that allows readers to engage or move on.”

Generative AI simply can’t do that. It can responses to prompts based on its training that may or may not be fully accurate. Even if it is accurate, how is content from GenAI unique and differentiated from other content that’s out there? The model provides content based on other content it was trained on.

By definition, that’s not thought leadership.

Those who rely on ChatGPT and other GenAI models to provide their content may be providing content that sounds good and may even check the SEO box, but it’s not unique content. Somebody else had to say it first; otherwise, the AI model wouldn’t have regurgitated it.

Why should you care about content? Human curators are still needed to help with that.

There was an old TV series from the late 1950s (which was even before my time!) where the narrator said: “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.” There are many eDiscovery professionals out there with their own unique experiences, learned best practices and thought leadership that never make it into an AI model. I want to help bring as many of those stories out to the industry as possible.

Greg discusses much more on the topic in his terrific post here, which helped relieve my own existential angst! 🙂

So, what do you think? Are bloggers (content creators) still valuable in our GenAI world? Please say “yes”! 😉 And please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using Bing Image Creator Powered by DALL-E, using the term “robot at one computer trying to copy content from a human at another computer”.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.