USC Annenberg hosted a sit-down with Microsoft’s vice president of communications strategies, Steve Clayton, about the age of AI and its impact.
Clayton discussed the evolution of AI since its inception, and how Microsoft plans to get involved with the creation of their Microsoft Copilot. Copilot is a chatbot software that can do a range of things on request.
“When we brought these products to market, there really was this notion that this technology is here to assist us to augment our work not to replace our work,” said Clayton in the sit-down discussion. “We don’t want technology to replace our work, and I really believe that we don’t want technology to replace the people that work.”
Clayton also said AI at Microsoft is not allowed to run rampant without human oversight.
“We still require human intervention,” said Clayton. “Relatively quickly we saw examples of so-called ‘hallucination’ where [when] the AI didn’t have an answer, it would just make up things…and so things are changing, it’s going to get better, faster and more accurate as technology advances.
As Clayton did his live demonstration, he used the voice feature to find the definition of a word, ask what nearby record stores sell a record he was looking for and tell the audience how many calories were in a Snickers bar he took a picture of and uploaded to the software.
While the live demonstration got lively reactions from the crowd, Clayton also discussed the real world implications of AI.
“I think we can look back at the journey of any technology, and any big technology has many forms of disruption,” said Clayton. “When large technology shifts, some jobs are impacted and go away, but entirely new jobs that often we’ve never even dreamt of will get created. So, I think, we’ll definitely see that dynamic play out because that’s always been true.”
Some students agree that AI is useful.
“The communications industry is so vast and AI will change it, but it will change it differently for different fields,” said Victoria Frey, a junior communications and English creative writing major. “Communication as a field is very broad, especially here at USC.”
On the other hand, some students still have doubts about the regulations and implications of AI.
“I would say they are overly optimistic. They talk a lot about the need for safety regulations and things of that matter, but we have yet to really see much of that,” said Ian Cabeen, a senior psychology major. “From a legal standpoint from any country, as well as most companies, it’ll be interesting to see where that goes in the future and if it develops in a safe way.”
With doubts arising from students in the crowd, Clayton offered his advice.
“The first job is to get out there and use the technology to become familiar with it,” said Clayton.
“The second piece of advice is to cherish this profession. Cherish the discipline of writing, reading and all the things that you get from that as communicators. There’s a cultural shift that we will need to acknowledge is going to happen.”