AI defined 2023. Bullets and ballots will shape 2024
HOW TO sum up the most important news of the year past? The obvious answer in 2023 is to use artificial intelligence (AI). In that spirit, I asked OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard — two of the most popular generative AI tools — to do the job for me.
Their responses show AI's power, but also the ways it still falls short, in this case both in terms of Reuters editorial standards and when compared to human editors.
ChatGPT told me that “As an AI, I don't have real-time access to current events or the internet to know the specific events of 2023” before offering me “a hypothetical scenario based on current trends and topics.” Its rosy scenario included the global community agreeing “to a radical and comprehensive set of measures to reduce carbon emissions significantly by 2030”, scientists successfully wrapping up final phase clinical trials of an unnamed cancer vaccine, and the United Nations brokering a deal to end decades of geopolitical tensions in an unspecified region of the world.
If only.
Bard was more helpful and accurate, offering me a summary of news from the Russia-Ukraine war (though it was slightly unclear on what year the war started), what happened to the global economy, and details of tech developments, including AI and gene editing. It missed the war between Hamas and Israel.
But even if AI cannot yet match a journalist, the technology's emergence in 2023 promised (or threatened, depending on your viewpoint) a profound shift in the way humans operate, and boosted the stock prices of companies that embraced that promise. In 2024, expect more progress and more news on regulators scrambling to keep up.
Next year will also be defined by bullets and ballots.
In October, Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing around 1,200 civilians and taking about 240 more captive. The brutal surprise attack — the single most deadly day in Israel's history — triggered a massive retaliatory operation. Israel has pounded Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza for weeks, ordered the movement of more than a million people within the tiny enclave, and killed, according to the Hamas-run Gaza