Editor's Notebook November 2024

Craig Mongeau - Editor in Chief - November 2024

A question I get asked a lot these days is if we use artificial intelligence, or AI, for any of the stories we publish in Superintendent's Profile or the other publications we do. The simple is answer is no, but AI, or ChatGPT, the popular online platform that provides responses to prompts is pretty good. If you were to ask it, "Write me a 500-word story on the history of snowplows," it'll do it and do it well. So, the question really should be, "Is it right to use AI to create stories?"

Again, the simple answer is no, for me, anyway. When we ask ChatGPT the question about snowplows, all it's really doing is rapidly scanning the Internet and returning an article based on existing information. So, in a way, it's like a supercharged research tool. It's created an article in a second that would take hours to research yourself. Pretty helpful, right? But is it right to simply take what ChatGPT created and pass it off as your own work, as-is? My answer is an emphatic no. To me, that is unethical, but I believe it can be used to help research a topic and then take what you get back and turn it into something original.

For example: why can't AI cure any form of cancer? It can't because it's merely taking existing knowledge of the subject and presenting it in a new way. It can't create or extrapolate knowledge of how cancer happens and then determine how to eradicate it. Maybe someday it will, but right now, it is, in my opinion, a great thief of other people's ideas and I remain committed to creating human-generated original content, even with all its inherent imperfections. I'll happily accept something taking longer to produce than to be done in a matter of seconds, but be unoriginal and in effect, lie to our readers.

Now, shifting gears without the help of AI and using only the brain cells I have still functioning relatively well, this month's issue went to press before the N.Y.S. Highway & Public Works Expo on Oct. 23, 2024. Please look for complete coverage of the big show in next month's issue. As you've heard me say for several months now, we expect this year's Expo to be the biggest ever, and I look forward to reporting the results to you in the December issue. And I hope all of you have a great Thanksgiving. P