Human First AI Second : A Practical Approach to Success E168

I thought to myself, it seems silly now, but I thought, I really thought that that was, you know, immoral. I thought that it was wrong. The thought of creating like a username or having AI know who I was, my age, my personal information was terrifying to me and so helpful. It almost made me feel like I was able to express myself better than I could have without it.

Like it really was motivating for me. And it gave me that pull out of my writer's block. And so it had a huge impact on me. Hi, my name is Punit Bhatia and you're listening to Fit for Privacy podcast where AI meets privacy.

This is not legal advice. Thanks for listening. Everyone is talking about AI. everyone is talking about technology and everyone is saying that future is technology everything will be digital everything will be technological yes that is true but I like to state it differently everything will also remain human I think in my view human first and AI or technology second is the recipe for success now why do I say that and how do others see that do others see the same way.

And I found a person called JD McPherson, who wrote a book, Human First, and talks about similar concept in her words. And I invited her for a conversation in the Fit for Privacy podcast. So let's go and listen to her. And this is going to be even more relevant because we often talk about privacy AI and technology, and we talk about the concerns, but it's also important to remain human.

While it's important to implement ISO standards, while it's important to implement the GDPR and the EUA Act. Being human is important and while you see at growthskills.store the ISO 402001 or other ISO standards, let's go and talk to JD McPherson and understand what does she have to say about human first AI second approach. Hello and welcome to the Fit for Privacy podcast and we are in an episode with JD McPherson.

JD, welcome to the Fit for Privacy podcast. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to have you and as a journalist, I like to ask you, I mean, you being a journalist, how do you see the space of technology, AI, and so on? Because in the media, in news, there's no news without AI, there's no conference without AI, there's no talk show without AI.

But how do you see this space of technology and AI? Yeah, it's interesting. So I, I think coming from a writing background, so, you know, I was one of those sort of artsy kids when I was very young, I wanted to tell stories. I spent a lot of time writing in journals.

And I think a lot of people can relate to that. When you love reading and writing, it usually starts at a very young age. So that was me. And I, I knew I wanted to be a writer.

And specifically, I wanted to be an investigative journalist and sort of change the world with my words. You know, over the course of the last 20 years, like I went to journalism school in the middle of social media, just becoming a thing, even online journalism. When I first started, I think I started journalism school in 2008. And there really wasn't even like we were still just looking at newspapers and television and radio.

And in 2010, so we're only talking about 15, 16 years ago, there was a shift in the journalism world into online journalism. And it became something you could actually study. And at the same time, very, very soon after that, you started seeing a reduction in funding and a reduction in jobs in more traditional print media. And then with social media, you see almost everyone in a way is a journalist.

Anyone with a cell phone can record what's happening in front of them and put it online in like a journalist would. Right. And so the whole world of journalism and media over the last 15 years has completely shifted and changed. You also get now really you're trying to get eyeballs, you're trying to get clicks.

So the whole media world is around just getting someone to click. And what that means is that there's a huge amount of emphasis on a headline, even more than 15 years ago, because the headline, the first five words, that's what people read. That's what people see. And that's the impression that's going to, and the image as well.

That's what's going to make them click on it. And so with artificial intelligence, I think specifically for the media world, and we can get into, you know, being a writer and using AI as a writer as well, but for journalists and for media outlets, they're able to now use artificial intelligence to help get those eyeballs in an even more efficient way, which ultimately is how they make money, is through getting clicks and getting eyeballs. So that's a really interesting conversation in and of itself.

But the other part of it is, so for example, I think the New York Times and a few others now have subscription where you have to pay a monthly amount. So you might see a headline in the first paragraph in a newspaper when you click on an article online, but then they won't let you see the rest. And I think the New York Times is even more, you know, you have to pay in order to even read any of the article, which is a fascinating turn of events where it's now a pay to play and people are willing to spend money for real, you know, quote unquote, real, authentic, written, investigated journalism and subscribe to that service and sort of drown out everything else, which is trying to get a click or free or, you know, probably largely now utilizing AI.

So it's really interesting. I think we're in a period in time, and we have been for the last 15 years where things in media and journalism are really shifting and changing. They have been, they continue to. And the way that people make money and the way, what success looks like, both for an individual writer, an individual journalist, and also for organizations and companies I think the definition of what that looks like including profits is changing all the time And there I will say also a real push and pull almost like a tug of war between advertising which is essentially what where you're trying to get someone to click, you're trying to get that eyeball, the clickbait, you're really getting paid through ads.

So it's an advertising profit model versus a subscription model, which is no ads, you know, and then leaning into that more authentic, real, you have to pay in order to get into this private club kind of experience. So yeah, I think it's fascinating. And Meta now, like social media, large like Meta is the name, Right. I think their ad, like I talk about this in my book a little bit.

I did, I did a deep dive on revenue because same with media, it goes into AI just in general as a topic, how are large language models going to make money, right? How, how are organizations going to make money? And advertising continues to be at the top of that. And that absolutely is true with media as well.

And that's not new. Like you might have picked up maybe you see them sometimes like lifestyle magazines, like Metro News is an example in the UK and Canada. We have Metro News essentially a free newspaper, a free magazine. It's not free.

It's ads. Nothing is free. Nothing is free. It's all about, as you rightly said, grabbing attention, gaining the eyeballs and getting them to click.

and you mentioned the new york times trying now to make that click a paid click because you have to subscribe and so you give in the story you get the attention and as the person gets interested maybe you read a few lines and then you have to pay and that's where it's getting tricky and you mentioned earlier that when you had a maternity leave and then when you came back you were fascinated by this topic of artificial intelligence and how it's advancing and you did some research What did that research that you do about this artificial intelligence reveal to you broadly, apart from the things you already shared in a nutshell?

Yeah, so as I mentioned, I come from this background of wanting to be a writer my whole life. I'm, you know, my degree is in journalism and theater. I play the violin. I studied philosophy in undergrad.

I was always sort of the artsy kid. And I feel like coming into this world we live in now, and especially as you say, I went on a maternity leave in 2004, which it felt like to me at the time, I went on maternity leave, AI didn't even exist. Like large language models, Chachapiti was not in common conversation. And then I returned to work last year and it was everywhere.

And so I almost missed, it felt like to me at the time, I missed the transition. Like it was like all or nothing. And in the year and a half that I was off, that happened. And so when I went back to work, it was 2023 when I went on maternity leave and I went back to work late, late 2024, coming into 2025.

five. And I had a friend, I write about it in the book, but I had a very, very close friend who sort of was like, you know, have you tried Chachi PT? And I was at the time, I was having some writer's block and struggling coming back to work after being off for a year, a little over a year, really struggling trying to write, you know, a thousand word articles on a regular basis, which is what journalists do, writers do. And I was really struggling.

And so my friend who I really trusted said, have you tried this? And at the time I thought to myself, it seems silly now, but I thought, I really thought that that was, you know, immoral. I thought that it was wrong. The thought of creating like a username or having AI know who I was, my age, my personal information was terrifying to me.

And yeah, like I thought that it was, I thought it was immoral. I really thought it was almost like a sin to use AI to write or to help me be productive. And so I very nervously, tentatively started using it. And I used it like Google for a long time.

And I think a lot of people are still using it like a Google search engine. But so I would be working on something and I would be like, you know, I literally used it as a thesaurus. So what's another word for being too cold? And then it would give me this like beautiful synonym, you know, in a way that was, it just felt good.

Like it felt better than, for example, in Word, you know, you can right click and you get a thesaurus right there. And that's been there for years. And that's the other part of this is artificial intelligence in some form, I think we've been living with for a long time, but chat tea or other one, Claude and some of these others, like it's a very different experience where you almost, you get this like back and forth. And so at the time I was trying to write and it was so validating and so helpful.

It almost made me feel like I was able to express myself better than I could have without it. Like it really was motivating for me. And it gave me that pull out of my writer's block. And so it had a huge impact on me as a young mom, as someone who wanted so badly to be a writer continues to want to be a writer still trying to be a writer.

My experience with it was just right, it completely blew my mind. And it was a very positive experience. And then I started using it more and feeling more confident and asking questions and just being myself. And I started seeing my friends and my colleagues, even my husband, really be anti-AI.

So that was a big also a motivator because I couldn believe it I was calling my parents I was calling my friends I was talking to my husband and nobody wanted to use AI They thought it was you know same sort of thing, privacy issues, maybe it's cheating. And again, in my circle, most of my friends and colleagues are writers, musicians. They do fall into that category, I guess, like not as much technically savvy, like they're not necessarily the same as me. Like I'm not a, I write like, I'm not a tech bro, you know?

So there was a lot of resistance in my immediate life. But I like to pinpoint on one point which you mentioned. You mentioned that you felt it was cheating. Now there's a group of, I understand the reluctance to use it, concerns around privacy concerns should i shouldn't i but there's another group of people like you mentioned your friends and your family they are reluctant but there's another group because most people start like that and you mentioned you were also reluctant but by using it and over time you overcame reluctance so reluctance you overcome like that but then the other aspect is you generate content you can generate images you generate writing or articles or or maybe ask you to edit your article improve your article suggests changes and there there too there's a school of thought who say it's plagiarism of course if you copy somebody else's text it's plagiarism if you use ai for assistance it's different if you use ai for generating and creating and dumping it in your name that's different but what's your view do you think using ai for creative work like journalism like writing book cheating is it ethical is it plagiarism is it breach of intellectual property rights what's your view on that dimension uh yeah i think this is a fat i think this is a really fascinating subject um and i think it's complex um i think though basically my answer is no i don't think it's plagiarism to use ai to help you write something um but i mean i think there's there's the part that makes so what i think is critical thinking skills it's it's about a return to the thing that makes something worth reading something compelling something thought provoking something that engages both yourself and others around you and that's where i think the the ethics around specifically around this like plagiarism or cheating, like high school students using AI to like write an essay or something like that.

I think that it puts a lot more demand on the teacher. I think that professors and teachers are put in a position now where assigning an essay or a multiple choice, you know what I mean? You can't anymore. And I actually think it's more about supporting our educators to come back to this place of, okay, so this is, AI is here, you know, it's not going anywhere.

Being able to solve math equations, being able to generate texts very quickly, you know, that's not going anywhere. But being able to think outside the box, being able to take something that AI has generated, and then making it worthwhile, right? That is where things for me start getting really interesting. And it's, and it's where I wish more people, I wish more people were putting a voice to that.

Because there are so many, like myself, there are people like we're going through this incredible period of time, right? And I feel like we need now more than ever, people like ourselves, people who are willing to engage critically and talk about it, use AI, push AI, explore AI, you know, use it for art, use it for writing and then document that process. And we have to allow for people to do that. And you can't, so for me, I can't write, I have my book right here.

I'm going to show you. I can't write a book about AI without using AI. And you can't punish, you know, you can't punish, you shouldn't be punishing people like artists as well. I think are falling into this category where like, I think I saw Comic-Con, I don't want to like put them on blast specifically, but book fairs, you know, advocates, right?

This is what I'm saying. Like people who are supposed, organizations who are supposed to be really supporting independent authors, artists are sort of banning AI use. And that I think is a mistake. I think that we should be having more conversations about what ethical AI use looks like and like saying that it's just cheating using AI like carte blanche banning books from book fairs or you know from book awards because they've used AI just carte blanche you know of course upsets me from like coming from a perspective where I didn't just get a book from ChatGPT and put it in the world, right?

I'm trying to engage with this in a critical way. And there's a lot of people doing that and having these conversations. And yet they're being penalized. No, I agree with you.

I think the human element is very important. The AI and human will coexist rather than AI or human. It's not an or question, it's an and question. How do you coexist and how do you use your humanity not for mundane tasks but for critical thinking for using it to make it more unique and your perspective so if there's anybody could write an average book 10 years ago but to write a good book and with the help of ai if you can develop it further and make it an excellent book that where ai is to be used the idea the thought the concept the inputs have to be yours but they have to be enriched they have to be refined and they have to be helped as if an assistant would do it for you but you mentioned uh earlier that you have written this book human again so i fully agree with the title i haven't read it yet if there's any time to be human in the history it's now and it's now from now on because earlier you could live sleepingly or half awake or half conscious but if you have to be alert if you have to be alive and if you have to be in this ai world going forward with robots around you in 10 years you got to be human you got to be able to differentiate and you got to be alive and kicking so what is this book human again all about it's about exactly what you're saying like what where you're saying um basically what we're both saying is the baseline it was here and now it's here, right?

So the first draft, like everyone is going to have access to a certain level for free immediately, right? Like whether it's today, a year from now, five years from now. And so what is going to make somebody succeed and thrive in their day-to-day life, but I think especially in their workplace is their ability to express themselves, their confidence, their taste, their perspective, their uniqueness, and to use your words, to be able to refine it, to polish it, to put their own stamp on whatever it is that they're working on is going to become the, maybe not 50 years from now, but in the coming five, 10, 15 years from now, I think is going to become absolutely imperative.

And I, and so that's what the book's about. And, and so, and I talk about how we do that. And so what I, one of the chapters that I, again, feel so passionate about is that I say, the liberal arts are going to have a massive comeback. So right now and for the last, I think, several decades, really, at least for me, my generation, my parents and many of my friends' parents, you know, it was engineering, lawyer, doctor, like there's a set amount of business.

There's a set amount of professions that our parents sort of wanted us to do to get a job, right, to succeed. And so the liberal arts largely are kind of, they've taken a backseat in a lot of universities, I think, around the world. So in other words, education for education's sake, right? So going and studying philosophy, studying English literature, of course, these are still important and they're vital, but I do think that they've, they're going to become almost mandatory.

Like in order for you to really succeed in life with artificial intelligence, pretty much across every sector, the ability to think critically. And in my opinion, that comes from things like traveling, right? Going and seeing other places, experiencing other cultures, looking at art, making, feeling uncomfortable, being bored, listening to music. Those are things that make us feel human.

They make us feel things. And, and ultimately they help us sort of become ourselves, become unique, have a unique perspective and develop, develop those things, develop our taste and our confidence and our point of view, and then apply that when using artificial intelligence. And, and, and I just think that's such a cool, if it's true, what I'm saying, what a cool, like, and like, for me, it's just like, you know, like, it just makes me feel so good to think that 10 years ago, it would have been computer science, And maybe 10 years from now, it's going to be studying literature.

You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. Human first, AI second. And that's going to be the recipe for success in future.

Because previously you could be human tech or techie. But now you've got to be human first. Bring in your humanity. Bring in your salience.

Bring in your critical thinking. Bring in your skills. Bring in your idea. Bring in your concept.

And then use AI to develop it. then use AI to further it, to enrich it, to make it look better and do it for you. So AI is going to be your assistant. AI is going to be your partner who makes you more powerful, more better, more sharp, more relevant.

And with that, if people want to get access to this book or want to talk to you, what's the best possible way to get handled on this book? um it's available i think pretty much everywhere burns and noble amazon you can just google human again in the ai age jd mcpherson my email is jd.mcpherson1990 at gmail.com i'm also on instagram um handle at jd mcpherson um but yeah no yeah i think that's and i also have a website but I think it's all pretty easy to find online.

Good. Yeah. These days, it's easy to find people online as long as you want to. And that's where the human aspect comes in.

But with that, I would say it was wonderful to have you in this human first AI second approach and hear your thoughts about it. And I would love to get a handle on your book. And thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me.

Pleasure. Thank you for joining us on the Fit for Privacy podcast. We hope you found today's conversation valuable and thought-provoking. Subscribe for more insights like this.

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