⁄From the Editor⁄ A Harmonious Science? IN LATE 2022, it seemed like everybody I knew was playing with ChatGPT, or DALL-E, its adjacent image generator. I created an account myself and asked the tool to write some poems about my cats. They were dreck. I asked it to write a biography for me; it politely declined, saying I’m not well-known enough for it to find enough information. I asked it to write a biography for my partner; it confidently asserted he attended a college he did not. One day I wrote, “Can you write a version of ‘John Henry’ that replaces the protagonist with a 21st-century information worker and the steam-powered rock drill with an AI tool?” ChatGPT returned a five-verse song that included this verse: The day finally came when the AI did admit, That Joe’s insights and skills were truly legit. With handshake and code, they joined in alliance, Man and machine, a harmonious science. The chorus, by the way, went like this: Oh, Joe Henry! A legend so bold, Facing down AI, his story is told. Against lines of code, he’d valiantly stand, A modern-day hero in this cyberland. I’d already discovered that most of the poetry AI can produce is dreck, but I hadn’t expected to find it offensive. Putting aside that John is still a pretty common name—why replace it with Joe?—and the cringe-inducing word “cyberland,” there’s what ChatGPT did with the text itself. The folk song “John Henry” is, as I read it, a bleak tale about the human toll of the industrial revolution, a man who worked so hard to keep up with the steam drill that he got sick and died. ChatGPT’s retelling of it is the opposite of a gritty reboot. I’d say it misunderstands the point of “John Henry,” but it actually seems to understand it just fine, and seems a little too eager to assure me that everything is going to be just fine. AI might not be sentient yet, but it’s already a little defensive. That or the last year of headlines has me both nervous and skeptical. AI was one of the sticking points in contract negotiations during last year’s Screen Actors Guild strike; as this issue went to press, thousands of tech and media workers lost their jobs, with multiple companies directly citing AI — or at least automation — as one of the reasons they’re cutting so many workers loose. And, as I note in my first question in our cover story (p. 26), I’ve come to suspect a lot of new tech is marketed as AI when it’s not — instead, “AI” is just a new buzzword. That cover story — a roundtable discussion about the promises and threats of AI—came about in part because rather than give into my own cynicism, I was curious about what people who observe the tech more closely are thinking. As it turns out, there may truly be reason to hope that AI, and cruder automation tools, will free us from the more tedious aspects of our jobs and let us focus on what people are actually good at. At least, the human participants in our AI roundtable are approaching the tech with a mix of skepticism and optimism, and so were the subjects of this issue’s profiles of Oregon companies doing interesting work in the AI space, or using AI (see the special section on p. 36). In that sense, ChatGPT’s awful “Joe Henry” song may be correct, at least in spirit. But it took human beings—all of them smart and eloquent in uniquely human ways — to make me think so. VOLUME 47 ⁄ NUMBER 2 OREGON BUSINESS (ISSN 02798190) is published 8 times per year, monthly except Mar/Apr, Jul/Aug and Oct/Nov/Dec issues, by MEDIAmerica Inc. at 12570 S.W. 69th Ave., Suite 102, Portland OR 97223. Subscription inquiries should be directed to 503-445-8811. Subscription charge is $24.95 per year, $49.95 for two years in the USA. Single copies and back issues available at above address and at selected newsstands. The editor is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts. Copyright © 2024 by MEDIAmerica Inc. All rights reserved. All material is protected by copyright and must not be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. Printed in Oregon. Periodicals Postage Paid at Portland, OR. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Oregon Business, 12570 S.W. 69th Ave., Suite 102, Portland OR 97223 EDITORIAL EDITOR Christen McCurdy christenm@oregonbusiness.com ART DIRECTOR Joan McGuire joanm@oregonbusiness.com STAFF WRITER Sander Gusinow sanderg@oregonbusiness.com STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Jason E. Kaplan jasonk@oregonbusiness.com COPY EDITOR Morgan Stone CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Erika Bolstad, Jon Down, Melanie Sevcenko PUBLISHING PUBLISHER Courtney Kutzman courtneyk@oregonbusiness.com EVENTS MANAGER Craig Peebles craigp@oregonbusiness.com ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Evan Morehouse evanm@mediamerica.net ADVERTISING AND PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Greta Hogenstad gretah@mediamerica.net DIGITAL PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Alison Kattleman alisonk@mediamerica.net PRESIDENT AND CEO Andrew A. Insinga CONTROLLER Bill Lee BOARD OF DIRECTORS CHAIRMAN André W. Iseli PRESIDENT Andrew A. Insinga SECRETARY William L. Mainwaring TREASURER Win McCormack 6
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