Speaker: ASHLEY

Start early. So my name is Ashley Condor. I’m really, really glad to be able to be part of this conversation. So thank you so much to Alliance AI. And since we’re inviting me, I am a journalist. I’ve been a journalist for the last what coming up to eight years now. And for most of those years, I have not used AI. But just to quickly go back to my intro, I’m actually based here in Nairobi. I’ve worked in journalism in London, covering companies like Channel Four and Channel Five. And now I currently work for the BBC here in Nairobi. But before I even start, I would love to just first caveat us put a strong pause and say, I am not an AI expert. I am speaking for the people who have recently discovered it with the advent of chat tippity and have come to understand and realize just the length at which it can benefit my productivity. So I would love to share with you how I’ve been using it in my world of work and also in my personal life. So we’ll start with first how I’ve mainly been utilizing AI professionally with me so one of the things that we obviously do as journalists is we kind of have to be a jack of all trades you you’re telling stories about so many different people and communities And a large part of that is involving you learning about these communities so what a fun on AI with telepathy specifically It’s been so useful to just helped me to understand How to start that process of getting to know a particular community. So for for this example, I was doing a story about community known as the Hyundai people. They are they’re kind of indigenous to DRC. Not kind of they are indigenous to the DRC Dr. Congo. And I don’t think not many people know about them just because they’re very small tribe. So even taking on the task of telling the story was already quite intimidating. Hope you can see me. Can we all see me? Just confirm you can still see me? Yes. Yeah, so I find AI to be super useful in helping me build guided frameworks for research. And it’s also been extremely useful for giving me like a quick access to historical context about communities like the Hyundai people, for example. But the more important effort effort that it’s really served is fight helping me to find a catalogue of recognized organizations, that and resources that can help me and assist me in my research process, basically. I don’t know about you guys, but sometimes, excuse me, sorry, I am really intimidated when I see a blank page, and you just have to start filling it. When I go to charge a PC, for example, and I send a prompt like, Hey, can you help me understand more, but the Hyundai people helped me build a research framework for learning about them. It kind of gets rid of the anxiety of just working from a blank page. And it sets like a building block for you to start working from. So I find it super useful for that. The other thing that I enjoy using AI for is in my work is generating content ideas. So this can look like once you’ve actually amassed all of this historical knowledge about the you know, the people group if I was to do that story, for example, once you’ve amassed all of this knowledge and I need information about particular story. What do you actually do with it? For the most part, you don’t need to tell everything from A to Zed. You kind of just need to niche and hone in on one single aspect and build a story from that. So this also a I have found which activities specifically, it’s helped me to kind of break down Um okay what are the cultural you know what would be in the example for the wounded people what would be the cultural traditions that they would adhere to what Artistics expressions are being done for real Audit practices that are indigenous to them For example that we can tell story is about, it really helps to break down the research and just turn the content ideas that you have into an actual story rather than like I said, be intimidated by working from a blank page. It just helps you with a springboard. Lastly, I want to also show no loss. This isn’t enough, not the last slide, but I also wanted to share what I would not use it for. wouldn’t use or rely on AI so far, just for finding sources? Sorry that he doesn’t pay someone. Oh, sorry. Okay, nevermind. I wouldn’t use AI to rely on finding my sources. And because I feel like some of the information that you end up finding that is a little bit outdated. And I still feel like there’s better resources that you can go to to validate the information or claims that you’re making, in your stories as a journalist. Also, there’s this kind of industry jargon that we always use, which is to say that a journalist is only as good as their sources. And as much as activity is super useful for productivity, and helping you be more productive in your work. I still don’t think it can fully replace the quality of resources that you acquire from years of investing relationships, and, you know, relationships with actual people. Without just researching. This is one of those things that just can’t be replaced quite as easily, at least not just yet. We don’t know what the next 10 years has in store for us. The other thing that I would say that I wouldn’t rely on AI for is audience engagement or knee. So say for example, that you’re covering a breaking news story as a journalist. If you completely replace your audience engagement with AI, you might end up in a situation where you’re feeding inaccurate information to your audience. On a live kind of you’re giving live update live updates that are inaccurate so usually in cases of breaking news even when you’re not working with AI you have to be super sensitive about what you’re saying because there’s always something constantly changing changing hence the nature of breaking news so Do you really need to be more hands on in such a situation and those are the kinds of documents that I would not recommend using AI For a lot Honestly it’s say that I also use AI on more What’s up guys i use it for pros Still reasons then professional and one of the ways I want to share it is I use So what’s the plan everything and what I Say anything I say I Anything and everything can be Mind with AI so Recently I started I’m taking powerlifting seriously I became a pro powerlifter and I’m preparing for my first competition in August. And I went to AI and no, I went to tactical team rather. And I asked chatting with you to create a nine week powerlifting program that would help me break, like, max out on my current one rep maxes for the squat, deadlift, and benchpress lift, which are the three lifts that you do in powerlifting. And, lo and behold, it created such a, you can’t see all of it here, but it created such a detailed, dead, like a very detailed nine week program that was all inclusive with things like D loading, and you know, all these intricacies that you tend to see when you work with a personal trainer. It had a lot of that in the program. And this is one of the things that really astounded me about chapter 18. I have friends who have said that they use it for meal planning, they use it for PowerPoint presentations, for example. I didn’t use it for this one, funnily enough, but I find it still super well apart from the screenshots that you see. But I still find it. I find it amazing the kind of things that it has simplified in our day to day lives. And I think that the real magic of AI and artificial intelligence, it’s benefiting us at a very, you know, micro personal level and it’s affecting