Barry Diller, president of IAC and Expedia Group, has long been a critic of Google. Now it’s entering the fight for AI, where ChatGPT’s capabilities have raised the alarm that jobs across entire sectors could possibly be worn out. Diller, whose publications include People magazine and the Each day Beast, says he has some ideas on how to prevent this rapidly mutating technology from destroying the publishing industry like the Web did nearly 15 years ago.
Lydia: You have been very vocal about your concerns about Google’s powerhouse, which is currently being sued by governments around the world on antitrust grounds. When will the counterattack on artificial intelligence happen and what is going to it seem like?
Barry: For the first time, this topic has reached a stage where the entire publishing industry is de facto grappling with the potential consequences of generative AI. That is the first stage. And it’s getting steamy.
The following step is a series of options…I believe all of them shall be taken up. The primary is laws and the second is litigation. I can not say which way it would go, but legal proceedings are mandatory. I won’t go into those details, but listed below are the options. we’re involved.
Lydia: Do you agree that lively AI development must be placed on hold due to fears it could turn into “dangerous” or is the genie already out of the bottle?
Barry: A six-month moratorium is neither practical nor possible. We cannot force the world to agree with this.
Lydia: But is China so cooperative?
Barry: (laughs) Exactly.
Lydia: Will generative AI start reducing the need for journalists who simply aggregate news? When could we see it occur? Six months?
Barry: Nothing is completed in six months, but the truth is that 100 million people have entered ChatGPT in the last month, which is remarkable.
Thanks to this, the entire publishing world noticed this problem. Forces will come together to set the rules that may allow firms to survive.
Lydia: It is a vague statement.
Barry: We’re definitely involved. We’re very committed to everyone in posting to take the right steps. There are also real problems with the sources of financial support that underlie this threat.
When the web was born and all publishers allowed their content to be available on the web for free of charge, it took 15 years for publishers to say “no, it is not free” and arrange paid firewalls.
If we would like the situation to occur again, we do nothing. Even the Latest York Times was close to bankruptcy, though it will definitely recovered over the years.