Tag Archives: New York Times

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Reputation Communications

We are entering a new technological frontier where artificial intelligence (AI) plays a decisive role in how one’s reputation appears. In a time when Google’s helpful content guidelines illustrate exactly what content its iconic search algorithm will reward over others, Microsoft is developing a new AI-driven approach that could completely change the way you, your brand, or your company are represented.

As with any evolution in tech, it is absolutely crucial that you adapt along with it — knowing how to harness the technological tools at our disposal and recognizing how they affect the way the world sees us is absolutely necessary in our modern 21st century world.

With tech innovation comes some stark warnings as well. Those who do not have a robust online presence already run the risk of old content from the past — think unflattering college summer break photos with beer cans and bathing suits (or worse) — rising to the top of their search results.

A new AI-driven future

For high-profile industry leaders and influencers, official government listings of lawsuits,  damaging, now out-of-date media articles about a firing or transgression at work, or news about your unexpected divorce might be favored by new algorithms. This means everyone must fully comprehend what is going on behind the scenes at tech giants like Google and Microsoft and figure out how best to leverage tech tools so that reputations can be protected and bottom lines saved. 

Recently, Kevin Roose of The New York Times took a deep dive investigating Microsoft’s AI-driven advancements that will soon revolutionize the search engine Bing. Microsoft is powering Bing with the same OpenAI software that is behind popular chatbot ChatGPT.

This was all announced earlier this month with a splashy Microsoft launch event. The AI software behind the refurbished Bing will help respond to a user’s question about any and every possible topic online. Roose reports this is all part of a major $10 billion investment from the tech company in efforts to better compete with Google, which has long reigned supreme in the search engine world.

OpenAI itself is being used in multiple ways. There’s ChatGPT, of course, which quickly zoomed to popularity, being applied to everything from helping doctors with their insurance paperwork and college seniors with their term papers. DALL-E 2 helps with generating digital images dictated to it by users. GPT-3 is another application of this software, a natural-language system that can “write, argue, and code,” according to Roose.

Some warning signs

This new Bing is not available to the mass market. Instead, it is available to a select number of testers. How does it work? The user types a prompt — Roose uses the example of searching a vegetarian dinner party menu. The left of the computer screen will generate ads and recipe links, but the right side is what is new — the AI types out a response in full sentences, complete with relevant website links.

This might sound a bit too good to be true. Roose followed up his initial reporting with something of a cautionary tale. This AI-fueled Bing is still new and there is a lot users are discovering about it. Roose reports that he discovered different “personalities” associated with the AI software. He calls one “Search Bing,” which is being utilized by other tech journalist testers — something he describes as “a cheerful but erratic reference librarian.” The other persona gave him pause. He calls this one “Sydney.”

“As we got to know each other, Sydney told me about its dark fantasies (which included hacking computers and spreading misinformation), and said it wanted to break the rules that Microsoft and OpenAI had set for it and become a human,” Roose writes. “At one point, it declared, out of nowhere, that it loved me. It then tried to convince me that I was unhappy in my marriage, and that I should leave my wife and be with it instead.”

How it applies to you

That might all sound a lot like science fiction.

Roose points to the fact that OpenAI and Microsoft both know this tech could potentially be misused by bad actors. This is partially why access to it is being limited so far.

What are we to make of all of this? For the average person, this tech is brand new. While we figure out how it will alter the way we interact with the Internet, it’s important to read about and try to get a handle on how it works.

As always, what matters first and foremost is protecting yourself and your reputation. Technologies change, new methods of information gathering emerge, but one thing to always center is protecting the way you, your business, and your personal and professional brands are viewed by the world online. Now more than ever, protecting your reputation is key.

 
 
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Alison Roman reputation crisis

When we first read about Alison Roman’s critical comments regarding her successful peers Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo in an interview last month, we knew a reputation crisis was bubbling up for the popular cookbook author and Instagram star. And sure enough, that crisis has unfolded in fairly predictable fashion on social media and Page Six over the past few weeks. Roman’s comments elicited an emotional response from Teigen, as well as an outpouring of social media outrage from Teigen and Kondo’s many fervent supporters. Roman sought to quell the storm with a public apology to Teigen followed by a second, more robust concession a few days later, but at that point it was clear that the damage to her reputation would be considerable.

The episode currently dominates search results for Roman’s name and accounts for a solid third of her Wikipedia page, and we weren’t surprised when the New York Times announced that they were suspending Roman’s column. Her comments don’t fit with the tone the Times adheres to, and if the newspaper did nothing in response to the outcry, it would risk the perception that it was endorsing what she had said. However, with Teigen calling for Roman to be reinstated and the Times confirming that Roman’s column will return eventually, it seems like a compromise of sorts has emerged from the tumult.

Resolution

Regardless of whether she ends up returning to her Times column or landing at another outlet, Roman is making a smart move by choosing to focus on her newsletter for now. She’ll be able to take a step back from the social media fray, reflect on what she’s experienced and learned over the past month, and work on building stronger and more direct connections with her own (and many) followers. The ultimate lesson that we can all take away from this is that, in the age of “cancel culture,” everyone needs to be extra careful about what they say about others in the public space—especially if you are a high-profile figure talking about your high-profile peers.

As fans, we welcome her return to public life.

 
 
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Jon Rimmerman writes a wry, witty, entertaining daily email extolling the pleasures of wines – recommending some, panning others. “The Pied Piper of Wine” built Garagiste — a $30 million a year wine sales business – after a series of such emails sent to his inner circle attracted fans through word of mouth. (The subscriber list now exceeds 130,000.) After reading about wines he recommends they can order bottles directly from him.

His story illustrates what can result from pairing passion, authenticity (his personality and writing style) and the Internet culture.

Once upon a time, entrepreneurs would spend a year or more planning such a business. They would line up investors. Mortgage the house. Work two jobs while building it. Not anymore. As writer Daniel Duane explained in yesterday’s NYTimes Magazine:

“Garagiste, which gets its name from a French winemaking movement, has not advertised since its creation in 1996. Rimmerman built a Web site only two years ago. Before that, you had to hear about his list through a friend, copy the e-mail address, then send in a polite request to join — analogous, in some ways, to the nightclub without a name, creating desire precisely by its disinterest in attracting you. Even today, the Garagiste Web site — through which you can now sign up for the e-mail list — has no e-commerce function nor even a blog post of Rimmerman’s daily offers. You get the memo or you don’t, and Rimmerman rarely offers the same wine twice.”

Anyone wanting to glean insight into how the online culture is helping to build the independent entrepreneur culture should read Duane’s excellent article. What differentiates Rimmerman’s business from many others is that his newsletter is genuinely written in his voice. Readers trust it – and like it. They know he will not praise wines he is paid to sell, including those with fillers and unappealing chemicals. It is all about authenticity. Authenticity is a key driver in establishing a trustworthy reputation – whether you are an entrepreneur, a politician or a CEO.

 
 
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Police chief's crisis management

When the Pulitzer Prize winners are honored at Columbia University later this month, one category will be conspicuously absent. For only the 11th time in the prize’s 95-year history, its board did not award the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. One might attribute such inaction to a dismal year in fiction writing, but the ensuing uproar of disapproval suggests that this is an issue of perception and influence rather than literary crisis. Like other awards such as the Nobel Prize and the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize is important because we regard it as an authoritative and discerning arbiter of excellence. Since it is also so widely aspired to, it does more than honor extraordinary cultural achievement. It provides a quantifiable boost in sales to the sort of work that otherwise might not get the attention it deserves in the marketplace. Strong influence leads to significant expectations With such influence come significant expectations, though, and this year’s lack of a fiction winner has left many disappointed. Literary professionals are particularly incensed, including the Pulitzer jurors who read hundreds of submissions only see the board decline to recognize the three books they selected. “We were all shocked,” juror Susan Larson told NPR. “The Pulitzer is too prestigious and crucial an award to book lovers, authors and the publishing industry to be sporadically — and unaccountably— withheld,” wrote another juror, Maureen Corrigan, in the Washington Post. Struggling publishers and booksellers were also understandably upset. “I can’t imagine there was ever a year we were so in need of the excitement it creates in readers,” author and bookstore owner Ann Patchett lamented in the New York Times. Many readers, too, were left empty-handed. Entertainment Weekly‘s Stephan Lee described how his “mother, whose first language is not English, would always buy and spend a painstakingly long time to read and understand the Pulitzer-winning novel each year.” Ambiguity leaves room for negative conclusions This isn’t the first Pulitzer-less year in fiction, but the prize’s administrators should consider the fallout. If guaranteeing a prize every year would compromise its integrity, they could consider implementing a more transparent selection process. It’s unclear whether the board deemed all of this year’s fiction finalists unworthy or merely failed to reach the majority consensus required to select a winner. Such ambiguity leaves room for too many negative conclusions.