The dizzying recent developments in artificial intelligence may have prompted anxiety that many professions will soon be as redundant as lamplighters and whale oil merchants, but Pat Kenny (Newstalk, weekdays) clearly thinks his job is safe. On Wednesday, Kenny discusses the ramifications of the technology with John Clancy of Galvia AI, who reads out an introduction generated by the ChatGPT app, supposedly in the same style as his host.
“Well now, folks,” quotes Clancy, “Let’s have a chat about the perils of AI, or artificial intelligence, if you will.” Kenny, in response, points out that he rarely says “folks”, and hates the term “chat”. “I like the word ‘conversation’,” he clarifies, before adding, “I suppose it’s not a bad stab.” Maybe he would have been more impressed if the spiel had been produced by an app called ConversationGPT, but either way, his grudging attitude is probably justified: on this evidence, there’s little danger of AI supplanting PK any time soon.
Certainly, it would be difficult for any computer to re-create Kenny’s tone. The sniffy superiority and nitpicking insecurity of his verdict is all too human, not to mention far more entertaining than the generic patter yielded by AI. That said, Kenny isn’t entirely dismissive of the technology. “It does have very positive attributes,” he says. Perhaps he’s thinking of the children’s bedtime story that ChatGPT penned at his request, about a bunny who becomes a newsreader.
Adopting his most soothing Jackanory voice, Kenny reads out the tale – which has all the warmth of a technical manual – before ending with a flurry of snores. “I’ve put you to sleep, haven’t I?” he chuckles, with understandable satisfaction: given that having a soporific effect on one’s audience isn’t usually seen as a virtue among broadcasters, it’s another strike against his putative virtual replacement.
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For all that Kenny is sometimes characterised as wooden and technocratic, the item serves to highlight the quirks that lie beneath his undoubted store of knowledge and grasp of detail. Speaking to Minister for Higher Education Simon Harris about new degree courses that don’t require CAO points, the host is typically thorough. But he also offers pithy opinions on the third-level admissions procedure – “the points system is cruel because it’s based on supply and demand” – and how it pushes people into careers that may not suit them: “I prefer someone who really wants to do something than doing it just because they got the points.”
There’s an urge to cringe when Kenny attempts to differentiate between an affair and a fling during his discussion on marital infidelity. Even then, however, he shows his enjoyably idiosyncratic side
Moreover, for someone whose sense of humour is often more flat-footed than sparkling, Kenny can display an unexpectedly wicked sensibility. After Galway county councillor Peter Roche claims that young people there are using cocaine because it’s cheaper than alcohol, the host wonders if his guest is suggesting an equivalence between the stimulants. “Might you not be accused of encouraging people to compare and contrast the two?” Kenny mischievously asks. (The councillor, unsurprisingly, disagrees.)
None of this is to say that the show is heaving with rapier wit and piercing insight, while the host is still prone to statements out of kilter with more self-consciously enlightened contemporary sensibilities. There’s an urge to cringe when he attempts to differentiate between an affair and a fling during his discussion on marital infidelity with psychotherapist Stephanie Regan. Even then, however, Kenny shows his enjoyably idiosyncratic side, defining a philanderer as a man “off with every dog and divil”. The day that ChatGPT comes up with such a description is when we should all worry that AI has got too smart for our own good. In the meantime, Kenny can rest easy.
Impeccably mannered he may be, but Bryan Dobson tries not to make things easy for Minister for Education Norma Foley when interviewing her on Tuesday’s News at One (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays). The Minister is on to discuss the restoration of promotional positions for primary schoolteachers – something denied the profession since the 2008 crash, a shocking but telling fact – but the anchorman instead grills her about the problem of recruitment and retention in the sector, dubbing it “the biggest challenge facing education”.
As it turns out, the biggest challenge for Dobson is getting Foley to give a straight answer. Every question is met with a volley of statistics on class ratios and teaching posts, delivered in the Minister’s unflappable classroom manner: she constantly repeats the phrase “I acknowledge” to increasingly meaningless effect. The duel reaches its apogee when Dobson presses his guest on the number of empty teaching posts, only to be frustrated again and again.
Sample excerpt: “So how many vacancies remain?”
“We do have vacancies in some areas more than others.”
“How many?”
“The full figure varies from area to area.”
Ultimately, Dobson’s questions linger in the air longer than Foley’s answers
In the end, Foley’s rolling barrage of departmental data is so relentless that her host almost sounds relieved to call time on the encounter. But if Dobson doesn’t elicit clear responses, neither does the Minister emerge unscathed. Rather than highlighting her achievements in what is a reliably testing Cabinet post, the torrent of information seems more like a tactic for dodging inconvenient queries. Ultimately, the questions linger in the air longer than the answers.
Otherwise, the host continues to preside over the afternoon news slot with seemingly effortless command. His sonorous timbre lends on-air authority as he commentates on Biden’s Irish visit: his summary of the US president’s speech in Belfast is somehow more compelling than the original, broadcast earlier in the bulletin. But as Dobson discusses the matter with newsroom colleagues Vincent Kearney and Carol Coleman, he sounds at ease rather than stiffly formal. While he might initially seem like an old-school figure, anchoring the listener amid the swirl of events in stentorian fashion, Dobson’s warmer side makes for a reassuring presence, at least if you’re not a politician: there’s nothing artificial about his approach.
