The Man, The Machine ... The Presidency?

Georgie

        SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 5, 2036, 5 a.m. (Combined News Reports) – The machine won: One that no grizzled politician likely ever imagined taking a campaign by storm.

That’s the result from yesterday’s presidential election that pitted Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who co-founded the Unity Party with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, against Sam Altman’s AI-created invention and presidential candidate, a Democrat named “Georgie.”

Sam Altman campaigning

 

Just before 2 a.m. Pacific Time, with 98% of the ballots counted in California, and many states having tallied up their voting results, Georgie, with Altman as its vice-presidential candidate, appeared to be on a path to win at least 301 Electoral College votes, 31 more than necessary to win the White House.

 

Sources close to Zuckerberg and his vice-presidential candidate, former California Gov. Gavin Newsom, said the Meta founder is expected to make a statement at 10 a.m. Pacific Time today. They weren’t sure if he would concede the election, demand a recount or ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule itself to determine that only a human being, not a man-made machine, is allowed to hold the country’s highest political office.

Mark Zuckerberg online ad

    It wasn’t known, as this story was written, when Altman and Georgie would make a statement. 

 

            Last night, Altman confirmed that, if elected, he and Georgie would take the oath of office at the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 20, 2037, from Chief Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

 

            Altman’s AI-created candidate made this election one of the most controversial in the nation’s history, starting in early February, when the U.S. Supreme Court justices unanimously ruled against Zuckerberg and two other presidential aspirants, former Vice President JD Vance and former Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, to allow Georgie to run for the presidency.

 

            The Justices noted there was no language in the Constitution requiring only human beings to be president and that a machine, at 35 years old, the age requirement for the presidency, would, unless continually updated, likely be obsolete.

Voters in New Hampshire

 

            “They just allowed the Wizard of Oz to become the next president,” grumbled DeSantis.

 

            “We avoided a Biden problem,” Altman said, referencing the late president’s mental acuity issues.

 

            “It used to be a scandal or two could cost someone an election. Now we’re seeing a man-made candidate, with apparently no skeletons, with a very good chance of being the next president,” said historian Jon Meacham during an interview last night on CNN.

 

            “No one saw this coming – certainly not the Founding Fathers,” he added.

            

            Altman defended his invention throughout the campaign.

 

            “These times are more challenging than any human being, let alone president, has the brain power to solve. Georgie is smarter than anyone and will be the president to solve problems from food insecurity to schools and employment to relations with China, Russia, North Korea, Ukraine and The Middle East,” he said. “He’ll be more centrist once he gets into office.

 

            “Georgie is so smart I think he could be a three-term president,” he added.

 

            As the election neared, the polls showed voters who were employed preferring Georgie while those out of work wanted Zuckerberg, suggesting the unemployed had been replaced by ChatGPT and other AI-designed devices.

 

            Asked if Georgie would vote in the election, Altman replied, “Sure. Of course. I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t.”

 

            Altman took issue with reporters during the campaign when asked if Georgie was a euphemism for him.

             “Georgie is his own man, or woman or maybe just trans,” Altman said. “But either way, this machine, I mean Georgie, is its own being.”

 

            “Georgie will never get sick, need a day off, be hungry, require sleep, suffer from mental decline or be at risk of assassination,” Altman noted frequently during the campaign.

 

            When asked if power outages could negatively impact Georgie, Altman declined to directly answer the question, saying, “That’s why I’m here.”

Belittled and Betrayed

The problem with big business and other institutions, whether large, small, multinational or local, is the people running them. Too often, they speak out of both sides of their mouths and then are utterly gobsmacked when hit with evidence that few trust them.

 “Ninety percent of business executives think customers highly trust their companies … only 30% of consumers actually do. That gap of 60 percentage points is greater than the 57 points we saw in both 2023 and 2022,” says a recent report from PwC, a management consultancy.

 

While I can’t speak for every reason customers’ faith in companies dwindles, part of it must be the fact that there’s little authentic communication. Every organization, or nearly every organization, is armed up with a battery of attorneys and a team of communications experts, which seems ambiguous since I’m hard-pressed to know what a “communications expert” is. 

To make sure the official utterances are mealymouthed? 

 

Perhaps.

 

My most recent experience was with Hilton Hotels. At one of their locations everything that could go wrong went wrong. The heat didn’t work in two of their rooms and, at one point, when walking to the front desk to change rooms for the third time, a mouse skedaddled in front of me – and that was near an area where guests can buy food.

 

To rectify the problems, I wrote what I thought was a very diplomatic yet direct letter to the CEO, Christopher Nassetta, suggesting he investigate this location because the building was iconic and could serve the brand well, perhaps even enhance its reputation, to use some “communications speak,” as those “experts” in corporate communications might call it. 

 

Here’s my letter:

 

December 2, 2024

 

                                                                        

Mr. Christopher J. Nassetta

President & Chief Executive Officer

Hilton Hotels & Resorts

7930 Jones Branch Dr.

McLean, VA 22102-3388

 

Dear Mr. Nassetta:

 

First paragraph removed for this version.

 

I’ve stayed there many times, and this previous time, on Monday, Nov. 25th, was the last.

 

I was originally checked into Room 177 and noticed the heat didn’t work. I was then sent to room 294, where the heat did work, but there was a problem with the door. The system that allows the card key to unlock the door needed to be repaired. The engineer wasn’t sure how long it would take, so rather than become a prisoner in my own room, I asked to be and was transferred to room 290, where the heat also didn’t work. Instead of complaining, I remained in the room because, by that time, it was around 11 p.m., and I had an early start the following morning.

 

And, if that wasn’t bad enough, at one point that night, while walking to the front desk to get another room, I spotted a mouse scrambling across the corridor near the hotel’s convenience store, where food is displayed.

 

This isn’t the first time I’ve had an issue with the heat at this hotel. It’s happened with other rooms in other parts of the building, too, and every time I’ve transferred to another room. 

 

The staff was very kind and amenable, but it’s the last time I’ll stay there. At the Marriott hotels in the area this has never happened. 

 

I strongly urge you to visit this location. You’ll notice a building that’s an architectural gem but requiring work. Lots of work! It could serve your company so much better if someone would improve it. The rooms are okay but often the furniture and the bathrooms are scratched. The same goes for the elevators. 

 

In all the time I’ve been going there, over the last five years, the people have been fabulous, from the front desk to those in the dining room and at the bar. They, too, would be better served with an improved building.

 

I take no joy in writing this letter. I retain fond memories of Hilton, having stayed at many of your locations around the United States during my business travels and, during my youth, in Europe as well as at one of your other iconic locations, now since gone, in Hong Kong.

 

For the sake of your company’s reputation, correct the problems.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

Doug Page 

 

Here’s the company’s first response via email from the address guest.correspondence@hilton.com.

 

Hi DOUG,

 

Thank you for contacting Hilton Guest Assistance regarding your recent experience at one of our properties. Guest inquiries and feedback are important and valuable to us. A case has been created for you and forwarded over to the hotel’s management team for review. Please allow 3 days for follow-up.

 

We appreciate you choosing Hilton hotel brands for this stay and hope we will be your first choice for your future travel needs.

 

As seems to be with the case with much correspondence between companies and their customers, the email was unsigned. Was it written by an actual human being or was it generated by that funky new thing called AI?

 

It’s a mystery.

 

Two days later, another email arrived, with the subject line “Your Scanned Document,” likely after someone – other than the recipient – read it. Here it is:

 

Hi Doug,

 

I am truly sorry to hear about your experiences ... I understand how frustrating it must have been to change rooms and still not have the problem resolved.

 

To make it right, I can issue a refund for your stay. Please reply to this email and let me know if this is acceptable.

 

We value your feedback and are committed to improving our services. If there is anything else we can do to assist you, please do not hesitate to let us know.

 

Thank you for bringing this to our attention, [sic] and thank you for your loyalty as a Silver Hilton Honors Member.

 

Best Regards,  

 

Chari Huntzberry

 

As much as I sensed Chari wanted to do the right thing, receiving a letter from the CEO would have been better. Such a note would convey that Mr. Nassetta cares enough about his customers to take time from his busy day to communicate with them and commit to correcting the location’s problems. 

 

Allowing Chari, who’s likely far removed from the CEO suite, to handle the issue, gives off many impressions: First, Nassetta never read the letter; second, he doesn’t care about customer problems; third, he’s under the impression that all’s well at that particular location – when it isn’t! 

 

Is it any mystery why customers don’t trust the companies? Their complaints never reach the top. 

 

The refund was slightly over $100.00, and I accepted it. 

 

I compare this experience to that of my father, Robert Page, during his days as the CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times. Nearly 40 years ago, one of the newspaper’s columnists, Vernon Jarrett, caused quite a hullabaloo, when he dared to suggest that since the mayor, Harold Washington, who died unexpectedly the day before Thanksgiving, on Nov. 25, 1987, was a black man, he should be replaced by another black man. 

 

How radical!?

 

Dad’s office was flooded with letters, with many of the writers calling for Jarrett’s head. I read a few of them and some of Dad’s responses, too. One stands out: It was to a dentist in Peoria, Ill. Like many of the writers, he demanded Jarrett be terminated.

 

“I’d hate to be the next black man to come to you to get a tooth pulled,” Dad replied, going onto say Jarrett wasn’t about to be fired.

 

The dentist likely didn’t appreciate Dad’s response, but at least he received a reply from whom he wrote.

 

CEO engagement with customers, The Harvard Business Review discussed two years ago, “is a strategic opportunity for the company to reinforce marketing messages and the company’s unique value proposition in the marketplace. Such a culture of commitment, driven publicly by the CEO, is crucial for the next few years, given the unsettling trend of customer satisfaction being in steep decline.”

 

In other words, the company’s best customer service representative is the CEO.

 

By directly engaging with customers, they show the company gives a damn – and the problems will be fixed. They’re the company’s flag bearers and put the organization’s credibility on the line anytime they interact with clients and consumers. 

 

But too often no one’s home. I’ve emailed Mark Zuckerberg with questions about Facebook's advertising policies and never received a response. 

 

Say what you will about Elon Musk, perhaps Jeff Bezos, too, but at least they engage with customers from time to time. That likely explains some of their success.

 

Take note, Mr. Nassetta … and others, too.

Book Review: Bulletins from Dallas: Reporting the JFK Assassination

Before he takes the oath of office, President-elect Donald Trump should read Bill Sanderson’s outstanding book, Bulletins from Dallas, about how the country’s two leading wire services covered President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.  Silicon Valley titans Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Larry Page (no relation to this reviewer) and Sergey Brin could stand to read it, too. 

After calling CNN “fake news” last week, Trump could use a tutorial about how reporters go about their jobs.  It’s not always pleasant – it might even take down our most sacred institutions or a favorite person – but that’s how the business operates.  At its best, it covers events and people without fear or favor and always with accuracy, balance and fairness.  Silicon Valley’s leaders could also use the book so they can discern which news is fake and which is real.

In this day and age of fake news websites and, recently, a network news anchor gone rogue, I’m sure it’s difficult to believe that two news wire services, The Associated Press and United Press International, once competed ferociously to not only get the news first but to first get it right.

The physical beating UPI White House Correspondent Merriman Smith took at the hands of his competitor, an AP reporter, is UPI lore and is vividly recounted by Sanderson, a New York Post editor, detailing how President Kennedy’s assassination was reported by the two wire services shortly after shots were fired across Dallas’s Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963.

Sitting in the front seat of what was called the wire service car, with easy access to its radio phone, Smith quickly called UPI’s Dallas bureau once gunfire rang out, dictating details as the car followed the presidential limousine to Parkland Hospital, where Kennedy died. 

Realizing Smith was hogging the phone, the AP reporter, Jack Bell, punched Smith numerous times to get it back.  His pummeling didn’t work and a story about the shots crossed UPI’s wire before the car carrying the two reporters arrived at the hospital.  There’s even speculation Smith knocked the car’s phone out of order so UPI could maintain its increasing minute by minute lead in reporting the assassination’s details.

Nearly an hour before the White House announced Kennedy’s death, UPI did something out of the ordinary, quoting a Secret Service agent – the famous Clint Hill – that the president was dead by the time he arrived at the hospital.  UPI officially announced Kennedy’s death, based on a statement by White House Deputy Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff, at 1:35 p.m. CST, and the AP followed two minutes later.

In the arena of wire service journalism, where every second and minute mattered, that was similar to losing the Super Bowl 100 - 0.  In other words, the AP was resoundingly defeated. 

UPI and AP clients, at the time, included hundreds of newspapers around the world, along with numerous television and radio stations.  They demanded accurate and fast reporting.  If they took both wire services, they often compared their reports for accuracy, speed, even writing style.

On that fateful day, most Americans didn’t realize what Smith, Bell and their cohorts were enduring to provide an accurate account of Kennedy’s death.  Instead, they saw the news delivered by the man considered the country’s most trusted news source, CBS News Anchor Walter Cronkite, who spent his early years working for UPI’s predecessor, The United Press.

Like his fellow Unipresser, a term used to describe those who worked or were previously employed at UP or UPI, Cronkite was ahead of his television news competitors.  He was a man of great integrity and feared reporting Kennedy’s death until it was confirmed, knowing an erroneous report of such magnitude would ruin if not end his career.

That value is lost today.  NBC News Anchor Brian Williams was caught fudging the truth about his time covering the early days of the Iraq War in 2003.  The New York Times had its own issues with Jayson Blair, a reporter caught making up stories.  More recently, Rolling Stone magazine in 2014 reported a rape at the University of Virginia that never happened.

And while the news industry might want to be smug over Trump’s callouts of what’s fake news, it would be better served to remember that some of this problem starts with us.

Sanderson’s book traces Smith’s life from his youth in Georgia up through covering six presidents, from Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon.  He was a media star in his own right, writing stories for leading magazines and even appearing on television’s “The Tonight Show.”  Sanderson also shows that Smith was a Washington insider, perhaps too friendly with the presidents he covered, especially Lyndon Johnson.

The problem with today’s technology is that anyone can be a “reporter”.  But instead of having an editor review, correct and ask questions about stories before they’re published or broadcast, anyone can write a blog, publish a video, or post on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat or Instagram and rarely be corrected or stopped, unless, perhaps, they say something libelous or they’re publishing an act of terrorism.  In other words, we’re in the era of fake news, deliberately or not.

As Sanderson opines, “The Internet made news faster (but) we ... gained four minutes (and) lost a lot more.”  (page 212) 

The changed habits of today’s news consumers – taking in more information online – hasn’t helped the newspaper business.  It resulted in fewer advertising dollars and fewer reporters, Sanderson writes.  In 2000, newspaper newsrooms employed 56,200 editors, reporters, photographers and support staff.  It’s down to 32,900 as of 2016. 

This decrease isn’t just compromising the news business.  It’s also harming the country.  It’s hard to believe the nation’s depleted newsrooms didn’t contribute to some of the reporting prior to the November 8^th election predicting Hillary Clinton winning the presidency.  An election involving 50 states cannot be covered from the newsroom.  Reporters need to be on the ground, finding out what the citizenry is thinking about those who would lead them.

Only now are the editors at The Times and The Boston Globe discovering states like Iowa and Wisconsin and sending reporters there.  From reading the stories, you might think they were covering foreign countries.

The news business and the United States were fortunate to have Merriman Smith and certainly a UPI which covered politicians and events across the globe as the world’s largest, independently owned news wire service. 

The wire services have suffered many setbacks since the early 1960s.  UPI is much smaller, nothing like it was twenty or thirty years ago, having been sold a few times.  It’s owned by News World Communications, a media entity founded by the Unification Church.  The AP suffers the same woes as the media industry it serves, seeing its revenues decline nearly 25 percent from their peak in 2008.

Sanderson’s book is very well sourced, and he told me both AP and UPI cooperated with him on the book.  He also said AP’s archivists worry about how UPI is maintaining its archives.  Maybe there’s a deal to be done there, with UPI allowing AP to manage and store their archives.

Smith’s life ended in tragedy in 1970 with a self-inflicted pistol shot.  He’s buried at Arlington National Cemetery.  It’s a fitting tribute to him.  The man who stood for everything journalism holds near and dear – getting the story right – lays with America’s heroes, including his son, Albert, killed in 1966 while serving in the Army in Vietnam.

(Publishing details:  Bulletins from Dallas:  Reporting the JFK Assassination, Bill Sanderson.  New York:  Skyhorse Publishing, November 1, 2016)

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About me, the reviewer:  I’m a freelance reporter in Massachusetts and worked for UPI between 1984 and 1987, in Washington, Dallas, and Philadelphia.  I’m also the co-author, with Philip L. Kilbride, of Plural Marriage for Our Times:  A Reinvented Option? 2^nd Edition, Santa Barbara, CA:  Praeger Publishers, 2012.  My dad, Bob Page, was UPI’s general manager between 1975 and 1980.  He spent 20 years at UPI, from 1960 to 1980.

Link to my book:

https://www.amazon.com/Plural-Marriage-Our-Times-Reinvented/dp/0313384789

AP staff cuts: 

http://www.politico.com/media/story/2016/12/ap-lays-off-25-staffers-004887

AP 2015 annual revenues:

https://www.ap.org/ap-in-the-news/2016/aps-2015-profit-rises-30-percent-on-tax-benefit-cost-cutting

BusinessInsider.com on a fake “mommy” blog:

http://www.businessinsider.com/mommy-blogger-calls-b-on-the-mommy-blogging-industry-and-admits-much-of-her-blogging-was-fake-2016-5

Cisco on fake blogs:

http://blogs.cisco.com/security/cognitive-research-fake-blogs-generating-real-money

Pew report on the U.S. newspaper industry:

http://www.journalism.org/2016/06/15/newspapers-fact-sheet/

Arlington National Cemetery obituary of Merriman Smith’s son:

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/amsmithj.htm

The New York Times story about Rolling Stone magazine’s fake rape story at the University of Virginia:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/05/business/media/rolling-stone-rape-story-case-guilty.html?_r=0

The New York Times story about Jayson Blair:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/us/correcting-the-record-times-reporter-who-resigned-leaves-long-trail-of-deception.html

The New York Times story about early voting leading to a Hillary Clinton presidential victory:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/12/us/politics/early-voting-registration.html