GLOBAL EYES: READ ME FIRST!

New and improved: Enhanced by ChatGPT! Plus, the Turkish Election Chat.

Why, you may be wondering, do I have so many newsletters from the Cosmopolitan Globalist in my In Box today?

Let me explain.

But first, an invitation: Would you like to join me in a discussion of the Turkish election—which is tomorrow—on Substack chat at 6:00 pm Paris time today? That’s noon EST. This is the most significant election of the year, not just for Turkey, but the world. I don’t just say this because of my personal connection to Turkey. If you’d like to know why I say so and what to watch tomorrow, come join me on Substack chat this afternoon. Let me know in the comments if you plan to come so that I have a sense of how many people to expect.

Now, to the emails you’re about to receive.

When ChatGPT came out, I immediately thought it could help me write Global Eyes and was very excited about it. But it wasn’t as useful as I hoped because it isn’t allowed to access the Internet, and its training data ends in 2021.

A few of days ago, though, a reader wrote to ask if I could send a 500-word executive summary with every edition of Global Eyes. I thought, “Of course I can, if it readers want that.” Then I thought, “I bet ChatGPT could do that.”

After playing with it for a few days, though, I’m not sure whether ChatGPT is up for it. It’s outstandingly good at summarizing text, but not so great at figuring out which parts of the text are newsworthy. Here’s an example: How would you summarize this story, from the most recent edition of Global Eyes?

Iran is executing one person every six hours:

Some 42 people, just over half of which were of the Baluch ethnic minority, were executed by Iranian authorities in the ten days covered by a report from Iran Human Rights. The news of the execution spree came as Iranian authorities announced that they had killed Swedish-Iranian dual national Habib Farajollah Chaab on Saturday. At least 194 people have been executed in Iran so far this year, according to the group’s count. The number is a baseline minimum for Iran’s secretive death row. Only two of the 42 executions that they reported on Friday had been officially announced by authorities.

ChatGPT reduced it to, “Iran executes many.” This is strictly speaking correct, but it wouldn’t give you any sense of why I included the item.

The problem is that I don’t really understand what I do when I make editorial judgments, so I don’t know how to give it the prompts it needs. Take the example above. It’s not a good summary because readers already know and have long known that Iran executes many. The newsworthy element is the monstrous, industrial, and recent pace of the murders.

I could explain that specific point to ChatGPT, but the rule isn’t generalizable to the thousands of other judgments I make every time I publish an edition of Global Eyes, each of which involves an editorial principle that I’ve probably never even articulated consciously. Whatever prompts I give ChatGPT need to be more specific than, “Focus on items that will come as news to our readers,” not least because that requires defining what our readers know. And it’s even trickier because ChatGPT hasn’t seen the news since 2021.

Could I find the right prompts? Would doing so truly save me time and labor? I decided to test it, and I’ve been working on it all week. That’s why you’ve received so many newsletters today. But don’t worry: You’re not actually receiving more to read. I’ve just separated Global Eyes into geographic regions and prefaced each with two versions of an executive summary. One is by me, the other by ChatGPT. But I haven’t specified which is which, because I want you to tell me—unbiased—which you prefer.

If you like these summaries, from now on I’ll include them every time. If you like ChatGPT’s summaries as much as mine, or more, I’ll offload job onto my little AI buddy. (If you prefer mine, I’ll do it myself.)

I’m sending the sections separately because when I added the summaries, Global Eyes was really too long, and I didn’t want you (and particularly, the reader who begged for summaries) to be overwhelmed. But again, this isn’t more than you usually receive. It’s exactly the same thing; it’s just separated into regions and prefaced by what I hope are helpful summaries.

By the way, might you prefer receiving Global Eyes this way? Could it be easier to read, perhaps? Or does it annoy you to receive so many emails?

Stay tuned for the rest. And let me know about the Turkey chat.