Bill Simmons may have stopped writing with any regularity in the mid-2010s – he claims his fingers don’t work – but that won’t stop him from reminding you of his greatest hits. On a recent podcast about Russell Westbrook’s retirement, he couldn’t stop quoting his old columns. He first referenced an article from the 2012 NBA finals, and wasn’t finished until 11 minutes into the podcast.
His guest, The Ringer contributor Kirk Goldsberry, deserved an award for patience. But the biggest blight on the episode came later, in the form of a bizarre ad read. The segment was instructive, not for its content but for Simmons’s ignorance of how he would be perceived.
As large language models such as ChatGPT have become ubiquitous, they’ve slashed website traffic across the internet, accelerating the decay of already imperiled media and creative industries. As the founder of The Ringer, a website and podcast network, Simmons should want to protect his company from those effects. It’s a strange look for someone who has historically sought out and promoted unique writing to suddenly trumpet the virtues of an LLM, and naturally raises questions.
Is Simmons clueless about how the move is a betrayal of the industry – or does he not care? Unfortunately, Simmons is far from unique here. Countless podcasts promote AI, from the Joe Rogan Experience to This American Life.
Wondery’s The Lead: Starting Five even debuted an AI host in 2023. What makes Simmons’s embrace of it particularly frustrating is that he used to champion human creativity. In 2011, Simmons founded Grantland under the ESPN umbrella.
It rapidly became a dream platform for young writers. Simmons and his editors sought out writers across a variety of beats and writing styles, and encouraged them to do the most ambitious work possible, all funded by ESPN’s deep pockets. The results were often startling for their scope, style, and ambition.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
