Humans before bits

In today’s hyper-connected, data-driven society, the role of an AI strategy leader within a book publishing company, has steadily emerged into prominence. It’s an era where technology shapes the publishing paradigm, and a dedicated AI strategist plays a pivotal function. This role yields an innate understanding of where AI can enhance value, delivering a competitive edge that leverages machine learning algorithms to churn through millions of data points, boost advertising campaigns, predict market trends, fine-tune book pricing and curate personalised content for readers. An AI strategy leader can also drive efficiency, streamlining processes such as manuscript selection and editing, maximising profitability and ensuring the company stays at literature’s avant-garde in the digital age.

An AI chatbot wrote that. What follows are my own words.

First, let’s unpack that AI-generated intro. The prompt was to write a few sentences about why a dedicated, strategic AI leadership role makes sense within a publishing company. Although quite a lot of what the chatbot wrote makes sense, its assumptions would benefit from judgement, critical thinking, and a dash of human stress-testing. That’s where we are with generative AI today — and that’s how I’ve ended up here: as Pan Macmillan’s global AI lead.

Answering the brief to write about my role, AI and the implications for publishing, I was asked, “Why this role and why now?” Well, the very best time to dedicate resources to focusing on a challenge and an opportunity as enormous as AI seems to me to be… as early as possible, wouldn’t you agree? In 2006 when I was first hired as a digital publisher and asked to envisage a digital future for the trade publishing landscape, to work out new approaches on everything from rights acquisition and terms through to formats, production, marketing, sales and distribution contracts, neither the Kindle nor the iPad had launched; those came in 2007 and 2010 respectively. At the time, many didn’t believe that e-books, and then digital audio, could possibly become the meaningful sector of our market that they are now, and a big part of my job was to help take people on a journey of discovery, engagement, reinvention and change.

This time, the job is in some ways similar, in that the future is unclear. We know new technology is going to change the landscape we operate in and the way we all work, but we cannot be entirely sure how. This is a massive global shift, not a publishing-specific format or channel shift — and the opportunities as well as the challenges will be far more complex and subtle to navigate and realise. Hence, I am tremendously excited by this new role! And, at the same time, I am approaching it with humility. We are bit players in this emerging landscape and we need to keep our heads.  

A philosophy I’m taking into my job is that we must let go of what we can’t control and instead focus on what makes us distinctive: our humanity

A philosophy I’m taking into my job is that we must let go of what we can’t control and instead focus on what makes us distinctive: our humanity. AI has been in development for decades, and with the birth of easily accessible generative AI tools, it is now accelerating in terms of its potential uses and applications at lightning speed. AI expert Mustafa Suleyman says AI will become Artificial General Intelligence, that is, capable of “human level performance across a wide range of tasks”, within three years. The technology companies developing AI have billions at their disposal. Our role as publishers will not be to keep pace with every development or to be ahead of the curve technologically. Rather, our role will be to stay informed, to make smart choices — remembering at each step, that we do have choices — and to use our boundless creativity to use AI to enhance our ability to do great business: reaching more readers and listeners than ever before — and selling more books on behalf of our brilliant authors and illustrators.

As AI develops — at a speed most of us will find dizzying and overwhelming — it will be the responsibility of those leading on AI in publishing to help us hold to our shared values, including a belief in the importance of writers and writing, and an inclusive approach to doing business. We must work together to ensure that everything we do with AI is done with due consideration, and in support of upholding human stories, the human voice. Publishers must work even harder to promote the value of these voices, which I believe will continue to provide inspiration, knowledge, nourishment and, most importantly, connection — from one human to another — inspiring empathy, nuance and understanding in ways that machine-generated content will simply never do.

At Pan Macmillan we started talking meaningfully about AI at the beginning of 2023 and we began by setting our intentions. We laid out six principles — built on our company values — at the heart of which is a commitment to taking a people-centred approach. Rooting ourselves in this way has proved helpful when navigating the changes sweeping around us, and approaching key decisions. We’ve engaged the whole company in the conversation about AI, inviting outside speakers to inspire and educate us, including many of our own authors from around the globe, running all-company workshops to introduce new AI tools and technologies and facilitating brainstorms to generate ideas for how we might leverage AI in safe and ethical ways for the business. We’ll continue to regularly consult our people about their views on AI, and last year we held our first AI roundtable with authors, agents and key representatives from industry bodies to feel our way through this topic collaboratively. We believe it is critical to be navigating this new territory together.

AI is a topic to be handled sensitively and requires dedicated attention and resources. As publishers we know our needs and priorities best, and we must take an active lead in our future. Although we might not always agree with each other on every decision we will need to make in the next few years, a commitment as an industry to a civil, people-first, and transparent approach can ensure we start the conversation now.