Who is mystery author Ronee Hulk?

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SIX THINGS TO TALK ABOUT
Who is mystery author Ronee Hulk? | Predictions | AI + vending machine = disaster | Europe’s (welcome?) decline | Books of the year | Scotland’s Christmas Home of the Year

🍸 Who is Ronee Hulk? We know a few things. For a start, that he or she is the Edinburgh-based pseudonymous author of a buzzy new book about our AI-powered future called Dear Future: You Can Keep The Change.

We’ve seen the book be well-received by people who know and care about these things. (For instance: a LinkedIn comment from a health professional described the chapter on healthcare as “one of the most honest and practical examinations of AI in healthcare that I’ve read. Rather than speculating about distant futures, it focuses on what’s already happening in diagnostics, patient pathways, and service design, and on why the system still struggles to adopt tools that clearly work”.

And we know Ronee has a website where you can enter your profession and find out when AI will take your job.

What did that tell me? Today, journalists have 1910 days left before “the last remnants of human-driven news dissemination will cease to exist”, on March 15 2031.

The site’s prognosis is lyrical, but unutterably bleak: “With every article generated by AI, the lines between creator and creation blur, culminating in a landscape where journalists are no longer necessary, nor missed.

“Society will adapt to this new reality, but the cost will be profound, reflecting a world increasingly governed by cold logic rather than the warmth of the human experience.”

I had been hoping The Early Line, resolutely AI-free, would continue a lot longer than that. I hope you fare better.

• (And if you happen to be Ronee, as a great many clever people from Edinburgh read The Early Line… do hit reply and get in touch. I’d love to talk. :))

📣 Upgrade to read the full Party Line, including news of a disastrous experiment when an office got AI to run its vending machine, a thought-provoking essay on Europe’s decline, two great Books of the Year lists to try out, and Scotland’s glittering Christmas Home of the Year.

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