#128 – Fernando Tellado on AI Tools and Rehumanising the Web

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So on the podcast today, we have Fernando Tellado. Fernando is a very large force in the WordPress community in Spain. He’s the editor and writer at ayudawp.com, a blog in Spanish about WordPress with more than 15 years of publishing on a daily basis. He does consulting maintenance, security and performance services for WordPress sites. He’s published four books about WordPress. Not only that, he’s been involved with the WordPress community for 20 years organizing meetups, WordCamps, coordinating the official support forums, as well as taking leading roles in Spanish translations and Spain’s official community website.

We begin with a discussion on the current state of AI tools, which offer the capacity to generate thousands of posts in mere moments, mainly for search ranking purposes. Fernando explores the issue of content quality, and the growing challenge of distinguishing between human and AI generated content.

This leads to a chat about the strange position which Google finds itself in with its latest AI model, Gemini, which aims not only to generate content, but also to interact and answer questions like a human. How can Google on the one hand, be able to create content, and on the other be mindful of only promoting content, which it views as credible and reliable?

Fernando also talks about the rapid evolution of technology, drawing parallels to the industrial revolution, and it’s long lasting effects on society.

He tackles concerns about AI potentially replacing jobs, and underscores the addictive nature of mobile phones, particularly for children.

The role of government in regulating technology also comes under scrutiny, but Fernando expresses skepticism about political intervention, and instead stresses the importance of parental responsibility in guiding children’s use of technology.

Towards the end, the discussion revolves around the necessity for both adults and children to learn and use technology responsibly. Fernando is passionate about the importance of human imagination, and our innate capacity to adapt to the technological environment. He advocates for individuals to slow down, assess the impact of technology on their lives, and make deliberate choices that ensure their wellbeing and that of their families.

If you’re intrigued by the intersection of AI, WordPress, and the call for responsible unreflective use of technology, this episode is for you.

If you’re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading over to wptavern.com/podcast, where you’ll find all the other episodes as well.

And so without further delay, I bring you Fernando Tellado.

I am joined on the podcast by Fernando Tellado. Hello, Fernando.

[00:04:09] Fernando Tellado: Hello Nathan. Very nice to see you too.

[00:04:11] Nathan Wrigley: Really nice to meet you. We are at WordCamp Europe. We’re in one of the media rooms, and we’re chatting to Fernando today because Fernando is participating at WordCamp EU. He’s got a presentation, a talk, and the talk is called Re-Humanizing the Web, and everything you want related to WordPress. Is that the correct title? Did I get that right?

[00:04:31] Fernando Tellado: Yes, it’s the correct name.

[00:04:32] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, perfect. So we’ll get into that presentation, and what it means, and how you are very optimistic I think, about technology and AI, and all of those kind of things. But before we do that, will you just tell us a little bit about you, your relationship with WordPress, the things that you do in your life and in the WordPress community, which I understand in Spain is huge.

[00:04:53] Fernando Tellado: I have been working with WordPress for more than 15 years. In these years I have been part of the community, where there wasn’t community in Spain. We made three WordCamps in Spain, called WordCamp Spain. Afterwards, it should to be named after cities. There was a time when we could make WordCamps the country. Afterwards they said that we must make the WordCamps city related. But we made the three WordCamps in Spain called Spain WorkCamps. In 2008, 2009, 2010. It was the first, the three first ones.

I was making translations at this moment. There was no community, and we began the first embryo of our community in the second WordCamp Spain, in Barcelona. And we began with translations because it was the first need, because everything in WordPress is written in English. In Spain it’s very difficult to introduce some software that isn’t in Spanish, because in Spain we don’t speak English, we don’t speak any other languages.

So it was really important for us that WordPress being in our languages, because it was our first priority. I think we have made a good work, because at this moment we are one of the biggest community. I think we are the best or the big, one of the biggest communities in translation. Every day, there aren’t any pending translation to be approved, day by day. And it’s the same in support.

We have the support forums that, every day, every question made is answered for one volunteer. And we are all volunteers. We have been volunteering for 15 years, in an everyday basis. We are very, very, few people that work in a daily basis, but very constant people. And I am only one of these people.

By the side I have a blog, where I have been writing for more than 15 years about WordPress. Almost in a daily basis. I write four or five posts a week, from Monday to Friday. I enjoy it because I write about the things I learn every day. It’s funny for me to see my blog post 15 years ago. They’re very simple. I have discovered a plugin that made this thing. The name of the plugin is that one, okay perfect, and it could be perfect for someone in every moment. Because in some moment, anyone is going to find solution for anything.

And I have probably more than 5,000 posts. I have 40, more than 50 thousand comments in the blog. And I still write every day, because I every day work in WordPress. I work, my clients WordPress, every day I learn something. I teach WordPress to people, but I learned WordPress from everyone. From my colleagues at the work. From my clients, in every site because every site is different. Every site you have different needs, and it’s not difficult for me to write in the blog.

When a lot of people ask me, is it not difficult for you to write every day year, after year, after year? It could be if I don’t work on WordPress, but as I work in WordPress everyday, I always have something to write about it.

I like writing, I never thought that I want to write about technical things. I always thought, I will compare as a writer. I have written some books, but books about WordPress too. No books about a novel, or history that I would like. It’s about WordPress. So my life has been dedicated to WordPress in all aspects.

[00:08:18] Nathan Wrigley: Quite a story. 15 years of almost daily blogging.

[00:08:22] Fernando Tellado: And not expected at all.

[00:08:23] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it just happened. That’s amazing. And I’m sure there’s a lot of people out there in the Spanish community, and maybe further afield who are very thankful for all the things that you’ve written over the years.

[00:08:33] Fernando Tellado: Sometimes I feel like the father of a lot of people.

[00:08:36] Nathan Wrigley: The Spanish community.

[00:08:37] Fernando Tellado: Because I am getting older, it is good to get older too. You have some perspective about things. I am more kind. It is very difficult to make me angry.

[00:08:46] Nathan Wrigley: So do you build websites for clients still? It sounds like, from what you said, that’s what promotes the bits and pieces that you are writing each day, because you find a new thing, you solve the problem, then you write about it. Yeah, like that, okay perfect.

You’ve got this topic that you are doing at WordCamp Europe. By the way, have you done it already?

[00:09:03] Fernando Tellado: I did a basis at WordCamp Pontevedra, it’s a city in the north of Spain. I made a presentation, in which the first part was somewhat like the first part of the presentation. I’m going to talk tomorrow.

[00:09:17] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, it’s tomorrow, okay.

[00:09:18] Fernando Tellado: Tomorrow at 12.

[00:09:19] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, perfect. So it’s called Re-humanising the Web, and everything you want related to WordPress. If you are saying that rehumanising the web is a thing, that means, I presume you think it got dehumanised at some point.

[00:09:34] Fernando Tellado: At some point, yes.

[00:09:35] Nathan Wrigley: What do you mean by that? What’s been dehumanised in the web? Just try to sum up your thoughts.

[00:09:40] Fernando Tellado: The bad use of the tools. I think the tools are great. I am absolutely pro technology, I am absolutely pro AI, but we use badly, the technology. We are dehumanisation, the web. The website is our environment, it’s where we live, it’s where we find, and it is where we will work, in your case or mine. And it’s very important, I think it is the most important thing in the 21st century of the web. And we must take care of the website, or the web. And when people make bad use of the technology, they can dehumanise the technology.

Examples could be niches. There are a lot of people that have a lot of expertise on making niches, with niches automatically. From five years ago, they have the automatic WordPress packs, that they could make about 50 or hundreds of websites in a day or two days, in order to promote SEO niches.

Today, with the AI, they can make about 100,000 websites per day, with the aid of the AI, and paid of $1, $2, or $10. It is very cheap, and it’s very easy to make niches. And niches, there are websites that doesn’t make nothing to the people. They are not going to answer questions. We use the internet in order to answer our questions. When we go to Google, what is Google? Google is our psychologist. We ask Google, what’s happened to me? Do you have any answers? We are going to make questions to Google.

So the people to make niches, the niches website. So it is going to make the website less useful than yesterday. This is dehumanising because there are not people after this content. They are only a machine, that has not brought this content in order to answer a question of a human. It is made only to satisfy the need of the person that works in marketing for SEO, and he’s promoting one niche.

[00:11:38] Nathan Wrigley: So if we rewind the clock, let’s go for five years. If we go back in time five years, when human beings created every piece of content, of course they could copy and paste and that happened. But mostly the content was written by a human, and it was written at a scale which humans could keep up with. So one post per day, two posts per day, whatever. And now you’re saying that the AI tools can create 10,000 posts in a heartbeat, in a few minutes.

[00:12:09] Fernando Tellado: Who can read that?

[00:12:10] Nathan Wrigley: Right, but also, why is it being created? And from what you are saying, it’s been created purely for Google, SEO.

[00:12:16] Fernando Tellado: Purely for business.

[00:12:17] Nathan Wrigley: And ultimately that makes everything pointless because if there’s 10 trillion articles out on the internet, how can Google, which has, people argue about Google and whether it’s a force for good or a force for evil, but it’s definitely been helpful finding information. In the future, if we flood the landscape with AI written content, how can we ever decide what’s actually useful? And I don’t think we’ve got there yet. But do you see it coming? Do you see a day when that will happen, if we don’t put the brakes on?

[00:12:53] Fernando Tellado: I think there are a lot of players that can act in that way, in order to pull the brake. Google is one of these, because Google can defer between human and not human content. Very easy. It’s very easy for Google. It’s very easy for us too. If we read every day, we can distinguish human made content or not.

But I think Google is making the road easy in order to publish AI content. And at the same time, it’s putting in the road tools in order to pull the brake. Because Google is, at the moment, refactoring the more personal research. As you can remember, some years ago, beside some results you can see the face of the person who wrote the post.

I think Google is, well, no, Google has, I say that he’s going to this type of recognising, or the way of recognising, the author of the content, in order to distinguish between human made content and AI content. Because I think it’s a matter of survival for Google, because the end, we are going to rely on the tool, and Google is a tool. It’s a big, I always say this, it is a big spreadsheet. I always see Google as a big, big, big spreadsheet. A big, big, big form, that has the results that can be useful or not.

In few years, doesn’t find good result for us, answer for us, we are going to abandon the tool. We are abandoned a lot of tools by the time. Younger people think that some tools are not going to disappear, never. And you and I know that it’s just, it does not even happen. We have seen disappear tools like Photo Log. We can see disappear, Facebook in some moment, or Instagram. Everything is possible, and Google too.

[00:14:36] Nathan Wrigley: What I find curious about, let’s just keep talking about the Google example, because it’s really easy to understand the benefit of Google. But curious that Google are also in the AI race. At the moment when we’re recording this in June 2024, they have this Gemini model, it’s called Gemini. And it’s obviously an LLM to create content.

But also, there’s the flip side. It’s not just about creating content, but it’s about answering questions, and interacting, and it’s kind of trying to be a human, if you like. So for Google, it’s a really difficult balancing act, because on the one hand, they’ve got to keep up with the AI opposition, so people like, I don’t know, Anthropic or OpenAI.

[00:15:18] Fernando Tellado: People like AI.

[00:15:18] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, yeah, exactly. But also they’ve got to protect their search engine business, because if that gets just full up of AI, exactly what you said, it won’t even take five years. It would take a year for people to say, well, Google’s useless. It just gives me rubbish every time. I’m going to stop using it and go elsewhere. So that’s a very, very difficult path to tread for them I think.

[00:15:41] Fernando Tellado: I don’t think, where is the market going? Where is going Google? Because one, two years ago we were, every moment, talking about NFTs, and who talk about NFTs today? Nobody. We have the Bitcoin bros, now we have the AI bros. People who embrace every new technology the most. And who knows? Who knows?

I think we must have embraced the technology, as every technology gives us something to learn, and take the best of every technology, in order to advance in our life, and in the society. And every technology has the capacity to make a better life for us. From nuclear energy, it’s an extreme example, but nuclear energy has become a very important way of make our lives better through the years.

In some years not, but through the years, it has become a very important technology in our lives. With this whole, more little technologies, it is going to be the same. In some point they’re going to convert it to facilities, to something that we assume that every time has been there, and we are going to take the better of every technology. In the case of the NFTs, in the case of the AI, we have some kind of AIs from 10 ago. It’s not really new. Growing in very few months, and the technology of ChatGPT, in order more conversational in the AI.

But it’s like a city, it’s like an evolution of a city. There’s an evolution of all the oldest and older technologies. We have to present attention to these technologies, but not to give them too much attention.

[00:17:22] Nathan Wrigley: Interesting. Yeah, the thing that you said there about Bitcoin and NFTs, yeah, you’re really right. If you were to go back, I don’t know, three years or something like that, they really were being talked about a lot. You could barely open a newspaper without somebody talking about Bitcoin, and now complete silence. Nobody’s talking about that. And so maybe the same will happen to AI, and we’re in a kind of hype cycle at the moment, where everybody’s obsessing about it.

I do wonder about that. I do wonder about, let’s say, for example, companies like OpenAI who have a lot of money tied up in it being successful, and presumably spend quite a lot of their time telling us how wonderful it’s going to be, marketing it to us, if you like. And maybe that cycle, we’ll just get bored of it. We just get disinterested, and it will just become something that we use, but we’re not really, you know, it’s nothing to worry about. It’s nothing to get excited about even, because it’s just what we’ve got.

[00:18:22] Fernando Tellado: No, I think we can excite about this. But at the end, all of these technologies in a certain point became a standard. When everyone used the word it tends, in a moment, to not make sense. It’s like freedom or anything. When everyone talks about freedom, freedom doesn’t mean anything. That’s the same. At this moment, I think AI is a claim for every services. Every day we see services with the new AI, with artificial intelligence. Everything has AI, not in my case.

My case, I have that claim, in the blog that is, write it with no AI. You’re not expecting to have something that is going to give you always the reason, because AI always gives you the reason. If you discuss with AI, for example, in ChatGPT, it tends to be nice with you always.

I think this is the first sentence someone teach to the AI. Be nice. At the end, be nice. If someone discuss with you, be nice. Don’t discuss with anything, because do you remember there have been some scandals about the AI in Gemini I thought? Create soldiers of the second world war.

[00:19:27] Nathan Wrigley: An image of the.

[00:19:29] Fernando Tellado: Nazis and so on. That’s because they have no contest, no one behind to tell the child, because it’s a child. No, not this way, better this way. You must learn it every day. And the AI is interesting, if always is going to be someone behind learning every day what it’s going to be, how it must behave with the environment, because the environment changes. We have something different as humans, it’s our capacity to adapt our environment to us, and adapt us to our environment. This is the story of the humans.

So there are some things that I’m going to talk in my presentation at WordCamp Europe. I want to talk especially about this, because always there’re going to be technology. There’s going to be amazing technology, but always remember that the technology doesn’t make by themselves. Always there’s a human that is capable to imagine that technology in the first place. This is the most important thing. The most important thing is to imagine that technology, and this is a human capacity.

And in the second place, it could be to make this technology, or make work this technology. But human is capable to imagine things, that is the most important thing, that because I not afraid of technology. Because I know that for years in the history has been demonstrated that only a human can imagine how could be things. All the rest of the animals, if we can embrace in the animal race or something, has a lot of capacities, but not the capacity to imagine it’s own life. Or it’s own capabilities more beyond the actual capabilities. And that’s because the human can make AIs, and sort of interesting and amazing things.

[00:21:10] Nathan Wrigley: Does it concern you that, even though AIs seemingly can’t be truly creative in the way that a human can. If you tell it to draw a picture of a, I don’t know, a dog sitting on a landscape with the moon in the background, and it can do something like that. And it looks like creativity, but if we understand the way that that’s actually happening, it’s merely a process of, okay, what should this next pixel look like? And eventually it comes out, and it’s got a picture of a dog, but it’s not created that question itself.

Do you worry that it’s good enough that it could put a lot of people out of work, who are doing work that doesn’t require much creativity? I don’t know, imagine that you are in a call center, you’re a support agent, and you are answering questions. The responsibilities that you have are not all that complicated, it’s fairly basic.

I think some people worry that those kind of jobs are going to disappear, because an AI can take over. And then if we imagine the career ladder, you know, you start on the bottom rung, and you go to the next one, and eventually you retire at the top. If we knock out the bottom layer, it’s going to be hard for the next generation, the children of today to start the career, because that whole bottom layer has disappeared. And I don’t know how that’s all going to pan out, but that concerns me a little bit.

[00:22:28] Fernando Tellado: Yeah, I can understand you. It’s a concern for me too because I always think about the children. Who’s going to think about the children? I want to talk about this because there are tools that could be very useful for you and for me, but it is not useful, and they are not suitable, and not recommendable to children.

A simple case, calculator is very good for a person that is a physician, a mathematician that knows how to calculate, and used the tool in order to gain time.

But it’s not a good tool for the children because this tool is going to retain him or her to learn how to calculate. We must put some breaks on, or close 13 doors in order to maintain these priorities. I think we must think about the tools, not only what tool can do, more about, in what moment is this tool can be thrown to the people, or to who?

Because it is very important that, from the beginning of your life, we train our brain in order to make all the human can do. And in some moments the tool can be the worst idea for us. There’s a certain part of our brain, it’s the prefrontal cortex. It’s very important in this thing. There are a lot of scientifical studies, it’s very, very, very interesting. You’re aware about, are concerned, and in this case, about what is going to happen with humanity and society.

It’s very important in this part of our brain because this is the part of the brain that distinguish us as human from the other animals. And it’s especially important for the children. Because, not only for the new tools of the AI, that is very important in case of social media. They use the consummation of social media, it’s a very instant transformation. It’s an transformation that very few seconds, cannot train the brain, the prefrontal cortex, to make all the things that the prefrontal cortex could do.

This part of the brain is the part that differentiates us in things as important as predictions, imagination, how to be nice in a conversation when you need to be nice, when to know how to empathy with someone. There are very important things that some of these tools, today tools, like social media networks, and the AI can not permit this part of the brain to grow as needed.

So, we as parents, we as human adults, we have a responsibility in order to allow our children, or other children to grow as sane as possible, and not to allow to use some tools in certain ages. In Europe, some countries is beginning to forbid to make the mobile phones in the classroom. Because it have been obvious that the attention is dispersed, and the children learn badly.

So I think we are going to this kind of better use of the technology, because it’s true what you say at the beginning of our conversation about the extra hype of the AI, or the new tools. A point that the people cannot distinguish on the right use of externally.

[00:25:29] Nathan Wrigley: I think that’s a really interesting point, because you talked about a calculator, and how that saved you a lot of time, but no child is going to hold the calculator and use it at three o’clock in the morning, or be addicted to doing calculations. I mean, maybe there is a child somewhere who would use the calculator all day, every day because they’re just fascinated.

But the mobile phone in particular, really has the capacity to subvert the entire day. You know, you can pour all of yourself into that thing, you’re scrolling on some kind of social media, or you’re chatting with people, or you’re just watching videos.

And especially for children who are born in an era where that was always around, and they see their parents that are addicted to it, and they see that everybody at the bus stop is using it, that then has become, well, that’s how normal people function.

Everybody’s scrolling all the time, and that concerns me a lot because there is something unique about that device. There’s some way that it can drag you in. Even, you know, the moment you’ve got nothing to do, out comes the phone, and you can spend a long time. So I think you’re right. I think there is a little bit of a shift at the moment. I think people are starting to recognise, that’s probably not healthy for anybody to be doing that.

[00:26:48] Fernando Tellado: I understand absolutely. But we must think that, in very few years, we have gone, we have traveled in a work, in our parents, in a lot of cases, having got a telephone in the release. Very, very few years ago.

[00:27:01] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah not long.

[00:27:02] Fernando Tellado: When you and me born and grow, there weren’t internet. And the problem is for children, but we all child too, because we’re not training in the current use of these new technologies. Technologies are over us, but not only over the children, it’s over us, everyone.

We are not trained how to make a good use of these technologies. We might be trained before, we might be able to be trained, afterwards train the children. We are the first one to train in how to use in the core, the way these technologies, because we are not trained to do it. We have been born in our world very different, and we are astonishing about this technology, because it’s brilliant. They’re awesome. So they surprise us, and we use that in a platform. And we must train us in the first place, and after train the children.

[00:27:53] Fernando Tellado: This is a matter of too much information, too much changes in very few time, for everyone. We must put the breaks on in some moment, and make a reflection. For example, my presentation, it’s not a talk. I’m not going to give answers to any question. I would like to make the people reflect about this problem, this opportunity, in order not to be concerned, in order to be responsible. We must change. As adults, as human adults, we must send to the responsibility, and begin to train ourselves in how to use this technology in a good way.

We can hear a lot of the startups, that is beginning to talk about the bad things about their own technologies. They say a lot of people see themselves as startups, and says about, they don’t allow the children to learn with the iPads, or tablets, or so on because they know what they are going do.

We’re the people, with the adult humans, enlightened with technologies, don’t know how work really the technology. These younger people that knows how the algorithms works are telling us the truth. And the truth is that we must begin to learn how to use these technologies, and afterwards spread it to the children. I don’t mind about you and me because we are adults, and we affect our responsibilities, and make our own life. But we must take responsibility for the children

[00:29:13] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it’s an interesting thought because, first of all, I imagine it’s true that every generation that has ever been has faced something which they thought was going to be the end of humanity. You know, whether it was the printing press, Gutenberg’s printing press, or whether it was, oh I don’t know, the plough, or whatever it may be. This is going to be the end of all the things. And it feels like this one really could be that, and yet it’s probably just one, you know, and in history, 200 years from now, people will look back on our time and say, oh, that was an interesting moment.

[00:29:43] Fernando Tellado: This is very interesting to realise that today, I pay my dues, things, a technology that didn’t exist when I was born. And it was going to be the same as the time passes. At the moment, there are works that doesn’t exist, that in the future are going to exist, and a lot of people will work in this new works that doesn’t exist at the moment.

The more radical change I think was in the industrial revolution. That changed everything. It changed not only the way human work, they introduce the plastics, as we know at this moment, because it changed everything. We create the cities because there weren’t cities before, we create the industries, we create the supermarkets, all the world as we know it at the moment.

It led to some problems. We are living today with problems created in that moment, in the Industrial Revolution. As, in the future, someone is going to live with the problems we are creating now, right now with another technologies. But there is going to be always somewhere that is going to disappear.

[00:30:47] Nathan Wrigley: I have one final question, which is that, you say we need to train ourselves. And I think that’s a really important message. If you detect in yourself that technology has overtaken important parts of your life, you need to be an adult, I guess, and say to yourself, put it down. Stop using it at the moments where it’s not useful or it’s not important, or, I don’t know, you are ignoring your family because of it. And we need to train the children to have that understanding. So there’s that message as well.

Do you prefer, or maybe there’s no perfect way, do you think government should be involved in this? Like you said, certain countries are saying, you may not carry mobile phones in schools. In the UK, very recently, I doubt it will happen, but one of the political parties suggested that mobile phones should be banned until you are 16 years old, which is a really, hitting a nut with a big hammer. What do you think about that? Do you think it should be more personal education, or top down government, giving us guidance about what we can and cannot do?

[00:31:49] Fernando Tellado: I have problem with politicians because I not confident of them. Politics is very important in our lives, it’s the way we lead us, decide who is going to represent us. And that’s the way this must to be. But, at the end, political are the new kingdom, are the new cast, are the new kings. So they are very separate for all decisions at the moment. In the case of children, I am especially unconfident, because a politician is always going to try to train the new generations, in order to be good for him.

And I always prefer that the fathers decide because, I know very few things, but I think that I knew that a father going to do nothing that could be bad for your children. You’re going to always protect your children because it’s always you. Is you are father? I don’t know.

[00:32:41] Nathan Wrigley: Yes.

[00:32:42] Fernando Tellado: Yes. You are not going to do anything that is going to be bad for your children. That’s not the same in the politician. The ideas could be nice, could be affordable, but at the end, the fathers has to be the last decision in those things. I don’t believe in politician at the moment because I miss my life. My life in Spain, we’ve had very bad politicians for life. From dictators, to actual, and, not better. But, at the end, we had the less responsibility in the family, we have to decide.

It’s difficult for us because easier for us when someone go to our house, poof, read instructions. I get to my son, read instructions, they are more prepared to do these kind of things. I must read the instructions in order to know, is this tool going to be good or bad to my children? Because I have the responsibility as they live in my home, and I’m responsible for them, I’m responsible for what this technology is going to be in their lives.

So we must take that responsibility in every little thing. We must stop, as you say. We must stop a moment, say, I go, it’s a mobile phone, it’s interesting. There are other apps. What is this app? What this app is important for me, or it’s important for my children. We must live more quietly, and take the things with a little more time. We don’t need to live so fast, it’s not necessary, not mandatory.

It is good for Facebook, it’s good for Meta, good for Google because they live from the algorithms, and they live for how many times we scroll in the mobile phone. But our life is not that. We don’t need so many things. And there are very good technologies, there are good AIs that we can use for our benefit, not for the benefit of who made it in the first time, or someone’s needs above our need.

[00:34:27] Nathan Wrigley: I think I understand a lot more about what you mean by rehumanising the web now. You’ve really explained it very well. So thank you for chatting to us today. Unfortunately, time is short, so we’re going tohave to, as we say in the UK, knock it on the head. We’ll have to end there, but that was a really interesting conversation. So, Fernando Tellado, thank you so much for chatting to me today.

[00:34:46] Fernando Tellado: It has been a pleasure for me.

On the podcast today we have Fernando Tellado.

Fernando is a very large force in the WordPress community in Spain. He’s the editor and writer at ayudawp.com, a blog in Spanish about WordPress, with more than 15 years of publishing on a daily basis. He does consulting, maintenance, security and performance services for WordPress sites. He’s published four books about WordPress. Not only that, he’s been involved with the WordPress community for 20 years, organising meetups, WordCamps, coordinating the official support forums, as well as taking leading roles in Spanish translations, and Spain’s official community website.

We begin with a discussion on the current state of AI tools which offer the capacity to generate thousands of posts in mere moments, mainly for search ranking purposes. Fernando explores the issue of content quality and the growing challenge of distinguishing between human and AI-generated content. This leads to a chat about the strange position which Google finds itself in with its latest AI model, Gemini, which aims not only to generate content but also to interact and answer questions like a human. How can Google on the one hand be able to create content, and on the other be mindful of only promoting content which it views as credible and reliable?

Fernando also talks about the rapid evolution of technology, drawing parallels to the industrial revolution and its long-lasting effects on society. He tackles concerns about AI potentially replacing jobs and underscores the addictive nature of mobile phones, particularly for children. The role of government in regulating technology also comes under scrutiny, but Fernando expresses scepticism about political intervention, and instead stresses the importance of parental responsibility in guiding children’s use of technology.

Towards the end, the discussion revolves around the necessity for both adults and children to learn and use technology responsibly. Fernando is passionate about the importance of human imagination and our innate capacity to adapt to the technological environment. He advocates for individuals to slow down, assess the impact of technology on their lives, and make deliberate choices that ensure their well-being and that of their families.

If you’re intrigued by the intersection of AI, WordPress, and the call for responsible and reflective use of technology, this episode is for you.

Useful links

ayudawp.com

Re-Humanizing the Web – Fernando’s presentation and WordCamp Europe 2024

PonteWordCamp

Gemini

OpenAI

Anthropic