By Iylia Marsya Iskandar
GOMBAK, 18 October 2019: The era of Artificial Intelligence (A.I) has proven that one person can teleport to South Africa without even moving, shared Mr. J.D. Lovrenciear in his speech during the fourth installation of the PR (Public Relations) Lecture Series, this evening.
Mr. J.D Lovrenciear, Executive Director of Business Ethics Institute of Malaysia (also a Council Member of the Institute of Public Relations Malaysia or IPRM) shared the stage with Mr. Ahmad Izham Khairuddin from Consumer Forum Malaysia and Ms. Ivlynn Yap, the Managing Partner and Founder of Citrine One in the two-hour programme.
All guest speakers revolved their speech around the million-dollar question by both Public Relations practitioners and fresh graduates of the same field, “Will A.I replace my job?” in this period of the fourth industrial revolution (Industrial Revolution 4.0).
“Back then, I would need 20 staffs in my company but due to A.I, now I need only about five staffs,” shared Ivlynn in her speech.
However, agreeing with the first speaker Mr. Ahmad Izham, Ms. Ivlynn shared, “A.I will not replace your job but it will in fact assist you with acceleration, accuracy and automation of data.”
“Those days, we had to flip through newspapers to monitor media coverage which will take hours, but with A.I, we can easily track these online in a short period of time,” Ivlynn shared.
Meanwhile, Ahmad Izham commented, “Will A.I replace PR practitioners? The answer is No. Because there is still data that needs to be processed and it cannot work without human touch.”
On the other hand, J.D Lovrenciear insisted that A.I only acts as a tool for Public Relations practitioners to get their contents across.
“In Public Relations, all the facts and data are transparent, however, what determine your success relies on this 1%. And this 1% is human intuitive,” J.D Lovrenciear added.
He stressed to all of the engaging audience to “be more human in a robotic world.”
All speakers highlighted that technology will continue to develop, but there is still a need for the human mind in the ropes of the Public Relations industry.
In response to a question as to whether PR will be rendered irrelevant with the advancement of A.I raised during the Question and Answer session, all speakers unanimously agreed that students should ‘misplace’ their fear of A.I and groom themselves to be the model employees that is on-demand instead.
Under the keyword ‘WELL’, J.D Lovrenciear shared that a Public Relations graduate should have the ability to think well, read well, speak well and write well.
“If you have all these four skills, people would not second-guess to hire you,” he further elaborated.
All the speakers agreed that they would hire fresh graduates who have the passion and willingness to learn and execute according to strategies with the right attitude.
The lecture series, organised by the Institute of Public Relations Malaysia Student Association (IPRMSA) – IIUM Chapter, took place at Mini Auditorium, IIUM in Gombak here.
The club’s President, Nor Shafiqizni Yuhani, earlier during his opening remarks, hoped that audiences would gain more knowledge on the effects of A.I in Public Relation practices.
Simultaneously, the programme manager, Siti Nurzahra Rusdi hoped that this PR Lecture Series will be of continuation in the near future.***