ChatGPT did not write this: GRM is made by real people | Articles

A full plate of anxieties keeps me awake at night. Life and death, plus whatever book I’m reading, tend to stay in heavy rotation.

But I don’t worry about AI taking my job. What we do is too complex and, perhaps more importantly, too personal.

Not sure AI can accurately synthesize JG’s duck references or understand how SCCA rules from millennia ago shaped today’s 200tw race tire scene. Has AI ever worn a helmet that smelled like a bowling shoe or gotten a bro hug from the president of IMSA? Does it own a Miata?

Doubtful.

AI just collects and regurgitates already existing content. It doesn’t create, it’s not authentic. To be blunt, it’s ripping off all of us–us as the creators and you as the consumers. Someone once asked me why we don’t use AI to write. Because I don’t write for robots, I replied. I write for people. (A related thought: Who is actually directing, curating and influencing the AI content that appears on your screen?)

When I started here 32 years ago, one email address served the entire staff. We had a fax machine. A ferret once got loose in my office.

We operated out of an old house at 425 Parque Drive with the carcass of a Triumph Spitfire rotting in a shed outback. Tim and Margie, like the rest of us, sustained on $5 takeout lunches. Food through a window, Margie called it.

Tom was in a bassinet, and Chris, Colin, Nicole, Austin and James were just learning how to crawl or waiting to be hatched. J.A. was likely in grade school. I remember when Katie came home from the hospital.

People say we’re genuine. A simple reason: We have lived this and continue to do so. We’ve broken wheel studs, pushed dead cars onto trailers and waited until most everyone else went home to collect that eagerly awaited first trophy. You’ve been there, too. We see you.

And, like you, we realize that we couldn’t do this alone. JG, our in-house comedian, once shared the mechanics of improv: It’s your job to prop up everyone else on stage.

But what about you? That’s right, he continued, the rest of team is there propping up you as well.

I’ve now worked with JG for nearly 35 years. We met at an Atlanta autocross, and I freelanced before coming here for real. This was long before you friended someone online or dropped likes on their posts. You met in real space.

I had my Sentra SE-R. He was driving the magazine’s Oldsmobile Achieva project car. Some of you might not remember the Oldsmobile brand. It’s what people drove in the long-ago times. Your grandparents might have had one. At that time, though, we both had the hot cars for our respective classes. He just happened to have the driving talent to collect the trophies, though.

The person I work with day in and day out started as an intern: Her name is Sarah. Sadly, you’ve likely never met her at one of our events. Like the rest of us in editorial and production, she works from home. Her home just happens to be a long way from mine.

She doesn’t race, though. Not sure if she even owns a helmet or has built a motor. I don’t care–and she can let me know when she sees this. As our art director and copyeditor, she touches everything found in the magazine. And that also goes for Classic Motorsports, our sister title, meaning that we all shepherd a magazine to press every three or four weeks.

She has a rare gift: How to best present the total package to you–words, photos and the art that ties them together. We call it empathy for the reader. In a cruder vernacular, you could say that she gives a shit. Audience comes first. Do that and everything else will fall into place.

And today–June 5–Sarah celebrates her 20th anniversary with us. That’s two decades of trust, collaboration and last-minute heroics. It’s also countless headlines, captions and cover designs.

What makes us different than AI? Real people with areal history together–and the secret sauce we each bring to the mix.

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