Costanza 1

Ryan Costanza

Professor Jessica Zisa

Writing 2 - Academic Writing

2 February 2023

Anything and Everything Computers with Tom Smith, Season 2, Episode 11

Script:

Host: What’s up friends, welcome back to Anything and Everything Computers with Tom Smith.

For those of you who are new here, we bring on specialists to talk about up and coming news

within the world of technology every week! Today we have a super special guest here today to

talk to us about some newfound technology that’s getting ready to take all of your jobs! Just

kidding… Kinda. Anyways, let me introduce you to the woman of the hour, esteemed Professor

of Marketing at the University of Queensland and the director of the Asia Pacific Association for

Gambling studies, of course I’m talking about THE Dr. Catherine Prentice.

Prentice: Thank you so much for that amazing introduction.

Host: Of course. So Catherine… Tell us a bit about yourself.

Prentice: Well, as you said I am a Professor of Marketing at the University of Queensland, but I

am also an Associate Editor for the Service Industries Journal, Tourism Review, and Journal of

Global Scholars of Marketing Science.

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Host: Wow that’s quite the resume. I also heard that you’re an expert in the field of artificial

intelligence?

Prentice: Yeah, that’s actually what I’m here to talk about today. As I’m sure you’ve heard, there

have been a ton of improvements to artificial intelligence over the past few years or so and we

are finally reaching the point where it is possible to use AI to perform certain jobs.

Host: That’s kinda scary… hopefully a robot can’t run a successful podcast!

Prentice: No need to worry about that… Yet. Who knows really what the future of artificial

intelligence holds. Anyways, me and my colleagues have analyzed countless studies of the role

that emotional intelligence and artificial intelligence play in the hospitality industry.

Host: Sorry to interrupt, but what exactly is emotional intelligence?

Prentice: Oh, sorry for not explaining. Emotional intelligence is essentially the ability to express

and control emotions as well as handle situations with judgment and empathy. It’s very important

because it is a field in which humans are much stronger than AI. I’d also like to note that it plays

a very important role in many jobs and just everyday life itself. People with higher emotional

intelligence, or EI, are much more likely to have better social relationships as well as be more

successful in their careers. As a manager, searching for employees that have a high EI is very

beneficial because they perform better, have higher job satisfaction, and more commitment to the

job.
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Host: It seems like a no-brainer. Higher EI is the way to go for a manager!

Prentice: Yes! It is much more profitable and efficient for managers to hire candidates with high

EI. This efficiency is especially important in the service industry. Another thing, I’d like to

explain what exactly artificial intelligence is, because some people have a misconception of it.

Host: Go right ahead, you are our teacher today.

Prentice: Awesome. Artificial intelligence, or more commonly known as AI, is a form of

machine learning that allows robots to essentially behave like humans. Artificial intelligence can

be boiled down to six dimensions: autonomy, ability to learn, reactivity, ability to cooperate,

humanlike interaction, and personality. It can be used in a practical sense by businesses to

become more efficient because once you buy or create the robot, its salary consists of the

electricity that it takes to run it.

Host: That sounds like illegally cheap labor.

Prentice: It is very cheap and also very legal. AI is really good at performing mundane tasks for a

low cost. For example, in the hospitality industry AI helps with managing reservation systems,

improving service quality, reducing energy consumption, and providing information to

customers.
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Host: It’s got to be too good to be true. What's the catch? How long does it take them to turn

against us and take over the world?

Prentice: Well, I’m not too sure about taking over the world, but there are definitely some

downsides to using AI. According to a research report from McKinsey Global Institute from

2017, five percent of jobs have already been replaced by AI and there is no signs of slowing

down. Also, an Oxford study projected that about 47% of jobs could be automated by 2033. Jobs

that deal with collecting and processing data like finance or insurance are at the most risk. Don’t

get too worried though, because experts still have research supporting the idea that only

low-level mundane jobs will be overrun by AI. There is good evidence to support that high level

jobs will be supported by AI but never fully dominated.

Host: Great to hear that Albert Einstein and his friends are safe, but what about the rest of us?

Prentice: I guess we’re just going to have to wait and see.

Host: Welp you heard it here folks, we’re done for.

Prentice: Not exactly. I think you are underestimating the importance of EI. Numerous studies

done on restaurants and hotels in Portugal show that emotional intelligence is significantly

related to employee retention as well as internal and external service performance. I would

actually highly recommend reading the article titled ‘Where machines could replace

humans—And where they can’t (yet)’ written by Michael Chui, James Manyika, and Mehdi
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Miremadi which provides a detailed report on how emotional intelligence and artificial

intelligence both affect the Portuguese hotel industry. It really goes in depth about how AI will

affect certain jobs in the future. Also, just to remind you this is all speculation, although what we

predict is likely to happen, it is not certain.

Host: That’s reassuring. Can you tell us a bit more about the AI studies you analyzed?

Prentice: For sure. To gain a better understanding of the effect of EI and AI on service

employee’s performance and retention a study was done on numerous hotels in Portugal. The

robots used in the study were chatbots, concierge robots, digital assistance, voice-activated

services, and travel experience enhancers. After running a pilot test on some 20 workers, the

researchers contacted the managers from numerous hotels and began to ask the employees

questions about satisfaction and efficiency.

Host: I’m imagining a hotel where I walk in and I’m surrounded by robots… I’d get freaked out!

It would be like a zombie apocalypse except instead of trying to eat you they tell you the best

restaurants around town.

Prentice: I guess they are kind of like zombies in a way.

Host: Funny. Going back to the study, what were the results like? Are we still going to be useful

or is it not looking too good for the ol’ human race?

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Prentice: Well, the results were mixed. Both EI and AI showed a significant impact on employee

retention and it seems as though the best option is to use both of them in conjunction with one

another. That being said, EI reigns superior for the customer service aspect. For example, all of

the interactions that people make with hotel staff will impact their view on the hotel. A rude

interaction with a bell boy could alter their opinion. In this field humans are better suited due to

their superior emotional intelligence.

Host: Score for the humans! What about artificial intelligence?

Prentice: These studies were actually strongly in favor of EI over AI. The results showed that AI

had a negative effect on job efficiency and customer satisfaction. When employees had a higher

level of EI, they actually performed better when the level of AI was lower. Also, the employees

who were rated high on AI and low on EI did not perform better than those who rated low on AI

but high on EI.

Host: Does that mean that AI is most likely not going to replace the jobs of those hotel workers?

Prentice: Exactly. At least for now it seems like it would be unprofitable to replace them. These

studies however, were done in a very specific field, so the results cannot be translated to any job.

That being said, we can make the general assumption that every job that benefits from a higher

emotional intelligence will be safe for now.

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Host: Well this has been great, it has been a pleasure talking to you and it sounds like our readers

can sleep soundly tonight knowing that their job isn’t in the line of fire for at least a few more

years.

Prentice: Thank you for having me! I’m glad I got to share our analysis of all of the hard work

those researchers did and hope everyone listening is a little bit more educated than they were

before tuning in. Have a nice day Tom.

Genre Translation Analysis: Peer Reviewed Article to Podcast Script

I have always been interested in artificial intelligence and machine learning because it

seems like it is going to be the next “big thing” in the tech world. This particular article sparked

my interest because even though I have lightly studied the development of artificial intelligence

for many years, I have yet to learn anything about its practical use in the real world. The article

that I chose for my project was about how emotional intelligence and artificial intelligence affect

the hospitality industry, both alone and together. I wanted to turn this article into a podcast script

because I thought it would be interesting to turn such a high level piece of writing into a more

casual genre. I had to change many of the genre conventions and the rhetorical situation of the

article in order to successfully convert it into a podcast.

As I began to think about how I wanted to translate my article into a podcast script, I first

decided to think about what was different between a podcast script and an academic article. I first

went to see what journal my chosen article was published in to see if I could get an idea of who

exactly this article was written for. The article title is “Emotional Intelligence or Artificial

Intelligence- an Employee Perspective” and I predicted based off of the title that the article
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would be for engineers or artificial intelligence specialists but it was published in a journal called

“Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management in 2020”. This led me to believe that the

intended audience was marketing or management professionals in the field of hospitality. This

made sense considering the authors Catherine Prentice, Sergio Dominique Lopez, and Xuequn

Wang are all masters of marketing and/or other business related fields. This is not to say that the

audience is limited to management and marketing professionals, because after reading the article

I realized that it could also be read by engineering or artificial intelligence specialists who were

interested in the effects of AI on the job market. My next task was to figure out how to

effectively translate the information in the article into a different genre with a different audience

and purpose. Lisa Bickmore provides information on how genre exists within the writing world

“The names of the things you write—e-mails, messages, record or application forms, order

forms, lab reports, field observations, applications, narratives, text messages, and so on—can be

thought of as individual compositions, large or small, that happen incidentally in the course of

other activity. But another way to think of these compositions is as predictable and recurring

kinds of communication—in a word, genres.” (Bickmore 1). As Bickmore states, genre is a

predictable and recurring kind of communication, so I had to figure out how to communicate to a

different audience. Considering this, after I had identified the audience I had to think about my

new intended audience and how I could change the information and genre conventions in the

article to appeal to a podcast viewer.

I did some research on what type of people listen to and watch podcasts and learned that

it is usually educated people between the ages of 18 and 54. I wanted to create a script that would

appeal to anyone who was interested in artificial intelligence and how it would affect the job

market. This means that they would not need to have technical prior knowledge, but they should
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have an understanding of threshold concepts and basic information in the fields of artificial

intelligence, emotional intelligence, marketing, or management. I believe that the group of

people who would want to listen to my podcast episode share the same goal of utilizing AI to

create a profitable business venture. Accomplishing this goal would require skill and knowledge

from both business experts as well as machine learning scientists forming a discourse community

between them. I also considered the audience when I chose a field expert as the guest to cover

subjects that would be captivating for people who are interested in AI and its business effects.

Many of the genre conventions that were apparent in the peer reviewed article would

need to be changed in order to fit the podcast genre. The conventions from the article that I noted

were formal tone, technical language, data analysis, references to other researchers, formal

structure (introduction, literature review, method, data collection procedure, data analysis/results,

discussion, and implications/conclusions), tables, graphs, charts, and an abstract. For starters, I

knew that I wanted to make the podcast script more humorous and casual, so the formal tone

would need to be changed. In order to do this I made the host of the podcast, fictional character

Tom Scott, serve as the comedic relief and made him ask clarifying questions while the guest

speaker, Catherine Prentice (one of the authors of the original peer-reviewed article), would bear

the information and semi-formal tone. For example, when Prentice would accidentally say

something a bit confusing the host would say something like “Sorry to interrupt, but what exactly

is ___?” or repeat what she said in a clarifying way in case the audience needed extra help

understanding. These clarifying questions clarify the reader more on certain topics that may have

been confusing and also add a conversational feeling to break up monotonous dialogue.

The content of the article was also something that needed to be changed. I wanted to keep

the same general information but also had to reframe it and use different strategies so that it
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seemed more like a podcast than an academic article. Wardle and Downs provide questions to

ask yourself when writing in a specific genre “Questions about substantive characteristics

(content): What sort of content (substance) is typically contained in this genre? What do these

texts tend to talk about or say?” (Wardle and Downs 35). When I read this statement by Wardle

and Downs, I thought about the rhetorical purpose of a podcast versus an academic article. I

believe that the rhetorical purpose of the original academic article was to inform managers and

marketers in the hospitality field without any entertainment. The rhetorical purpose of my

podcast is very similar to that of the original article but with less emphasis on the information

aspect and more emphasis on entertainment/emotion. The original article contained a lot of

economical and scientific information about the studies and I tried to figure out how to

incorporate that into a podcast. The main issue was that I could not use any of the figures or

visual data tables because it is near impossible to describe those by word of mouth. Instead, I

decided to write about the trends of the data and what that meant in relation to the study. General

speaking, podcasts are usually entertaining and serve to educate the listeners quickly and

efficiently.

Another aspect of podcasts that I noticed is that they use much more pathos than a

peer-reviewed article. Of course they can still appeal to logos and ethos, but in comparison they

are also very emotionally charged. I decided that the best and most efficient way to convey the

information from the studies without boring the listeners would be to give a brief summary of

how they conducted the surveys and then another summary of the results and what they mean in

a practical sense. To uphold logic and credibility, I made sure to reference studies and articles

when needed while still keeping the conversation flowing. I paired this with some satire and
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jokes from the host to add some emotion and make the whole explanation not bogged down by

numerical figures and statistics.

Throughout this process I learned how complex the world of genre really is. I was not

expecting to make so many changes to the original piece, and ended up writing something almost

unrecognizable to the original article. My main goals while writing the translation was to convey

enough information from the article so as to not lose its purpose but not too much that the

podcast was tedious or difficult to understand. I achieved this by assessing which information

was important and attempting to translate it into a more comprehensible form. Having a better

understanding of the intended audience, tone, jargon, and purpose was extremely helpful.
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Works Cited

Bickmore, Lisa. “Genre in the Wild: Understanding Genre within Rhetorical (Eco)Systems.”

Open English SLCC, Open English @ SLCC, 1 Aug. 2016,

https://pressbooks.pub/openenglishatslcc/chapter/genre-in-the-wild-understanding-genre-

within-rhetorical-ecosystems/.

Prentice, Catherine, et al. “Emotional Intelligence or Artificial Intelligence- an Employee

Perspective.” Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, vol. 29, no. 4, 2020, pp.

377–403, https://doi.org/10.1080/19368623.2019.1647124.

Wardle, Elizabeth, and Doug Downs. “Writing about Writing.” Amazon, Bedford/St. Martin's,

Macmillan Learning, 2022,

https://www.amazon.com/Writing-about-Elizabeth-Wardle/dp/1319195865.