Mark Palmer on AI and public speaking

It’s been said that Winston Churchill mobilised the English language and sent it into action with devastating effect to thwart Hitler’s obsession with world domination.

The power of speech, in other words. That seems just as true as the observation that the great man was rarely drunk, but rarely sober either.

It doesn’t matter – but oratory does. Sadly, there’s not a lot of it nowadays, certainly not in the political arena. Tony Benn was, of course, a master, and dear old Ronald Reagan had his moments when reading from a script.

Nothing quite compares with that fearful yet exhilarating moment when all eyes are on you before uttering a few opening words

Which brings us to public speaking at a more local level. Some people love it; others go weak at the knees at the very thought of addressing a crowd, even if the audience is 100% on their side. I belong to the first category; my wife the second. Joanna would rather join a pride of lions in their den for an impromptu supper than stand at a podium after a formal dinner.

It’s not that I like the sound of my own voice (well, not entirely) but more a case of enjoying the adrenalin rush. You do your preparation; you deliver the speech sotto voce several times to yourself; you time it (or, at least, you should), but nothing quite compares with that fearful yet exhilarating moment when all eyes are on you before uttering a few opening words.

The only thing that comes close is walking out to bat on a hostile pitch and facing a quickie who is not bothered whether he removes your front teeth or your middle stump.

My father was a good public speaker and did a lot of it. When he died I found a scrapbook in which he stuck some jokes or a few personal anecdotes, which could be deployed for any particular occasion.

Brevity was foremost on his mind – just like my mother, who always maintained that a sermon on Sunday mornings should never be more than nine minutes long.

Mark Twain once said, ‘It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.’

My father used to tell the story of a livery dinner in the City of London where the guest speaker went on and on. Eventually, the chairman decided that the only way to shut him up was to hit him with his hammer.

Unfortunately, he missed the speaker but struck a grand woman seated next to him, who was heard to exclaim, as she slid semi-conscious under the table, "Oh, lord, hit me again, I can still hear him."

I don’t get invited to many weddings nowadays (funerals, sadly, are coming thick and fast) but when I do, the speeches normally are impressive. Thank goodness the British still regard self-deprecation as crucial and that jokes against one’s self always go down well.

Presumably, in the future, it will just be a matter of the best man punching in some basic information about Jemima and Rob – and artificial intelligence (AI) will do the rest.

My mother always maintained that a sermon on Sunday mornings should never be more than nine minutes long

In fact, that’s exactly what’s already happening. I’ve been looking at the boasts of a company called ToastWiz, an American outfit offering to write your speech for $29.99 – money back if you don’t like it.

‘ToastWiz sends your completed form to an artificial intelligence model. The model compiles your inputs to create three wedding speech drafts, then uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 to generate the wedding speeches,’ it says.

Apparently, once you’ve paid the fee, you get the three wedding speech drafts almost instantly. Is that profoundly depressing or progress in the making?

I know what Mark Twain would think. He once said, "It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."

He would pronounce ToastWiz as, well, toast!