AI and Journalism

As AI becomes more prevalent in our society I have heard a lot of my peers ask “Is AI going to take our jobs?” my answer always is no. Let me talk to you a little bit about why I believe this.

I think that there are a lot of misconceptions regarding AI, the top one I have heard is that AI is unbiased and this will help with the “fake news” ideology that a lot of journalists have been criticized over. However, AI is just as biased as we are.

Biases within AI

Although humans in general may deny it, everyone has bias. The standards and morals which we have cause a bias in our lives. It is up to journalists themselves to make sure they do not insert their biases into their work.

However, when looking at AI and what it is as a whole— something that was created by humans. Those biases the creators have will be inserted into AI.

An article by Dataron really highlights this when they discuss an incident that occurred in October 2019, where AI made some biases highly correlated with racism within the US Healthcare system.

Although it is stated in articles everywhere that discuss AI bias that people are working on fixing this bias issue, it will be hard to overcome.

Journalism is about human interaction

When thinking about journalism and the way journalists receive their information, most of it is from interviewing sources.

Although AI can produce information and stories it will never be able to create the journalist-source relationship and the effort good journalists put into creating a healthy environment to make the source feel more comfortable.