Will AI Lead to the Demise of Journalism?

Photo courtesy of Analytics Insight

Ever since I was young, I have known I wanted to go into journalism. When adults in my life would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would answer excitedly that I wanted to be a journalist, but, I usually got the same negative reaction: they would look at me, displeased, and tell me something along the lines of “You won’t get a job doing that, journalism is dying.” While this sentiment was (usually) out of concern for my well-being – these people cared about me and wanted me to be able to get a job, support myself and my future family, etc. – it was not what you should tell a child who is beginning to discover their passions in life, nor was it what I believed to be true, so, I would always respond with, “journalism is not dying, it is evolving.” To this day, I stand by this statement, but now, my argument has begun to falter, as another, new factor has been introduced into the mix: Artificial Intelligence (AI).

With digital landscapes evolving at a rapid pace, it is important for us to reassess the capabilities and possible disruptions that AI might have to offer us. How is AI changing journalism as we know it right now? What might journalism look like in ten years? Can we as humans work in tandem with AI? 

Let’s take ChatGPT as a starting example. This is a popular form of generative AI that allows users to input questions and commands, and the chatbot will output results. The GPT of ChatGPT stands for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer,” which is in reference to the fact that ChatGPT can process requests and formulate responses. Some have outlined the harm that AI could do to the journalism world, and more generally, the writing world as a whole. According to an interview in The Baron with David Caswell, an expert on AI, “…We have to see AI as an unstoppable force, already having a serious impact on news operations, and…this is only the beginning. AI is evolving at such speed that there is no way to assess with any accuracy what it will be able to do in the future.” While this is a frightening sentiment, ChatGPT and other AI systems like it are still flawed systems with its kinks still being worked out; According to Forbes, there are a few main issues that ChatGPT has demonstrated so far. This can be summarized in a few categories; a lack of common sense, a lack of emotional intelligence, limitations in understanding context, trouble generating long-form, structured content, limitations in handling multiple tasks at the same time, limited knowledge, and accuracy problems or grammatical issues. 

While it seems like there are quite differing opinions about the future of AI, let me give my own *expert* opinion. Bottom line: journalism is led with empathy that only a human can evoke. Yes, AI models are great at parsing through, summarizing, and providing information, but their strength lies essentially in the absorption and regurgitation of such information, and not coming up with new and groundbreaking things. The kind of journalism that most people really care about is based on personal questioning, observation, and interpretation that humans can only do with one another. Humans have a tool that Artificial Intelligence does not: emotions. Yes, AI can write a killer summary of a source, or seamlessly transcribe an audio recording, but it can most definitely not add genuine color and feeling to a piece.

I think that instead of fearing this new technology or letting it take over journalism as we know it, we should use AI to our advantage. Instead of having to spend copious amounts of time and energy transcribing, summarizing, etc, we can use AI to do these menial tasks, and our depth of human capabilities can be used towards more important things like going deeper into more meaningful journalism.