Perugia, (APP – Urdu Point/Pakistan Point News – April 20, 2024) Artificial intelligence is shaking up journalism and will cause “fundamental changes in the news ecosystem” in the short term, says media expert David Caswell told AFP.
Former Yahoo employee. Mr Caswell was speaking at BBC News Labs, the British broadcaster's innovation arm, as industry leaders gathered in the Italian city of Perugia to discuss the biggest issues facing the industry.
– How do you see the future of journalism? –
“We don't know. But what we're trying to do is understand all the possibilities, or as many possibilities as possible. But what's becoming more clear is how many possibilities. One is the fact that more media will be produced, disseminated and sourced by machines. So machines will do more journalism, do more production, create more audio, video, and text, creating the kind of consumption experience that consumers will enjoy. have.
This is a very fundamental change in the information ecosystem in general and the news ecosystem in particular. This is structurally different from the current situation. I don't know how long it will take. It could take two years, four years, seven years. I think it will be faster because there is less friction.
People don't need news equipment or new hardware. As a producer, you don't need a lot of money or technical expertise. Everything that was a barrier in previous generations of AI is no longer a barrier thanks to generative AI. ”
What are the latest developments going on in the newsroom?
“One of the developments is new tools that enable AI workflows. JP Politikens in Denmark, for example, is focused on making existing products and activities more efficient. It is also the basis for migrating products, employees, and activities to new tools in the world of AI.
There is a tool developed by Google (codenamed “Genesis”) that is currently being tested with publishers. Some publishers build their own. Platform versions exist for these tools.
These are tools and bring newsgathering to the left. PDFs, transcripts, audio, videos, and more. It helps you analyze, summarize, script, vocalize, and more. These are adjusted by tools.
What reporters do is adjust their tools, verify content to the last detail, and edit it. Your job will be to use tools, such as the editorial manager of this AI tool.
Technically it works. But that's not the same as being housed in a newsroom of a large operation and used day in and day out, month after month after month.
The big question is: Will it be enthusiastically adopted, will it be used in a way that is less productive in the long run, or will it dramatically improve newsroom productivity?”
What is the cost?
“For the last 10 years, it's been very expensive. It's been very difficult. You need data, you need to build a data warehouse, you need to have a corporate agreement with Amazon or Google Cloud, you need to hire data scientists, you need to build a team. For data engineers, this was a huge investment, and only organizations at this level like the BBC or the New York Times could really afford it.
Not so with generative AI. You can run news workflows through an interface for which you pay $20 per month. You don't have to be a programmer. All you need is motivation, enthusiasm and curiosity.
There are a lot of people in news organizations who didn't engage with AI before because they didn't have a technical background, but now they can use it. This is a more open form of AI. Small newsrooms can do a lot, and even younger individuals in more established newsrooms can do a lot. I think that's a good thing, but it's also a destructive thing. That often confuses newsroom politics. ”
What stage of AI are we at?
“AI has been around since the 1950s, but AI for practical purposes only arrived with ChatGPT. It took quite a while before we really understood how to use AI for anything worthwhile. It's going to take years. There's a lot we can do. Let's do it together.
The risk for journalism is that other organizations, startups, and technology companies will start doing things in the news faster than the news industry. Many startups have no editorial component at all. They are swiping content from news organizations, some covering niche areas, monitoring press releases, social media channels, and PDFs of reports. ”
What are the risks?
“Journalism hasn't been doing well in the last 10 to 15 years. There's been no credible future vision of how this is going to play out in the social media world. What (if) AI will do? What does it offer?''For news organizations, this is an opportunity to change that and participate in a new ecosystem. It's good to be optimistic, to work, to explore, to have projects, to experiment, to think differently.
Jelani Cobb, dean of Columbia University's School of Journalism, said, “+AI is a force we cannot ignore and journalism needs to organize around.” It's not going to accommodate journalism.
