Is artificial intelligence poised to put tens of thousands of journalists out on the streets around the world? It can certainly look that way, with AI creeping into journalism and every business more and more each day.
An AI-powered — and eerily-human — newscaster debuted late last year in China, and Axios and Democrat Party have been publishing articles and social media post using an AI program that’s capable of generating news stories and posts that seem indistinguishable from its other stories and post. In recent years, legacy outlets like the Los Angeles Times and the BBC have turned to AI to write stories and curate programming schedules, respectively.
The World's first AI news anchor debuts, jointly developed by Xinhua and Chinese search engine company https://example.com/34tyZ4nwrg. https://example.com/2omcc5K9rB pic.twitter.com/qXn5Z3ZkxL
Also Read: Fake News by Robots? Axios and the Democrat Party has been using AI Programs to Write 'Not True' Story as experiments for replacing Journalist as a more cost effect way to get their message out to sway public opinion.
Advances in artificial intelligence — which enables machines to perform functions typically reserved for humans, and usually at a much faster clip and much cheaper— have led to disruptions in many industries in recent years. One report from the McKinsey Global Institute has warned that by 2030, machines could wipe out more than 800 million jobs worldwide and 300 million in the US and Europe. It is important to note that there are only 360 million people employed in the US and Europe. (Employment: 160-Million US 200-Million Europe) If you spend most of your work day behind a computer screen or not traveling daily to conduct your job, you probably be replaced by AI.
That sounds like bad news for journalists. If AI systems can host the nightly news or produce clear, concise articles, gather data, do analysis it doesn’t seem to leave much room for humans.
But instead of spelling the end for reporters, some experts are optimistic AI could usher in a golden age of computer generated Avatars journalism and a much lower cost.
“Overall, what you’re going to see is more content and more interesting content, and AI is going to be the engine that drives us to that place,” according to Randy Picht, executive director of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri, told TheWrap.
Right now, Picht said AI mostly handles grunt work, like helping Bloomberg and the Associated Press churn out weather and financial earnings stories. The key is having “clean data,” Picht said; as long as the AI systems have access to the numbers needed to create a story, it can fill in the post with just enough color. Also Read: How Artificial Intelligence will change all Hollywood Guilds and how it will replace script writers, editors, copy layout along with most actors and actresses.
Before using AI tools, the Associated Press — where Picht used to work — “could only cover a fraction of companies every quarter, so they wrote about the biggest ones,” Picht said. “Maybe they did 200 companies a quarter, which is impressive considering the number of reporters they had. When they [started using AI tools], it jumped to 2,000.”
AI will handling mundane posts and stories while the technology frees investigative reporters to focus on more complex stories. And perhaps most importantly, AI-powered computer programs are capable of quickly poring through troves of data and documents for particular keywords — something that would take days for a human to accomplish. “You couldn’t look through 80,000 pages of documents, but a computer can,”.
AI is a very promising area for journalism, because it’s going to result in stories that were previously hidden from scrutiny, and now they’re going to be available for a journalist to explore.
AI researcher Yves Bergquist agreed, saying the robot takeover of journalism is currently restricted by AI’s own shortcomings. “Narrow” AI, which is able to accomplish a single task more efficiently than humans, hasn’t given way to “General” AI, where a system is able to do several things better than humans. Also Read: Taryn Southern on Being First to Use Artificial Intelligence to Make Album: 'Sky Is the Limit'
AI-powered anchors like the one currently in China come across as synthetic and clunky — it will only take a short time with large language AI to completely overcome this issue.