Leverhulme Scholar @oiioxford | AI in news/Political comms/Misinfo | Research Assistant @risj_oxford | Fellow @TowCenter | Affiliate @unc_citap | My views etc…
This week, @emilybell & I will be joined by Charlie Beckett, @ndiakopoulos & Uli Köppen at the International Journalism Festival to talk about AI, platforms, and news. #ijf23
Come to say hello and/or ask us tough questions or watch via the live stream: https://www.journalismfestival.com/programme/2023/the-elephant-in-the-room-could-ai-give-technology-giants-more-control-over-the-news
Over the last 1 1/2 years, I talked to 150+ research journalists and experts to understand what #AI will (and won't) mean for journalism and the news.
With generative AI making headlines, I have summarised some thoughts here for
@oiioxford
"We seem to be being led by a remarkably similar group of…wealthy technologists…down yet another untested and unregulated track"
Great piece by @emilybell on the pitfalls of AI in journalism, with comments from myself, @CharlieBeckett & @merbroussard
We hope this document will be useful to journalists, executives and policymakers alike—and clearly show that there is hope and that better climate journalism is possible, if we want it.
Link again, here: https://www.ebu.ch/guides/open/report/news-report-2023-climate-journalism-that-works
(Perhaps of interest to @rahmstorf?)
Spearheaded by Alexandra Borchardt, with writing support by Katherine Dunn and myself, this report details on 180 pages what has been done, can be done, and should be done by news media to address and adequately report on the most important issue of our time. It was a gargantuan effort to bring all these different perspectives together and we will have likely missed out on some things but we really tried to come at this from a macro perspective, while remaining practical in our advice.
🌳 Our work of 8 months has come to an end, but for many news organisations it only just begins. Very happy to see the
European Broadcasting Union (EBU) News Report 2023 on “Climate Journalism That Works” out in the wild—with many case studies & summaries of latest research.
🌳🪴 https://www.ebu.ch/guides/open/report/news-report-2023-climate-journalism-that-works
Interested in AI, news, and platform companies?
Then come to my @journalismfest panel in Perugia this April, co-organised with the wonderful @emilybell, featuring @CharlieBeckett, Uli Köppen & @ndiakopoulos.
@990000 Yes. Over on Twitter, someone sent me this study: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0276367
@Dubikan Well, recommendations are "bad" if the systems are not designed in the way you imagine (as these aspect include specific design choices). As for clickbait headlines, I am with you!
Hive-mind: Do you know of any good studies/meta-analyses/lit reviews that news coverage as a whole has become more negative over time?
@Dubikan Because we have conflicting interests at work. The business case is to give readers more of what they want. The democratic case is that readers should have a balanced information diet. Then there is the argument about autonomy (should readers receive automated recommendations against their will). Ideally, all this is kept in balance. But risk is that business case wins, and rest is treated as afterthoughts
@Dubikan Yes, that’s exactly what I meant :) AI (well machine learning really) as applied to recommendation of news orgs own content through their own channels/products
Yes, with LLMs we will see a bigger impact on the production side. But it's only But it's only one part of the broader "AI-ification" of the news.
However, AI is used by news organisations in countless ways—detecting stories, improving production processes, and more targeted distribution—which taken together already make a difference to journalism.
It just happens in more places and in ways that are seen as less worrisome to most of us (even though, e.g., the use of AI in recommendation is potentially just as or even more problematic than in writing texts).
What it misses out on is the fact that AI is already in use in news organisations around the world...just in ways that are much less fancy to the outside observer.
One reason why we see this hype around ChatGPT and generative AI is that these models have become very good at communicating with us and mimicking activities that were thought to be the domain of humans only. They still do not "understand" and likely never will but are good at fooling us into believing just that. Hence the hype.
Nice piece by in Vanity Fair, drawing together some industry perspectives on AI, recent developments around ChatGPT, and where we might go from here.
What it does well is that it points to concerns about plagiarism, accuracy, and the quality of information—all issues which come up in the context of large language models and their increasing use in news work, and topics we should think about (and people already do).
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/01/chatgpt-journalism-ai-media
📢 I am happy to announce that I have been invited to join Partnership on AI’s Local News Steering Committee.
Together with a stellar cast of experts I will provide independent advice on guidelines that aim to help local news organisations navigate the space of AI for their work.
A collection of the papers for the @ICAHDQ 2022 preconference “What Comes After Disinformation Studies” is now online, published by the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life. It critiques the current disinformation discourse.
Involved in the preconference and special issue were @kreissdaniel, Meredith Clark, @alicetiara, Sylvain Parasie, Rachel Kuo, Elaine Schnabel, @shannimcg, and yours truly.
📢 Journalism/News scholars: Does anyone have an up-to-date list of AI use cases in the news that I can use as a reference?
I already have @CharlieBeckett et al.'s work, but would like to make sure that I am not missing anything more recent.
