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How Much AI In Journalism?

~ Taran ~ 2 Comments

Recently, I’ve been active in a group on Facebook that is supposed to be a polite space to debate things. News articles fly around, and the news articles we see these days from different sources carry their own biases because rather than just presenting facts, they present narratives and narratives require framing.

I wondered how much of these articles were generated by what we’re calling artificial intelligence these days. In researching, I can tell you I’m still wondering – but I have found some things that are of interest.

The New York Times Lawsuit.

It’s only fair to get this out of the way since it’s short and sweet.

Of course, in the news now is the lawsuit that the New York Times has brought against Microsoft and OpenAI, where speculation runs rampant either way. To their credit, through that link, the New York Times presented things in as unbiased way as possible. Everyone’s talking about that, but speculation on that only really impacts investors and share prices. It doesn’t help people like me as much, who write their own content as individuals.

In an odd twist though, and not too long after the announcement, OpenAI is offering to pay for licensing news articles (paywalled), which you can read more about here if you’re not paying TheInformation1.

Either way, that lawsuit is likely not going to help my content stay out of a learning model because I just don’t have the lawyers. Speculating on it doesn’t get me anywhere.

How Much AI is being used?

Statista only has one statistic they cite in the amount of artificial intelligence used in media and entertainment: 78 percent of U.S. adults think news articles created by AI is not a good thing.

The articles there go on and tell us about the present challenges, etc, but one word should stand out from that: foggy.

So how would it be used, if it is used? With nearly 50 ‘news’ websites as of May last year, almost a year ago, and with one news site even going so far as having an AI news anchor as of late last year, we should have questions.

Well, we don’t really know how many news agencies are using artificial intelligence or how. One would think disclosure would be the issue then.

The arguments against disclosure are pretty much summed up below (an extract from a larger well balanced article).

Against disclosure

One concern is that it could stifle innovation. If news organisations are required to disclose every time they use AI, they may be less likely to experiment with the technology.

Another is that disclosure could be confusing for consumers. Not everyone understands how AI works. Some people may be suspicious of AI-generated content. Requiring disclosure could make it more difficult for consumers to get the information they need.

Should the media tell you when they use AI to report the news? What consumers should know, Jo Adetunji, Editor, TheConversationUK, TheConversation.com, November 14, 2023.

On the surface, the arguments make sense.

In my opinion, placing innovation over trust, which is the actual argument being made by some with that argument, is abhorrent. To innovate, one needs that trust and if you want that trust, it seems to me that the trust has to be earned. This, given the present state of news outlets in their many shades of truth and bias might seem completely alien to some.

I do encourage people to read that entire article because the framing of it here doesn’t do the article justice and I’ve simply expressed an opinion on one side of the arguments presented.

How Is AI presently used?

Again, we really don’t know because of the disclosure issue, but in October of last year Twipe published 10 ways that journalists are using artificial intelligence. It points from the onset to Klara Indernach, a tag used by Express.de to note when an article is created with artificial intelligence tools.

Arist von Harpe is cited in the article for saying, “We do not highlight AI-aided articles. We’re only using [AI] as a tool. As with any tool, it’s always the person using it who is responsible for what comes out.” This seems a reasonable position, and puts the accountability on the humans related to it. I have yet to see artificial intelligences be thrown under the bus for an incorrect article, so we have that landmark to look for.

The rest of that article is pretty interesting and mentions fact checking, which is peculiar given the prevalence of hallucinations and even strategic deception, as well as image generation, etc.

We’ll never really know.

In the end, I imagine the use of any artificial intelligence in newsrooms is evolving even as I write this and will be evolving well beyond when you read this. In a few years, it may not be as much of a big deal, but now we’re finding failures in artificial intelligences all the way to a court, in a matter that is simply fraught with political consequences. They were quick to throw Google Bard under the bus on that one.

It is still disturbing we don’t have much insight into the learning models being used, which is a consistent problem. The lawsuit of the New York Times seems to be somewhat helpful there.

I honestly tried to find out what I could here and in doing so came up with my own conclusion that wasn’t what I would have expected it to be.

In the end, it is as Arist von Harpe is cited. We have to judge based on the stories we get because every newsroom will do things differently. It would have helped if we had less room to speculate on biases before the creation of these artificial intelligence tools, and whoever screws up should lose some trust. In this day and age, though, feeding cognitive biases seems to trump trust.

That’s probably the discussion we should have had some time ago.

  1. These paywalls are super-annoying for we mere mortals who do not have the deep pockets of corporate America. How many subscriptions is a well informed person supposed to have? It’s gotten ridiculous. We’ve known that business models for news have been in such trouble that a ‘news story’ has a more literal definition these days, but… surely we can do better than this? ↩︎

The Best Way To Avoid Spreading Misinformation

~ Taran ~ Leave a comment

It’s likely at some point we’ve all spread some misinformation involuntarily. It can have dire consequences, too. Washington Post has an article on misinformation but they forgot the most important thing, I think.

Waiting.

‘Trusted sources’ has been a problem that I’ve been studying since we were working on the Alert Retrieval Cache. In an actual emergency, knowing which information you can trust from the ground and elsewhere is paramount. I remember Andy Carvin asking me how Twitter could be used for the same and I shook my head, explaining the problem that no one seemed to want to listen to: The problem is that an open network presents problems with flawed information getting accepted as truth.

Credentialism is a part of the problem. We expect experts to be all-knowing when in fact being an expert itself has no certification. It requires being right before, all the while we want right now and unfortunately the truth doesn’t work that way.

We see a story on social media and we share it, sometimes without thinking, which is why bad news travels faster than good news.1

The easiest way to avoid spreading misinformation is to do something we’re not very good at in a society that pulses like a tachycardic heart: We wait and see what happens. We pause, and if we must pass something along to our social networks, we say we’re not sure it’s real, but since headlines are usually algorithm generated to catch eyes and to spread them like Covid-19, we have to read the stories and check the facts before we share rather than share off the cuff.

Somewhere along the line, the right now trumped being right, and we see it everywhere. By simply following a story before sharing it, you can stop spreading misinformation and stop the virus of misinformation in it’s tracks. Let the story develop. See where it goes. Don’t jump in immediately to write about it when you don’t actually know much about it.

Check news sources for the stories. Wait for confirmation. If it’s important enough to post, point out that it’s unconfirmed.

It’s that simple.

  1. There’s a pun or two in there. ↩︎

Mediation, Media, Social Media, Journalism

~ Taran ~ 2 Comments

El Mercurio newsroom
El Mercurio Newsroom, by JD Lasica.

We use language and communication so much that sometimes we take it for granted.

‘Media’, ‘mediation’ – when we look at these words, it’s all but impossible to note the exact first 5 letters. This is no coincidence. They both derive from the noun, ‘medium‘. Digging further gets you to a Proto-Indian root, ‘*medhyo‘, something you can drill further down into if you wish.

It’s an interesting history in not words, but concepts and thoughts. Medium has been used to describe, ‘intermediate agency, channel of communication’ since around 1600. The basis of ‘media’ and ‘mediate’ is medium. Are they so different in concept?

In theory, no. In practice these days, it’s hard to say.

Mediation

As mentioned before, I took the first level of training in Mediation at the Conflict Resolution and Media Center of Trinidad and Tobago, and after hours I began thinking about the common etymology of ‘media’ and ‘mediate’ which got us to where we are, here. Yet when I look at the two as they are now, through a fresh lens, that seems to be the only way in which they are linked other than through some serendipity.

Mediation is a confidential process that works toward resolution of conflict through communication facilitated by a neutral third party. I did learn a few things.

Media, on the other hand, has come to mean any communication over one or more mediums. Newspapers use paper and literacy, radio uses sound and radio frequencies, television uses sound, video technologies, and sometimes literacy, and the Internet combines all of these to varying extents. ‘Social Media’ is redundant, really, because all media is social – it’s really media that allows easier feedback, and these day, allows things to be shared faster than other forms of media, driven by interests of users.

From Media To Journalism

‘Media’ encapsulates entertainment, education, and news. However, these days, we hear it used in the context of ‘news’ a lot. The lines between entertainment, education and news have blurred with the ‘talking heads’ and the prevalence of bias to sell advertising or simply to keep it. So when we hear about ‘The Media’ in this context, it’s about a specific use of the media. It’s about what we are given as news. And journalism is where ‘news’ is supposed to come from, or where we say it’s supposed to come from.

If you talk to anyone with a point of view, they will say that there is bias in published journalism – be it published in print, on radio, on television, or on the Internet – and that’s where things can get fuzzy. And so does what a journalist actually is. As Mark Lyndersay points out in , “What Is A Journalist?“:

…Paul Richards asked, “Who or what constitutes a journalist and should be protected by this?”

“And more importantly, who should not be considered a journalist?”

The American Press Institute notes, “Asking who is a journalist is the wrong question, because journalism can be produced by anyone.”

As the Institute explains on a series of pages on its website dedicated to considering the role of journalism professionals (report here), the journalist is a “committed observer.”

In 2011, “We Are All Journalists Now” by Scott Gant covered the same issue. It’s 7 years later, and I’m not sure society has changed enough to deal with it sensibly. And if we get into the etymology of ‘journalist’, we find this:

1690s, “one whose work is to write or edit public journals or newspapers,” from French journaliste.

As A.J. Liebling wrote, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” The Internet gave everyone with access to the Internet access to such a press. To publish publicly without a media organization, potentially publishing things less biased by advertisers – but then, to make money, advertising became necessary, and all that happened was the atomizing of the same business model.

What all of this really gets to, though, is an phrase attributed to Edmund Burke, supposedly used in a debate in 1787  when the House of Commons of Great Britain was opened to the press.

Indirect But Significant Influence

There are 2 definitions of the Fourth Estate defined on Dictionary.com:

  1. the journalistic profession or its members; the press.
  2. a group other than the usual powers, as the three estates of France, that wields influence in the politics of a country.

The first definition fit better before the Internet, where there was a more substantial difference between journalists and the general public. The second definition fits better in modern times, where we can all publish. And there you have the link between journalism and the public as it shifts in one definition.

These days, the more popular what you share is, the more influence you have – for better or worse. What others share that you have demonstrates how much influence you have as well – a closed circuit.

Thus, if we can get past definitions of ‘journalist’ and ‘journalism’, words doomed to a period when journalists broadcast instead of interacted, we get back to us all being a part of the Fourth Estate.

But what does this all have to do with mediation? Not that much right now, it seems, and yet, maybe it should. The Fourth Estate is necessarily not confidential, but maybe it could be more neutral. Maybe that’s what they should have in common. Maybe that ‘neutral third party’ should be everyone publishing to some metaphorical public journal. Maybe we should all be facilitating facts instead of regurgitating hearsay – after all, hearsay is heresy.

An informed public, after all, is what I expect from journalism. What I get, on the other hand, hardly seems to fit Journalistic Ethics and Standards. I can’t criticize what happens in the industry, because all I know is hearsay – but I can make a few distinctions that I believe can accepted and agreed upon as truths in the context of journalism aspect of the media:

  • When it comes to the media in the context of news, people need to be informed. They want to be entertained. The two are separate.
  • Publishers are the ‘media’, journalists are not the media unless they self-publish. If they don’t self-publish, they just work for the media.
  • With the atomization of the Fourth Estate, anyone who publishes has a greater responsibility when using their influence.

In these ways and more, we might get ‘media’ and ‘mediation’ to make more sense together when we see those common five letters.