Will Artificial Intelligence Kill Journalism?

The company behind the ChatGPT chatbot has on Wednesday, March 15 rolled out its latest artificial intelligence model, GPT-4, in a new advance for the technology that’s caught the world's attention. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

According to “The Elements of Journalism” by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel the journalist's role is to inform the public about the issues so people can make the right decisions for their lives. “Without this process, democracy will not survive.” In other words, journalism is the art of relaying information to others in such a way that promotes autonomous thinking.

On March 13, 2020, Chap GPT 4 was released as Open AI’s fourth generation of the artificial intelligence (AI) language program. This program is capable of creating human-like responses via text and speech. Many companies are looking to collaborate with AI to optimize the growth of their companies. What will this mean for the future of journalism and our democracy?

Considering this technology has the potential of outperforming any worker and exceeding their job requirements at record speeds. Many people of the working class can’t help but wonder if they can trust this new technology.

Goldman Sacs predicts 300 million jobs will be lost or degraded by AI.

1.5 million people in England are at high risk of losing their jobs to automation, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

“The Elements of Journalism” by Kovach and Rosensteil analyzes the demise of traditional newspaper journalism and local democracy as a result of the transformation of news due to the emergence of digital news. For instance, “infotainment” has been rewarded in this new era of journalism. Infotainment is the blend of information and entertainment. This form of media focuses on what is most diverting and fun to get more views. It’s more fiction-based even though it tries to come off as the truth.

Many may argue that this digital news age has made room for tyranny, not freedom. Instead of using technology as liberation, we’ve managed to become consumers of the technology and blindly accept the information we receive online as knowledge. One of the main problems with AI and journalism is it may deviate from traditional reporting by devaluing experts' opinions and the journalist themselves.

In Chapter 7 “The Elements of Journalism” Kovach and Rosenstiel further analyze the impact of the news digital age in creating “a forum for public criticism and compromise.” The public forum initiates news and companies with algorithms such as Facebook and Twitter amplify this; “a debate focused only on the extremes of argument does not serve the public and instead leaves most citizens out…The public forum must include broad areas of agreement where most of the public resides and the solutions to society’s problems are found.”

This can result in people who aren’t knowledgeable on a topic mistaking information curated online for knowledge. Information is not knowledge.

On the other hand, it would be unfair to discuss AI without having the full spectrum of what journalism may potentially look like in a few years; both the positive and the negatives. It is evident that with the surplus of access to the worldwide web, more people are compelled to share their opinions and disguise this as journalism.

During the Carter administration, his attempt at verification in journalism was the 3-Day Rule. If given three days without serious challenge, the government will have set the context for an event and can control public perception of that event. Which leads citizens to accept things without questioning or clerks.

The digital age adds pressure to functional and conditional truth in journalism however, AI can fix this problem by fact-checking sources and information at a faster rate than humans. Working alongside AI to fact-check information will ultimately be more time efficient in this sense.

AI-generated articles are a new frontier many journalists haven’t registered as yet. Accepting the reality that AI will replace journalists is a stage of grief many journalists may have to go through.

Meanwhile, news companies are ecstatic at this new emergence of technology. Artificial intelligence will allow them the luxury of efficient and accurate news. With the capability to search the entire web within seconds, AI will be a tool the news companies need to optimize their business and stay ahead of their competition.

Although AI-generated content lacks personality and journalistic insight these are only mere characteristics and mannerisms for the technology to pick up on and learn.

In the Future Of Jobs Report in 2022, 62% of the organization's data processing and information search and transmission tasks were predicted to be performed by machines.

The current state of journalism is hanging onto a thread. The rate at which AI is evolving is exponential and like many industries, journalism will be affected by this new advancement tremendously. Although AI is a tool that can enhance the industry but at what cost?

Whether or not journalism will only be a mere figment of our imagination and obsolete in the near future is still too early to tell but it will not go away without a good fight.