From “Avengers: Age of Ultron” to “The Terminator,” there have been many examples of robots trying to take over the world.
Artificial intelligence has luckily not reached that point. However, AI has infiltrated its way into our daily lives, including journalism.
So how is AI affecting the news industry?
Some journalists are worried it might replace their jobs, while others see it as a great tool. We, as a staff, have mixed feelings about AI in journalism.
AI can be used as a tool in journalism but shouldn’t be overused. Need help coming up with certain words? AI is a great tool for that. However, a journalist shouldn’t rely on AI to create story ideas. The great thing about being human is our creative brains, which is something AI isn’t the best at. It generates all of its ideas from things already on the web.
We see the uniqueness of relying on ourselves to generate ideas, not a robot. We can go out into the community and interview people. The information we get from interviews is personable and relatable, whereas AI can not fully convey the human experience. This is why we only use AI as a tool on the occasion.
The paragraph below is an example from ChatGPT when asked to write about a current news event.
- In a historic summit held today, world leaders gathered to discuss urgent climate action measures, pledging to collaborate on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and combatting global warming. The event underscored the growing recognition of the need for immediate and coordinated efforts to address the escalating climate crisis.
This AI-generated paragraph is very broad. What world leaders gathered? Where did they gather? What was the resolution to the meeting? Well, the world may never know.
A story written by journalists, on the other hand, would include all of the important information like who, what, when, where, why and how.
Additionally, the information AI generates can not always be trustworthy. It takes information from many data systems and then makes predictions based on the correlations and patterns of that data. Oftentimes, when you ask it where it got that information, it won’t say the exact location but says it’s from its system.
How do we know if that information is correct then? We don’t know until research is done testing whether the information is true or not. This is why we see that AI should only be used as a tool on occasion in journalism.
While we are not perfect, our stories are based on the information we gather from our sources. We are committed to making the stories as original as possible while accurately representing the sources.
Just like everything else in life, AI is constantly adapting and changing. ChatGPT, an AI program, is already on version 3.5 or 4, depending if someone wants to pay for the premium version. As AI continues to improve, it is scary what the future might hold. We don’t want to see our jobs replaced by a computer in the future.
Fortunately, AI is not at that point, and hopefully, it won’t ever get to that point. So in the meantime, we will continue doing what we do best, which is telling stories of what’s happening around Utah Tech University and southern Utah.
Here at Sun News Daily, we’re not robots and don’t plan on becoming robots anytime soon.
