by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
It definitely seems as though we’re going through a digital Cambrian explosion. Almost every day, it seems as though AI has found a new niche to exploit. Everything from screenwriting, to photography to potentially movies themselves be totally, dramatically disrupted by AI.
It makes me wonder how AI might revolutionize journalism. This is question comes up as journalism is at something of a crossroads. I, for one, get all of my information passively through Twitter. Even though I love magazines and newspapers, I rarely, if ever, actually read any of them either in print or online. I’ve been listening to Ben Smith, formerly of BuzzFeed, go on his podcast book tour, I am reminded that we’re kind of in a liminal moment in modern journalism.
But how would AI disrupt journalism if, to date, LLMs are rather passive. It seems as though possible at some point, AI might reach a point where you could hook it up to a communication system so the AI could be assigned a story by an editor. Then, the AI would shoot out emails, make phone calls, the whole shebang.
Even though being a journalist was really hard for me because I have the wrong personality, the hard part of being a journalist is the gathering of information. If you could design a pro-active LLM that could carry on a human-like conversation on the phone or via email, then, well, there you go, about 90% of journalists would be out of a job.
All that would be left is editors and people who have to physically in a room with someone for, say, spot news. And those jobs would linger until you could figure out a way to put your AI into the body of android who could physically go to a Congressional scrum, say.
I guess the issue for me is we may need to reimagine the very idea of what journalism is. It could be that either there will be some sort of comprehensive carveout regulation things like journalist or lawyer, or whatever HAS to be done by a human, or we face the idea that a Universal Basic Income may be our inevitable future.
