AI in the News: Re-Shaping our Information Ecosystem
Project Lead:
DPhil Student
Collaborator:
Professor of Technology & Society
About the project:
Many news organisations now incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) technologies into their work processes in the hope of greater efficiency and higher profits. Today, AI writes articles and helps journalists to better understand their readers’ interests. The challenge is the public are often unaware of these technologies working in the background to recommend news stories to them, create new kinds of audiences for advertising, automatically synthesise and report information or create simple news stories from public sources.
We do not yet know the consequences of this shift to AI technologies. How will our public debate change if the media are transformed by AI? Will the result be better news, or more one-sided, superficial, and sensational reporting? How can AI be used ethically and properly in the news without harming public discourse? And what about the independence of journalism if AI makes news organisations even more dependent on technology corporations that develop it?
The aim of this project is to find answers to these questions and highlight these issues for the public and for the news industry at a one-day symposium with leading experts and practitioners and in additional publications. Ultimately, we want to make suggestions how AI use in the news might be balanced with the need for a healthy public debate, and what regulation, or industry self-policing might be needed to achieve the same.
Contact:
Felix M. Simon
This project is funded by the Minderoo AI Challenge Fund.
