Media executives have learned nothing from AI tests.
Source The Verge
Media bosses keep promising that AI will benefit journalists. But who is really using the tools and to what end?
Journalist Mia Sato, platforms reporter for The Verge, says, "For the past eight months, disparate segments of the public have been clamoring to integrate generative artificial intelligence software like OpenAI's ChatGPT into their daily lives, and especially their work."
Everyone from doctors and online marketers to students and tennis announcers are experimenting with incorporating artificial intelligence tools. Aspiring millionaire spammers are using chatbots to speed up their junk generation, while artists are using AI art tools like Midjourney to beat out human competition. At least one lazy lawyer tried, and failed, to reduce the research they needed to do. The promise of maximizing output and saving time is driving much of the "experimentation."
The media are among the institutions that have bought into this AI-assisted vision of scale and speed. For years, AI tools have been used in things like corporate earnings reports and short sports stories: formulaic dispatches that deliver the bare minimum. But now that powerful big-language models are widely available, news publishers want more of them and are becoming a pretzel to justify implementing AI tools with little work process or oversight. The result has been a series of pivots that undermine their core mission of providing accurate and expert information.
