News’ artificial intelligence fixation deserves more scrutiny
Journalists shouldn’t passively accept the encroaching presence of generative AI into the news industry.
This story first appeared in our newsletter, The Front Page, which examines systems of power and inequity in media. Subscribe here.
On Wednesday, California legislators announced a public-private partnership with Google to fund local news: a five-year, $250 million deal. Just two days before, POLITICO broke the story about the prospect of the development, which replaces the California Journalism Preservation Act. But not all the money is going toward newsrooms: $62.5 million will be for a new program focused on artificial intelligence, and the agreement creates a National AI Accelerator.
Its creation reflects a broader trend across news, with industry juggernauts largely embracing partnerships with OpenAI, which operates the virtual assistant ChatGPT. Last summer, the American Journalism Project entered an over $5 million partnership with Open AI. In the past year, several news outlets — from the Associated Press to Vox Media and this week, Condé Nast — have partnered with the company to share select licensed articles from their archives to ChatGPT.
The California draft proposal said the partnership will “strengthen democracy and the future of work in an Artificial Intelligence future.” But futures aren’t passively created. Instead of moving away from and pushing back against the use of generative AI, the industry — and state legislators — sends the message that workers shouldn’t have a say in where their labor goes.
Leaders largely don’t consult rank-and-file reporters about these partnerships. In-language departments have been cut in favor of using AI to translate stories. And ChatGPT also contributes to the broader environmental destruction causing climate change. The AI system emits 8.4 tons of carbon dioxide each year and has used hundreds of thousands of liters of water during its training.
Is it worth having information reach more audiences if it means fomenting further damage elsewhere and wrecking trust among already beleaguered staff? Union leaders at Media Guild of the West released a statement opposing the partnership and the opaque manner in which it was created: “The future of journalism should not be decided in backroom deals.” It’s not too late for journalists to push back against this future.
As I wrote about last month, prioritizing investment in AI is often happening over funding ways to work with communities and the organizations that are reaching them.
It doesn’t have to be one or the other. But maybe it should be: Even ChatGPT says ChatGPT is racially biased. Newsrooms are still learning how to untangle systemic racism from their work; why add another obstacle — AI — whose implications are still not fully understood or grasped? It undercuts the promises newsrooms made to their communities and workers about pursuing a more equitable, just society in 2020.
Related reading:
- Thriving BIPOC Journalism Report (Borealis Philanthropy)
- Making AI Less “Thirsty”: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models (arXiv)
- Why Journalists Shouldn’t be Neutral on Climate Change (Zocalo Public Square)
- AI Causes Real Harm. Let’s Focus on That over the End-of-Humanity Hype (Scientific American)
- How to report better on artificial intelligence (Columbia Journalism Review)
James Salanga is the co-executive director of The Objective and the podcast producer for The Sick Times.
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