SXSWORLD

3 0 SXS W O R L D | F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 9 | SXSW.COM The impact and potential for artificial intelligence (AI) seems boundless, and although the technology is being met mostly with great optimism, one thing its detractors fear is the looming wave of AI-driven automation that will put many people in many indus- tries out of work. Morbid curiosity about their own professional obsolescence has made the impact of AI in jour- nalism a popular subject among many tech and media writers, as more and more news organi- zations are publishing stories written by com- puters. In the two years since The Washington Post introduced Heliograf, its in-house automated storytelling technology, thousands of auto-written articles have been published on its website. "Do we need to worry about robots replacing journal- ists? The answer is a resounding no," says Meredith Broussard, a data journalism professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University and author of Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World. "The state of the art isn't there yet." Much of the fear of artificial intelligence is being driven by a misunderstanding of what the technology actually is. Popular depictions of AI, like the sentient hosts in Westworld or the charismatic droids of Star Wars, don't quite capture reality. "One of the things I usually say is that 'AI is math,'" Broussard explains. "It sounds like because of the name 'AI' that there's a little brain inside of the com- puter but there's not … it's computational statistics on steroids." "I don't think AI is ever going to replace jour- nalists, and certainly not great journalists," echoes Rubina Fillion, the director of audience engagement at The Intercept. "What AI is good for is freeing up people who can spend less time focused on mundane tasks a lot of journalists end up doing," Fillion continues. "It's really a way to increase productivity and put more resources into reporting." AI is being used is many different ways in modern newsrooms, from generating story ideas from trends in social media or choosing a few images related to keywords in an article so a photo editor doesn't have to sort through hundreds, or even thousands, of shots. One of its most common uses currently is automated text generation. Or, Broussard describes it: "Really, really, really sophisticated and amazing Mad Libs ... You have a template, and you fill in the blanks with words. That's actually how these computer programs work, too." Think of sports, weather or financial news that relays important numbers and figures. Many of these have already been automated. "The news organizations that are using it most reg- ularly are Bloomberg and the Associated Press," Broussard says. The AP's use of automation has been so successful that, according to a report from Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab, they've managed to produce 12 times Journalism Need Not Fear Artifical Intelligence By Chris Cantu Meredith Broussard. Photo by Lucy Baber

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