How do I use AI in my journalism?
In my mind, there’s a world of difference between inputs and outputs.
I use it to “steelman” my argument; to make sure I’ve considered all angles.
For instance, in the argument I make in this week’s edition about journalism’s frightening return to the kind of race-based reporting of the 1970s and 80s, ChatGPT threw up arguments and evidence I doubt I would ever have come across with a simple Google search. It made my piece rounder and, I believe, better argued. Truer, even.
That ability to have an on-demand devil’s advocate is an enormous benefit to any journalist (unless, of course, making your argument truer is a time-consuming inconvenience).
That’s what I mean about inputs versus outputs: human intelligence using artificial-intelligence inputs to improve human outputs. The danger is when the artificial intelligence is the output.
We saw that recently in an Indian print newspaper, where the final paragraph of a story about car manufacturing contained the tell-tale line: “If you want, I can also create a snappier front-page style version”… etc.
If you think that’s an isolated example, I have some news for you: it’s everywhere. And increasingly so. When journalists are under extraordinary pressure from business models that demand a conveyor belt of clickable content, it is only human that they will resort to this.
Thankfully, at The New World, the metric of success is not clicks but subscriptions. And we have an innate faith that the only way we will gain new subscribers is if we supply the highest-quality, most thoughtful, most provocative human journalism we can.
It’s the exception that proves the rule. In today’s magazine (as you can see above), in our special edition on AI, we carry what will be the first and last example of an article written by ChatGPT – which was asked to make a defence of itself.
I hope you read it, and then read the other articles in this edition – from Matthew d’Ancona, Vasudevan Sridharan, Nigel Warburton, Marie Le Conte, Paul Mason, Lucy Reade, James Ball, John Bleasdale and Matt Muir – and conclude that the AI article is the kind of stuff you’d expect to read for free. The rest? Well, worth the price of a subscription any day.
All of which brings me with regrettable predictability to a sales pitch. If you enjoy The New World, if you value our commitment to exploring and explaining the fast-evolving politics, culture and society we inhabit, if you appreciate my guarantee that our journalism will always be the work of thoughtful, curious and talented human beings … then introduce us to a friend with a gift subscription this festive season.
