By Madison Yang
Digital interactions, entertainment consumption, structures of the workforce and experiences in academia are rapidly evolving with the expanding implementation of artificial intelligence.
As AI continues to grow in the workforce, its increased presence in higher education poses ethical quandaries regarding the research, reporting and writing methods journalism majors will learn to wield.
For Felicity Kwok, a third-year communications studies major at Long Beach State, the pervasive presence of AI has sped up her ability to collect data and research topics or subjects.
When preparing questions for interviews she conducts, Kwok said using tools like ChatGPT allows for a much quicker process.
“I like it because it saves me time to do research on my own, and it allows me to get everything from one place,” Kwok said. “And if I find something that’s useful, I can just ask [ChatGPT] to dig deeper and ask them where they found this information.”
For Kwok, the convergence of AI and journalism has the ability to revolutionize the way in which news stories are pitched, created and presented. There is a noticeably faster process when using AI tools for any kind of work, whether it be for writing articles or completing a media project.
Xin Qin, an assistant professor in the department of computer engineering and computer science at CSULB, has done significant research at UC Berkeley’s Artificial Intelligence Research lab.
When asked about what kind of AI tools she foresees impacting the journalism world, Qin pointed to an apparatus called voice cloning.
Voice cloning tools like Noiz, Qin explained, can take someone’s spoken statement in a foreign language and translate it to English while still using the original speaker’s voice.
Qin said it can potentially aid aspiring broadcasters in just practicing their reporting.
“It’s in your voice, in your tone, in your accent, but it’s fluid English, with a proper stopping pace,” Qin said.
There are, however, the disconcerting implications of relying on AI tools to deliver news. For students studying journalism, Kwok pointed out, placing reliance on AI tends to minimize the human element of writing.
“It takes the personality out of it,” Kwok said. “ChatGPT is just looking at the data, and a person’s not just about their data. You actually have to look and do your own research… ChatGPT is a good diving off point, but you actually have to go and do your own work.”
As thorough research is a principle of the utmost importance to a journalist, omitting or shortcutting that step in the process of crafting a story could lead to an absence of personalized color in the piece.
Qin also discussed how her research experience has shown that any new functions or codes with AI will always lead to small bugs, or errors. This highlights the importance of keeping experienced humans in their jobs so that such mistakes can be caught.
“From the way [I’ve seen] them training the AI, the more important the work, the more necessary it is that there is be a human to monitor it,” Qin said.
Beyond the classroom, AI is being incorporated by large publications like the Los Angeles Times.
Early into March, the LA Times introduced a new AI feature called Insights, which provides a breakdown and contrasting viewpoints at the bottom of each article.
The feature namely focuses on opinion stories, labeling the content as one of five positions on the political spectrum: left, center left, center, center right or right.
The new feature stirred controversy when the AI-generated counterpoints were able to provide defenses for the Ku Klux Klan at the bottom of columnist Gustavo Arellano’s story on the KKK’s long history in California.
The Insights feature has since been removed from the story.
As the industry shifts with publications like the New York Times introducing their own use of artificial intelligence tools, the LA Times’ recent experience with Insights is a reminder of how journalism is continually shifting and acclimating to the new AI world.
“My anticipation is this tool will exist and may be integrated more and more, but someone will make this tool better,” Qin said.
