Artificial Intelligence and the Press: the Paradox of Freedom of Information?
Certainly, I begin to realize that I get older when, when it comes to dealing with a subject, I rely on past experiences (almost from another life, or at least from another century) as an exposition of personal battles that I use didactically for a case study, as is the testimony that follows (with the reader’s permission): I still remember with a certain nostalgia my first job as a journalist in my early youth, a work environment that then allowed me to pay for my Philosophy studies, and whose profession I developed between newsrooms for several years, coming to perform later functions as press officer for various employer institutions, coordinator of news agencies, and even founding director of a couple of newspapers specialized in Economics. Since, although Philosophy could not live, as a willful philosopher I have always considered that Economics is a branch of Applied Social Philosophy, under the maxim of “tell me what Economy you impose and I will tell you what Society you build”. A working time lived as one of the journalistic community in which the search for the Objectivity of the news represented the Sancta Sanctorum of journalism, in a tacit deontological oath to the Principles of Truth and Reality, through unwavering professional methodology to contrast the news -prior to its publication- with opposing sectoral sources of opinion, and always in an exercise of strict description of the facts without interference of personal opinion. Although also, it is no less true, that by then a few journalists from some media outlets were already beginning to coexist who, betraying their social responsibility, acted as media typists or information mercenaries (choose at will) from sectoral power groups on duty, whether political or economic, by fully publishing their press releases received in the newsroom without any professional validation. But this is another topic.
Since then, a lot has happened, and I don’t think it’s for the better. Since the holy crucible of public information, which is none other than Objectivity (in journalistic terms and, by extension, both ontological, epistemic, and ethical), is currently under question as an enforceable practice in the elaboration of news for general consumption. A circumstance that we must consider highly worrying, since Objectivity is the cornerstone on which the right to information is based, which protects the free dissemination and access to truthful information by citizens regarding the res publica. Therefore, in an inverse deductive logical process, the less informative Objectivity, the less Democracy.
Although the loss of informative Objectivity that prevails today has its origin causes and different lines of evolutionary stories, more typical of the relationship between the levels of power in continuous pulse of the journalistic sector and the prevailing establishment, all of them currently converge at the same point by centripetation of the new era of humanity marked by Artificial Intelligence (AI). An era where the social concerns among ordinary citizens, of recent history and progressive dimensionality, lies, precisely, in the inability to discern whether or not a piece of news is objective, derived from the famous phenomenon of fake news. That is to say, can we trust today the veracity of a piece of news? The question, of legitimate collective concern, finds its reason for being in four key propositions of the structure of the new public information system:
1.-The news is based on experience and digital perception.
2.-AI, as the monopolizing entity of the digital channel, is becoming a source and means of accessing news, by controlling both the transmission of informational data and its contextualization.
3.-The AI monopoly on the news has as a collateral effect the exponential promotion of the fake news social phenomenon, the consequent result of which is the creation of a new collective state of mentality of disinformation.
4.-The sociological phenomenon of misinformation goes directly against the Principle of Objectivity of the news, which is directly proportional to the degree of devaluation of the credibility of the information veracity in public opinión.
In this context, if we understand that the Press, conceived as a professional activity carried out by journalistic practice, has traditionally been considered as the fourth democratic power (under deontological parameters) by informatively supervising the res publica in the exercise of Executive, Legislative and Judicial; its social devaluation in the face of public opinion for the benefit of an AI that monopolizes both the communication channel par excellence in the current digital age (internet), and the message of the news to be transmitted (informative story), in addition to the broadcast of said news (whose actor is the AI itself), and even the selection by algorithmic criteria of the news to be consumed by the receiver (who are ordinary citizens), it is clear that both the Free Press and Freedom of Expression are in serious danger. And, by extension -I will not tire of repeating it-, the very model of democratic social organization. Well, from now on it is foreseen, in a trend of clear progressiveness, that it is the AI, and not the Press, who covers the information needs of the citizenry and, furthermore, who defines what should be understood both by information need and by information necessary.
A process that is exacerbated by two sociological trends of obligatory reference:
1.-The replacement of human journalists by AI
Without going into mentioning the irruption of robots or AI avatars as television journalists throughout the planet -such as the latest experiment carried out by the British Sky News (1)-, of which I have already echoed in past reflections, it is a it shows that AI is beginning to take positions in the integral production of content for the so-called classic media. Let’s see examples on both sides of the binomial of media supply and demand. In this sense, as an example of a global provider we find the Canadian company Village Media (2), whose AI prepares journalistic reports, creates headlines, writes summaries for social networks, and devises and investigates topics of possible interest, among other functions, to its client companies in the media sector. And as an example of a consumer of AI journalistic services, we will mention the US news portal CNET (3), which has been publishing complete articles generated by AI for months (4), which are later echoed by hegemonic news search engines like Google that we all consume. In fact, Google’s own vice president of news, Richard Gingras, just a few days ago published an article about his concern regarding the health of the future of news due to the invasion of AI (5). A social phenomenon that even extends to journalist associations, as is the case of the American Associated Press founded in 1846, whose scope of operations is international, and which is currently developing projects for the creation of news by AI (6,7).
In other words, the monopoly of AI over the sources and means of accessing news is on its way to becoming an indisputable reality. A deliberate cession (which I would particularly define as irresponsible) by the human being over information control for the benefit of the AI that, without a doubt, can lead us to the normalization of a false Reality, and with it control ourselves in the process (8). Since with the modification of the referential parameters of the veracity of the news (in a biased contextualization of facts and events), the Reality Principle is modified, and with it the capacity of rational discernment of the human being himself about his most perceptible environment immediate. And, corrected the Reality, re-educated the citizen in one way or another.
2.-The generational change in the relationship with the news
If we add to this, in addition, that the new generations (which it should be remembered constitute the foundation of tomorrow’s society) have a progressive exponential downward trend in news consumption, with a current ratio of 24 percent among minors 35 years old (9), and that said scant follow-up of the news among young people is carried out mainly through social networks (10) in the formats of short texts and short videos (11), which supposes a fragmented news consumption and overcooked, we can foresee a not too distant social horizon marked by the following theorem:
1.-The new generations, as the social force of the new era of AI, give little public value to the news.
2.-The news, in the absence of a sufficient future citizen critical mass to ensure its function and social quality, end up being controlled by AI.
3.-The AI, in its ability to monopolize the news by human delegation, de facto establishes a Single Thought (12) socialized by controlling the transmission of information and its contextualization.
4.-The socialization of the Unique Thought of the AI, in a society of deep digital interaction, conditions the collective mind of future citizens creating a sociological phenomenon of Hive Thought (13), or say a shared group thought about the Reality emanated by a single issuing entity that is the AI.
5.-Beehive Thought entails as an immediate effect the degradation of fundamental human cognitive capacities such as Critical Thinking, creating a future society of non-thinking citizens (in the Socratic sense) for the benefit of an assistive AI of public information.
6.-Ergo, as a conclusion: in a society where public information is provided by the homologation of the AI without the ability of citizens to reply (due to negative re-education of the natural function of thinking), the plurality of information, as well as Freedom of Expression, and by extension the Free Press are relegated to a soon forgotten past.
Exposed which, the obligatory question is: how to ensure the Freedom of Information in the era of AI? The answer, although it is a complex practical solution, must be faced at a multidisciplinary level: from Politics, Economics, and the Social.
Political Paradox
At a political level, it can be understood that the possible regulation on AI Journalism will determine the concept and management model of a State in the administration of public information of its society. However, although public information is guaranteed -in the democratic world- through the healthy competition of private communication companies (under deontological criteria audited by the Professional Associations of Journalists), the interference of a guardian State on the private market of public information, in a political zeal to combat false news and in defense of accurate and diverse information, raises the question of how far the State can interfere without breaking the democratic constitutional order. Well, otherwise, we would find ourselves facing a paradox: the greater the State’s zeal to guarantee public information, the less freedom of information.
Economic Paradox
At an economic level, it is empirical evidence that the degree of quality of the Free Press is directly related to the ability of communication companies to be financially self-sufficient in a market of free competition; that is, exempt from the dependencies and economic conditions of the lobbies on duty. However, AI is redefining Capitalism itself, as the economic market model on which democratic social systems are based, by turning the free competition market into an oligopoly. Since the force of development and social backbone in the new AI era is concentrated in a small group of large technology companies. Therefore, we find ourselves facing a new paradox: Information freedom is only achieved without the interference of AI, but to be able to inform in the midst of the digital age, AI products and services are required.
Social Paradox
While at a social level, if we understand that Freedom of Information is indivisibly linked to Freedom of Expression, like two sides of the same coin, we must also understand that Freedom of Expression is the external manifestation of one’s own opinion derived from the process individual mental which we call thought. Therefore, a society in the healthy exercise of Freedom of Information is a society where its individuals have learned to think, a cognitive process in which the phases of information gathering participate (through observation, description and/or comparison), the reflection (as an analysis of the information collected), and the conclusion (as a synthesis of said reflection). Which, in a qualified sense, leads to Critical Thinking. However, in the midst of the AI era where it thinks for us (14), since the AI collects information on a subject, analyzes it and draws the packaged conclusion and in tenths of seconds for comfortable ingestion of the human collective, digital device to hand by hand, it is easy to deduce that we are facing a new paradox: If the freedom of information is based in the first instance on the free faculty of human thought, but this is subject to the logical algorithmic reasoning of the AI that acts as a thinker for us ourselves, can we exercise freedom of information without our own ability to think?.
As we can see, conclusively, the management of Freedom of Information in democratic parameters in a digital world and in coexistence with an increasingly omnipresent and omniscient AI, appears to be extremely complicated. Although there will be those who point out that freedom of information and expression are educable social values, without taking into account that the educational system itself is being immersed under the long shadow of AI. A topic that I will not expand on because I have dealt with it in a previous reflection (15). Given which, is it possible to achieve the virtue of the Aristotelian midpoint in the relationship between AI and Freedom of Information? Or, on the contrary, are we facing an irreconcilable paradox? Time will tell us, although the server opts, without any liking, for the second possibility.
References
(1) Artificial intelligence: how could it change the future of journalism?. skynews. Youtube, July 7, 2023 https://acortar.link/NDwLjQ
(2) Village Media https://www.villagemedia.ca/
(3) CNET https://www.cnet.com/
(4) CNET is quietly publishing AI-generated full-length articles. Frank Landymore. Futurism, January 11, 2023 https://acortar.link/luaDhs
(5) Considering the future of news in our societies. Richard Gingras. Medium, 8 July 2023 https://acortar.link/VsqIyK
(6) Leverage AI to advance the power of facts. AP https://acortar.link/DtxaPe
(7) Exclusive: AP reaches technology and news sharing agreement with OpenAI. Sarah Fischer. Axios, July 13, 2023 https://acortar.link/UYkhey
(8) The three AI tactics to create the new False Reality (and submit us in the process). Jesús A. Mármol. Medium, April 21, 2023 https://acortar.link/rG6Qde
(9) Social networks are gaining ground in news consumption and TikTok continues its rise among young people. Andrea Garcia. El País, June 14, 2023 https://acortar.link/VbDPHe
(10) Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023. Reuters Institute, University of Oxford, 2023 https://acortar.link/MslNn8
(11) In a visual society, the word is banished as a measure against freedom of thought. Jesús A. Mármol. A Seeker’s Log, January 8, 2019 https://acortar.link/BsJiBg
(12) Is individual thought in danger? Jesús A. Mármol. A Seeker’s Log, October 17, 2018 https://acortar.link/QSV4yn
(13) What effects does the AI Hive Thought have on the new generations?. Jesús A. Mármol. Medium, June 7, 2023 https://acortar.link/0NmNQy
(14) Are ChatBots going to make us dumber?. Jesús A. Mármol. Medium, January 2, 2023 https://acortar.link/sLoZei
(15) Teachers are already replaced by AI, what are the social implications?. Jesús A. Mármol. Medium, July 12, 2023 https://acortar.link/MMsSVP
