AI technology and journalism: Improving for the future
By Oba Cantine
Using AI and bot technology to help sift through the sea of fake/ hoax news on the side of Journalism is great for weeding out any possible articles that fall into the category of fake news.
Although in recent years the idea of artificial intelligence has already become an intrinsic part of our researching process, thanks to intelligent databases such as Ebsco and Jstor.
These two database systems archive scholarly and peer-reviewed articles from highly accomplished academic writers and journalist. Although these tools are primarily research tools used in colleges to find cataloged information online.
The development of these programs points to the possibility that artificially intelligent programs will become the new norm for researching and fact-checking information.
A more well-known example of this can be found in the Facebook algorithm and the AI that they programmed to find remove hoax stories from their website. Even though that same AI program has caused Facebook to come under fire, from right-wing publications accusing them of having a liberal bias.
Although the AI technology being used today is not as refined as human judgment can be, it can enhance our perspective of a story. Similar to the way that Amari Imani, a data scientist from Columbia University, programmed an AI system that is able to decipher emotions through “micro-expressions” found in various parts of the face.
To assist Sarah Slobin, a journalist from the Quartz, in her 2017 story where she reported on “the nature of Donald trumps inaugural speech”. Amari’s AI enhanced the traditional method of journalism by using machine learning to assist with Slobin’s reporting.
When discussing how the AI was programmed to identify facial expressions Amari states, “…algorithms are doing the same thing” [as babies] “…but instead of it taking three years to learn how a person’s facial expression is communicating a certain emotion, machine learning algorithms go through thousands of images at once and try to categorize them.”
Artificial intelligence may be a long way from being able to seamlessly identifying information, without error of classifying things as false positives or false negatives. But the positive impact of AI and bot technology on journalism is undeniable; people just have to learn not to solely rely on it more than they rely on their own abilities.
