FLORENCE. Will ChatGpt ever be capable to choose up the telephone and extort data from any police workplace on what occurred within the metropolis the evening earlier than? Will a robotic or something resembling one ever be capable to see a truth, consider its newsworthiness and turn into a major supply itself? The reply to those questions is probably probably the most reassuring of the various heard to date on the way forward for journalism. The director of the New York Times Joe Kahn gave it to a bunch of scholars gathered in Florence by Andrea Ceccherini’s Young Publishers Observatory.
Kahn is an old style reporter: he received the primary Pulitzer within the American province with a collective work in opposition to violence in opposition to girls, on the Dallas Morning News. The second, in 2006, received him with an investigation into the Chinese judicial system. Today he governs probably the most influential and conventional press organ on the earth, ten million subscribers and – he himself says – 5 hundred million {dollars} a yr to pay an editorial crew of 1,500 journalists.
Kahn firmly believes that no advances in synthetic intelligence will ever substitute the work of reporters. And but the phenomenon should be ruled: «Especially within the brief time period it is going to make data worse. The availability of reports with out analysis will turn into more and more simpler, and with out verification the usage of synthetic intelligence will enhance polarization and misinformation. Searching for unique sources will turn into more and more essential.” It is the rule of the algorithm to the nth diploma: no hierarchy, no verification, poor means of the reader to discern between what’s true and what’s false or distorted.
In the various responses of the director of the Times to the scholars there’s affirmation of what appears banal however just isn’t: the principles of excellent journalism are at all times the identical, primarily the prerogative of the traditional manufacturers. «Today, to get complete data it is very important learn extra issues», «join the dots», says Tim’s primary Pietro Labriola, additionally a visitor in Florence. What issues to him, nevertheless, is to start with having “first-hand information”. Kahn invitations us to be cautious of what passes on social networks, “aggregated data, or aggregates of the mixture”. Tools which, if not handled with detachment, gas data bubbles and the “egocentrism of people”. We have to “do as we as soon as did, dig and search for unique sources”.
The guidelines are nonetheless the identical, however doing good journalism is more and more tough. «The world is filled with intelligence companies that attempt to affect the media, and I would not say that the American ones are higher at doing it than others, actually much less so than the Russian ones». Just as it’s more and more tough to maneuver in battle areas: «My newspaper formally protested to the Israeli military for a way they managed the entry of journalists into the Gaza Strip. Today it’s simpler to work in Russia than within the Territories.”