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AI-Driven Stories: How journalists can work with robots and algorithms
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Rahel Philipose
5:54
6:02
Hello and Welcome to Athens Gen Summit 2019, a discussion about AI-driven stories moderated by Reginald Chua, COO, Reuters. The panel discussion is led by Lisa Gibbs, Director of News Partnerships, The Associated Press and Ben Rudolph, Managing Director, Microsoft News Labs.
6:08
With the advent of technology and easy access to digital information, Gen Summit aims to speak about how journalists can work with robots and algorithms and the use of Artificial Intelligence.
6:14
What is AI?
6:18
Lisa Gibbs starts off by talking about the perspective of the Associated Press. "When we started using this technology, it was for us to solve problems of efficiency and save time for our reporters. As we've gotten more experienced and technology has evolved, challenges have become more sophisticated." She addresses the concerned about how journalists can use this technology in their work.
Beat journalists can use this tech to find news in their beat.
6:22
Reginald Chua speaks about the struggles in order to keep up with the capabilities of AI.
Chua asks Ben, "What are the changes that took place in the AI journalism industry last year?"
6:23
Ben Rudolph responds, "the biggest shift over 12 months is from theoretical knowledge to practical democratization of tools. Other players have thought about how to take basic tools and take it to the next level."

Moving beyond the large players such as BBC having the technology to most players and journalists having the modern cutting edge technology.
6:24
6:25
Is AI journalism more accurate?
Yes (0% | 0 votes)
 
No (0% | 0 votes)
 
Total Votes: 0
6:26
According to Ben, identifying people in videos a few years ago was harder, but it has all changed with the booming of technology.
6:27
Addressing another concern regarding AI Journalism, Chua puts forward another question, "What is the role of the journalist, and when will AI replace humans?"
6:30
Lisa Gibbs emphasizes on the content produced and the role of the audience. She says, "These technologies can help us create different versions of stories for different platforms. Now, we are able to think about what more we can offer to our readers." The Associated Press is working on a summarizing tool. "We are looking at whether we can use algorithms to produce that. We're getting to the point where we can really start thinking about content strategy in a strategic way," she adds.

If algorithms are detecting patterns from data quickly, then the editor's role is going to change. The relationship between editor and tool is beginning to change.
6:32
Referring to new interactive voices that were available in the past, Chua questions, "How close are we to being able to encode that kind of news and achieving an interactive experience?"
6:36
Coming ahead on the interactive aspect, Ben speaks about different personas and experiments with interactive voice news, "How close are we to being able to get interactive voice news?"
We get an extraordinarily large amount of data so the next step is specifying what data would be highest in demand.
We can actually execute a fairly cursory level of interactive news even today. When we start to get beyond specifics to more complex, broad and generic questions, that's where it gets harder".
Ben continues, "What we'll get to see first is depth rather than breadth, specifics rather than generic questions which will come later."
6:37
6:38
Gibbs asks Reginald, "What is your take on the role of the journalist and what we see as the story?"
6:40
She further highlights the potential these technologies have. "These technologies aren't just a gatherer of facts, they add to credibility." Technology has been changing our work since we started doing it. In a way, this is the same as how digital cameras changed photography, how the smartphone changed journalism," she adds. Talking about event detection tools that AP has rolled out, she said, "When we first tested these tools with our reporters, we didn't use the words AI. they were just another tool we were using."
6:41
Tools define what we can or cannot do. Chua asks Ben how we can guard the quality of data, the inherent bias in the data.
6:42
Ben answers, "Cautionary tales, algorithms built were comparatively more racist than humans because the data programming was more biased, leading to incorrect and biased data."
6:45
Speaking about the drawbacks of AI in the lives of journalists considering how more and more people can get equipped with AI. "How fair is it to journalists?"
6:47
Ben focuses on news credibility and the dilemma people find themselves. "It is not magic, people are becoming increasingly skeptical of news and it's accuracy. We want to make AI into a tool and we're open to feedback which creates transparency and clarity," he adds.
Transparency leads to trust between journalist, publisher and reader, he concludes.
6:52
With that powerful statement, the discussion comes to an end. Thank you all joining us.
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