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by Jensson 750 days ago
> Ultimately, two things are becoming clear: AI needs journalism to thrive, and journalism needs to find a sustainable way to coexist with AI

Why would AI need journalism to thrive? This seems just thrown in there, I bet journalists would want that to be true but I don't see anything here stating why.

2 comments

Because after the initial scraping where the AI for example can tell you about each American president, users want the AI updated to know if any present is a convicted criminal (for example).

When we were all naive the AI bots came through and just took our content, now as everyone wises up, folks are laying down a cost for the next round of web scraping.

Imagine your bot could only scrape once a year.. your AI would quickly get out of date on many topical issues. This ‘latest updates gap’ is where the journalists and publishers see leverage.

AI is not a primary source. Journalists (should) be doing more than just collecting data from online sources.
In case it should be said, journalists without first-hand experience in direct evidence gathering tend not to be primary sources either. It may be the case that AI will have some types of relevant first-hand experience, and may count as primary sources in a number of circumstances. I can see many possible cases in the future (maybe even a decade from now) where AI can engage in a variety of thorough investigative practices. Reaching out to communicate with people, flying a drone to inspect, or perhaps executing more more complex processes may be coming. Justification or sufficient positivistic authority may come in different degrees and kinds in this cluster of practices as well.