Imagine a World Where AI Writes All the News

 Each morning, millions of people wake up, check headlines, before they have even rolled out of bed. Today, news has never been faster; breaking news updates, live feeds, automatic notifications and real-time streams. However, at a faster-than-ever pace, there is an ever-growing reality that the masses are barely aware of. AI is already slowly creeping into the newsroom.

However, what if we take this a step further?

Imagine on any given morning you look at your mobile phone to discover that the article you are reading, the headline you are sharing, the sports updates, political analysis, celebrity stories and breaking news alerts were not written by a human. There are no reporters, no newsroom debates, no journalists reporting live from floods, war zones, elections, or protests, no journalists being forced to analyse events from an ever-changing perspective; machines are processing and presenting stories to you in seconds.

Initially, this would sound effective and even impressive.

Machines would report news much faster than humans would ever be able to. Machines would never get tired, they wouldn’t demand a pay packet, and they wouldn't have deadlines. Reports would be generated in seconds following the reporting of a relevant event. Stock market news reports, election results, weather updates and sports reports could all be automated, and if, as a society, we want our news quicker than ever before, then AI journalism looks like the answer.

However, as society moves forward, a deeper, more significant question arises;

Can news exist without the human experience?

News reporting has never just been about information. It is about observation, ethics, emotion, and human reasoning. A machine can tell you the numbers relating to a tragic event: how many people were injured and how many cities have been affected by a disaster, but how would it ever understand how these numbers feel to a bereaved mother or a lost father? It can't feel fear like humans can, and the silent sorrow of a grief-stricken city simply cannot be articulated by an algorithm. News is not just information; it is humanity that makes it news.

One of the greatest dangers of AI-generated news is that it might actually be too perfect, well-written and algorithmically driven for the human eye to doubt. As society becomes so enthralled with instant news and how fast the updates are being published, news will slowly start to shift from reporting facts for societal benefit to pushing what the audience is most likely to want to click on, share or get emotionally involved with. In a society that consumes a lot of its news via machines, the nature of truth itself will become blurred and subjective.

AI algorithms learn from data fed into them. It would therefore be no surprise to find that any bias present on the internet or any false reports spread online may find their way into the algorithms and eventually into AI-generated news reports. As a machine cannot understand the ethical implications of its reports, it cannot risk the truth if it contradicts what its program tells it. This sort of investigative journalism is not something that can be programmed, and it involves human intuition and courage, which cannot be replaced by a machine.

There is also another disturbing idea, which is that with an increase in AI-generated news, it might be a matter of time before people are no longer trusting any form of news. The human element of responsibility still exists, a reporter will sign his or her name below an article and the responsibility is their own. A news editor will decide how an article is edited and presented, and in this situation, responsibility falls upon the news agency; however, with an AI writer, it may be very difficult to ascertain responsibility when the news becomes untruthful, with so many companies behind a single machine the system may become too diluted to pinpoint blame and find it harder to achieve the justice that individuals deserve.

Perhaps the worst consequence may not be job losses, however, but a gradual loss of the human element of storytelling within society, as the job of news reporters is not to just collect information, but to inform society about events in human terms, in what is recorded. Through the human eye, it records the struggles and tribulations, triumphs and losses of humanity as it evolves. A loss of human elements could result in the production of emotionally hollow content, technically accurate, however lacking in soul.

Clearly, AI has a future role to play within media, perhaps as a supportive tool and in helping journalists produce and retrieve information more quickly. However, the notion of machines replacing the very reporters who tell our stories should not be celebrated, for it could mean that the loss is not the jobs in the newsroom, but society as a whole is the ultimate loser.