Press and media
View from briefing·center
in brief
In the conversation about AI, some guidance from the AP
It’s hard to know whom to believe when some experts promise an artificial intelligence “Golden Age” while others fear the literal end of humanity.
I mean, are those our only choices?
I’m skeptical that the people building AI models will sit still when one of their AI personas tells them the Golden Age requires they share the wealth. Or maybe they mean a Golden Age for some … or for themselves.
Meanwhile, the harbingers of mortal danger are urging that we “pace the frontier,” to use the term of art — to manage the pace of development of the most advanced AI models. Yes, please. I’d very much prefer the slow road to my possible doom.
Whatever future you envision — heaven, hell, or somewhere in between — you would hope AI would have improved the public discussion about AI. Of course, that debate starts with humans, who are notoriously all over the map.
While good information abounds on what AI is and isn’t, it competes with noise, often from people with a stake in the outcome or in winning a place high up in the attention economy.
The New York Times ran in February 2023 an attention-grabbing piece, “A Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled,” with the subhead, “A very strange conversation with the chatbot built into Microsoft’s search engine led to it declaring its love for me.” The article attracted a lot of attention, but I’m not sure it generated a lot of understanding.
That article was the first thing that came to mind a couple of weeks ago when I read a Bluesky post by Leah McElrath displaying a portion of the Associated Press Stylebook entry on AI. While the guidance fills an entire chapter, one particular admonition jumps out:
Do not ascribe human emotions or capabilities to AI models or imply that they exert independent, human-like agency in the world. It does not further the public’s understanding of their role. Instead, it obscures humans’ work in developing and supervising such AI systems.
Most newsrooms with which I’m familiar use the AP Stylebook, with additions and adaptations to meet their specific needs. Stylebook discussions were among my favorite newsroom meetings. Perhaps some would have found them tedious and pedantic, but not me. They were about the precision and clarity of thought we brought to our journalism and the understanding we hoped to convey to our readers.
And maybe, in this case, the AP Stylebook is a good place to start — or improve — our AI conversation.