What the Future Looks Like
How an AI-mediated world transforms news consumption.
News consumers are changing, and journalism needs to change in order to meet them. At the moment, according to the Reuters Institute, only about 7 percent of adults use chatbots as a source of news, but that doubles to 15 percent for the under-twenty-five crowd. A day is coming, and soon, when people will turn to artificial intelligence for answers to all sorts of questions—despite the host of incredibly well-documented flaws of AI systems in providing accurate, credible, unbiased information.
That is because AI systems are more attuned than news organizations to an individual’s needs. A small-business owner in the town of Gahanna, Ohio, is going to want a personalized AI-generated answer about how a change in the state’s tax policy might affect her, rather than plow through a long New York Times analysis written largely for a general audience. A parent in Fremont, Nebraska, interested in school board decisions probably wants to know how these affect her child and less about debates among members over diversity, equity, and inclusion. A revolution is coming, in which news is produced on the fly, by generative AI systems addressing the specific queries and needs of one person. The technology is already more or less mature enough to allow systems to do this reasonably well, with largely vetted and accurate information—even if, for the moment, they are doing it very badly.
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