"Self-Gathering News" will become a reality before the end of this decade. How can we prevent it from going rogue? Across various sectors, smart machines are already operating products and systems in real time, from additive manufacturing to autonomous vehicles, precision agriculture and more.
AI will similarly impact the field of journalism.
The rapid advancements in AI and decreasing computing costs will dramatically improve our ability to collect data and verify facts, leading to a significant increase in the amount of high-quality, reliable information that is generated and analyzed programmatically.
With data sensors monitoring activities in both the real and digital worlds, we are approaching an era of precisely generated news powered by AI agents that behave as journalists, algorithmically determining what is noteworthy in every real-world event.
These autonomous agents will be largely automated, following a set of directives established by human editors. If the state of the world changes, the news will instantly update. News will become 'self-driving,' and the information you receive will be updated as new data becomes available. For example, as a protest unfolds in New York City, AI agents will update a news article in real time: the latest number of people arrested, sourced from public databases, the streets that are being shut down, based on traffic data, and even the responses of city officials, by analyzing their statements released online.
Static articles will become a thing of the past.
The transition towards “self-driving news” will be gradual and incremental at first. Initially, machine-driven algorithms will assist human journalists, but over time, journalism will increasingly be shaped by processes developed by machines themselves.
In this scenario, technology can be be used to inform us about the state of the world and help establish ground truth. A system that not only informs but also deepens understanding and supports constructive engagement with the world.
However, this algorithmic mechanism also presents the risk of being employed as a means to control society. In the AI age, I don't think human journalists will fade into oblivion. It's actually the polar opposite: they will have one of the most critical roles in society—that of arbiters of algorithmic integrity. That means the way to prevent AI from going rogue is for human journalists to establish, audit, and enforce an Editorial Constitution that creates guardrails to govern the machines to abide by the standards of journalism: transparency, accuracy, and reliability. This is something that needs to start being established no