AI in journalism: the case for paranoid optimism

“There is a future for journalism, but it will look different,” said John Micklethwait, Editor-in-chief of Bloomberg last week at City St George’s, University of London.

He delivered the James Cameron Memorial Lecture on the future of quality journalism in the age of AI. Prior to overseeing the editorial direction of Bloomberg, John spent 25 years at The Economist.

The lecture series, which has been running since 1987, commemorates the late foreign correspondent whose work included reporting on the Bikini Atoll nuclear experiments, on the Vietnam War, and on the death of King George VI.

Dr Glenda Cooper, Head of the Journalism Department at City St George’s, moderated the talk. She said:

The James Cameron lecture is one of the highlights in our calendar and has been given by some of the biggest names in journalism in its 37 year history.

Traditionally it tackles the key issues facing the media  – and one of the biggest at the moment is the profound impact AI is having on the news ecosystem. So we were delighted that John Micklethwait chose this as his subject.

Journalists are by nature a pessimistic crowd. I would like to make the case for paranoid optimism about the future of quality journalism in the face of AI.

Paranoia: because so much can go wrong.

Optimism: because journalism can cope with this tech as long as it sticks to the principles that governed the late journalists James Cameron and Marjorie Deane.

It’s a virtuous cycle: make great content, use that to lure in new subscribers, use that money to make more good content.

This model gives you greater independence.

Machines need humans to understand stories.

From numbers of serves to angles of shots, sports journalism is increasingly relying on stats, but presenters like Gary Lineker help us understand what it all means.

An AI summary of an article is only as good as the story its based on.

AI can’t write a column like John Authers or Matt Levine and it can't do an interview like Mishal Husain or Francine Lacqua.

Humans still get the story. You need people who know people. You don’t get scoops on a Zoom call.

AI can prompt ideas but commissioning a story remains a human skill.

For politicians everywhere, AI is getting too intrusive.

America innovates, China replicates, and Europe regulates. The UK is somewhere in the middle and can be a neutral place for rule setting on cyber warfare and child protection.

Rules like Section 230 mean tech giants are as responsible as telephone companies – responsible for the wires but not what is shared on them – but this argument is becoming threadbare.

What happens when kids fall in love with AI? Regulation is coming.

‘The world that James Cameron and Marjorie Deane worked in was very different to ours. But I think the same fundamentals apply, the same eternal verities.

As long as we focus on original reporting, on writing stories that people in power don’t want us to publish or that tell us something new about the world, and that without fear, favour or bias, we will do well.