3 ms·

I suppose the idea is that you feed a scientific paper or research institute's PR to an LLM and it spits out an article. That's the bread and butter of many sci

by Veen 4y ago

I suppose the idea is that you feed a scientific paper or research institute's PR to an LLM and it spits out an article. That's the bread and butter of many science journalists. An editor can make sure it isn't a load of nonsense, which is one of the things editors already do. But, that leaves a lot of space for "proper" journalism: gathering facts on the ground, interviewing relevant people, assessing impact, and so on.

abeppu 4y ago
> I suppose the idea is that you feed a scientific paper or research institute's PR to an LLM and it spits out an article. I'm sure many journalists do this, but I would argue that science journalists also need to: - consult other, independent sources with knowledge of the field. These parties may be able to highlight weaknesses or limitations of the work, framing assumptions that the work is dependent on etc. - consulting broader background sources to provide context for the work, and potential relevance. A science journalist who merely extracts from the research institution's PR is exactly as bad as a business reporter who merely extracts from a company's PR is exactly as bad as a political reporter who merely extracts from a politician's grandstanding. All of them are bad journalists who are merely tools of some other organization's public relations effort.
- JieJie 4y ago
  If we think of it in the same way we think of programming, journalists are the junior developers of the writing world, editors are the senior developers of the writing world. Editors are also writers and also do journalism, they just do it at a more high level, and that includes directing journalists on how to better do their job. It isn't necessarily a supervisory role, but more of a pedagogic relationship. It seems to me, and I have experience in the alternative weekly newspaper world (which is long dead as a business model, but as a model of journalism, I feel one that we would do well to resurrect in some form) would prefer if all writers took on a more supervisory role, directing AI to do all of the investigatory work of showing up at the records office and sifting through city council transcripts. Then the human writer would do what humans do well and work those personal connections that they have much more time to do now that the AI is doing all the tedious grunt work. I understand that people are frightened and in a bit of a panic, but these generative AI could do a vast amount to bring back truth to journalism, if we do this correctly. Will we? <shrug>

by Veen 4y ago

abeppu 4y ago

> I suppose the idea is that you feed a scientific paper or research institute's PR to an LLM and it spits out an article. I'm sure many journalists do this, but I would argue that science journalists also need to: - consult other, independent sources with knowledge of the field. These parties may be able to highlight weaknesses or limitations of the work, framing assumptions that the work is dependent on etc. - consulting broader background sources to provide context for the work, and potential relevance. A science journalist who merely extracts from the research institution's PR is exactly as bad as a business reporter who merely extracts from a company's PR is exactly as bad as a political reporter who merely extracts from a politician's grandstanding. All of them are bad journalists who are merely tools of some other organization's public relations effort.

JieJie 4y ago
If we think of it in the same way we think of programming, journalists are the junior developers of the writing world, editors are the senior developers of the writing world. Editors are also writers and also do journalism, they just do it at a more high level, and that includes directing journalists on how to better do their job. It isn't necessarily a supervisory role, but more of a pedagogic relationship. It seems to me, and I have experience in the alternative weekly newspaper world (which is long dead as a business model, but as a model of journalism, I feel one that we would do well to resurrect in some form) would prefer if all writers took on a more supervisory role, directing AI to do all of the investigatory work of showing up at the records office and sifting through city council transcripts. Then the human writer would do what humans do well and work those personal connections that they have much more time to do now that the AI is doing all the tedious grunt work. I understand that people are frightened and in a bit of a panic, but these generative AI could do a vast amount to bring back truth to journalism, if we do this correctly. Will we? <shrug>