Tech

AI: Critical thinking and upskilling crucial as journalism faces a new turmoil

In the wake of the Irish Times’ inadvertent publication of an AI generated, human directed article, news outlets have to adapt to the latest chapter in the digital revolution

Journalists and editors need to understand the necessary trade-offs involved, between false positives and true positives, or the role of human-in-the-loop processes, in order to benefit, writes Neil Brady. Picture: Getty

One day in 2013, while working at the Guardian, a group of us were asked to attend a meeting on internet security protocols. The disruption of news gathering by social media platforms like Twitter was relatively recent, and publishers were still adapting to that new dynamic. We were advised that the paper was in the process of being hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army, and that we needed to take certain steps to secure our ...