As the United States enters a new era of artificial intelligence, the world of journalism is at stake. The rise of new AI companies such as OpenAI and ChatGPT have intentions of making everyday lives easier, though creating fear for future journalists, such as me.
The main question of my concern is that as AI continues to adapt and grow, is the career path of journalism still realistic for students now?
The answer is, interesting enough, yes. The career path of journalism may be more realistic than ever.
Many people believe that OpenAI and ChatGPT are reliable sources of information. Though these search engines are quick with delivering information, it has been found that the information is often invalid or misleading.
According to an article on December 17, 2023 from The Washington Post, Pranshu Verma said, “Misinformation experts said the rapid growth of these sites is particularly worrisome.”
Not only is some of the information used by AI search engines misleading but many news outlets have been detected using AI-generated articles.
Verma said, “Since May, websites hosting AI-created false articles have increased by more than 1,000 percent, ballooning from 49 sites to more than 600.” Verma continues with, “The rise of AI fake news is creating a ‘misinformation superspreader.’”
Though AI-generated search engines are quick ways to collect data on a topic, it is not worth the credibility of the press.
In concert with these complications of AI, Brian Mostoller, XPress moderator, said, “AI is going to be so rampant; how are we going to treat these devices we created?”
Well, future journalists and everyone are going to have to learn how to embrace the rise of artificial intelligence.
Lisa Zuba, editor and director of marketing for The Gator Byte, agrees with the concept of embracing the fast-growing advancement of AI.
I will admit, as someone who highly considered going into journalism, it is challenging to accept the lack of human-to-human interaction that is to come. It is difficult to embrace something so powerful and adaptive as AI.
The rise of AI will eliminate jobs in journalism which only makes the industry harder to get into. According to The Verge, an American technology newspaper, Tom Warren writes, “Microsoft is laying off dozens of journalists and editorial workers at its Microsoft News and MSN organizations. The layoffs are part of a bigger push by Microsoft to rely on artificial intelligence.”
The jobs of future journalists may just rely upon who will be able to write more efficiently and skillfully? A competition between humans and artificial intelligence…sounds straight out of a movie.
