Artificial intelligence will change many aspects of our professional life, as a future journalist can do in just one day what today takes weeks or months of continuous work by an investigative journalism team. This does not fall into the category of science fiction, but it is likely to become a reality in the near future, which is shown by the following detailed scenario inspired by the reality of realistic technological progress in a recent study conducted by The Associated Press.
Over the past few months, the agency has held meetings with several AI leaders to obtain a comprehensive report detailing its impact on journalism. According to the study, by 2027, newsrooms will be blessed with a wide range of AI-based tools, journalists will be able to integrate these smart technologies into their daily work absolutely seamlessly, and artificial intelligence technologies will be able to do much more than what currently exists, such as providing automated news reports.
Artificial intelligence technologies will allow journalists to analyze data, identify patterns and trends from multiple sources, see things that cannot be seen with the naked eye, convert data and spoken words into text and convert text into audio and video, understand emotions, analyze scenes to identify elements, faces, text, colors, and many others. When journalists use these tools to enrich the reporting, writing, and editing process, then we can call it augmented journalism.
The next wave of technological innovation is no different from any previous wave, and success remains dependent on how human journalists implement and use these new tools, and since artificial intelligence is man-made, all the ethical, editorial, and economic aspects that are taken into account when producing traditional news content are still applied in the new era of enhanced journalism.
Ultimately, the impact of artificial intelligence on journalism will be a tale of how a human journalist copes and works side by side with machines, and to harness AI technologies and take advantage of them in the news industry, the first step is to understand how technology can be used and exploited in a newsroom setting. The Columbia Journalism Review has developed a scenario and a scenario for one day in the life of a journalist after ١٠ years from now.
So what will be the details of one day in the life of a journalist in 10 years (in 2027)?
8 a.m:
An environmental journalist takes a self-driving car to get to the newsroom where he works, suddenly sensors for measuring air quality – he had previously placed them in the city of Springfield (the capital of the US state of Illinois) – send an alert to the smart dashboard in the car indicating the detection of a shift in the percentage of air pollution, where the alert shows a 10 percent decrease in air quality in Springfield.
The journalist designed this alert with the help of a data scientist to develop a system that feeds the data and presents it within a specific template or formula: “there is [X] [increase/decrease] in air quality at [the site],” and upon seeing the alert, the journalist sends a pair of drones equipped with instruments to test water and air quality to confirm the validity of the alert.
8:30 a.m:
When a journalist approaches the news center (his workplace), a computer that tracks social networking sites alerts him about an increase in conversations about the topic of air pollution and children suffering from asthma attacks in Springfield, and the computer also detects a high percentage of publications related to the topic by a group of mothers.
The journalist receives an alert that reads:” [Mothers in Springfield] express [their] concern about [air pollution] and[their children], " and the computer can understand and understand when individual posts are positive or negative, and whether they refer to a person, place or event, it can detect similarities between different posts, analyze trends through large amounts of older content posted on social networking sites.
9 a.m.:
The journalist arrives at his workplace and asks his computer, by talking to him, to display the results received from the drones that he had previously sent to test the water and air quality, enters the data into a frame (a kind of complex spreadsheet), and directs a program to determine whether the numbers are outside the usual statistical range.
Thus, the journalist makes sure that the pollution rates today are abnormally high compared to the previous ones, and then the journalist communicates via Twitter with one of the mothers who talked about air pollution and asks her for an interview later in the day to discuss her concerns.
10 a.m:
The journalist transfers a set of images from his computer to augmented reality glasses and determines that there has been a decrease in visibility (an indicator of high pollution) in an area around a newly constructed factory in the past few days, depending on the development of the computer vision field and the presence of hundreds of available images.
The journalist was able to obtain these images through a series of robotic cameras deployed throughout the region, and used computer vision techniques (an algorithm capable of viewing and understanding photos or videos with improved resolution) to compare the images of the area around the plant over time.
11 a.m:
The journalist searches public records using an automated assistant, uses a text analysis tool powered by artificial intelligence to view thousands of government records and licenses, and the smart assistant highlights cases of outrageous behavior, recorded fines, revocation of permits, public criticism, and legal problems.
The journalist discovers that a factory owner has previously been fined for cheating emissions tests at other sites, suspects that the same thing happened in Springfield, calls the PR company representing the factory owner for clarification, and the journalist suspects that the person who spoke may be hiding something, as the technology of analyzing the voice and tone of the person on the phone showed that he was “hesitant” and” nervous”.
12 noon:
The hungry journalist asks the food delivery service based on artificial intelligence to give him recommendations on food recipes based on the ingredients he entered. The system analyzes the chemical properties of those ingredients and recommends using the optimal recipe, and after twenty minutes, a drone drops the food on a special landing platform stretched out outside the window of the newsroom.
1 pm:
The journalist who is having lunch asks his robotic assistant to run another set of public records, and the assistant, through a series of marriage and birth certificates and social media data, finds files indicating that the CEO of the company responsible for building the plant is a distant relative of the woman who conducted the tests of the plant in Springfield.
The computer works thanks to an algorithm that can provide meaningful information based on public records and derive relationships between text elements, and the algorithm relies on something called natural language processing, which is a technology that understands the text and deduces the connection between people's places and things, and the journalist can in real time visualize the digital family tree and find the links between the two parties.
2 p.m:
The journalist wears virtual reality glasses to control a pair of drones and sends them to the area he is investigating, only to find out that the pipe at the factory splits into two and transfers some kind of material into the air, and he also sees that there are some kind of protests there.
The algorithm, working on the analysis of the live video received from the drone, reveals the presence of human density and notes that the security personnel of the plant are largely concentrated in one area, the journalist also determines that they have placed barriers around a small part of the industrial cluster, and a digital map leads him to the conclusion that behind these barriers is the split pipe.
The journalist returns to his self-driving car and heads to the plant to investigate in person, and security prevents him from approaching the barrier that hides the chemical leak, and two factory workers tell him that they have had difficulty breathing since the alarm was sent and none of them remembers seeing an inspector since the plant started operating.
3 p.m:
The journalist stops at a local cafe on the way back to the office to talk with the mother, who on the same day was tweeting about her young children and the Sudden Attack of asthma attacks, the mother tells the journalist that her children were asleep while the windows were open and woke up in the middle of the night complaining of respiratory problems, and shows him a video of her children coughing over and over again.
The journalist, sitting in his car on the way back to the newsroom, replays an audio recording of the interview and, through the sentiment analysis system, determines that the mother's tone is “real.”
4 pm:
The journalist, who was ignored by his human sources, conducts additional research through a large amount of press releases related to previous accusations of the factory and the sanitary department polluting nearby neighborhoods, and the journalist is working on passing those documents to the Intelligent Analysis System, which finds that neither of the parties has issued any form of apology.
5 p.m:
The journalist dictates his story on an application located within his smart computer, which in turn drafts and types the text, and the editor-in-chief gets an alert to review and approve the story. Within minutes, he has a well-verified research story dealing with high pollution levels in Springfield, including quotes from factory workers and the mother he interviewed at the cafe.
The journalist is working to support the report through air and water samples taken during the day, and the report on breathing problems associated with the plant shows that the data indicate the extent of negligence and violation of Environmental Law, which contributes to air pollution in Springfield.
This article is distributed across all platforms from smartphones, smart watches, smart cars, smart mirror and everything smart, and this story gets thousands of views and views in the local community of the city, and a new inspector is sent the next morning to the factory, who notices several legal violations to close it indefinitely.