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Articles by Nicholas Diakopoulos

Nicholas Diakopoulos is an assistant professor of communication at Northwestern University.
@ndiakopoulos
What’s okay and what’s verboten when it comes to AI in the production of news? Here’s how 21 newsrooms in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere have laid out their own policies and plans.
“It’s probably better to think of these tools as internal newsroom tools, making suggestions to reporters and editors rather than generating text that will be directly published.”
In other words, the odds are pretty good — but it’s far from a lock.
“We found, surprisingly, that no single feature of a headline’s writing style makes much of a difference in forecasting success.”
Estimates say that today’s AI can automate only about 15 percent of a reporter’s job and 9 percent of an editor’s job. But that doesn’t mean AI won’t change a lot of the work that remains.
“Artificial neural networks are advancing rapidly in their ability to synthesize content — including images, videos, and texts — that are increasingly indistinguishable from authentic content.”
“There’s more at stake in the competition around platforms than market share and money. It’s a question of values.”
At Georgia Tech’s Computation + Journalism Symposium, representatives from both fields explored what the vibrant news information environment might look like.
As algorithms play an ever-larger role in how we get news and information, it’s important to realize the ways that bias — intentional or not — can seep into their decisions.