The original AI: Newspapers run on accurate information

By Ken Paulson

Artificial intelligence is going to transform everything we watch, hear and read. You can already see it happening.

Asking an AI search engine a question about an obscure fact can yield quick and surprisingly detailed responses. Type in a cellphone model number and you’re suddenly a highly informed consumer. And when it comes to transforming legendary television show casts into babies, AI is world-class.

But news? AI-fueled news poses problems.

The first is that news is about reality. AI provides tools to bend reality. We’re seeing a wave of AI-abetted falsehoods and deepfakes online, all designed to mislead us with doctored images and video. 

No, Ukraine is not sending children, the disabled and the elderly to clear minefields. President Trump does not have a forehead indentation indicating serious illness. Sen. Amy Klobuchar didn’t attack Sydney Sweeney and complain that Democrats are “too fat to wear jeans or too ugly to go outside.”

It’s time to retire “seeing is believing.”

A second issue with AI is that it doesn’t know what the truth is. Its take on the world will be driven by the data it accesses. Popular but untrue information isn’t necessarily filtered out. There’s no one sitting at a desk signing off on AI’s best guess.

In contrast to the breathless tone of clickbait, newspapers in print and online can seem a little old-school. Traditional. Reliable. Safe.

Local newspapers embrace the original AI: accurate information. How refreshing is that? Newspapers focus on your community, written by neighbors who shop at the same stores and send their kids to the same schools. Most can readily be reached by phone or email, and when they make an error, they correct it. 

How quaint. How essential.

AI isn’t magic. When used for search, it offers an analysis and recasting of information about what’s already known, drawing on the vast resources of the web. 

Any search about your hometown, though, depends on that information being captured and published in the first place. If your local newspaper doesn’t report on a new transportation plan for your community, there’s nothing for AI search to draw upon. AI is not sitting in the third row of the city council meeting.

There’s an oft-used phrase in data analysis: Garbage in, garbage out. No local news in, no local news out.

In the long run, artificial intelligence may be good for us; it may be bad. But it will be.

The question is whether we will support the local daily journalism that informs us, protects our communities and yes, fuels AI. 

Unless we support local newspapers and local journalism of all sorts, we will lose the collective knowledge and insight that allows a community to address its needs and move forward. We can’t fix what we don’t know is broken.

If we don’t subscribe and support local news media, we will no longer know how our tax dollars are being used, how well elected officials are doing their jobs or what the real stakes are for the next local election.

But just wait until you see the mayor as a baby.

Ken Paulson is the director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University and a former editor-in-chief of USA Today.

National Newspaper Week takes place Oct. 5-11. Support your local newspaper.