Journalists in newsrooms not only in the Philippines but around the world are often forced to work beyond their limits and cover numerous topics at the same time. Tordecilla wanted to find a solution that would allow reporters to maximize efficiency and reduce the time they spend reviewing documents.
“AI is a hot topic, but there is little documentation on how to use it and apply it to journalism,” he said. “So I wanted to find a use case for it. If the hype that this technology could change the world is true, it should change journalism as well.”
His program, called COA Beat Assistant, is built using tools available in the paid version of ChatGPT, allowing users to customize AI models for specific purposes without coding. Tordecilla has structured his COA to summarize information from his extensive Executive Summary, which can run up to 50 pages.
“[COA] Reports are an invaluable source of information and available to everyone…but due to the density of the documents, it takes a lot of time to review their contents. [it]And people see different things in documents,” he said.
“It's important to look through these documents to uncover evidence or traces of wrongdoing, but the reporters covering that beat don't have enough time to go through everything. So I'm here participated in the fellowship [at Harvard] We're trying to find ways to use AI technology to make that job easier. ”
The results were promising. In a February essay for the University of Oxford's Reuters Institute, Tordesilla said COA Beat Assistant reduced investigative time by up to 80 percent for reporters who regularly report on corruption cases based on state audit reports. I wrote that I estimate that it was helpful.
As recently as two years ago, creating a similar tool would have required programming a sophisticated machine learning model and feeding it thousands of manually annotated documents, Tordesilla said.
He envisions the audit bot as a springboard for other tools that can sift through similarly dense publications, such as legal documents and environmental reports.
Journalism vs. disinformation
While AI may enable journalists to do their jobs better and more efficiently, there are concerns that the ability to generate lengthy texts on any subject almost instantly could lead to more falsehoods from disinformation providers. be.
Even before the rise of generative AI, social media platforms in places like the Philippines were flooded with misinformation. But Tordesilla said fake AI content can be countered by using the same tried-and-true method that journalists have long employed to expose falsehoods: well-researched reporting.
“We have to go back to the misinformation toolkit that we've been working on for the last 10 years. That's how we deal with misinformation that AI deals with,” he said. Ta.
People fighting misinformation need to embrace AI, not resist it, says Jonathan Corpus Ong, associate professor of digital media and director of the Institute for Global Technologies for Social Justice at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. he said in Asia this week.
“Whether we like it or not, AI is here to stay. Punishments like pre-emptively banning AI tools or demonizing AI as if it were just a lie. It is our responsibility to respond and adapt rather than reverting to a similar approach,” said Ong, who has studied disinformation networks in the Philippines.
“Unfortunately, entrepreneurial ‘bad actors’ are always ahead of the curve and adapting to new digital innovations. Unless journalists, educators, and human rights activists learn about the uses and abuses of AI, we will become even more vulnerable to false knowledge claims and propaganda generated by AI. ”
“Defending democracy requires unity and sharing of technology,” Yun said during the opening of the Third Democracy Summit in Seoul. “We need to build AI and digital systems that can use AI and digital technology to detect and counter those who create fake news and spread disinformation.”
Even as AI tools empower journalists to fight corruption and disinformation, rapidly evolving technology also threatens journalism jobs. There is a lot of struggle surrounding news organizations, many of which are already in financial difficulty and are choosing to replace reporters with AI-generated content.
Tordesilla said such concerns are overblown and that the technology is still far from replacing real journalists. He said the focus should instead be on using AI as an efficiency tool, similar to word processors and spreadsheets.
However, Tordesilla acknowledged that AI has the potential to change the value proposition of media works.
“It's going to take the entire industry to figure out where the value lies in that value chain. Even if you're good at reporting but not so good at writing, AI can help you generate good copy.” “It’s possible,” he said.
“Maybe the most important thing is being able to go into a community and report the stories that only you can get from that community.”
Ong said AI tools could be particularly useful for journalists in developing countries working in newsrooms with limited resources to develop training and work processes similar to those used by much larger media outlets. said.
“Journalists, especially from the Global South, need to innovate their own tools and training materials that are relevant to our cultural contexts, regulatory environments, news media traditions and diverse languages. Of particular interest is innovation and training. [Tordecilla],” He said.
Tordecilla hosted a workshop for news organizations to demonstrate how to use COA Beat Assistant, other free tools, and open source AI systems.
United Nations to vote on first resolution on AI to ensure technology safety and security
United Nations to vote on first resolution on AI to ensure technology safety and security
He hopes the tool will further increase the ability to process much larger mountains of documents, enabling surveillance reporting that previously required teams of journalists and significant resources.
“I get asked, 'Is there a tool that can compare five years of reports from the same agency and compare the data that comes out of that?'” And the current model doesn't work well in that regard…so I We're just looking for technology to improve and make our lives easier. ” he said.