Can machines write compelling news articles that are both informative and engaging?
In this blog post, we will explore AI’s writing abilities in the world of journalism and answer the question: Does AI write good news articles? And more importantly, can it replace human journalists?
Besides the obvious pros of AI-written news being faster and cheaper than human journalists, the cons are numerous and challenging:
Limited training data
AI models are only as good as the data they are trained on. If the training data is incomplete or inaccurate, the AI model may produce inaccurate or biased results.
Lack of context
AI models may struggle to understand the context surrounding a particular piece of information, leading to incorrect or incomplete conclusions.
Factual innaccuracy
AI hallucination is a major issue for current models like GPT-3. This phenomenon causes the model to fabricate facts out of thin air and state them with enough confidence that many human readers wouldn’t think twice about doubting them.
Errors in data labeling
In some cases, the data used to train AI models may be incorrectly labeled, leading to inaccurate results.
Biases in data
AI models can also be biased if they are trained on data that reflects biased or incomplete perspectives.
Complex and changing information
Some information is complex, and even human experts may struggle to understand it completely. If the information is changing rapidly, AI models may not be able to keep up with the latest developments.
Limited domain knowledge
AI models may be trained to recognize patterns in a specific domain, but may not be able to apply that knowledge to other domains.
Lack of common sense
AI models may struggle with common sense reasoning, which can lead to errors in understanding or interpreting information.
Dry and lifeless writing
AI typically writes in a dry, stale manner lacking in human personality. It can make for good Wikipediaesque writing but it struggles at forming a human connection with the reader.
Conclusion
Artificial Intelligence is advancing rapidly, and with it many opportunities have been created to improve the news industry.
AI can certainly write good news articles that are factual and concise, but whether it can replace journalists entirely remains an open question.
The best AI replacement for a journalist is Hypotenuse AI, because it has an additional layer of fact-checking that GPT-3 and chatGPT both lack.
It is clear that AI has potential to automate mundane tasks so as to free up journalist’s time for more creative pursuits; however, a human touch will always be required if we want our news stories to be engaging and meaningful.
We must continue to monitor developments in this area carefully as we move into the new age of technology-driven journalism.
English bloke in Bangkok. First used GPT-3 in 2020 and has generated millions of words with it since. Not really much of an achievement but at least it demonstrates a smidgen of authority. Studies natural language processing, Python and Thai in his spare time.
