JournalismAI Discovery

AI is already here, being used all over the journalism industry for news gathering, production and distribution.We'll walk through the various ways that newsrooms use AI for specific tasks like improving reader retention, supporting investigative work and identifying breaking, to name a few.

Some people joke that AI is "cool things that computers can’t do." We at JournalismAI define AI to mean: a collection of ideas, technologies, and techniques that relate to a computer system’s capacity to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. In the first module, we'll talk about what AI is—and isn't—and what it means to be a journalist in the age of AI.

As journalists, we can think about data as the mechanism by which accountability is attained. Technologically, data plays a major role in which algorithms can be used and even whether or not your problem can be solved with AI. In our course, we'll explore the importance of data and its influence on the possibilities, limits and outcomes of AI-journalism projects.

AI projects can be complicated and preparation pays off big. In this module, we’re going to put the pieces we’ve covered thus far together and talk about how to get started with an AI-journalism project. Like many things in journalism, AI tends to be a team sport. We’ll also talk about building upon others' work and finding suitable partners for collaboration.

Even the best planned projects run into difficulties. In this module, we’re going to go over some of the common failure paths and how to best avoid them. We’ll also discuss best practices and share some of the ingredients that have made previous successful journalism AI projects. We’ll draw on the wealth of experience gained from our 2021 Collab Challenges as well as from newsrooms, large and small.

The world of AI moves fast. Even veteran practitioners can find it difficult to stay current. In this final module, we’re going to take the time to review recent changes in AI technology and cover what trends may be relevant to journalism. We’ll also discuss resources you can use to leap forward from the stepping stone that is this course.