What changes will AI bring to the news business?

There are two major ways AI will most affect the news business: 

1. Bringing down the cost to produce stories and using language translation technology to both pull reporting from and 
2. Delivering finished stories to countries all around the world in dozens of languages.

What do you think people in the news business are concerned most about AI? 

Understandably, people are concerned about losing their jobs. Every major technological advance eliminates some (but also creates new) jobs, but we at Channel 1 feel strongly that journalism itself cannot be replaced with AI. The most important step in the process is for a human to investigate and write the story. Secondarily, many are concerned about the quality of reporting going down. For those outlets that use AI to scrape other sources and cobble together a story, that is a legitimate concern. We believe that solid human journalism is the cornerstone of any story we write, and technology makes it more efficient to tell that story and get it to as many people as possible across the globe.

How quickly do you see AI impacting the news business?

Certainly, AI is already being tested in newsrooms nationwide with varying degrees of success. It will be a process of trial and error to see where the technology can be additive and where it doesn’t do a better job than traditional workflows. But there is no doubt that we’ll see an increasing impact from AI in the news business as time goes on.

What are you looking forward to most about NAB?

I always look forward to talking to peers in the industry about what’s exciting them, worrying them, challenging them, etc. For our company, we know this will be a long, iterative process to do this in the right way, and that will involve constant advice and feedback from all of our colleagues in the news business.