Is AI a Friend or Foe? Dave Isaac Explores AI's Impact on Journalism

Dave brings us inside Microsoft's ambitious plan to save journalism. With newsrooms' bleeding talent and the authenticity of news at stake, could AI be the hero journalism desperately needs?

We also discuss relevant AI tools for journalists like Claude for idea generation and Otter for transcriptions. Are you like Dave, cautiously optimistic about the future of AI and tools available?

Join us as we explore the cutting edge of AI in journalism, where the line between human creativity and machine efficiency blurs. Stay tuned, subscribe, and join the conversation on the profound synergy between AI and journalism.

Time stamps:

(03:24) Microsoft’s announcement regarding generative AI

(08:17) Past industry changes that led to personal layoffs and adaptation.

(13:09) Quality control of ChatGPT and Gemini.

(15:32) Ghostwriting, ownership, and hesitation about AI writing.

(19:32) OpenAI's impact on various companies' products.

(20:34) Concerns around misinformation and accuracy

(23:30) Critical thinking is needed to verify online information.

(25:56) Dave Isaac’s future predictions.

Quotes:

"When it comes to that intersection of journalism and AI, it's really hard to see all of those jobs be lost. And then the answer to how do you replace all that content? Becomes, well, whatever chat GPT spits out."

— Dave Isaac [00:04:19 → 00:04:32]

"When chat GPT rolled around in November of 2022, and I had been at Gregory FCA, my current role as in a PR firm, I got to admit I was a little threatened at first because I had kind of seen so many iterations of that as a reporter that it was, oh, this is what's going to take my job."

— Dave Isaac [00:09:03 → 00:09:21]

"I think the key, especially for working at an agency, and we do this at Gregory FCA, is you just have to be very transparent with your audience, with, in our case, our clients, that, hey, we are using these tools."

— Dave Isaac [00:11:13 → 00:11:23]

“We're already seeing bad AI copy flood the Internet. So if you use it the right way, it can be a great, effective tool. Create efficiencies, reduce the amount of time you spend on things. But it's just about the approach to me.”

 — Dave Isaac [00:12:19.520 - 00:11:48.958]

"A lot of the AI content that you see the first line almost every time is some, some variation of, in the ever evolving landscape of whatever[…] When I see that line, I almost just stop reading and say, okay, ChatGPT wrote this."

— Dave Isaac [00:13:16 → 00:13:37]

"Experiment with the different tools too, because you talked about using a range of tools in your classroom, and I found that chat GPT has a lot of capabilities within the tool itself, can produce pictures and look at data and things like that. But I find the writing terrible."

— Dave Isaac [00:16:19 → 00:16:34]

"There are companies that build their entire business model around using OpenAI as like a plugin API into their product. So a lot of these tools that... are basically chat GPT using everything that is in that training data, using that large language model to power whatever tool that the company has created."

— Dave Isaac [00:19:57 → 00:20:10]

"...people crave the shortcut. To be clear, you can still have a shortcut, but you have to vet these things and you have to vet their outputs, because without that, you're just flying blind and you really have no idea what it is that you've put your name to…"

— Dave Isaac [00:21:37 → 00:21:58]

"These tools spit these sentences out with such authority that it's very easy to believe that they are true, even if those statements are not true."

— Dave Isaac [00:23:32 → 00:23:42]

"Unfortunately…I see AI being used to replace more reporters."

— Dave Isaac [00:26:44 → 00:26:53]

"I was a little skeptical. But the more that I used them, the more that I saw what using them responsibly looked like, the better I felt about using them from my workflow perspective."

— Dave Isaac [00:28:13 → 00:28:23]

“I think it's less fear of having a job be replaced with AI and more. Okay, how do I use this thing to make me better?”

— Dave Isaac [00:29:07 → 00:29:14]

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Further Info:

Microsoft Wants To Save Journalism - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/microsoft-wants-ai-save-journalism-gregory-fca-bdpef?trk=public_post_reshare_feed-article-content  

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveisaac/ 

Claude (ChatGPT alternative) - https://claude.ai/   

Perplexity (Google search alternative) - https://www.perplexity.ai/   

Llama AI - https://llama.meta.com/