(Image courtesy of Maximalfocus on Unsplash.com)

(Post updated on June 1, 2024).

The new threat to journalism is similar to the one from the 1990s. The first was the internet. The second is artificial intelligence, especially generative AI, the most prominent of which is large language models such as ChatGPT.

Don’t remind me. I am looking for work, so I aware of the supposed AI menace. Invariably, news stories and white papers make the same point: Hal, the famous robot in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, has not only come to life but is also ubiquitous!

Yet we in the media, like our counterparts in the tech industry, are swept up more by hype than critical thinking. We fail to take a good hard look at generative AI.

The cold, hard fact about a fancy new technology

If we had, we might have avoided gloom-and-doom prophecies.

Generative AI has a dirty little secret: Its content is often simple and shallow, little or no better than data you can find on Google, Bing, or traditional search engines. It doesn’t deliver insights and context worthy of a graduate-level seminar. Rather, it delivers high school-level recitations and echoes conventional wisdom.

To illustrate my point, I used Google’s Gemini to pose a question:

Did the children’s crusade help the civil rights movement?

Yes, the Children’s Crusade is considered a significant turning point in the Civil Rights Movement. Here’s why:

• • Raised awareness: Images of peaceful children being met with violence from police shocked the nation and garnered international attention for the cause.
  • Increased pressure for change: The brutality against children pushed President John F. Kennedy to publicly support federal legislation for civil rights.
  • Symbolized the movement’s future: The courage of the young participants demonstrated the growing strength and determination of the Civil Rights Movement.

The Children’s Crusade, along with other efforts, helped pave the way for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Taken as a whole, the answer is inexpert.  In particular, the second and third parts are misleading.

President Kennedy sponsored civil-rights legislation in June 1963, the month after the Children’s Crusade. Yet the legislation went nowhere on Capitol Hill as Southern Democrats controlled the committees with authority over the bill. The bill might have stayed there if JFK had not been assassinated and Lyndon Johnson became the President.

Also, the post overstates the young participants’ courage. Young people would not have participated if the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. aide James Bevel had not urged King to use young people in the march.

Even the first part lacks proper context.

Dr. King would have failed if had tried the Children’s Crusade ten- or twenty years earlier. Fewer than half of American households owned a television set; not until 1959 did more than 90 percent of American households has one. While it’s true “no black Church, no civil rights movement,” it’s also true “no TV in every living room, no successful civil rights movement.”

A phantom but looming menace?

I say this with caution. My conclusion is based on AI at present. Generative AI may well improve dramatically. After all, the internet was far less sophisticated in 1996 than today.

Generative AI is anything but sophisticated today. Still, I worry that the shallow technology will wipe out journalists’ livelihoods. If so, we in the media will have only ourselves to blame. We ditched the scientific method in favor of technological determinism.

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