[Open Society Foundations]

"In February 2024, the Open Society Foundations issued a call for applications for a convening in which selected participants would share their visions of an AI-mediated future."

I thought this, from the concluding observations, was telling:

"Participants were generally reluctant or unable to articulate exactly how AI might transform the information ecosystem. [...] Relatively few submitted scenarios described an AI-driven transformation in specific detail, and it was clear that many participants who were convinced that AI would fundamentally restructure the information ecosystem also had no specific point of view on how that might occur."

In other words, while many people in journalism see that this set of technologies may transform their industry, and are potentially excited or terrified that it will, they have no idea how that will happen. This is the very definition of hype: one can imagine people proclaiming that blockchain, or push notifications, or RealMedia, or WebTV might do the same.

It's not that there are no uses for AI (just like it's not that there are no uses for blockchain). It will find its way into end-user applications, underpin newsroom tools, and power data-driven newsroom investigations, without a doubt. But the hype far exceeds that, and will eventually, inevitably, deflate.

In the meantime, journalists are not as worried about the technologies themselves as who controls them:

"Throughout the application process and workshop discussions, it became clear that much of the conversation was not actually about AI, nor about journalism, nor about the current or future information ecosystem, but instead about power. It was clear that power, and the potential for transfers of power from one group to another, was the explicit or implicit subject of many of the submitted scenarios as well as the five final scenarios that were distilled from the workshop."

Technologists, in turn, were blind to these power dynamics, while simultaneously predicting more dramatic changes. There's a fundamental truth here: it's ultimately about money, and who controls the platforms that allow readers to read about the world around them.

Same as it ever was: that's been the struggle on the web since its inception. AI just shifts the discussion to a new set of platforms.

#AI

[Link]