Dr. Mario Garcia has helped media transition from black and white newspapers to color, adapt their print layout to the internet, and rethink design once again for mobile devices. Now he sees AI as the next big revolution in journalism.
Garcia is a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, CEO at Garcia Media, and author of more than a dozen books, including his latest: “AI: The Next Revolution in Content Creation.” Over a 54-year career, he has helped change the layout and presentation of 764 newspapers in 120 countries. He brought color to the pages of the Wall Street Journal and worked with the Washington Post on its 2008 redesign.
Having guided media through a number of evolutions, Garcia immediately sensed AI’s potential to further transform the industry. This week on The Disruption Is Now podcast, Garcia joins host Greg Matusky to share his perspective on AI’s emerging role in the future of communications and media.
In this episode, they cover the role of humans and AI in journalism, how to approach prompts for better AI output, how to handle bias, and more.
Watch now:
Key takeaways:
Humans must oversee AI content creation
Generative AI can produce high volumes of content quickly, but it lacks human judgment, emotional awareness, and the ability to conduct in-depth original reporting. Human guidance remains critical for providing strategic direction, validating facts, interviewing expert sources, and correcting AI inaccuracies and biases.
Newsrooms and marketing teams should establish clear protocols and workflows for how they plan to use generative AI, including human review processes, to maintain quality control and transparency around what content is human-generated and what is AI-assisted.
AI boosts creativity through new perspectives
AI has been trained on a vast trove of content and data encompassing far more than any one person could consume in a lifetime. This gives AI the ability to draw connections and suggest creative angles or ideas a human alone may never have uncovered.
With the right prompts and direction, AI can stimulate imaginative thinking by exposing us to new perspectives outside our normal experience.
AI may weed out mediocre reporting
AI raises expectations for human creators, who now have to lean in to gathering sources, conducting interviews, and reporting stories that ChatGPT can’t on its own. However, by taking over some basic tasks from journalists, AI could free up more time for them to do that work.
Reporters with more bandwidth can produce content that raises the bar for quality and insight. This might leave no room for “good enough” and weed out mediocre reporting that relies too heavily on surface-level information anyone could Google.
Thoughtful prompting is key to quality outcomes
Not all prompts are equal. Generic or basic instructions often lead to lower quality or inconsistent results.
More detailed prompts that clearly state your purpose and goals, capture your unique perspective, and include relevant contextual details will almost always result in better AI-generated content. Providing clear topical framing and constraints is crucial. Those who learn the art and science of steering AI through effective prompting will gain the most value.
Consider biases encoded in language models
Like any technology, AI systems reflect the data they are trained on. The sources of information fed to generative AI models imprint certain perspectives, recommendations, and ideas.
Creators should be aware of potential biases that may arise based on the languages, datasets, and domains used in an AI model’s training. Closely reviewing AI-generated content for any issues is vital.
Key moments:
● Dr. Garcia outlines his experience transforming major media publications (2:57)
● A brief history of disruption in media over the past five decades (3:45)
● What Dr. Garcia sensed about AI (6:55)
● Major AI takeaways Dr. Garcia discovered while writing his latest book (8:46)
● The importance of keeping humans in the loop when creating with AI (11:11)
● Why you shouldn’t treat AI as software (13:00)
● Why AI creativity trumps 100% accuracy (13:38)
● What AI will do for journalism (15:55)
● The importance of establishing AI protocols (16:13)
● How Dr. Garcia used AI while writing his latest book (18:14)
● What AI does well and what it doesn’t (21:01)
● How AI might give reporters more time to do what they do best (24:17)
● The danger of “good enough” (25:00)
● Which workers benefit the most from AI (26:39)
● The importance of leading AI with your own thoughts (31:00)
● How the language of AI source material can create biases (34:14)
