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AI replacing journalists and what it means for jobs

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Last week,  we heard (from journalists!) that journalists at MSN are being replaced with AI.

I think this is shape of things to come

The announcement highlights a wider trend i.e. how every job will change to include an AI component.

If the AI component is very significant – the job, as we know it,  will cease to exist

AI will also learn the job ‘on the job’

The story is reported as

Microsoft has gradually been moving towards AI for its Microsoft News work in recent months, and has been encouraging publishers and journalists to make use of AI, too. Microsoft has been using AI to scan for content and then process and filter it and even suggest photos for human editors to pair it with. Microsoft had been using human editors to curate top stories from a variety of sources to display on Microsoft News, MSN, and Microsoft Edge.

So, that means over the years – under human supervision  – AI got to ‘learn’ the job of news reporting – until one day – it could do the job entirely on its own!

The replacing of journalists is just a trend in that direction

But we all know that not all journalists can be replaced

Everyone knows a favourite journalist who goes above and beyond the call of duty

For me, that is Christiana Amanpour

I first saw her reporting the Balkan war on CNN – dodging bullets – and providing insights

 More than two decades later she is doing the same!

And I doubt AI can replace her!

This is likely to happen to many jobs

We provide the ‘supervision’ for the supervised learning and the simple components of the jobs will be ‘learnt’ by AI

But not in all cases

The next time you hear the words ‘your calls may be recorded for training and quality purposes’

Ask yourselves .. who is being trained?

A human or AI?