The rapidly advancing technology behind emerging artificial intelligence platforms has caused workers in numerous sectors of the economy to worry that their jobs will be replaced by machines.
There is already substantial evidence that certain positions can be done mostly or entirely by AI algorithms.
One notable example is Channel 1 News, a startup media company created by TV veteran Scott Zabielski and entrepreneur Adam Mosam. They have teamed up to create a half-hour weekly news program that will use AI creations instead of human anchors to deliver the news, which will also be written entirely by AI.
📰 AI in Broadcasting: The Future of News or the End of Reporters?
In a rather audacious move, Channel 1 News has declared its intentions to tap into the world of generative artificial intelligence for its future broadcasts. Behind this ambitious move are Scott Zabielski, who…
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The pair are planning to increase production, ultimately hoping to create as many as 1,000 daily news segments.
At this point, however, Zabielski noted that the process has not been perfected.
“The elephant in the room is this still looks like you’re watching a video game character talk,” he said. “And does anybody really want to watch a video game character deliver the news to them? I don’t think so.”
Nevertheless, he is optimistic that the rapidly advancing tech sector will address this shortcoming in the near term.
“So part of what we’re doing is, like any technology, you can’t wait until it’s perfect to start on day one,” Zabielski explained. “So we’re obviously getting ahead of this and we’re looking down the road at 12 months from now, 18 months from now, three years from now. It is going to get to a point where you absolutely will not be able to tell the difference between watching AI and watching a human being. But we also understand that there’s going to be a pathway from here to there.”
Mosam noted another hurdle, which involves the notorious unreliability of the so-called large language models that supply AI platforms with their information. He noted that human editors will be required to fact-check content produced for the program and only “reliable sources” will be accepted.
“We’re very aware of the LLM hallucination, hallucinations and things like that,” Mosam said. “We’re staying away from that. It’s established data sources that are really trying to add a new interface on the news.”
Looking ahead, however, Mosam said that this model provides an opportunity to revolutionize the prevailing methods of news delivery — from essentially recreating news events to providing hyper-personalized information to individual audiences.
