Journalism Ethics & the AI Challenge

media release: “Journalism Ethics & the AI Challenge” will bring together news media professionals, media innovators, academics, students and the public to address the ethical dilemmas that AI poses to the practice of journalism. Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Julia Angwin will deliver a keynote address on the challenges of covering AI. 

Expert panelists will take on subjects such as the evolving nature of fakes, frauds and disinformation in the era of AI, the potential for AI to reduce or amplify bias in the news, how professional standards of practice are attempting to meet the AI movement, how news organizations can put news values such as transparency, accountability and data privacy at the forefront of their AI practice and how labor issues intersect with AI.

Keynote 9:00 AM CT: KEYNOTE: “BOOMER, DOOMER OR SOMETHING IN BETWEEN: WHAT IS ETHICAL COVERAGE OF AI?” BY JULIA ANGWIN

Julia Angwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, a bestselling author, a New York Times contributing Opinion writer and a Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. She has led investigative teams at The Wall Street Journal and ProPublica, and founded the investigative newsroom The Markup. She earned a B.A. in mathematics from the University of Chicago, and an M.B.A. from the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University.

Panel 1 10:10 AM CT:  AI IN THE NEWSROOM: TAKING ON TRUST, BIAS AND AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT

This panel will address how the use of AI in media organizations changes ongoing conversations in the field of journalism around these critical ethical areas: newsroom bias, audience engagement and building audience trust.

Nikita Roy, Knight Fellow, International Center for Journalists; AI Journalism Lab program lead, Newmark J-School (CUNY); host, Newsroom Robots podcast

TBA

Moderator: Nicholas Diakopoulos, professor, Communication Studies and Computer Science at Northwestern University; director, Computational Journalism Lab (Northwestern) associate professor, School of Journalism & Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Panel 2

11:10 AM CT:

NEWSROOMS NOW: CREATING AI GUIDELINES & BEST PRACTICES

This panel will discuss the process of forming ethical guidelines and best practices for AI use in the newsroom. Panelists will talk about the ethical issues in play, how we can ensure that labor is a part of the AI conversation and will also identify specific areas in which AI is already helping news organizations fulfill their obligations to their audiences.

Garance Burke, global investigative journalist, Associated Press

Paul Cheung, CEO,The Center for Public Integrity

Moderator:  Colin Benedict, vice president, Morgan Murphy Media

12 PM CT: LUNCH

12:45 PM CT: SHADID AWARD PRESENTATION with judging chair Kathryn McGarr

PANEL 3 1:00 PM CT: TRUTH DECAY IN THE AGE OF AI: THE TIDAL WAVE OF DECEPTION HEADING STRAIGHT FOR YOU

Headshot of Al Tompkins, a white man wearing a black t-shirt and suit jacket. Al Tompkins brings 51 years of journalism and teaching experience to this session that will explore how artificial intelligence and disinformation will confuse 2024 voters and compound the complexities that journalists face covering contentious races.

    Presenter: Al Tompkins is an author, a national award-winning reporter and newsroom leader and spent 25 years as senior faculty at The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida.

2:10 PM CT: CLOSING REMARKS