Journalists Strike over AI
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If there’s one place I DO NOT WANT TO SEE AI, it’s ProPublica, that gem of investigative journalism. Alas, they are run by bad people too it turns out. And their reporters are fighting back:
After more than two years of stalled contract negotiations, ProPublica journalists walked off the job Wednesday in a newsroom-wide strike.
An unexpected issue is at the heart of the dispute: How much of ProPublica’s work can be off-loaded to artificial intelligence.
In recent years, newsrooms around the country have begun contending with what role AI can — and should — play in their journalism. In Ohio, the Cleveland’s Plain Dealer is publishing articles that have been drafted by AI. Fortune and Business Insider are also using AI to write full articles, while other news outlets are using AI for tasks like trawling through heaps of data and suggesting headlines.
But how AI will fit in at ProPublica, which specializes in deeply reported investigative journalism and has won eight Pulitzers, is less clear. But the newsroom’s inclusion in the battle over AI is a sign of the issue’s resonance throughout the journalism industry as the technology spreads and editors in big and small newsrooms come under pressure to find ways to work more efficiently.
ProPublica’s union asked the outlet to commit to not replacing jobs with AI and to allow staffers to have a say in how AI is used in the newsroom, saidMark Olalde, a ProPublica reporter and member of the union’s bargaining committee.
“We’re not trying to say, ‘No, we don’t want to use technology.’ What we’re trying to say is we want to use technology ethically, efficiently and in a way that will preserve the accuracy and quality of our work,” Olalde said. “It’s something that management has really dug in on in a head-scratching way.”
Outside ProPublica’s Washington bureau on Wednesday, a few blocks from the White House, about a dozen ProPublica staffers braved brisk spring temperatures to protest the protracted negotiations, which have lasted 28 months since the outlet first unionized in 2023. Besides wanting a say in how AI will be implemented at the acclaimed newsroom, staffers said the union is also fighting for layoff protections and wage increases.
AI may have some uses in terms of enormous data sets and medicine and things like that. But 99% of its uses makes it the most anti-human technology ever developed. I would rather die than use AI for any task that I do on any routine basis. Because what’s the point of living? Especially when you are using the average energy requirements of Denmark to do a basic task?