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How to report better on artificial intelligence - Columbia Journalism Review

• Be skeptical of PR hype
• Question the training data
• Evaluate the model
• Consider downstream harms

How you want me to cover artificial intelligence

Seven principles for journalism in the age of AI

1. Be rigorous with your definitions.
2. Predict less, explain more.
3. Don’t hype things up.
4. Focus on the people building AI systems — and the people affected by its release.
5. Offer strategic takes on products.
6. Emphasize the tradeoffs involved.
7. Remember that nothing is inevitable.

I just filled out this form on the BBC website. Here’s what I wrote, based on this open letter to the BCC Upper Management and Editorial Staff.

What is your complaint about?

BBC website or apps

Which website or app is your complaint about?

BBC News website

Please give the URL, or name of the app

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-57853385

Are you contacting us about a previous complaint?

No

Select the best category to describe your complaint

Standards of interviewing/presenting

What is the subject of your complaint?

Innacurate reporting and unreliable source

Please enter your complaint

The article is based on a single self selected study of 80 individuals sourced from Get The L Out, a group who, prior to the survey, were already united by anti-trans views.

This study breaks the BBC’s own guidelines about using surveys as sources for claims in coverage, as it is self-selected, with a small sample size and a clear bias held by those self-selected to respond.

The article dangerously frames this as a widespread issue, whilst simultaneously acknowledging that there is no actual evidence to that effect outside of isolated claims and cherry picked individual cases.

The article routinely implies that transgender women are not women, uncritically quoting people who call transgender women men without at any point clarifying that this is ignoring their legal status as women in the UK.

Idle Words: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

The real story in this mess is not the threat that algorithms pose to Amazon shoppers, but the threat that algorithms pose to journalism. By forcing reporters to optimize every story for clicks, not giving them time to check or contextualize their reporting, and requiring them to race to publish follow-on articles on every topic, the clickbait economics of online media encourage carelessness and drama.

The Tragedy/Farce of the Open Web according to journalists – Baldur Bjarnason

Continuous web death.

The modern journalist is not an expert on the web. They and their colleagues have spent a large part of the last twenty-five years dismissing the open web at every stage. They are not the people you can trust to either accurately assess the web or to make usable websites. You can’t even trust them to make sensible decisions about web strategy. Just look at their damn websites!

This is a news website article about a scientific finding | Martin Robbins | Science | guardian.co.uk

A perfect parody lampooning the shallow and cowardly reporting of most so-called science stories by the press (I'm looking at you, BBC).

‘Hyperlocal’ Web Sites Deliver News Without Newspapers - NYTimes.com

The New York Times covers Everyblock, Outside.in, and their ilk.

Police In Knife Standoff Up For Awards (from The Argus)

Yet more on the events I blogged about down the street, again from the local newspaper.

Hero PC Tackles Knife Man (from The Argus)

Here's the local paper's take on the happenings on my street that I blogged about.

Rotation Of Earth Plunges Entire North American Continent Into Darkness | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Millions of eyewitnesses watched in stunned horror Tuesday as light emptied from the sky, plunging the U.S. and neighboring countries into darkness. As the hours progressed, conditions only worsened.