28 Oct 2024 Confessions of an AI Sceptic

When it comes to generative artificial intelligence, I am a sceptic.

Is it just another Big Tech tool for collecting our personal data? Will it just magnify misinformation in a volatile political climate? Will it perpetuate racist, sexist and cultural stereotypes? Will it seem “smarter” only because we will cease to research, analyze, and create ourselves? My steps into exploring what AI tools can do have been reluctant.

So, I was challenged at a recent workshop for academic publishers, where I expected a similar level of scepticism. However, multiple speakers bluntly told participants to really learn and engage with AI tools – “because AI is here to stay and will only become more pervasive.”

This next generation of the digital transformation makes being a digital avoider or passive observer impossible – and unethical for those of us who aspire to achieving communication rights for all.

This means we all need to make sure we are critically, digitally, literate, which makes the Global Media and Information Literacy Week, happening now from 24 to 31 October, all the more critical.

The importance of being informed advocates is highlighted by the theme of the week’s feature conference: “The new digital frontiers of information: Media and Information Literacy for public interest journalism”. In the midst of a digital communication avalanche that mixes eyewitness truth-telling and misinformed or falsified reports, the role of public interest journalism is ever more vital – and challenging.

One glimpse of this comes from a recent report from Jeremy Bowen, International Editor, for the BBC. Writing about an Israeli strike on Jabalia in northern Gaza, he describes what he sees in a video filmed by a paramedic with a smartphone minutes after the strike, the details augmented by interviews he requested of a Palestinian journalist in Gaza as he himself is not allowed in. He seems to have to explain why he is not reporting directly:

I am forced to use conditional tenses because I am writing this in Jerusalem, not after interviewing eyewitnesses at the scene of the attack in Jabalia in Gaza. Reporters will always struggle to get to the best possible version of the truth they can find when they are stopped from getting to the place where the story happened.

Israel allowed reporters into their border communities along the border with Gaza in the days after the Hamas attacks last year. I was in Kfar Azza kibbutz when they were still recovering the bodies of dead Israelis, as soldiers checked buildings with bursts of gunfire. They wanted us to see where Hamas had killed around 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, and dragged more than 250 into captivity in Gaza.

The evidence is piling up that Israel has done things in Gaza that it does not want journalists to see, which is why they will not let us cross into the territory, except on rare and highly controlled visits with the army. I have been in only once, in the first month of the war, when Israeli firepower had already turned the areas of northern Gaza that I saw into a wasteland.

As a result, journalists rely on videos and statements that emerge from Palestinians inside Gaza, including some very brave journalists, and from international diplomats, medics and aid workers who are allowed into Gaza, and witnesses like Nevine with smartphones.

The evolving generations of digital communication make us sceptical not only of their quality but of what is true. Our antidote is not avoidance, but an ever more critical, literate society with more robust public interest journalism that sifts fact from fiction and uncovers what authorities may want to hide.

This is why WACC has developed engaging, online courses that not only aim to demystify digital developments but to give us tools and regional perspectives that will equip us to assess the implications – positive and negative – of new technologies.

The webinar series “AI, You and Your Organization” helps us understand and work ethically with generative AI, while the self-directed online “Just Digital” course explains the key issues involved in our digital lives, and how to take control in our own use – from protecting personal data to recognizing fake news and preserving freedom of expression. A further series of Just Digital is also being developed to equip us as more informed advocates of rights online.

Some scepticism about out digital transformation is healthy. But critical media and information literacy is even more vital. Each of us, and our organizations, must commit to continuing to learn, to assess, to analyze impact – and to advocate for open, honest and accessible information.

Image: AI course graphic by Nineteen Trees Creative; collage of faces generated by WACC using Canva Magic Studio