Artificial intelligence has begun to exceed expectations
In an earlier article I wondered whether a computer would ever be able to write an article that was so good that it would be difficult to tell it apart from a human-written article. That time might have already come.
In 2020 The Guardian published an article that had been written by AI. It was about the increasing use of AI in journalism, and how it is changing the landscape of the industry. It discussed how AI is being used to generate news stories, and how it is being used to help reporters with their work. It was so natural that it was hard to believe that it was written by a software called GPT-3 developed by OpenAI, a research company.
The Guardian isn’t the only news organization using algorithms to write articles. The Associated Press has been using an algorithm to write short articles about company earnings reports for the past few years. In 2015, Forbes started using an algorithm to write short articles about public companies. That said, some news organizations are hesitant to use algorithms to write articles because they worry that the articles will lack the human touch that readers crave. But as algorithms become more sophisticated, that is unlikely to be a problem for much longer.
Journalists have always relied on their own skills and knowledge to produce articles but with the advent of artificial intelligence, journalists will need to up their game in order to stay relevant in the future. Some believe that this will lead to the demise of journalism as we know it. Others argue that it will lead to a more efficient and effective form of journalism.
If artificial intelligence can have such an impact on journalism can you imagine what it will do to professions like law. In some areas the impact of artificial intelligence is already being felt. For example, law firms already use AI to help with the discovery process in litigation, and to automate the drafting of simple documents like contracts. In the future, AI may be used to help with more complex tasks, such as analysing large amounts of data to predict the outcome of a case, or providing expert advice on specific legal issues.
For artificial intelligence to be used to provide legal advice that can be used in court, it’s not just a question of whether the technology is good enough but whether it can be trusted. It’s not just about whether the technology is accurate but if it is biased.
“There is a long history of artificial intelligence being used in ways that are racist and sexist,” said Meredith Broussard, a professor of data and journalism at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University and the author of Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World.
