We can usher in a golden age of journalism by using artificial intelligence and networking technologies to reorganize the gathering and publishing of information to help citizens solve problems democratically. Software engineers and journalists could create civic action bots to scour networks for reliable information and deliver it to people interested in solving specific problems. Journalists would evolve from telling stories to helping citizens tell their own stories, such as mobilizing and sustaining public opinion until local governments replaced lead water pipes.<\/p>\n
In 1974, investigative journalists forced a law-breaking president to resign. Fifty years later, an unsuccessful coup leader may ride the Big Lie back into office. What once worked now fails. To protect and serve democracy, we must differentiate journalism from the news industry with which it\u2019s been synonymous. Industries die when the products they make are no longer useful or can be made more efficiently other ways. But the industry is not the product. Transportation survived the shift from horse-drawn to gas-powered, and soon perhaps to electric vehicles.<\/p>\n
As the news industry faces an existential crisis, journalists should ask whether \u201cnews\u201d remains a viable product when networks deliver information instantaneously. What if we reimagined journalists as miners, using AI to sift information flows for nuggets of reliable information that derived value from their usefulness to communities of problem solvers? Networks increase in value the more people use them. Could AI-enabled, journalist-curated, problem-solving networks offer a new business model?<\/p>\n
In two years, core teams of innovators could field test such concepts. Within five years, open-source communities could be applying AI-infused journalism to more problems of increasing complexity. Within 15 years a social engineering movement could emerge to ensure that government of the people, by the people, and for the people serves them rather than becoming their masters.<\/p>\n
The foregoing is my entry to a grant solicitation<\/a>\u00a0by the Open Society Foundation<\/a>, which was started by George Soros. The challenge was to suggest, in no more than 300 words, “what might an AI-mediated information ecosystem look like 5 to 15 years from now.” My submission succeeded in at least one regard — it’s 298 words, not counting the headline, subheading, and this postscript. Without implying any endorsement, I thank David Cohn<\/a> for his Linkedin post alerting me to the opportunity.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This unsuccessful grant pitch might contain the germ of a useful idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craft"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n