The Spanish journalist José Carlos Sánchez, head of Intelligence of Prodigious Volcano, explained the advantages of training journalists and editors in artificial intelligence tools (AI) in the fourth edition of the Cocuyo Festival, an initiative that promotes cocuyo effect next to the Deutsche Welle Akademie.
¿Qué es la inteligencia artificial?
Sanchez defines it as "the ability of certain computer systems to process and analyze external information and operate in consequences how a human person would do it".
Here some of the advantages that the guest highlighted at the Festival of Communication and Innovation held this October 14:
Reportería
The most obvious utility is that artificial intelligence can analyze large amounts of data and find patterns or classify information automated according to defined criteria.This could save hours, even months of work, to reporters.
An AI can also monitor specific data sources that are valuable for journalistic investigations.
For example: the International Consortium of Research Journalists used Machine Learning to identify the sex of 340.000 people affected by the use of medical devices.I also use this tool to process the data contained in the filtration of 11.9 million financial documents that served as the basis for the Pandora Papers.
Producción
An AI can help journalists produce content or take care of doing it completely.The Speech to Text, for example, facilitates the transcription of an interview or a speech in just minutes.
Artificial intelligence can also take sports results or voters and reports of the stock market and generate news of that.
Example: BBC has announced the results of a project of its innovation team in which they automatically transform the content of its web articles in native social media formats.
Public eye, in Peru, developed an algorithm that identifies situations of risk of corruption in public hiring with the objective that journalists can start from these clues to develop their investigations.
Distribución
The AI allows you to deliver content to readers in the right format and moment, which can have an impact on a better commercial strategy.
"Thanks to customization it is possible to generate an individual value offer that can be used to distribute content and improve the experience in subscription services or payment walls," says prodigious volcano journalist.
At the end of her presentation, Sánchez answered questions from the general director of Effect Cocuyo, Luz Mely Reyes.Some of the questions were what role can the journalist see in all this transformation?And what contents or courses are accessible to people who are interested in training artificial intelligence?
Sanchez highlighted the journalist's ability to deal with complexity, organize different data and sources of information, as well as his ability to provide context and ethical criteria to develop algorithms.
“Machines have no context or experience beyond the data with which they train.Erroneous information, poorly raised algorithms, confusing taxonomies or bad learning will lead to erroneous results, ”said the specialist.
Among the contents and training programs recommended by the Artificial Intelligence Guide for Prodigious Volcano journalists and the courses offered by The Knight Center for Journalism.