Artificial Intelligence at the hands of journalists
By Kate Wasniewski, First Flight High School
Artificial intelligence is able to help you write your English paper, it can single handedly drive your own car, and create almost anything you give it a prompt for, but how is AI affecting journalists?
In early 2024, North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) released a guideline for schools to follow; how and when it is appropriate to use AI in classrooms.
According to NCDPI, acronym “How to use AI responsibly EVERY time”, stands for evaluate, verify, edit, revise, and you.
EVALUATE the initial output to see if it meets the intended purpose and your needs.
VERIFY facts, figures, quotes, and data using reliable sources to ensure there are no hallucinations or bias.
EDIT your prompt and ask follow up questions to have the AI improve its output.
REVISE the results to reflect your unique needs, style, and/or tone. AI output is a great starting point, but shouldn’t be a final product.
YOU are ultimately responsible for everything you create with AI. Always be transparent about if and how you used AI.
There are many beneficial ways AI can be used, but it is very easy to get caught in an ethical problem involving AI. But NCDPI releasing the guideline to use AI effectively and properly has allowed for students to become more aware of AI in general, and to use it in the right way.
“There is so much AI has to offer but there’s this ethical issue that I see a lot of people run into,”
Anna Saunders, Newspaper Advisor at West Brunswick High School.
“People aren’t using it for inspiration, they are using it as a cop out to avoid doing hard work, rather than as a way to help them organize ideas, outline something, or come up with a headline idea, ” Saunders said.
Saunders explained that at WBHS her staff wrote a story about artificial intelligence this year. One of the stories was written by a staff member, while the other was produced by an AI generated website and was disclosed in the article in a caption.
Saunders mentioned her school was receiving a push in her county to use AI from the Digital Learning Services Program.
Being able to write a story and compare it to an AI version was able to show the differences between the writing style of a student journalist and a computer generated story.
Many students agreed with the idea that AI can be used to help, but it wasn’t a good option to use just to get something done quickly.
“There are ways to use it right, for example editing a paper, but not for plagiarizing a paper or writing it completely,” Courtney Weston, a graduate from WBHS.
“I think AI apps and programs can be helpful for coming up with rough ideas, and helping with the story writing process, but other than that it tends to start becoming the work of AI,” First Flight highschool student, Betty Morales said.
While it is important to be informed the correct way on when is the right time and how it can be used in schools and student journalism is key.
The importance of having journalists going out, reporting and getting the information, is shown through the process and storytelling of the finished piece.
AI lacks the emotion and empathy journalists are able to incorporate into their writing.
“There’s no heart or soul in AI. There’s no sensitivity in AI. Whenever you’re interviewing someone or telling a story, AI is just going to tell it without tact, but a person has that ability to read the room,” Saunders said.