Santo Domingo,- The director of the Listín Diario warned about the great challenges that humanity faces with the emergence of “Artificial Intelligence Agents” who already think for themselves, plan and can do things outside of a prompt that you present to them; That is, we are in an era in which machines can become more intelligent than human beings.
Journalist Miguel Franjul said that this statement can be seen as a bit exaggerated, but it seems that this is the case, at least in the use that is going to be given to certain activities of industries or companies. “And we are referring more than anything to those that concern us in the journalistic environment, to the newspaper as a company and to journalism as a public function of social interest.”
When analyzing the direct impact of the advance of Artificial Intelligence, Franjul predicts that the generation of robot journalists is already being visualized, that is, machines that can make news, analyze a situation: have that information on a digital platform, on the networks, convert it into audio and video, because it has the ability to work in many formats.
Interviewed by Héctor Herrera Cabral on the D’AGENDA program, which is broadcast every Sunday on Telesistema channel 11 and TV Quisqueya for the United States, The veteran journalist said that this technology can replicate the face and voice of a person, making it indistinguishable, that not even his family can realize.
He recognized that The risk that this brings is that it can lead to extortion and criminal situations, because those bots have a lot of information about the life of the person they seek to impersonate.
“So, in a situation like that you have to know that this technology can be used for good or evil, and that border must be established, and for that you have to appeal to ethical resources and the human value of journalism, that is, that cannot be lost,” said the communication professional.
He added that the multimedia scheme, which is already happening very quickly, the print media that have digital ones compensated for the drop in circulation and presence income by making alliances with large technological platforms, such as Google, whose company, to try to increase traffic, suggested keys or techniques regarding the headline of the news, size, hyperlinks, and through these algorithms, newspapers had a wide field to spread and disseminate.
What’s happening? That when these Artificial Intelligence applications arrive, which by themselves can do the job of generating that traffic, then Google sees that its business is threatened and “Looks for the counterpart of AI tools to prevent their businesses from succumbing,” Indian.
He argued that “From there, what they call Zero Click has come to reduce normal traffic.” of your digital content, that is, if the Listín Diario produces such or such content, those platforms do not distribute it to you, they reduce it a little.
“This has been giving rise, in a general sense, everywhere, a decrease in the digital audience and there has also been a decrease in advertising income; That is to say, it is no longer just the printed newspapers, but the Web platforms that are also feeling this,” warned Miguel Franjul.
He said that when a new actor arrived on stage, which is the Artificial Intelligence Agent, which can do what Google did, that is, an element of transition, interrelation and interconnection with the audience; Therefore, what the media, the multimedia, have to do is train themselves well, train their staff, know the ins and outs of that Artificial Intelligence and, in the future, interact with the Agents of Artificial Intelligence to reach a final audience.
Miguel Franjul assures that the threat from the press is AI and not governments
Journalist Miguel Franjul clarified that the fundamental threat to the media no longer comes from governments or organized crime, but in the damage that new technology can do to the survival of these media.
The director of Listín Diario recalled that in previous years the Inter-American Press Association focused on denouncing the coercive intentions of governments, the tantrums of the presidents, the attacks, deportations, arrests, murders and torture.
“Then we entered territories where the fundamental threat to the media was no longer in the government.” or in drug trafficking, but in the damage that new technologies could do to the survival of these media,” Franjul warned when participating in the D’AGENDA program.
The prominent journalist clarified that the emergence of Artificial Intelligence is a danger for the entire world, and it is still a challenge because this adversary is what humanity will have to deal with: “Governments have already found ways to communicate with people and communicate everything they want; “They have come to that.”
“Of course, they may get upset and angry because a media outlet says something they don’t like, That is natural, since a professor said that news is everything that the government does not want to be published, and not only the governments, anyone complains about information or comments that are disseminated about them, and instead of going out to deny or clarify what was said, they go out and say that such a media outlet or journalist is putting an end to it,” he explained.
The future of newspapers will be to offer news, content and have influencer
In addition to adapting to new technologies, The future of newspapers is to continue offering news, but inserting content, and contemplating the possibility of including influencers in your product that you offer to the audience, predicted the director of the Listín Diario newspaper.
“Content is a new product for us, based on the preferences of our readers, who we already know who they are.because artificial intelligence allows you to know your audience, you know where it is, at what time; Then, based on knowledge of the reader’s needs, personalized journalism is offered,” explained Miguel Franjul.
Franjul said that with this information the machine is trained so that the things that reach the medium’s audience are what they really need, because, like news, there is so much information that is disseminated that people sometimes have to stop to know if what is being reported is true or not.
He indicated that after the information boom that occurred in the midst of the covid pandemic, which People wanted to know what the other was doing in isolation, Now there is a decrease in interest in pure and simple news.
“The Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford They have been recording how what they call an evasion of the news is taking place; The users of the ecosystem are evading the news, and are preferring other things such as health issues, sports issues, entertainment with art figures, games, gastronomy, cooking, and all those things,” he explained.
He argued that people look for information that brings them well-being and they do not want anything that worries them, “to cover you from the dangers of stress, misinformation, news that is false or very overwhelming.”
Regarding the role of influencers, the director of the dean of the national press said that a new generation of communicators has emerged who take to the streets with a microphone and describe a news situation even better than a journalist, although they are not. They create interesting, educational content for you; however, some are very degrading.
“They are actors who are on stage and you cannot ignore them; On the contrary, there are influencers and YouTubers who should be in the media; In fact, they are doing it, incorporating them so that they also enhance the capture of the audience; Of course, we have to separate the wheat from the chaff,” said Franjul.
He agreed with the Spanish writer Irene Vallejo, who was recently in the country, in the sense that social networks, which are a space to cultivate friendship between human beings, to socialize, they are filled with noise, because many who go to a booth start shouting, to fight, to insult people, to defame and to do unpleasant things; That’s what she calls media noise.
However, He clarified that just as some of these communicators behave, there are others who make a great contribution to debate in the different areas in which they have specialized.
