AI and Journalism

AI and Epistemic Risk for Democracy: A Coming Crisis of Public Knowledge?

Prof. John Wihbey explores fundamental risks to democracy that recent AI innovations may pose, and how to incorporate ethical and responsible approaches to safeguard the value of human judgement.

“The norms of the traditional, human news business dictate crisp, definitive accounts of human actions, events, and views – blaring headlines and simple, condensed summaries that attempt to declare empirical truth and certain judgment. Should AI attempt to mimic such norms?”

The Counterdata Network – composed of the Data Culture Lab (Northeastern), the Data + Feminism Lab (MIT), and the DISCO Lab (Brown) – co-designed a software platform for monitoring human rights abuses from news reports. Originally, this emerged from the work of the The Data Against Feminicide project. The Counterdata Network has been extending the platform for groups that monitor other types of human rights violations. The platform uses AI/ML models to detect news articles about human rights violations and present those to users as email alerts and as entries on a web dashboard.

Prof. Dan Zed’s Open Source Investigations class used advanced AI technologies to support a variety of investigative reporting projects.

“In many coastal communities, rising seas and extreme weather linked to climate change are heightening the effects of erosion. These forces threaten homes, businesses and wildlife habitats, and they’re leading residents to wonder whether interventions such as beach nourishment can provide some respite from the relentless tides.”