Politico’s Union Journalists Win Key Ruling In Battle Against Lazy, Undercooked AI
from the I'm-Sorry-I-can't-do-that,-Dave dept
The rushed integration of half-cooked automation into the already broken U.S. journalism industry simply isn’t going very well. There have been just countless examples where affluent media owners rushed to embrace automation and LLMs (usually to cut corners and undermine labor) with disastrous impact, resulting in lots of plagiarism, completely false headlines, and a giant, completely avoidable mess.
Earlier this year, we noted how Politico was among the major media companies rushing to embrace AI without really thinking things through or ensuring the technology actually works first. They’ve implemented “AI” systems –without transparently informing staff — that generate articles rife with all sorts of gibberish and falsehoods (this Brian Merchant post is a must read to understand the scope).
Politico management also recently introduced another AI “report builder” for premium Politico PRO subscribers that’s supposed to offer a breakdown of existing Politico reporter analysis of complicated topics. But here too the automation constantly screws up, conflating politicians and generating all sorts of errors that, for some incoherent reason, aren’t competently reviewed by Politico editors.
Actual human Politico journalists are understandably not pleased with any of this, especially because the nontransparent introduction of the new automation was in direct violation of the editorial union’s contract struck just last year. So unionized Politico employees spent much of this year battling with Politico via arbitration. And they just won a key battle in the fight, the first of its kind:
“The arbitrator ruled that Politico officially violated the collective bargaining agreement by failing to provide notice, human oversight, or an opportunity for the workers to bargain over the use of AI in the newsroom.
“If the goal is speed and the cost is accuracy and accountability,” the arbitrator wrote in his decision, “AI is the clear winner. If accuracy and accountability is the baseline, then AI, as used in these instances, cannot yet rival the hallmarks of human output, which are accuracy and reliability.” He also confirmed that the report-building product contained “erroneous and even absurd” AI-generated materials.
Politico leadership have made all sorts of crazy claims in the run up to this ruling, including Politico deputy editor-in-chief Joe Schatz claiming that AI can’t and shouldn’t be held to the same ethical standards as actual journalists, because it was technically created by programmers and not journalists.
In a statement, unionized Politico workers hope this sets a precedent at other news organizations:
“We are going to continue holding the line. This ruling is a great example of the important role unions play in ensuring workers have a say over working conditions–including the rollout of new technologies. I hope it emboldens our colleagues at other news shops across the country fighting AI deployments that similarly degrade ethical standards, and I hope it sends a message to managers at POLITICO and news executives everywhere that adopting new technology cannot come at the cost of accuracy and accountability.”
These aren’t “AI doomers.” They’re people who believe AI can be a useful tool, they just want it implemented competently and transparently, within the lines of existing union agreements.
There are, of course, caveats. Most U.S. journalists aren’t protected by a union, and we live in a country where labor regulators are being steadily lobotomized. And Politico itself, owned by yet another weird rich, Trump-friendly zealot, engages in a lot of false equivalency (“both sides,” “view from nowhere”) journalism with or without the help of undercooked automation.
By and large it’s pretty clear what the extraction class ownership of U.S. media want to build: a lazy, badly-automated, clickbait engagement ouroboros that shits out ad engagement and subscription money without the pesky need to pay so many annoying humans for things like health insurance. A system that basically just props up all of billionaire-ownerships’ laziest priors without interference by the plebs.
But, if nothing else, it’s refreshing to see some effective, organized resistance against the rushed implementation of under-cooked automation by the kind of rich assholes for whom informed consensus and the public interest are the very last thing on their minds.
Filed Under: ai, automation, backlash, collective bargaining, journalism, llms, media, unions
Companies: politico
Comments on “Politico’s Union Journalists Win Key Ruling In Battle Against Lazy, Undercooked AI”
This article shows why rushing AI into newsrooms without transparency harms accuracy, trust, and real journalists. For thoughtful tech and media insights, DNP India is always worth following.
I was watching a youtube video. The “announcer” was terrible. It was so bad I had to turn the sound off. It had to be “AI”, and it wasn’t posted as being that. It was from a large broadcasting company. They need to stop trying to pass “AI” off as being human. If it had been a real human, they should be stuck in a psyche ward.
Re:
i noticed sometimes YT will label something as having particular machine-generated aspects. But there are plenty of false positives and negatives. Because AI is doing labelling.
And then there’s the atrocious voiceovers generated by YT itself. How can you translate when you can’t even speak the target language (English in my case).
Ah, right, the “AI isn’t accountable because it isn’t a human and a professional in the relevant field”. Saying the quiet part out loud again.
One cannot “hold AI accountable” in the first place. It’s you, jackass, the corporation and the management, which is being held accountable.
Sneaky Framing x Idiocy for a top 100 hit there, bub.
I'm old..
If you want to read a good book (hah, paper), try Weizenbaum: “Computer power and human reason”. All manner of arguments around AI use are already in there and its 40 years old. If you can get hold of a copy that is, the english speaking world has all forgotten about it. It’s still published in my country but academics are as power and voiceless here as they are elsewhere. (Weizenbaum is that ELIZA guy for you kids).