Who will win the battle between thinking and artificial intelligence?

The American journalist Patrick Radden Keefeone of the current references of the investigation journalismassured that he is concerned that “the critical thinking against artificial intelligence (AI).” Radden Keefe commented in the Spanish city of Barcelona that “AI It looks miraculous today and, like any new technology, it’s always dazzling.”

The journalist, who usually writes in The New Yorkerbelieves that it is risky not to realize the risks of AI: “We don’t see how it affects copyright, how it can affect us with the use of our image or our voice, as in the case of (actress) Scarlett Johansson, but it can happen with people who do not have the power and ability to hire lawyers like her”.

The author reflects on AI and How will it affect the way journalism is conceived? and in what way it can help or make more precarious the situation of those professions that have to do with the information of the truth.

Using the simile of the tsunami, the author of The empire of pain think that, “maybe, When we see the wave it will be too late to react.”

Too fast

Radden Keefe argues that “AI is coming very fast and no one knows how it will evolvesome think that we will no longer have to work anymore and there will be a universal income, but others take a more dystopian approach in terms of Terminator“, alluding to the machines in this series of science fiction films.

“Seeing what ChatGPT does,” he adds, “which can show an article apparently made by me, but which I have not made, that future is scaryand not just for journalism.”

Recognize that The fatigue and tiredness of addressing this topic is real.and that “also happens with climate change, in which there is only one variable, the timeline, despite the deniers, but there is little mystery.”

As a species, human beings, he points out, tend to have any new technology pass over them, as if it were a tsunami: “Often, It takes years to prove that these technologies are not so benignand now we realize that these technologies, which have good things, also have a whole panoply of negative aspects.

In his opinion, the current “It’s a strange time to be a journalist”not only has the information business model changed a lot, but “the press has been greatly demonized”, something that has coincided with the rise of far-right populism with the rise to power of Donald Trump in the US (2017 -2021).

The main danger for journalism at the present time is, in his opinion, “the power of the rich and the powerfulwho have the political power to turn the truth around, to silence it, a power that, following the manual, takes legal action.

For two months, the journalist will participate in the first edition of the international residency program of the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB).

With information from EFE.