This article is published in partnership with El Paso Herald Post, and El Paso News.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere. From companies touting the adoption of AI tools in their offerings to the threat to workers across the globe. Although it may seem new, controversies over AI have been ongoing for decades. The controversies range from worker displacement to AI taking over the world. AI researcher Geoffrey Hinton told CNBC in July that there is a 10% to 20% chance that AI will “take over the world in the not too distance future.”
AI taking over the world is speculative at best and likely not occur. AI, like the transformative technologies of the past, is a new tool that can be abused. The immediate problem with AI is not taking over the world, but like social media, its impact on misinformation and its threat to the job market.
In Paris, the threat of job losses by the adoption of the printing press led members of the Scribes’ Guild to chase Johann Fust out of town accusing him of witchcraft. Fust’s bibles printed on the printing press threatened the jobs of the scribes. Such was the threat of the printing press that Pope Alexander VI threatened to excommunicate anyone reading a book that was not authorized by the Church. For AI to take over the world, humans will have to move out of the way – like giving up programming the models with human bias built in. The limits on AI are imposed by humans. Unless Superintelligent AI evolves out of today’s AI technology, there is no danger to humanity, because humans will continue to dominate the technology. A super intelligent AI would be one where the AI agent possesses more intelligence than the smartest human. Currently a super intelligent AI is hampered by the lack of the immense computing power it would require to build it. There is just not enough neural networks available for such a project.
AI is the latest transformative revolution like the Industrial Revolution and the internet boom before it.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is the era of AI. It is driven by the internet, AI and robotics. The Third Industrial Revolution was the rise of computers, and the Second Industrial Revolution was the adoption of mass production. Like all previous industrial revolutions, 4IR is disruptive to people and businesses alike.
Each industrial revolution both displaces workers while creating new employment opportunities for them. The invention of the printing press ended the jobs for scribes but created jobs for people who could maintain the printing presses and the typesetters who created what people saw in the pages. Like the printing press, computers displaced the typesetters with people with keyboard experience that would create the next generation of what people read.
Each industry faces different scenarios as AI continues to enter them. The news industry, which has been in turmoil since the adoption of computers and, especially, the internet during the Third Industrial Revolution, will continue to see disruptions as news outlets and news workers continue to navigate the disruption of news delivery platforms that computers started.
News Outlets Using AI
Like computers forced newspapers typesetters to evolve or be left behind, the internet has forced news delivery technology to evolve as well. It has also changed the way people transact with the news. But as AI is threatening industries, news outlets have been adopting it.
There are several news outlets that have been using AI for some time now. Online Hoodline, whose slogan is “in-depth reporting about your home area,” uses AI to publish stories about the cities it covers, including El Paso.
The San Francisco based Hoodline originally employed freelance writers to report events in its local markets, but in 2024, the company started using AI-generated content to fill its news content. Almost all the bylines include the “AI” tag in them. The names belong to real humans, but the articles are mostly written with AI tools, according to a CNN report last year.
Hoodline’s disclaimer about its use of AI, says that it sees “journalism as a creative science and an art that necessitates a human touch.” The disclaimer adds that although they use AI to create content, the content “is driven by real human insight and discretion.”
The Associated Press is exploring and deploying the use of AI in its content. The New York Times states that “journalists are ultimately responsible for everything” that the newspaper publishes, but that they are “increasingly finding uses for the technology” in their journalism.
Gannett, the parent company of the El Paso Times, has been using AI since 2023. Earlier this year, Gannett started publishing stories with bylines that include “with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence.” According to Gannett, the byline is a human but that “by leveraging AI, we are able to expand coverage and enable our journalists to focus on more in-depth reporting.” Gannett did not specify how much of their stories are AI and how much is human interaction.
Recently, El Paso Matters used an “AI-generated illustration created with Canva” on an editorial.
The use of AI is controversial in journalism. The United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe reported in February that it believes that AI “presents both powerful tools and significant threats to press freedom, integrity, and public trust.” According to the UN, “AI tools are being used maliciously to generate convincing but false content.”
Some news outlets, however, argue that AI opens new possibilities for the news industry. For example, in “investigations and research,” according to Zach Seward, the editorial director of AI initiatives at The New York Times.
Publisher’s note: The family of El Paso News, which includes El Paso Herald Post, El Paso News and Fronterizo News has not used artificial intelligence in our news content. However, ignoring the use of AI in journalism today is akin to ignoring the internet in the 1990’s. The El Paso News group of news content providers is formulating an AI policy to produce our news content. When our AI policy is finalized, we will publish our policy explaining our planned use of AI in our reporting.
