AI should embody our values: Investigating journalistic values to inform AI technology design

Abstract

In the current climate of shrinking newsrooms and revenues, journalists face increasing pressures exerted by the industry's for-profit focus and the expectation of intensified output. While AI-enabled journalism has great potential to help alleviate journalists' pressures, it might also disrupt journalistic norms and, at worst, interfere with their duty to inform the public. For AI systems to be as useful as possible, designers should understand journalists' professional values and incorporate them into their designs. We report findings from interviews with journalists to understand their perceptions of how professional values that are important to them (such as truth, impartiality and originality) might be supported and/or undermined by AI technologies. Based on these findings, we provide design insight and guidelines for incorporating values into the design of AI systems. We argue HCI design can achieve the strongest possible value alignment by moving beyond merely supporting important values, to truly embodying them. CCS Human-centered computing Empirical studies in HCI.

Transforming the value chain of local journalism with artificial intelligence

“…Moreover, the development of an AI strategy involves a systematic risk assessment in terms of regulation and ethics (Steering Committee on Media and Information Society of the Council of Europe 2023; UnternehmerTUM 2020). To ensure that the use of AI will have positive external effects on society, scholars and industry experts are arguing for a responsible use of AI in journalism (Helberger 2024;Komatsu et al 2020). This means, first of all, to ensure that AI in local journalism complies with the law.…”

Minding the gap(s): public perceptions of AI and socio-technical imaginaries

“…One reason for this is that AI developers should understand what values are important for those who will be using the AI system they design. For example, journalists ask to go beyond important general principles, calling AI systems to embody the core values (truth, impartiality and originality) of their profession (Komatsu et al 2020). Another reason goes back to the intersectional issues brought by inequalities in AI design, development and training.…”

Towards a Normative Perspective on Journalistic AI: Embracing the Messy Reality of Normative Ideals

“…Measuring the effects and impact of value-sensitive design is yet another important challenge, as doing so is critical to evaluating, learning and improving. Measurement or "scrutability" (Komatsu et al 2020) comes with another load of methodological challenges. The study by Heitz and co-authors in this special issue is one important example of how research can also here play a role and, in so doing, can contribute to methodological innovation.…”