Weekly update, October 17

The West End Poetry Festival events started last night and continue through Saturday evening. This week in The Carrborean online, you'll find a preview of the event and an interview with Carrboro's Poet Laureate, Liza Wolff-Francis.

AI in the newsroom: As part of its annual First Amendment Day celebrations on October 8, UNC hosted a panel discussing Artificial Intelligence (AI) and local news. Specifically, how are newsrooms engaging with AI and how does it affect the reporting, editing, and production of news? Panelists described different uses, mainly how generative AI can support editorial workflow, e.g., transcription tools to produce notes about local government meetings. Newsrooms are using AI to make their products more engaging. Some newspapers use chatbots focused on certain topics to interact with readers (e.g., The Washington Post has a climate-focused chatbot). Some use it to generate outlines for stories and catchy headlines.

AI can scale automation, such as proofreading checks for style and grammar. The general consensus of the panel was that AI replaces tasks but not roles. There are things that AI will never be able to do, such as witnessing an event, developing sources who can provide information on a topic or event, and differentiating between what's happening on the ground vs. online. Newsrooms can use AI to focus on a problem, such as transcription. Using AI to transcribe recorded interviews frees a person to do more journalism--researching, reporting, telling a story. Lauren Berry of Bloomberg said, "We don't see a world in which AI is going to tell those stories for us."

Some problems with AI include the fact that it is often "confidently wrong." The models are not built to acknowledge uncertainty, and bias can be subtle, according to the panelists. Critical thinking is needed to evaluate if AI output is real and skills are needed to use AI well. To develop proficiency with AI, it's important to keep using and testing the tools. Use AI to learn how an audience is interacting with these tools and imagine new ways content will be consumed in the future.

With all reporting, transparency is essential to trust so it's important to say when AI is used. The Carrborean is built on community connection and trust. Therefore, we personally write our pieces. If a contributor uses AI to draft any part of an article, they will note that at the bottom of the piece. Even the painstaking task of compiling the monthly calendar of events in Carrboro is done by one (tired) human, although she is working on figuring out how to use automation to assist with that task. If you have questions or concerns about AI and The Carrborean, please contact: info@thecarrborean.com

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Town Council will meet on Tuesday, October 21 at 6pm in Town Hall. The agenda is not yet posted but will be here when it is. More information about attending meetings or viewing them online can be found here.

Two fundraising events will occur this beautiful weekend. You can attend Hope Renovations Open House from 2-5 on Saturday and then head over to Frank Gallery for the Off the Wall Gala from 6 - 9. Check out The Events Calendar for more things to do in Carrboro.