Is This What the Future of Journalism Looks Like?

Is this what the future looks like?

Here's a short pen portrait of journalism in 2035 that I wrote for an application.

What do you reckon? How much have I got right?

'AI technology is the primary filter of information for almost every person on the planet.

Wearable ‘always-on’ AI-assistants are a mass consumer product, marketed as a lifelong extension of the human brain’s capabilities. Most people consume their daily news through short summaries curated for them by these devices. Summaries are personalised, based on the content of the conversations they have held with the AI previously. Some people have adjusted the trust framework and worldview settings on their device but most don’t bother.

The always shaky model of digital news media has collapsed. It was built on a version of the internet which has become increasingly irrelevant. The world wide web now functions as a synthetic algorithmic battlefield on which consumer brands and influencers compete to sell products and adverts.

Most successful high-profile journalists are crowdfunded. The era of instant translation means that their investigative and sensemaking roles are often global - with like-minded audience communities forming across previous language barriers and new momentum to tackle trans-national social and environmental problems. Some operate openly from democracies, others use avatars to operate in politically restricted parts of the world.

Many operate in partnership with philanthropically funded organisations that have world-class technical capabilities in algorithmic forensics, data analytics, signal intelligence and can use their own AI technologies to access and assess information.

The companies which develop mass consumer AI technologies (or the governments which regulate them) possess more power over our collective understanding of the world than any media organisation in history.

There is a recognition amongst the shrinking number of democratic societies that avoiding the innately homogenising and authoritarian potential of AI requires extremely careful checks and balances on AI power in the form of transparency, strict anti-monopolistic laws and cultivation of civic norms of critical thinking and renewed concepts of media literacy.'