Kahn (Nyt): 'No bots or artificial intelligence will replace journalists'

The phrase is one that, for those in this profession, can only open the heart: 'No bot or artificial intelligence will replace journalists'. Thus the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Joe Kahn, in Florence for a meeting on tech media literacy organised by the Osservatorio Permanente Giovani-Editori, chaired by Andrea Ceccherini, which had Pietro Labriola, CEO of Tim, as its other guest of honour. It must be said that the reasoning is not enthusiastic a priori. AI will make the world of information 'worse' at first. 'The phenomenon we see with artificial intelligence,' Kahn added, 'is the availability of news on the Internet coming automatically without doing research. This will become easier and easier. Without doing anything artificial intelligence will bring polarisation and misinformation and make the situation worse. This is unfortunately the reality. Searching for original sources,' Kahn concluded, 'will become more and more important in the world of artificial intelligence than in the past.

To inform, to confront, to exercise a critical spirit have always been the key indications emerging from the meetings of the Young People's Observatory. "The dream that moves us is to change the world to make it a better place. With this logic, we try to defend the centrality of the person, especially at a time when changes threaten our ability to master it. The human person must be at the centre and technology at his or her service, and not the other way around, for any reason,' began Andrea Ceccherini at the start of the meeting in front of 400 students and a delegation that had also arrived from Spain. "In October,' Ceccherini announced, 'we will be announcing a project' that will ground the efforts of these years with the various tech media literacy initiatives.

What is certain is that the relationship between technology and media, as a litmus test of the good balance between tech and society, is increasingly the focus of attention and concern. All the more so since it is young people, the architrave of tomorrow's society, who are exposed. "If our fear is that socials transmit wrong models, the problem is to establish correct models. The real problem is to define what the correct behaviour is. So the discussion is not about blocking the tool or the individual social. I can block tik tok, Instagram and even take away your mobile phone. But if you don't define the right and wrong cultural models, we won't get out of it,' replied Tim CEO Pietro Labriola in response to a question from Maria Latella.

Next to tech there is also the whole issue of information, for a generation particularly exposed to news, but also to disinformation. In this context, CEO Tim Labriola recalls the need, also with regard to education, to follow the principle of 'connecting dots, understanding logic and issues. Only this can avoid becoming engulfed by innovation'. Which runs fast and often exploits 'regulatory loopholes', as demonstrated by the case of Mms, supplanted by WhatsApp, which had a higher speed of execution.

The editor of the Nyt, for his part, says he is 'optimistic when looking at young people'. With one caveat: against disinformation 'there is no magic wand. No one: neither Silicon Valley nor anyone else can save from the flood of fake news' except 'the critical spirit and the commitment to inform oneself correctly, going to the source and considering several sources'. In short, 'no one can eliminate news, but your proactivity is the key'. As well as trust in 'good information, which has a cost'. And that requires a lot of commitment, like that of publishers in seeking out the readers of today and tomorrow. "Fifteen or twenty years ago all we published was text. Today we have different formats, even more concise texts, audio, video, information via social media'. The bastion of information, of quality, always remains. "Sometimes,' Kahn points out, 'I hear young people saying that the articles in the New York Times are long and boring. Of course we try with our journalists to use a language that is accessible to everyone. But information requires commitment', also in reading.