According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, overall dependence on artificial intelligence (AI) for news is just 7% of 9,7000 people polled in 48 countries.
But the numbers are reportedly skewing younger, with 12% of those under 35 and 15% of those younger than 25 using an AI interface to get their news.
AI is essentially trained to put together an average of all the news on the internet, but programmers limit the search to what they consider respected news sources, which can skew Left if the programmers do not consider Fox News, for example, to be credible.
"The problem here is that with AI, unfortunately, you're getting much of the same," notes Michael Morris of MRC Free Speech America. "That's been true with social media as well."
He says some AI interfaces do not even pretend to be objective.
"OpenAI actually has exclusivity contracts with legacy media outlets, and so, the preponderance of what they're showing you is information from the outlets that they have these agreements with, that they're scraping content from," Morris explains.
Google and others have these agreements as well.
Morris recognizes, however, that this survey shows that news consumers have lost faith in mainstream media outlets.
"The population is done with legacy media," he summarizes. "They're sick of the lies, they're sick of the nonsense, and they want to find real information. And so, they're going to other sources."
According to the Reuters Institute report, traditional media – TV, radio, newspapers, and news sites – are losing ground to social networks and video-sharing platforms; almost half of 18-24-year-olds report that social media like TikTok is their main source of news.
This is especially true in emerging countries like India, Indonesia, Thailand, and Brazil, where Giovanna Macedo, an elementary teacher, is using AI to inspire her students.
After asking her students what they want to be when they grow up, she used ChatGPT to age their photos to about 25 years old, decked out in their chosen career garb.
"You can see the delight on the faces of the students," notes Dr. Alex McFarland. "There is that fire and passion in the eyes of all these kids because they're seeing what might be."
He says giving kids a glance into their potential futures is a great way to inspire them to stay away from drugs, alcohol, and destructive behaviors and become what God wants them to be.
"Stay clean, hang on to your dreams, and you'll achieve those dreams," he says.
McFarland points out that all technology is morally neutral, but that changes depending on who is programming it and how it is being used.
"Any technology has the potential for vast good or heinous evil," he tells AFN.
He views this as a brilliant use of the growing technology.
