SvD Kultur recently published a review of "Alex and Sigge's podcast" - made with the help of AI.
In the publication, the newspaper states, among other things, that the podcast profiles have become angrier during ten years of podcasting.
This is based on AI that converted 696 hours of audio into text, and categorized the material.
Now the publication is met with criticism from Expressen's culture manager Victor Malm who believes that the framing is incorrect, namely that AI is more objective in answering questions than humans.
- Shifting the privilege of definition over what is correct to a purely calculated computer is, I think, extremely unfortunate.
Our opinions will be well-founded on completely different premises than a computer, says Victor Malm to SVT Kulturnyheterna and continues:
- Such quantitative questions can only be a springboard to qualitative problems.
SvD: "An experiment"
In the article, SvD explains in the grant that with the help of AI they want to break preconceived notions about the podcast, and SvD's head of culture Lisa Irenius believes that they were clear in the article that the approach is an experiment.
- The AI is not a neutral voice.
It is not an absolute truth, says Lisa Irenius and continues:
- We humans interpret things we hear and see based on our previous experiences, and it works a bit like that with AI models as well.
They have been trained with certain amounts of data and depending on what they were trained with they make different interpretations.
Future journalistic tool
During the spring, SvD will continue to do cultural journalism based on AI.
When and about what Lisa Irenius does not want to reveal at the moment.
Victor Malm is generally positive about the use of AI technology in cultural journalism - as long as it is used in the right way.
If this is not done, Malm believes that in the long run we will postpone the definition of what is normal for AI.
- Then we get a certain form of answer and I am not sure that it is the best.