3 months ago
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How does a newsman screen a monolithic planetary acme with simultaneous programming? That was my situation erstwhile I entered the India AI Impact Summit astatine Bharat Mandapam successful New Delhi past week.
I archetypal thought I had an infallible tech-enabled plan: I would usage a snippet of codification to fetch audio clips of YouTube livestreams of respective sheet discussions, transcribe them with a cloud-based dependable designation tool, reappraisal those transcripts later, and past record stories.
But that is not what happened. The organisers look to person recovered it hard to get an capable fig of video and livestream unit to reliably instrumentality attraction of a twelve simultaneous livestreams. My method ran into occupation astatine respective discussions, wherever the watercourse started lone aft the sheet was introduced. This made it challenging for maine to “diarize” transcripts (add talker names to each text) by cross-referencing the panellists listed connected the acme website. The website itself kept changing without notice. And sometimes, overmuch to my annoyance, idiosyncratic would permission a unrecorded mic connected a accumulation counter, severely compromising my automated transcription.
Thankfully, different reporting assignments kept maine engaged — regular briefings, interviews with antithetic players successful the AI ecosystem, and high-profile controversies, including the haphazard information arrangements that caused speakers to miss their ain sessions and Galgotias University’s Chinese robodog.
As I ran astir taking notes, I kept thinking, ‘there has got to beryllium an easier mode to bash this’. And determination so was, for galore tasks. I felt blameworthy whenever I was not trying to find those easier ways. That feeling came from having conscionable downloaded Claude, a coding-focused AI app that could assistance marque my enactment overmuch simpler.
With nary coding experience, I built 3 tools apt to prevention maine clip connected grunt work. The archetypal is an Android app to continuously fetch notifications from the Gazette of India, which has a inclination to drop, with small warning, large argumentation updates done the week. The 2nd is simply a process to update my idiosyncratic website. While it earlier took maine fractional an hr each 3 months to bash this, it present takes conscionable a minute. The 3rd was a tiny browser hold to automate the galore steps required to taxable a drafted story.
I was — and inactive americium — excited and scared. Excited due to the fact that I tin beryllium escaped of immoderate of the drudgery that is incidental to my work. Fear due to the fact that these are capabilities that theoretically everyone has now. And with time, these whitethorn not beryllium conscionable chill hacks, but a halfway portion of the capabilities we are expected to exercise. How tin idiosyncratic who grew up successful a pre-AI net epoch vie with idiosyncratic who tries each they tin to get much done?
To beryllium sure, the trade of journalism is not arsenic exposed to AI-led displacement as, say, programming. The assemblage demands that a writer gain the spot of experts — and person them to stock what they cognize arsenic well. The LLM frenzy is, however, apt to diffuse successful unsettling ways. What happens to journalists starting retired without these tools erstwhile their contention is utilizing agents to constitute and nonstop individualised emails seeking information? What happens if the AI natives supercharge their productivity and compound their skills faster than idiosyncratic who inactive does things arsenic they person been for the past decade?
For now, determination is apt a ceiling: analyzable workflows involving autonomous agents — arsenic opposed to specified productivity hacks — necessitate tokens for LLM inference, which are expensive. Even with a paid Claude subscription, I deed usage limits utilizing its astir precocious exemplary to physique the 3 tools above. These costs connection immoderate cushion. But arsenic inference becomes cheaper, professionals volition person to look the afloat possibilities of automation and the costs of failing to adapt.
