artificial intelligence

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How AI may be able to improve journalism when it comes to reporting on Catholicism

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How AI may be able to improve journalism when it comes to reporting on Catholicism

One of the things I enjoy about the summer is catching up with people I haven’t seen all year to discuss news, politics and culture. Since so many of my friends are in the news business, inevitably the state of the mass media comes up as a topic.

The one constant subject that has arisen from these conversations is the rise (and potential threat) of artificial intelligence. Specifically, the topic of how AI can (and will) replace humans who report and write for a living.

While machines have yet to replace all writers, the threat is real. This isn’t just limited to journalists. AI has impacted Hollywood (look at the current writers strike), education (from grade school to college) and the retail industry. And yes, journalism is up there to when it comes to an industry seen as under threat, according to a poll conducted earlier this year.

AI a either a new technological monster or a friend to journalists. The industry is divided by the issue. Like the internet back in the 1990s, AI is both astonishing and perplexing.

How has AI and machine learning impacted journalism? Can it make it better or worse? These are just two valid questions people in newsrooms are asking. The question here at GetReligion is how AI could affect religion-beat work and, in this case, the state of Catholic news and publications.

For starters, consider that there will be 10 new AP Stylebook entries to caution journalists about common pitfalls in coverage of artificial intelligence. Here’s what the Associated Press said:

While AP staff may experiment with ChatGPT with caution, they do not use it to create publishable content.

Any output from a generative AI tool should be treated as unvetted source material. AP staff must apply their editorial judgment and AP’s sourcing standards when considering any information for publication.


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Thinking about AI and faith: Can a computer 'get' what it means to be truly human?

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Thinking about AI and faith: Can a computer 'get' what it means to be truly human?

Every now and then, I get an email from Ira Rifkin, who for many years wrote “Global Wire” posts for GetReligion about journalism issues in international events and trends. He signed off about half a year ago with an edgy post called, “Ciao, GetReligion: Thanks, all, for my tenure. Critic that I am, though, here are some final thoughts.”

With his unique mix of Jewish and Buddhist disciplines, Rifkin was also a keen observer of new ideas and concepts linked to what mass media tends to call “spirituality,” as opposed to more conventional forms of religious faith.

Several weeks ago, he send me a URL for a Los Angeles Times feature that ran with this headline: “Can religion save us from artificial intelligence?”

I immediately put it into my “think piece” file, but held on to it for a while to put some cushion between it and my podcast/post with this title: “When is preaching a 'news' story? Ah, the temptation of ChatGPT sermons.” Here is a byte of that:

Right now, one of the hot topics in the public square is the rise of artificial intelligence and, to be specific, the ChatGPT website. Thus, this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) focused on several “newsy” angles of the recent Associated Press story that ran with the headline, “Pastors’ view: Sermons written by ChatGPT will have no soul.” …

During the podcast, I riffed on the whole issue that different kinds of technology can shape the content of communications in different ways. If ChatGPT sermons have a sense of “soul,” it would be a “soul” that is defined by the creator of the software and the tech platform.

The Los Angeles Times story that Rifkin sent me opens with an AI sermon hook — but the issue at the heart of the story is much, much bigger than that.

Nevertheless, it helps to start this “think piece” recommendation with that feature’s overture:

Sometimes Rabbi Joshua Franklin knows exactly what he wants to talk about in his weekly Shabbat sermons — other times, not so much. It was on one of those not-so-much days on a cold afternoon in late December that the spiritual leader of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons decided to turn to artificial intelligence.


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Podcast: When is preaching a 'news' story? Ah, the temptation of ChatGPT sermons

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Podcast: When is preaching a 'news' story? Ah, the temptation of ChatGPT sermons

When is preaching newsworthy?

News consumers of a certain age may remember this famous Associated Press headline: “Priest Told Children That Santa Claus Is Dead.”

More recently, a Catholic priest in County Kerry made headlines around the world when he dared to preach a sermon defending centuries of Catholic teachings on abortion, marriage and sex — while reminding the faithful that the concept of “mortal sin” is serious business. His bishop was not amused.

Thus, controversial sermons are news, in part because editors don’t expects sermons to be controversial?

The act of preaching can also become “newsy” when it is linked to a trendy subject in modern life. That’s the equation: Old thing (preaching) gets hitched to hip new thing.

Right now, one of the hot topics in the public square is the rise of artificial intelligence and, to be specific, the ChatGPT website. Thus, this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) focused on several “newsy” angles of the recent Associated Press story that ran with the headline, “Pastors’ view: Sermons written by ChatGPT will have no soul.”

In a way, this whole AI preaching topic is linked to another “preaching that is news” trend that shows up every now and then — plagiarism in the pulpit. Overworked, stressed-out pastors have been known to cut a few corners and use material from other preachers, without letting the faithful know what they were doing. But that’s actually a very old story. See this On Religion column that starts with a case study from 1876.

During the podcast, I riffed on the whole issue that different kinds of technology can shape the content of communications in different ways. If ChatGPT sermons have a sense of “soul,” it would be a “soul” that is defined by the creator of the software and the tech platform.

This made me think back the early 1990s, when I was teaching at Denver Seminary and asking future pastors to think about the many ways that mass-media messages shape the lives of their flocks and, of course, the unchurched people around them (here is an essay on that seminary work).

During that time, I read an article — on paper, alas — about how the creation of studio microphones changed the content of American popular music, even at the level of lyrics in love songs.

Think about Frank Sinatra. As a young big-band singer, he belted out bold, strong, LOUD songs about commitment and romantic love that would never die. He had to be heard over that big band. But give Sinatra a microphone and, well, these songs turned into smooth, soft, seductive messages — urgent whispers of desire.

I wondered: How did microphones affect the style and theological content of preaching?


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Podcast: Behold! ChatGPT has interesting, haunting thoughts on religion-beat questions

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Podcast: Behold! ChatGPT has interesting, haunting thoughts on religion-beat questions

It is highly likely, at this point, that most news consumers have heard of the ChatGPT website.

If not, click here to surf through the 56,100,000 reports currently about at Google News about this artificial intelligence (AI) project. Some would prefer to spend several months watching videos on the subject at YouTube. Good luck using the actual ChatGPT site — odds are high that you will have to wait in a long cyber-line to get access.

Journalists are concerned about ChatGPT because it offers a vision of what could be ahead in newsrooms, with computers “reporting” background reports on news events and even trends. And ChatGPT is a big deal in higher education, since it’s highly effective at faking all or significant chunks of term papers. The bot recently passed the U.S. Medical Licensing exams.

I was curious to know what ChatGPT thought about (#DUH) religion-news coverage. The results provided the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in). For example, I asked: “What does the website GetReligion.org do?” The response:

GetReligion.org is a media criticism blog that focuses on examining the way religion is covered by the mainstream news media. It aims to provide analysis and commentary on news stories that deal with religious topics and to point out instances of inaccurate or biased reporting.

Not bad. That’s part of what we do here. We also provide as many, or more, think pieces, Q&As and memos about topics linked to religion-beat work, care of patriarch Richard Ostling, chart-master Ryan Burge and others. We also, from time to time, praise high-quality reporting from mainstream newsrooms.

Oh, I also confess that I asked ChatGPT about that Terry Mattingly guy and — on my birthday, no less — received a kind report on my work that also (#shudder) implied that I am dead.

Terry Mattingly was an American journalist and religion reporter known for his writing on religion and culture. He was a syndicated columnist and founder of the website "GetReligion", which analyzed religion news coverage in the media.


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Concerning 'good' faith and the Christian/pagan priest who believes Google AI is sentient

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Concerning 'good' faith and the Christian/pagan priest who believes Google AI is sentient

Let’s start with some basics as we look at a recent New York Post story that ran with this headline: “Google engineer says Christianity helped him understand AI is ‘sentient’.”

For decades, I have been arguing with people, mostly cultural conservatives, who say things like: “Journalists hate religion.”

This is simplistic. In my experience — first, while working in newsrooms, and second, while reading and writing about media-bias issues — many journalists don’t care enough about religion to work up a good batch of hate. They tend to be indifferent or apathetic, unless certain types of religious folks start interfering in politics, which is the true religion of many or most news professionals.

No, it’s crucial to understand that many reporters love certain types of religion and oppose others. Always remember the following passage in that Jay Rosen PressThink essay, "Journalism Is Itself a Religion.” Yes, this involves interaction with one of my “On Religion” columns, but I can’t help that, nor can I help that this is quite long. So, what is the religion of the press?

A particularly telling example began with this passage from a 1999 New York Times Magazine article about anti-abortion extremism: “It is a shared if unspoken premise of the world that most of us inhabit that absolutes do not exist and that people who claim to have found them are crazy,” wrote David Samuels.

This struck some people as dogma very close to religious dogma, and they spoke up about it. One was Terry Mattingly, a syndicated columnist of religion: “This remarkable credo was more than a statement of one journalist’s convictions, said William Proctor, a Harvard Law School graduate and former legal affairs reporter for the New York Daily News. Surely, the ‘world that most of us inhabit’ cited by Samuels is, in fact, the culture of the New York Times and the faithful who draw inspiration from its sacred pages.”

Yet here is the part that intrigued me: “But critics are wrong if they claim that the New York Times is a bastion of secularism, he stressed. In its own way, the newspaper is crusading to reform society and even to convert wayward ‘fundamentalists.’ Thus, when listing the ‘deadly sins’ that are opposed by the Times, he deliberately did not claim that it rejects religious faith. Instead, he said the world’s most influential newspaper condemns ‘the sin of religious certainty.’ “


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#RNA2017: Religion journalists gather in Music City — and GetReligion is on the scene

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If you're not following it already, here's a Twitter hashtag for you: #RNA2017.

The Religion News Association's 68th annual conference is underway is Music City — Nashville, Tenn. — and two GetReligionistas (Julia Duin and I) will be on the scene.

At the conference this morning, a new survey on U.S. religion was released by Baylor University. Both Religion News Service's Adelle M. Banks and The Tennessean's Holly Meyer had quick stories on the embargoed findings.

Here is the RNS lede:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS) — Americans who voted for President Trump are often very religious, believe in an authoritative God and hold traditional views about gender.
A new Baylor Religion Survey also found that Trump supporters are more likely than other voters to see Muslims as threats to America and to view the nation as a Christian one.
Almost three-quarters of Trump voters said Islam is a threat, compared with 18 percent of those who voted for Hillary Clinton. An even higher percentage — 81 percent — of Trump voters strongly agreed that Middle East refugees are a terror threat, compared with 12 percent of Clinton voters.
“Today, divisions in the American public are stark,” said Paul Froese, a Baylor University sociology professor and director of Baylor Religion Surveys. “We can trace many of our deep differences to how people understand traditional morality, theology and the purpose of our nation.”

And from The Tennessean:


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