Meet Laurens<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Laurens Vreekamp<\/a> is always thinking one step. As a trainer and design thinker, he works with a wide range of media organisations to explore how AI \u2013 from machine learning to language models \u2013 can be applied thoughtfully in journalism. For Laurens, AI isn’t inherently good nor bad, both in principle and in application. (Though, he considers some parts of AI system development problematic \u2013 more on that later!) It’s about intent and impact. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He recently led an RNW Media Brown Bag lunch for our staff and Vine community members<\/a>. We got to chat afterward about his interests, his book tailored for media professionals, his thoughts on AI and important values to carry when applying it to your work. Check out our conversation! <\/p>\n\n\n\n RNW Media: Hey, Laurens! What do you think about when you hear, “ethical use of technology & AI”?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Laurens:<\/strong> It means you’ve balanced the use of AI tools in a way that\u2019s fair and doesn’t perpetuate stereotypes or biases embedded in training data or the outputs of generative AI. It\u2019s also about compensation and consent \u2013 ensuring that artists, writers, illustrators and musicians are credited and asked for permission if their work is used. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s also the energy it takes to power the machines and the hidden labour \u2013 the ghost work \u2013 done in low-income countries, often in the Global Majority. These people fine-tune and train chatbots and large language models. Recently, there\u2019s also been a geopolitical dimension with debates in Europe around using Chinese and\/or American technology. It’s all part of the ethical complications around AI. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then it goes philosophical! There’s authorship and agency \u2013 who’s producing the content? Is it the machine or the human? And if you’re being paid to produce original content, to what extent can you rely on machines? And while fairness and responsibility are often approached through a technical lens \u2013 something fixable via software or statistics \u2013 it also reflects societal inequalities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n All of this should be considered when discussing the ethical use of AI. <\/p>\n\n\n\n RNW Media: And how are journalists using AI in their daily work?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Laurens:<\/strong> AI has long been used in journalism \u2013 from early tools like translation, summarisation, clustering information and entity recognition to more recent applications like sentiment analysis, SEO, headline suggestions, and metadata generation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A current trend is \u201cvibe coding\u201d: using AI to help teams prototype apps or newsletters by prompting a version of a product and sparking collaborative discussions. It\u2019s not about replacing developers but about supporting idea generation and briefs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Tech can open new creative possibilities. If you understand what it can do, you can find new ways to work […]”<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n RNW Media: As you can imagine, there are lots of hesitancies around using AI tools \u2013 even for us. So, what are some pitfalls and opportunities AI presents for journalists and media makers?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Laurens<\/strong>: I mentioned the example of the New York Times’ guidelines<\/a> during our Brown Bag session. The Times came up with AI guidelines<\/a> by experiment at first. Many newsrooms start this way and then hold internal discussions around what\u2019s acceptable and what crosses the line. These decisions are human \u2013 they\u2019re not binary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, the Times says it\u2019s OK to use a chatbot to help generate interview questions for a CEO. But the key principle is there must always be a human in the loop. A machine can help, but a human ultimately decides. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It should be a tool for validation and inspiration, not something that creates a publishable story on its own. Most newsrooms I\u2019ve worked with or visited agree with that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n RNW Media: Right! You offer great industry insights in your book, <\/strong>The Art of AI<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (only available in Dutch)<\/em>, which is a practical guide on machine learning for media makers. What inspired you to write the book? <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Laurens:<\/strong> When you talk to machine learning engineers, they light up about the potential of this technology. But public discourse often focuses on efficiency and output, which I think is a dead end. It turns us into machines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, AI should help us become more human. Tech can open new creative possibilities. If you understand what it can do, you can find new ways to work, not just do more of the same. <\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat is Ethical AI?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/span>Sharing Industry Insights<\/h2>\n\n\n\n