This article investigates the ramifications of search engine algorithms for journalism practice and its professional commitment to serving the public interest. Taking a discipline-transcending approach that combines quantitative data analysis with an exploration of the social forces shaping knowledge production in journalism, we examine a case study involving New Zealand media’s coverage of economic recession. This inquiry addresses the question of how journalists navigate the terrain of algorithms and respond to the challenges posed by programme-based news production in relation to their professional norms. Our study highlights the significant role of search engines, particularly Google, in shaping the journalistic newsgathering process and, consequently, public understanding of social issues. The computer-assisted analysis of Google’s ‘recession’ news selection revealed distinct patterns in the distribution of news content and geographical bias towards the United States within the selection algorithm. Ethnographic research at one Auckland newsroom revealed that Google Search is a fundamental tool for journalists, albeit used primarily for basic information-gathering and fact-checking rather than in-depth investigative work.
This study explored the disability representations found in Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot from January to March 2024. The content analysis examined Google’s Bard and Gemini’s story structure – which evolved over the weeks – in creating stories with disabled main characters. Findings discovered themes such as supercrip, inspiration porn and pity. Disabled boys tended to be associated with the supercrip stereotype, centring on adventure-type stories. Disabled girls were more commonly portrayed as sources of inspiration, tasked with improving the world. Physical disabilities (e.g. using a wheelchair, crutches or a donkey) were prominent in 71 per cent (n = 55) of all stories.
This article aims to contribute to a wider discourse on the implications of technologies on notions of selfhood, identity, social constructs and power dynamics by delving into the literary representation of brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) in selected science fiction (SF) tests. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that synthesizes phenomenology and identity politics theories, this article explores the intricacies of BCI in two SF texts: The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton and ‘The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling’ by Ted Chiang. The analysis hinges on the multifaceted implications of its integration of concepts of identity and selfhood. Bestowing an agential identity on machine, mind–machine interfaces, as this argument contends, proposes the machine as a figure of defiance in the texts being analysed – challenging traditional notions of identity, consciousness, agency and freedom, and facilitating a shift towards an alternative world-view where human agency is decentred in an Anthropocene era. Embracing Jameson’s view of SF texts as sites of imagination, ‘symbolic acts’ and ‘archaeologies of the future’, the analysis highlights how these texts employ mind–machine interfaces to challenge and subvert a world-view, which grants human beings special rights and a privileged status over other beings and entities.
The artificial general intelligence (AGI) narrative, which posits that artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to benefit all of humanity while threatening to destroy all of humanity, is an apocalyptic narrative that has become increasingly dominant in debates around AI ethics. This article (1) constructs an analogy between the transhumanist AGI narrative and Christian apocalypticism through which we can (2) constitute the transhumanist AGI narrative as a rhetorical strategy that invokes a state of exception to (3) endow AI with auctoritas, an intangible form of power that grants the legitimacy to decide on exceptional situations. The article concludes with reflections on the implications of this rhetorical transfer of power’s coupling with transhumanist eugenic goals on human rights and AI ethics.
Much has been made of the role artificial intelligence (AI) can have in the creative processes of advertising agencies. Not only can it be used to automate tasks and assess the success of advertising on audiences, but it can also alter the relationship between creatives and the work they produce, with computational creativity opening new opportunities to engage in creative and innovative practice. In fact, recent research has emphasized that creative people believe AI technologies will revolutionize the development, execution and dissemination of advertising. Yet, the potential of AI is not without its detractors because of the threat of job losses and ethical conundrums, leading advertising creatives to feel cautious and concerned about the place of this new technology in the industry. Of particular concern is how AI will influence the relationships between clients and agencies. Using data gained from five focus groups held in Aotearoa, New Zealand, with advertising creatives, this research article illuminates the perspectives of current practitioners on the role and potential influence of AI on creative production processes. It finds that most of those attending the focus groups believed that the speed of AI in creating content would increase the pressure placed on agencies to meet the needs of clients, that clients may opt to engage in their own computational creativity costing agencies money and reputation and that aesthetic considerations of agencies and clients may come into conflict.
