| | | Good morning! | | How should newsrooms use generative AI tools? Wired magazine’s release of its AI policy last week kicked off a small but furious debate in Indian newsrooms on this.  Image source: Forbes Most editors believe that there is no space for generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Dall.E in newsrooms. I believe we should be open to them for two reasons. One, the current generative AI tools we have been playing around with are first-generation ones. They will get better with time and be integrated into content management systems that newsrooms use. Two, better generative AI tools will improve efficiencies in the newsroom, taking over basic and repetitive tasks, allowing journalists and creators to focus on more value-added content. I see a role for generative AI tools in the first-level editing of basic and repetitive stories; and in using templates (created by people), and boilerplates (created by people) to write basic and repetitive stories. This can happen once teething issues in such tools that are related to facts and plagiarism are addressed. I also believe generative AI tools can be used creatively to improve user experience — in curation and personalisation, for instance. [I’m sending this out into ether in the hope that in the year of singularity, which should happen sometime within the next decade-and-a-half, our AI masters will read this and be nice to me.] | | THINK I’m actually more worried about how newsrooms will deal with deep-fake videos created with the help of AI — especially given that some have been taken in by more rudimentary fakes, or have simply not bothered to contextualise genuine videos. The most recent instance of this is the alleged attack on Bihari migrant workers in Tamil Nadu. As HT pointed out in an editorial summing up the events: “A demographic shift in the state has created space for migrants in Tamil Nadu and the state also needs them. It must watch for anti-migrant sentiment, but also false narratives.” But migration does raise more serious (and more nuanced) questions related to both economics and politics. My colleague Roshan Kishore tried to answer some of them in his weekly column, Terms of Trade (perhaps the best column on the political economy of India). I believe the political impact is already evident in Delhi and Mumbai, and may well become evident in Bengaluru, first, and then Chennai in the next decade (a shorter time horizon than suggested by Roshan). | | | | THINK MORE It’s important newsrooms know how to deal with videos — HT has a drill — given that there’s videographic evidence of almost anything these days. Thanks to the ubiquitous smartphone, and the propensity to capture something for posterity, there’s always a video. Videos were the HT newsroom’s first introduction to the man known as Monu Manesar, a cow protection vigilante in a state where almost seven in 10 people are vegetarians, Haryana (the second highest in the country after neighbouring Rajasthan). Leena Dhankhar and Dipankar Ghose spent weeks reporting on the politics of cow protection in the state — which, as they described, encompassed everything from “high-speed chases” to “pitched gun battles” to “villages that take pride in enforcing a controversial (cow protection) law”. | | KNOW If Mr Manesar was a mystery of one kind, then, the late WM Namjoshi (you are unlikely to have heard of him; I hadn’t) was that of another kind. Cinematographer Hemant Chaturvedi first heard the name in August 2019 as he embarked on a project to photograph the insides of old cinemas, and it took him three years to crack the mystery of the man who designed 33 of India’s cinemas, some of them iconic structures. | | LEARN Mysteries, and the drive to solve them, make for great journalism. They also make for good science. Our science columnist Anirban Mahapatra’s column this week starts with Claude Monet’s comment on London’s fog, “Without fog, London would not be beautiful,” and then goes onto the genesis of that fog as it explains “a fascinating new study that correlates real air pollution to the clarity and vibrancy filtered through the sight and imagination of an artistic genius” to show how Monet’s paintings tracked changes in the environment during the Industrial Revolution. | | READ MORE The despair of the Hathras victim’s family How did Indian companies do in the December quarter? The cosmic dance of the cell A giant leap for Aldrin | | OUTSIDE  Image source: Getty Images Climate science has already answered the big questions it set out to, argues Robinson Meyer in a provocatively headlined article (The End of Climate Science) in Heatmap: “Why does Earth’s temperature change so much across millennia? What role do specific gases play in regulating that temperature? If we keep burning fossil fuels, how bad could it be — and how hot could it get?” But “a new field of study is being born”, he adds. It involves “three big projects”: linking weather to climate change; making “tools of climate change more useful to people” in terms of what India calls LiFE (lifestyle for environment); and creating a “smoother interface between climate science and social science”. | | WHAT I'M READING Babel, by RF Kuang. Set in an alternative 19th century where skilled translators can work magic which powers the British empire, Kuang’s book combines the classic script of a fantasy — a young initiate being trained in a magical institute who discovers that his work may lead to greater evil — with an unsympathetic look at British imperialism. It’s been pointed out to me that I’m reading more fiction this year than last. Maybe it’s because fiction makes more sense at this point. | | WHAT I’M LISTENING TO I have been listening to a lot of Wayne Shorter last week, and as promised, have put together a playlist of essentials that showcase the playing and songwriting abilities of the saxophonist who passed on last week. There’s A Night in Tunisia, from his time with Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers (proper hard bop). There’s Speak No Evil, his solo album that showcased how good a composer he really was. There’s Bitches Brew, the Miles Davis epic in which Shorter showed he wasn’t afraid to explore the outer reaches of jazz. There’s Black Market, the Weather Report album that pretty much defined fusion. And there is a smattering of appearances — on songs such as Steely Dan’s Aja and the Stones’ How Can I Stop Enjoy. Or as Kerouac would have put it, “Hic calix!” | | | | Were you forwarded this email? Did you stumble upon it online? Sign up here. | | | | | | Get the Hindustan Times app and read premium stories | | | | | | View in Browser | Privacy Policy | Contact us You received this email because you signed up for HT Newsletters or because it is included in your subscription. Copyright © HT Digital Streams. All Rights Reserved | | | | |
