The increasing presence of artificial intelligence and automated technology is changing journalism. While the term artificial intelligence dates back to the 1950s, and has since acquired several meanings, there is a general consensus around the nature of AI as the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence. Since many of the AI tools journalists are now using come from other disciplines--computer science, statistics, and engineering, for example--they tend to be general purpose. Now that journalists are using AI in the newsroom, what must they know about these technologies, and what must technologists know about journalistic standards when building them? On June 13, 2017, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and the Brown Institute for Media Innovation convened a policy exchange forum of technologists and journalists to consider how artificial intelligence is impacting newsrooms and how it can be better adapted to the field of journalism.

We have witnessed the first wave of artificial intelligence (AI) in journalism in the form of chatbots, automated story generation, and machine learning techniques applied to news. The big tech companies have pushed AI to the center of their product strategies. How far along is the news business in incorporating these tools into the newsroom, and understanding the broad implications for journalism? At this event, we will examine how real examples of AI have been used in news, and what we can expect in the near future. We will discuss the importance of this growing field and identify priorities for data journalists, researchers, investigative reporters, and newsrooms.