Journalists Have Been Automated Consensus Machines (Robots) For Years

Why should editors get off the hook?

German tabloid Bild to replace range of editorial jobs with AI – Hundreds of redundancies expected as Axel Springer tells staff certain roles will ‘no longer exist as they do today.’

Germany’s Bild tabloid, the biggest-selling newspaper in Europe, is to replace a range of editorial jobs with artificial intelligence as part of a €100m costcutting programme expected to lead to hundreds of redundancies.

The newspaper would “unfortunately be parting ways with colleagues who have tasks that in the digital world are performed by AI and/or automated processes”, its owner, Europe’s largest media publisher, Axel Springer SE, said in an email to staff.

Artificially Intelligent, Maybe

But is it smart?

Technical progress by decree?

AI

Germany is often criticized for sluggish levels of digital investment, particularly in AI. The government wants to invest €3 billion before 2025 to try and close the knowledge gap with world leaders in the field.

Germans are smart, of course, but they can’t even spell AI properly. They call it KI. Ridiculous. And when you look at the amount being invested, well, maybe they’re not all that good at math anymore, either.

“This amount is much less than companies, such as Microsoft or Google, invest in AI in a single year. So people should not think that Germany will suddenly become a world leader in the field, able to compete with the US and China.”

AI Don’t Trust You

But what’s new? Germans don’t trust any new technical development that comes along. Grundsätzlich (out of principle). New is scary because it always comes from somewhere else.

AI

So here’s another piece of news that made the news even though it’s not news at all: A YouGov survey has revealed that Germans are distrustful of anything that has to do with artificial intelligence. Not only is AI new (and from somehwere else), it’s, well, artificial. It’s not natural, you know? Non-organic or something.

Die Mehrheit der Deutschen steht einer Umfrage des Instituts YouGov zufolge dem Einsatz Künstlicher Intelligenz (KI) misstrauisch gegenüber. Nur rund jeder Siebte – 15 Prozent – denkt demnach, dass der Nutzen der Technologie gegenüber den Risiken überwiegt, wie die repräsentative Umfrage ergab.