Course
|
ChatGPT and AI tools in Newsrooms
STATUS:
closed
Course Summary
Knight Center’s new four-week massive open online course, “How to use ChatGPT and other generative AI tools in your newsrooms” with support from the Knight Foundation.
During this four-week massive open online course, which will be held from Sept. 25 to Oct. 22, students will learn about the types of artificial intelligence that can be leveraged across news operations, how to implement and work with this technology, and how the next few years might unfold for the technology and industry.
About this Course
The MOOC will be taught by expert instructors Aimee Rinehart, senior product manager of AI strategy for the Associated Press’ groundbreaking Local News AI initiative, and Sil Hamilton, a machine learning engineer and esteemed AI researcher-in-residence at the pioneering journalism organization Hacks/Hackers. Joining them as assistant instructors will be Mexican journalist Mariana Alvarado for the course in Spanish, and Brazilian journalist Pedro Burgos for the version in Portuguese.
Check all the information needed on the official website by clicking here.
Schedule: 4 weeks (from Sept. 25 to Oct. 22)
Method: MOOC
Certificate: The Knight Center ($30)
Price: Free
Subject: AI Tools for Newsrooms
Promoters: Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas and Knight Foundation
Competences
Upon completing “How to Use ChatGPT and Other Generative AI Tools in Your Newsrooms,” participants will become conversant on the topic of AI and news, be able to put into use tools from simple process automation to basic GPT functions and develop a plan for their news operations to consider, and will be able to procure and maintain tools with automation and AI.
Course Curriculum
The course is designed for flexibility, allowing participants to log in at their convenience and complete activities when they choose during the four-week course period. There are also recommended weekly deadlines to complete course activities so participants don’t fall behind.
Although our MOOCs are asynchronous, meaning there is no mandatory live instruction, we value interactive learning. To facilitate this, we will host live office hours with the instructors. Attending our live office hours is optional, but highly encouraged. They will be recorded to ensure those who are unable to attend can access them later.
The material is organized into four modules. Each module will cover a different topic through videos lectures and guest interviews, presentations, readings, optional live office hours and discussion forums.
The introductory module (available immediately after registration) will cover the buzz around AI and why it matters in the news world, exploring its potential as well as its limitations.
Module 1 is about grasping the basics of AI and understanding Large Language Models (LLMs), what they can do, the debates they spark, and how newsrooms big and small can make the most of them.
Module 2 explores the history of AI, traveling back over 70 years to its origins, as well as explaining how AI generates text and its exciting leap into working with different media formats.
Module 3 covers the major AI companies today and where they’re headed, along with getting into the basics of the ethics regarding AI.Plus, it will cover the possible warning signs in AI advertising.
Lastly, Module 4 reviews how AI fits into newsgathering, production, distribution, and the business side of things, as well as the ethical considerations for procurement and use. The course closes with a discussion about our role in shaping the future of journalism with AI.
Program Directors
Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas and Knight Foundation
The Knight Center's distance learning program Journalism Courses offers a variety of free or low-cost online courses.
About the Instructors
Aimee Rinehart
Aimee Rinehart is the Senior Product Manager AI Strategy for The Associated Press. Before joining AP, she was the Deputy Director of First Draft’s New York bureau helping journalists and newsrooms to identify, verify and report on mis- and disinformation through the 2018 and 2020 U.S. election cycles. In 2018, she managed Comprova, a project to monitor and analyze misinformation and disinformation around the 2018 Brazilian elections. Aimee started working online in 1996 and was a digital originator at The New York Times, and returned to print briefly as an editor at the Wall Street Journal Europe in Brussels. She served on the steering committee for Partnership on AI’s AI Procurement and Use Guidebook for Newsrooms, and is a council member advising the direction of the newly formed Consortium on Trust in Media and Technology at the University of Florida. Aimee is in the 2024 cohort of the Executive Program in News Innovation and Leadership at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism CUNY as the Tow-Knight Fellow in AI Studies.
Sil Hamilton
Sil Hamilton is AI researcher-in-residence at Hacks/Hackers, a network of journalists who rethink the future of news through talks, hackathons, and conferences. A machine learning researcher at McGill University exploring the intersection of AI and culture, Sil has published research at NLP conferences like ACL, AAAI, and COLING. His work exploring the limits of language models has been discussed by Wired, The Financial Times, and Le Devoir. Sil has given talks on AI and the newsroom at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard; the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at Columbia; the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California; and The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas at Austin. Sil has consulted for The Associated Press on AI policies and serves as technology advisor at Health Tech Without Borders, a non-profit seeking to mitigate healthcare crises with digital tools.