Can AI Really Help Deliver Unbiased News?
Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning News
If you ask someone how they feel about today’s news, there’s a likelihood that you will hear this answer: they are tired, fatigued, and are losing trust. With news articles intentionally spinning stories in their favor and excess noise taking over fact, readers are tired of not knowing whether they are hearing the whole truth when reading a news story. Trust in the news has dropped to an all-time low, and the sheer number of outlets covering the same events has made it harder, not easier, to feel informed.
The same technology sometimes blamed for deepfakes and misinformation could actually be part of the solution. Artificial intelligence is being used in tools that help remove bias from the media. In short, AI can help as long as you understand how it’s used and where it still needs a human in the loop.
How to Recognize Biased News
Bias in the news is rarely as obvious as a headline that picks a side. More often it hides in the details. It shows up in the words a writer chooses, the sources they quote, and the perspectives they leave out entirely. A single story can be told several different ways depending on what an outlet decides to include or exclude.
Catching all forms of bias takes more work than most readers are willing to put in, as it can become a time consuming project each time you want to consume the news. You would need to read the same story across multiple outlets, compare how each one framed it, and piece together the parts that were missing. Most people do not have time to do that before their coffee gets cold. That is where artificial intelligence comes in to streamline the process, making it realistic to remove bias on a daily basis.
AI vs. Human Efforts to Remove News Bias
Artificial intelligence is good at the kind of work that wears people down to do manually. It can scan a large number of articles in a fraction of the time that a human can, identify loaded or emotionally-charged language, and spot when perspectives are missing from the coverage. Instead of reading five versions of the same story yourself, you can let the technology do the analysis and provide you with the content that matters.
A media bias fact checker that uses artificial intelligence can process more articles in one sitting than any human reader could. It can also cut down on human error, especially when reviewing too many articles makes it harder to spot all forms of bias. Because it works quickly, it keeps up with the pace of rapidly-changing media, letting the readers consume unbiased news at their own pace every time they sit down.
Can AI Really Be Unbiased?
AI is as reputable as the company using it. Finding a trustworthy news outlet using an AI tool to review bias in news articles is the first step to getting truly unbiased news. AI tools are used to the best of their ability when a human editorial team is also behind it. AI does the heavy lifting of flagging bias and gathering perspectives, then trusts an editorial team to review before it lands in the hands of users. Used that way, it does not replace critical thinking. It gives you more room to do it, because you are starting from a clearer picture instead of a slanted one.
Being able to point to unbiased news articles is invaluable in a landscape of media that is losing American trust.
Building a Smarter News Habit
Building a smarter news habit requires removing bias from the news you consume, which has become simpler than ever before. By removing human bias, one-sided perspectives, emotionally-charged language, and identifying gaps in news coverage, AI helps readers consume something they can trust, while forming their own opinions on any given matter.
