Date and Time:
Thursday, March 28, Noon - 1:30 p.m.Location:
First Amendment Forum, second floor
555. N Central Ave
Phoenix, AZ 85004
Join us for a moderated discussion featuring investigative reporters and educators on the forefront of artificial intelligence and journalism.
Ever since ChatGPT and similar AI tools appeared in 2022, journalists have faced many questions—from how to use AI, to concerns about their jobs, and dealing with misinformation. Media coverage about AI has also ranged from uncritical hype to scary apocalyptic scenarios, but something important has often been missed: journalists’ primary obligation to the public, to inform and hold the powerful accountable, and to investigate AI systems.
About the speakers:
Garance Burke, an award-winning investigative journalist at The Associated Press, whose investigations at the crossroads of government and technology led to federal probes, congressional inquiries, and high-profile resignations. Burke spearheaded the development of a new chapter in the AP Stylebook, offering guidelines to journalists on covering AI. Based in San Francisco, she is leading a collaborative team of reporters investigating the power and impacts of artificial intelligence. Her journalism has been honored as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting, and won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and a National News & Documentary Emmy Award, among many other accolades. In 2020, she was selected as an inaugural joint fellow at the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships-Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University, where she researched the role algorithms play in government decision-making.
Marina Walker Guevara is the Pulitzer Center’s executive editor, where she launched the Artificial Intelligence Accountability Network, fostering a global community of journalists reporting on and with AI. Before joining the Center, she was deputy director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), where she lead two of the largest collaborations of reporters in journalism history: The Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers, which involved hundreds of journalists using technology to unravel stories of public interest from terabytes of leaked financial data. Walker Guevara was instrumental in developing the model of large-scale media collaboration, persuading reporters who used to compete with one another instead to work together, share resources and amplify their reach and impact. She has won or shared more than 50 national and international awards, including the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. During her 2019 John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford, she focused on the use of artificial intelligence in big data journalistic investigations.
Sarah Cohen is a Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter and editor who joined the Cronkite School as its Knight Chair in 2018. She spent most of her career as a reporter and editor at The New York Times and The Washington Post, where her work was awarded most major investigative journalism awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting, the Goldsmith Award, the Selden Ring Award and Investigative Reporters and Editors’ gold medal. Cohen specializes in the use of public records and analysis of public record databases for investigative and long-term reporting projects. She has also served as the Knight Chair in Computational Journalism at Duke University and is a past president of the 5,000-member Investigative Reporters and Editors.
Djordje Padejski, an award-winning investigative journalist turned scholar, explores the impact of AI on journalism and news media ecosystems, with an emphasis on both disruptive and transformational aspects. He teaches at both the Cronkite School and Stanford University, focusing on the intersection of AI in journalism practices. He is the associate director at Stanford University’s John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships, where he mentors JSK fellows and alumni as they pursue innovative projects and technologies in journalism. Prior to Stanford, Padejski was an investigative/data reporter, editor, and director for a number of news organizations including The Center for Investigative Reporting (now Reveal), Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), and The Center for Investigative Journalism in Serbia (CINS).