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As AI takes on a greater role in our media ecosystem, many journalists look at it like a farmer sees an invasive species: as a force that threatens to slowly choke, kill, and replace their work, potentially threatening their livelihood. There’s good reason for this: For reporters and editors, AI represents an assault on multiple fronts. Not only can large language models (LLMs) take over many tasks within journalistic workresearch, writing, editingAI systems also threaten to substitute media publications entirely. The more readers get their information from AI, the less reason they have to engage with publishers or journalists directly. Ask a journalist how it’s going these days, and you’re likely to hear, “Not great.” Many are understandably skeptical, if not outright antagonistic, toward AI. And while the many rounds of recent layoffs at media companies aren’t happening because AI is replacing journalists en masse, its growing presence in newsrooms is certainly a factor in how those organizations are restructuring themselves. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"green","redirectUrl":""}} There’s another perspective, however. While the rise of AI is, in many ways, painful for journalists, it may actually be healthy for journalism. Audiences are moving on The fact is more and more people are using AI to find news and information. ChatGPT now has 400 million weekly active users, and it’s showing up on top 10 lists of the most popular sites on the internet. A recent study from Adobe found that the amount of traffic that AI services are sending to retail sites has increased 1,200% in just the last seven months. Despite generating far fewer clicks than traditional search, AI tools are driving a massive spike in trafficproof of their growing reach. AI use may be climbing fast, but it’s all a drop in the bucket compared to regular search. A recent analysis from search expert Rand Fishkin revealed that ChatGPT searches are less than 1% of overall search activity. Google’s “10 blue links” may still rule the day, but Google is going deeper into AI, too. Its AI Overviewstopic summaries at the top of search resultsnow appear in searches for more users, and it has recently expanded the availability of “AI mode,” which produces a summary that does away with the links altogether. While Google hasn’t yet begun applying these tools to current news articles in a significant way, the trend is clear: more AI in search, not less. So whichever way you turn, the picture is clear: a significant part of our future media ecosystem will be AI-mediated. The key question: How will these systems surface the content for the summaries they give? This is a difficult question to answer definitively, partly because AI companies aren’t eager to open up their “black boxes,” but also because the technology itself makes the decisions LLMs make fairly opaque. But we can infer a lot from the outputs they create, and what companies do say. OpenAI publishes a model spec for its LLMsbasically a set of first principles. One of them is “seek the truth together,” by which it means the AI and user collaborate to find whatever the truthful output is for the user’s query. Taken at face value, that’s well aligned with journalistic principles. Balance and neutrality are also encouraged by AI systems. Most topics in the news have left- and right-leaning takes, with chatbots giving a blended summary, possibly with a note that “opinions differ.” Overall, AI summaries are the result of a multisource approach that tends to reward depth and uniqueness. The new incentives of AI Deep and unique content that takes a balanced and neutral approach to the truth? We used to call that good journalism. If AI optimizes for these factors and allows for a business model that works, it would alter media incentives for the better. Because we couldn’t do much worse than the last decade. When search referrals and social reach ruled the day, publisher incentives were often not aligned with journalistic best practices. Even if you overlook the worst excesses of that era, such as clickbait and content farms, most digital newsrooms were obsessed with running up page views and unique visitors so they could sell big numbers to advertisers. As a result, incentives aligned around content that was provocative and disposable rather than thoughtful and rich. Success in the AI era, however, will be measured by how often your stories are cited in AI summaries. The content will need to be “definitive” in some waythat leaving it out would weaken the answer to the point where it’s incomplete or wrong. That’s great motivation for journalists to produce scoops, original quotes, and analysis you can’t get anywhere else. Of course, this all hinges on a big assumption: that AI systems can actually maximize accuracy and minimize biasand be trusted to do so. Recent evidence suggests that’s far from a sure bet: An extensive study from Newsguard revealed an effort to influence LLM outputs to favor the Russian point of view on the Ukraine war. And it was apparently successful: the brute-force campaign affected the outputs of all the popular AI chatbots and search engines. OpenAI might align its model “seek the truth together” with the user, but reinforcements may beneeded. There’s another snag: the copyright question. The major AI labs have attracted so many copyright lawsuits that elaborate data visualizations are required to keep track. That’s led to several AI companies inking content deals with various publishers, which might be good for business, but there’s a big downside for users: information in AI summaries will favor partners, which may not necessarily be the best possible sources. OpenAI, for instance, has said that ChatGPT does this, and it avoids citing, linking, or summarizing content from anyone litigating against it. Courts and legislators could step in, but they might not do so in a way that benefits news publishers. If they decide that the data ingestion that all AI systems do is fair use, that would instantly reduce the value of journalism in the AI market and disincentivize publishers from appearing in AI summaries at all. Extremely strong copyright, on the other hand, might make the information too expensive for AI companies to even offer a wide range of summarized news. This isnt a surrender. It’s a strategy. So yes, there a lot to be sorted out before we declare a golden AI age of journalism. But the tools are there to create an ecosystem with the right incentives: a media that can build sustainable business through summarization, a journalism community where talent and hard work are rewarded instead of quick hits and clickbait, and a public that benefits from thorough and fair summaries of topics. The potential of such a vision is worth fighting for, and certainly a much more productive struggle than pushing back against AI as an existential threat. The fact is AI is here to stay, but there’s an opportunity to help shape a new system that rewards truth, originality, and transparency. Sure, robots can do a lot, but when journalists do the hard work of telling stories that matter, that impact should be apparenteven to a machine. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"green","redirectUrl":""}}
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This week, AccuWeather released its prediction for the Atlantic hurricane season. The weather service found that after last years Hurricanes Beryl, Helene, and Milton, 2025 will likely be another supercharged year for tropical storms. AccuWeather expects the Atlantic hurricane season, which starts on June 1, to yield 13 to 18 named storms, including 7 to 10 hurricanes. Of those, three and six are expected to have direct U.S. impacts, with the Gulf Coast, Atlantic Canada, the Carolinas, and northwestern Caribbean at the highest risk. Meanwhile, as climate change and record-warm ocean temperatures usher the U.S. into yet another intense storm season, the Trump administration has signaled that it may be working to dismantle the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Heres what to know: Why does hurricane season keep getting worse? According to AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva, one of the main factors driving the companys prediction is elevated water temperatures. Across the oceans surface, including in the Gulf and Caribbean, temperatures aren’t just well above historical averages, the warm waters also extend to deeper depths than usual. Warm water fuels storms by evaporating quickly, causing rising columns of moist air to feed developing hurricanesmeaning that an abundance of warm water can make hurricanes develop both more quickly and more intensely. “A rapid intensification of storms will likely be a major story yet again this year as sea-surface temperatures and ocean heat content (OHC) across most of the basin are forecast to be well above average,” DaSilva said in a news release. Last year, high OHC supercharged intense storms, including Hurricane Beryl and Hurricane Milton. In an article for The Conversation that summer, expert Brian Tang noted, The peak intensification rates of hurricanes increased by an average of 25% to 30% when comparing hurricane data between 1971-1990 and 2001-2020. Experts believe that as climate change continues to worsen and ocean temperatures rise, its likely that hurricane season will only become more extreme and more dangerous. What’s going on with FEMA? As more information about the upcoming hurricane season comes to light, it appears that the Trump administration may be gearing up to shutter the governments largest disaster aid group. On Monday, Kristi Noem, secetary of Homeland Security, reportedly said that her department planned to eliminate FEMA. On Tuesday, CNN reported that top officials from FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security met to discuss FEMAs future and options for shutting it down. According to CNN, the agency is currently in a state of disarray as more than $100 billion in disaster assistance and grant money is frozen and hiring is largely stalled. The elimination of FEMA could have major consequences for the future of disaster relief in the U.S. In January, Samantha Montano, an emergency management professor at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, told Fast Company that abolishing FEMA would result in a less effective, less efficient, and less equitable emergency management system, which means it makes all of us less safe. Without question, we would see higher death tolls, greater physical damage, and immense economic impacts. Currently, aid from FEMA is provided only after local jurisdictions have depleted their own resources and the agencys intervention is approved by Congress. In 2023, the agency spent $30 billion aiding in the aftermath of fires, floods, landslides, tornadoes, hurricanes, and winter storms across the country. In 2024, FEMA workers went door-to-door providing aid after Hurricane Helene struck. Now, though, when the agency should be prepping for the upcoming hurricane season, staffers tell CNN that theyve had to pause their operations. March is typically when were finalizing hurricane plans. A lot of that got paused, one anonymous source shared. So, its already having an impact, which is that were not preparing.
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In mountain ranges around the world, glaciers are melting as global temperatures rise. Europes Alps and Pyrenees lost 40% of their glacier volume from 2000 to 2023. These and other icy regions have provided freshwater for people living downstream for centuriesalmost 2 billion people rely on glaciers today. But as glaciers melt faster, they also pose potentially lethal risks. Water from the melting ice often drains into depressions once occupied by the glacier, creating large lakes. Many of these expanding lakes are held in place by precarious ice dams or rock moraines deposited by the glacier over centuries. Too much water behind these dams or a landslide into the lake can break the dam, sending huge volumes of water and debris sweeping down the mountain valleys, wiping out everything in the way. Today, over 10million people across the world are vulnerable to glacial lake outburst floods.In High Mountain Asia alone, these flooding hazards are projected to triple by 2100, especially with continued high emissions. Read full @Nature paper: https://t.co/PsXcyH2jFC pic.twitter.com/RgZ44VF6v4— International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (@ICCInet) May 30, 2024 These risks and the loss of freshwater supplies are some of the reasons the United Nations declared 2025 the International Year of Glaciers Preservation and March 21 the first World Day for Glaciers. As an earth scientist and a mountain geographer, we study the impact that ice loss can have on the stability of the surrounding mountain slopes and glacial lakes. We see several reasons for increasing concern. Erupting ice dams and landslides Most glacial lakes began forming over a century ago as a result of warming trends since the 1860s, but their abundance and rates of growth have risen rapidly since the 1960s. Many people living in the Himalayas, Andes, Alps, Rocky Mountains, Iceland, and Alaska have experienced glacial lake outburst floods of one type or another. A glacial lake outburst flood in the Himalayas in October 2023 damaged more than 30 bridges and destroyed a 200-foot-high hydropower plant. Residents had little warning. By the time the disaster was over, more than 50 people had died. Juneau, Alaska, has been hit by several flash floods in recent years from a glacial lake dammed by ice on an arm of Mendenhall Glacier. Those floods, including in 2024, were driven by a melting glacier that slowly filled a basin below it until the basins ice dam broke. Avalanches, rockfalls and slope failures can also trigger glacial lake outburst floods. These are growing more common as frozen ground known as permafrost thaws, robbing mountain landscapes of the cryospheric glue that formerly held them together. These slides can create massive waves when they plummet into a lake. The waves can then rupture the ice dam or moraine, unleashing a flood of water, sediment, and debris. That dangerous mix can rush downstream at speeds of 20 to 60 mph, destroying homes and anything else in its path. The casualties of such an event can be staggering. In 1941, a huge wave caused by a snow and ice avalanche that fell into Laguna Palcacocha, a glacial lake in the Peruvian Andes, overtopped the moraine dam that had contained the lake for decades. The resulting flood destroyed one-third of the downstream city of Huaraz and killed between 1,800 and 5,000 people. Teardrop-shaped Lake Palcacocha, shown in this satellite view, has expanded in recent decades. The city of Huaraz, Peru, is just down the valley to the right of the lake. [Image: Google Earth, data from Airbus Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO] In the years since, the danger there has only increased. Laguna Palcacocha has grown to more than 14 times its size in 1941. At the same time, the population of Huaraz has risen to mre than 120,000 inhabitants. A glacial lake outburst flood today could threaten the lives of an estimated 35,000 people living in the waters path. Governments have responded to this widespread and growing threat by developing early warning systems and programs to identify potentially dangerous glacial lakes. Some governments have taken steps to lower water levels in the lakes or built flood diversion structures, such as walls of rock-filled wire cages, known as gabions, that divert floodwaters from villages, infrastructure, or agricultural fields. Where the risks cant be managed, communities have been encouraged to use zoning that prohibits building in flood-prone areas. Public education has helped build awareness of the flood risk, but the disasters continue. Flooding from inside and thawing permafrost The dramatic nature of glacial lake outburst floods captures headlines, but those arent the only risks. As scientists expand their understanding of how the worlds icy regions interact with global warming, they are identifying a number of other phenomena that can lead to similarly disastrous events. Englacial conduit floods, for instance, originate inside of glaciers, commonly those on steep slopes. Meltwater can collect inside massive systems of ice caves, or conduits. A sudden surge of water from one cave to another, perhaps triggered by the rapid drainage of a surface pond, can set off a chain reaction that bursts out of the ice as a full-fledged flood. Thawing mountain permafrost can also trigger floods. This permanently frozen mass of rock, ice and soil has been a fixture at altitudes above 19,685 feet for millennia. Freezing helps keep mountains together. But as permafrost thaws, even solid rock becomes less stable and is more prone to breaking, while ice and debris are more likely to become detached and turn into destructive and dangerous debris flows. Thawing permafrost has been increasingly implicated in glacial lake outburst floods because of these new sources of potential triggers. In 2017, nearly a third of the solid rock face of Nepals 20,935-foot Saldim Peak collapsed and fell onto the Langmale glacier below. Heat generated by the friction of rock falling through air melted ice, creating a slurry of rock, debris, and sediment that plummeted into Langmale glacial lake below, resulting in a massive flood. A glacial outburst flood in Barun Valley started when nearly one-third of the face of Saldim Peak in Nepal fell onto Langmale Glacier and slid into a lake. The top image shows the mountain in 2016. The lower shows the same view in 2017. [Figures: Elizabeth Byers (2016)/Alton Byers (2017)] These and other forms of glacier-related floods and hazards are being exacerbated by climate change. Flows of ice and debris from high altitudes and the sudden appearance of meltwater ponds on a glaciers surface are two more examples. Earthquakes can also trigger glacial lake outburst floods. Not only have thousands of lives been lost, but billions of dollars in hydropower facilities and other structures have also been destroyed. A reminder of whats at risk The International Year of Glaciers Preservation and World Day for Glaciers are reminders of the risks and also of who is in harms way. The global population depends on the cryospherethe 10% of the Earths land surface thats covered in ice. But as more glacial lakes form and expand, floods and other risks are rising. A study published in 2024 counted more than 110,000 glacial lakes around the world and determined 10 million peoples lives and homes are at risk from glacial lake outburst floods. The U.N. is encouraging more research into these regions. It also declared 2025 to 2034 the decade of action in cryospheric sciences. Scientists on several continents will be working to understand the risks and find ways to help communities respond to and mitigate the dangers. Suzanne OConnell is a Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth science at Wesleyan University. Alton C. Byers is a faculty research scientist at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado Boulder. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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