Conversations in the Public Interest
At a time when journalism is more important and more
threatened than ever, machine learning enables us to
reimagine the way communities stay informed.
AI empowers us to transcribe interviews with remarkable substance and speed, creating stories with expert content from dozens of sources.
We started our careers on manual typewriters. A half-century later, we’re still hammering out stories on keyboards, but we’re staring into screens that bring us into a world that has gone totally digital and, more than that, is populated by what some experts compare to an invasive species.
AI offers remarkable potential to augment our lives, but it also threatens to destabilize institutions and social norms. It raises urgent questions about privacy, equity, accountability, and the nature of work and identity.
Our aim is not to replace humans in reporting on local news, but to augment our community’s ability to focus on our difficult challenges, identifying those who have most to say on the subject and, with AI, “mine” their knowledge, extracting it for consideration in the public square.
Hosts
Since launching ProfNet in the early 1990s, Dan Forbush has had a long-standing interest in the power of collaborative media. Starting his career in academic public relations at Union College in 1975, he has served as the senior communications officer at Syracuse University, Stony Brook University, and Skidmore College.
With five decades of experience in higher education marketing and strategic communications, Bill Walker has led communications programs at Rutgers University, Dartmouth College Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the University of Arizona, and the College of William & Mary. He served as Skidmore’s communications chief from 1978 through 1985.