Artificial Intelligence (AI) makes as many mistakes as humans because it draws from imperfect data that humans produce, says British High Commissioner to Fiji Dr Brian Jones.
During the World Press Freedom Day 2025 celebration at the Civic Centre in Suva on Thursday last week, he said trusting AI for information would be a “foolhardy path”.
“AI makes as many mistakes as humans do. It draws on imperfect data because we produce imperfect data. So, trusting it wholly for your information, your entertainment, and your education, I think would be a foolhardy path to take,” Dr Jones said.
“Probably as long as I’m alive, there will still be a role for human journalists, ensuring that it’s ethically correct, ensuring that it doesn’t harm, and ensuring that the public interest test is met.”
He said that according to Microsoft Pilot, some of the areas where AI would make significant impact by 2030 was content creation, news generation, video content and personalised news stories.
“AI will be heavily involved in generating news articles, video content and personalised news stories. AI tools will be routinely used in newsrooms to help translate content in real time and create videos with digital avatars.
“AI will tailor content to individual preferences, ensuring that users receive news and entertainment that aligns with their interests.”
Dr Jones said this would allow journalists to focus more on in-depth and investigative reporting.
“It will automate many routine tasks, data analysis, as we talked about report generation and allowing human journalists to focus on more in-depth and investigative reporting.
“So we need to keep up with it, and we need to use it, both as a public policy, people like me sitting in governments trying to change and drive behaviour, we need to be aware of how we can feed AI machines with the good stuff to help protect people, help improve health, help improve development and the economy.”
Dr Jones said we must always remember that AI doesn’t look forward, it only feeds on information from the past.
