I return again and again with some thoughts on a conference – this time, the Sahafi Summit in Lahore a few weeks ago. I realize this has become a bit of a theme and is probably the last open “conference”, but the summit was fun, inspiring, surprising in places and generally one of those rare events where you talk about journalism without wanting to bang your head against the nearest podium.
But before we get into the summit itself, let’s talk about AI which also turned out to be the main theme of this Sahafi GT in Lahore. So, AI: the big, scary, shiny new thing that seems to be coming for our jobs, our minds, and maybe our souls if you listen to the more dramatic commentary surrounding it.
I’ll start with the most honest thing I can say: if anyone thinks that AI isn’t already being used in journalism, they’re either wrong or big liars. There is no third option here. Let’s be real: everyone uses ChatGPT. The boldest among us use Gemini. The most adventurous (or eccentric) call on Claude. Someone somewhere is secretly using something called “Google AI Studio Beta Ultra Something” – and pretending it’s not.
I, for one, am a self-confessed noob regarding most of them and have no idea how half of them work (something I need to fix ASAP). But I use ChatGPT – not to write my stories, but to make it do what a very efficient personal secretary could: help me clean up work lists, or organize my lesson plan according to dates, or rearrange bullet points or data, etc. For me it is a very good support tool. Nothing more (for now). But the point remains: AI is being used. It’s here, it’s everywhere. And you might as well stop pretending otherwise. And honestly, the real provocation here is that AI hasn’t broken journalism, it’s just exposed the cracks that were already there: the shrinking newsrooms, the low pay, the cult of speed over care. In this sense, AI is the mirror and we don’t look very pretty in it.
Now let’s move on to the second big fear: AI will kill jobs. Is this true? To a certain extent, yes. Transcribers and translators have already felt the impact. Machines do a fabulous job at both, and they do it in milliseconds without asking for that pesky thing employers hate: a salary. But is this the first time technology has changed our work culture? Barely. We had typists – and then we didn’t have them anymore. We had composers – and then we don’t have any more. We had radio stars – and then, as the song says, “the video killed the radio star.” (This is not really the case; radio has reinvented itself: hello podcasts?)
So yes, jobs will change. Some will end. New ones will start. The question is not whether technology changes us – it always does – but whether we are ready to adapt. Instead of panicking, what if we practiced? What if editorial offices offered workshops? What if, instead of making angry speeches against the machine, we learned to control the machine? Because the real danger is not losing jobs but “deskilling”. Relying too much on AI means young journalists can ignore the basics: interviewing, fact-checking, writing, sourcing. I really worry about producing editors who have never edited and journalists who have never reported.
Which brings me to the third point: the real question is not whether AI is used but how it is used. Do you use him as a creative partner? Research help? A translator? A summary? GOOD. Do you use it as a shortcut to not having to think, report, or understand? Absolutely not good. Journalism cannot be automated because journalism is not typing. Journalism is about judgment, context, and the ability to separate fact from truth (yes, they’re not the same thing). And in a world drowning in cheap, fast, low-quality content, journalism’s true value proposition may be becoming the opposite: slowness, depth, lived experience – anything that can’t be mass-produced or “triggered” in seconds.
And that’s where the Sahafi Summit comes in – because that’s precisely what people were talking about. One of the biggest concerns came from the union panel, which talked about job losses. And they are right to be concerned. Technology always hits the most vulnerable first. But the answer, once again, is not to freeze in fear but to reorganize, to negotiate better protections, to demand training.
And then there were the students, my favorite parts of the two days. May I just congratulate the Mass Communication kids of Punjab University for their caring and wonderful hosts. They asked piercing questions: What happens to art and poetry if AI can generate both? What happens to creativity? What happens to the writer’s voice? For me, these questions were a hope, a sign that young people are doing well. They approach the future not as passive consumers but as questioners. [As I tell my journo class: question everything].
My panel at the summit was on “the human spirit of journalism,” which sounds grandiose but was actually a very grounded conversation. I tried to say what I really believe: the human spirit will survive this. Publishers will survive this. For what? Because you will always need a human head to make sense of human stories. You can’t write about a flood, a protest, a family tragedy, or a political moment without understanding the people who live there. In countries like Pakistan, where much of our cultural and political history is based on oral histories and journalistic accounts, human memory matters. On the contrary, the rise of AI should push us to redouble our efforts on the most human aspects of our profession: empathy, curiosity, nuance, responsibility, skepticism.
So here we are: at the start of a long, complicated, sometimes frightening, sometimes fascinating conversation. AI is not going away. Neither does journalism. And this conversation will continue – in classrooms, in newsrooms, at conferences and, of course, in columns like this one. And somewhere in the middle of it all, we might just figure out how to make this strange new world work for us.
PS: Many thanks to Media Matters for Democracy (MMFD) and Punjab University for putting together something so carefully structured.
The writer runs this newspaper’s op-ed desk and teaches college and university students. She says stuff about X @zburki and can be contacted at: [email protected]
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policies of PK Press Club.tv.
Originally published in The News
