Letter from the Editor: The Beacon and AI

As someone who grew up on a steady diet of sci-fi novels (I’m actually named after a Heinlein character), I am well aware of what happens when you trust technology without keeping a safety net in place. I grew up watching 2001: A Space Odyssey in a family that very dutifully never owned a car with automatic windows. We were consistent in our understanding of technology, even if we were enthralled by its potential. 

I first became aware of artificial intelligence, at least in the non-science fiction sense, when I saw other artists complaining of their work being stolen to create substandard milquetoast versions of the styles it took them a lifetime to hone. 

Soon it was also my writer friends, and then, suddenly, everything was using AI, and no one was very clear as to where it was scraping its information from. That didn’t seem like the kind of tool a good journalist would trust. And so I didn’t.

Not long after AI appeared everywhere, I started seeing national reporting on the ways that data centers are affecting our environment. It turns out AI is thirsty, and some of the places where its databases are being built are in rural, environmentally sensitive areas. I’m not excited about a plagiarism machine that drinks more water than a yoga instructor. 

That was the dystopian future my childhood reading had taught me to rail against, and so, the Beacon has had an informal no AI policy from the beginning.  

Saying that, we have made exceptions. We use a few tools that are easy to verify, tools like Otter AI, which allows us to create an automatic transcription from recorded interviews. Most importantly, it also makes it simple for a reporter to verify the transcription by linking it directly to the audio files. We have also used AI in our research, as long as we’re able to independently verify the results. 

It became clear that we needed a sensible, formal policy that allowed both our writers and readers to understand where we stand on AI, instead of an informal policy that primarily lives in my head.

After months of debate among our board members, many of whom have strong AI feelings in both directions, we are launching our official policy. We will always verify any information we gain from using an AI research tool, and we will never use AI to replace human creativity. No AI images, no AI writing. 

You can see that policy here on our What Guides Our Work page. If you ever have any questions or concerns about the Beacon’s use of AI, please feel free to email me. I’m sure I can put down Book 5 of The Expanse long enough to respond. 

Very humanly yours,

Nhatt Nichols
Editor