From Explanation to Accountability A decade of explainable AI research has produced important techniques for understanding AI models, but less clarity on who those explanations are for and what accountability goals they actually serve

How could AI explanations work to support accountability? I review some of the research here: www.ai-accountability-review.com/p/from-expla...

Opinion | It’s Called Silicon Sampling, and It’s Going to Ruin Public Opinion Polling

Journalists should tread carefully when reporting on surveys these days -- the data could be based on a silicon sample, i.e. not from real people but from a simulation: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/06/o...

If someone expects you to conjure up a new AI tool out of thin air, share these numbers for how much other newsrooms spent on their AI projects:

generative-ai-newsroom.com/how-to-budge...

AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying LLMs-gone-rogue dominated coverage, but had nothing to do with the targeting. Instead, it was choices made by human beings, over many years, that gave us this atrocity

Must-read piece on the role of tech and policy
in the killing of 180 Iranian school girls by US bombs:

Also let’s not forget that Nov in an election year is absolute peak traffic — it’s hard to disentangle the normal traffic drop from AIOs since they also rolled out widely right around then…

AI Hype in Journalism: Visibility, Power, and the Politics of Media Narratives Hype is a phenomenon that emerges from a set of practices rooted in the norms and narratives not only of journalism but of digital media and its algorithmic infrastructure more broadly, in the soci...

🚨 New paper out!

Here’s the Introduction to our Special Issue on AI Hype, co‑edited with Naomi Mine, @natalihelberger.bsky.social, @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social & @teachguz.bsky.social, on how AI hype shapes journalism’s norms, values, and labor politics.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

These Tools Say They Can Spot A.I. Fakes. Do They Really Work?

This analysis of AI media verification tools could be turned into a benchmark that assesses them over time. Even better would be a journalism benchmark using hard examples from real verification use cases... www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/t...

An Ohio newspaper has a new star writer. It isn’t human. At the 184-year-old Cleveland Plain Dealer, a top editor’s push to let AI draft news articles is boosting traffic — and spooking staffers.

Cleveland's top newspaper is "removing writing from some reporters' workloads" by using AI to draft articles.

We dove into what drove the paper's editor to do that, how it's going and what the paper's human reporters think about it. wapo.st/4aX44e1 w/ @scottnover.bsky.social

Was the Anthropic deadline Friday because they needed it for a weekend thing?

Likeness Detection on YouTube YouTube video by YouTube Creators

It only took about five years since we proposed it (cacm.acm.org/opinion/what...) , but YouTube recently started rolling out its likeness detection feature to alert creators to synthetic versions of themselves on the platform. www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcZt...

AI versus accuracy? We're willing to make the trade-off. When asking AI about the news, readers “know the answers they are getting are not perfect.” They keep asking anyway.

Research suggests people who use AI tools to find news seem to prefer them over clicking on individual stories, despite being conscious of their limits when it comes to accuracy. @aisvarya17.bsky.social and I wrote about what publishers can learn from this www.cjr.org/tow_center/a...

Training Better Science Communicators with a Custom Chatbot Simulating an Interview with a Science Journalist to Help Researchers Practice Their Skills

What if you could practice your interview skills with a simulated science journalist? New on Generative AI in the Newsroom: generative-ai-newsroom.com/training-bet...

How I used Claude Code in a real data journalism project This morning three colleagues and I published a story outlining how the federal government is using AI. Here’s how I used Claude Code to help. Agencies are required to publish a spreadsheet of AI use ...

New blog post: A case study on using Claude Code in data journalism ->
kschaul.com/post/2026/02...

Experimenting with AI in a Living Literature Review From automating conference scrapes to stress-testing synthesis: a look at how AI tools like NotebookLM and OpenAI’s Agent mode support—and struggle with—the workflow of a living literature review.

AI is helpful for monitoring, collecting, and helping appraise research for a living literature review, but when it comes to synthesis or interpretation it's still lacking: www.ai-accountability-review.com/p/experiment...

oddly though "sicko fan" also makes perfect sense!

This diagram shows how elections work to create authority, and ultimately are where the buck stops in terms of accountability in a democracy:

At the end of the day the accountability for these actions is in the next election. Connecting the issues to affordability may be a way forward, e.g. data centers raising prices, AI and wages, etc.

Ironic

Sometimes I just want to pack up and get out of this country. Anyone else? Where are people landing?

2 days left to apply for a Mass Media Fellowship

🎉 The #MassMediaFellowship 2026 application closes in 2 days! Apply now for a chance to use your scientific background to write stories for the general public in newsrooms across the country. #SciComm
🔗 bit.ly/3KugH6D

Screenshot of a paper entry: Fictional Failures and Real-World Lessons: Ethical Speculation Through Design Fiction on Emotional Support Conversational AI Authors: Faye Kollig, Jessica Pater, Fayika Farhat Nova, Casey Fiesler (There are tabs with "abstract" and "summary" and "summary" is selected.)

The ACM Digital Library, where a LOT of computing-related research is published (I'd say at least 75% of my own publications), is now not only providing (without consent of the authors and without opt-in by readers) AI-generated summaries of papers, but they appear as the *default* over abstracts.

NSF pares down grant-review process, reducing influence of outside scientists Memo cites overburdened staff, but some say move also aims to elevate White House priorities

NSF plans to streamline merit review to heal self-inflicted staffing wound www.science.org/content/arti...

I have started a public notebook for the C+J conference at the University of Miami today and tomorrow.
notebooklm.google.com/notebook/51e...

What’s the Gen Z hand signal for “check please”? I imagine it’s a sort of phone tapping motion…

Vibe Coding for Newsrooms Why being a good project manager matters more than being a savvy coder

A smart explanation of "vibe coding," including how @jamditis.bsky.social used it to build a dashboard for volunteers in Springfield, NJ who were coordinating food assistance deliveries during the SNAP crisis and beyond generative-ai-newsroom.com/vibe-coding-...

Postdoctoral Research Opportunity – Global LLM Values Benchmarking Working Group: Postdoctoral Affairs - Northwestern University

🚨 Postdoc opening -- Come work with us at Northwestern! 🚨 This position is to work on evaluating LLMs for sociopolitical value expression: postdocs.northwestern.edu/announcement... -- Please share!

Vibe Coding for Newsrooms Why being a good project manager matters more than being a savvy coder

Vibe coding for newsrooms: generative-ai-newsroom.com/vibe-coding-...

Northwestern’s agreement to restore federal funding: www.northwestern.edu/president/do...

Sadly it is pretty normal in academic publishing… and also why I mostly don’t write chapters for these kinds of books anymore. You can request it through inter library loan or get a chapter scanned by our library…

Spread the word! 📢 The FATE (Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics) group at @msftresearch.bsky.social in NYC is hiring interns and postdocs to start in summer 2026! 🎉

Apply by *December 15* for full consideration.