Asking whether reporters covering technology are technologists might be a very meta topic for a column about women in tech written by a woman in tech. But that was the compelling question posed by journalist Alex Stern in our recent conversation.
Stern is a producer of the podcast A.I. Nation, a new project from Philadelphia’s public broadcast station WHYY and Princeton University. An English major who has spent the last four years at WHYY, she posits that journalists are technologists in multiple ways. Not only do those covering the industry often share a passion for the subject and help inform others, but they also must leverage and utilize technology in their daily work to produce their stories and podcasts.
Stern points out that the leap has happened quickly. She recalls being trained by people who operated in the pre-computer age and had actually used tape and razor blades to physically assemble some of their pieces. Now, reporters must understand how to deploy a wide range of tech tools from hardware devices to online platforms to perform their jobs.
For Stern and other podcast producers, that new technological floor is even higher. She says proficiency with audio software tools like Pro Tools is table stakes. And the pandemic forced many to expand their skill set even further because they are no longer able to rely on engineers in the newsroom to work with guests and for interviews. Now, reporters have to handle their own setup while assisting guests and troubleshooting remotely.
Of course, Stern says those journalists covering technology or a technical topic must also have a “fluency” with it to report effectively and honestly. For her, that fluency can be traced back to vacations with her family.
Growing up, Stern’s family spent a lot of time outdoors and visited a different National Park for each of their vacations. That time spent hiking and exploring inspired her and seeded an interest in science. In particular, learning that some of the lakes in Glacier National Park were a tropical blue because of glacier melt accelerated by climate change fascinated her to the point of writing about it for her college application essay.
She says it moved her in a way that she had never experienced in a traditional science classroom setting and motivated her to find other ways to pursue the connection between science and our everyday experiences. That dream was realized when she began writing for WHYY’s health and science podcast The Pulse. There, she was able to speak with scientists about the curiosity and sense of wonder that drove their explorations.
Curiosity is a trait shared by Stern, and what drives her now with the A.I. Nation podcast. Conceived as a way to demonstrate how AI is impacting our everyday lives more than we might realize, it teams her with journalist Malcolm Burnley and Ed Felten, computer science professor and former AI and technology advisor to the Obama Administration, as the two co-hosts. Together, they explore subjects like AI in relation to unconscious bias, driverless vehicles, automated weaponry, and preventing the next pandemic.
Stern is enthusiastic when it comes to breaking down the many layers of AI at work in our daily lives. As a baseline, she wants people to realize how pervasive it is – an ever-present feature of even commonplace things like Facebook, GPS systems, and online ads. The dramatic growth in machine learning and computing power over the last decade has led to an explosion in applications.
Stern says sometimes this can be an obvious win for humanity: “Who wouldn’t want faster development of drugs and vaccines to fight illnesses?” But there isn’t always transparency in how AI is applied in areas like policing, or it might have unintended consequences in others.
Ethical questions are also top of mind for Stern, specifically the way in which AI has been shown to replicate bias or can contribute to increased political polarization via social media algorithms.
This duality is a theme of the podcast and why Stern says that our society is at an inflection point where we have to determine how big of a role we want AI to play in our lives. She believes now is the moment when we have to decide where we want to want to lean into AI, where we need to set up guardrails, and where we need to ban the technology.
“We’re at the beginning of a journey,” she said. “And we need to deliberately plot our course.”
For Stern, that means translating the human experience for AI so that it functions more seamlessly in cooperation with us. Just as we imagine robots as a kind of replication of humans, so too is AI a mirror of humanity. We are teaching it to speak and think like us so that it can operate independently.
But she cautions that plugging AI into that shared human experience allows it to learn the good and bad equally. Like a child, we must be careful what we teach it so that the unintended consequences do not spiral. She says that as AI becomes a greater part of our world it can either propel us forward or hold us back. Her goal with the podcast is to highlight the areas where it impacts us and how we can all take a more active role in that ultimate determination.
Stern’s experience is yet another example of how more women can enter technology. Just as every company is now a tech company in some way, so too are we all technologists in at least some small way in our own lives. But like Stern, it’s possible to also impact technologies and even entire industries by having a passion or a podium. Find your voice and tap into your inner techie.
