The AI Battle Brewing Inside The New York Times
▼ Summary
– The debate over AI use in newsrooms is increasingly being settled through union negotiations with publishers.
– Unionized Tech Guild staff at *The New York Times* say management has withheld information about current and future AI use and its impact on jobs.
– The Tech Guild filed an unfair labor practice charge earlier this month over this refusal to provide information.
How newsrooms handle artificial intelligence, or whether they should use it at all, has been a persistent question across the media industry for years. Those answers are increasingly being forged not in newsrooms alone, but at the bargaining table between publishers and their unions. Right now, staff at The New York Times are bracing for a major confrontation.
Unionized employees in the Tech Guild, part of the NewsGuild, say that Times management has refused to share crucial information about how the company has already deployed AI, its future plans for the technology, and the potential impact on jobs and daily workflows. Earlier this month, the union filed an unfair labor practice charge over the dispute. The Tech Guild argues that without transparency on these issues, workers cannot properly negotiate over the effects of automation and performance monitoring on their roles.
(Source: The Verge)
