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The rise of artificial intelligence has raised grave questions about its environmental toll, its impact on the labor market, and even its potential status as an existential threat to humanity.
Journalists can and should have a healthy dose of skepticism about AI, Chase Davis told the Center for Health Journalism’s 2025 Data Fellows. But for reporters trying to dig up the truth, AI can also be a powerful tool to handle practical problems that pop up routinely while reporting, he said.
“I tend to think that the best uses of generative AI are extremely, extremely boring,” said Davis, a pioneer in journalistic uses of AI who has worked for the Minnesota Star Tribune and The New York Times.
Davis, the keynote speaker for the 2025 program, encouraged reporters to think creatively about how AI can help them find and tell better stories, not just the “low-hanging fruit” of generating headlines or three-bullet story summaries.
AI can make the painstaking work of data journalism faster, Davis said, and can also make the field more accessible to journalists: Instead of poring over programming languages like R or Python, a reporter can prompt AI to write the code they need, he explained.
But Davis also cautioned journalists not to check their journalistic standards at the door when using AI: Its results should be rigorously verified and fact-checked, he said.
With AI still in its infancy, Davis sees “an opportunity to take this technology that no one has really figured out yet and turn it toward the bits of our mission that matter.”
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