Welcome to The Signal, hosted by Fergus Bell and Tom Trewinnard. In this episode, Fergus speaks with Jessica Davis, Vice President of News Automation and AI Product at USA Today Network. Drawing on her extensive experience leading AI initiatives and capstone research at CUNY, Jessica addresses the critical challenge of scaling AI efficiently while preserving journalistic integrity.

She explains why constant manual oversight - having humans "in the loop" - creates operational bottlenecks and automation bias. Instead, she advocates for a "human on the loop" model, utilising structured AI evaluations and supervisory "evaluator" agents grounded in clear, data-informed metrics.

In this episode, Fergus and Jessica discuss:

• Maintaining Trust: Why "generative AI is probabilistic" and how to manage accuracy risks.
• Avoiding Oversight Fatigue: Moving past manual review without losing editorial control.
• Evolving Standards & Hallucinations: How "evaluator agents" fix errors and prove reliability.
• Embracing Industry Shifts: As Jessica notes: "I do think it's a natural step, and if it makes us uncomfortable, well, why? Let's sit with that a minute... and talk."

If you want to understand how the news is being created and distributed, how AI is - and can be - used in newsrooms, insights from media leaders, practical thinking on the future of journalism, and honest conversations about what's working and what isn't, subscribe and follow to stay close to The Signal.

Fergus and Tom will be here every week. Find The Signal on YouTube, Spotify, Apple and wherever you get your podcasts.

Produced by Rob Fitzpatrick

Edited by James Bullock

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to The Signal, hosted by Fergus Bell and Tom Trewinnard. In this episode, Fergus talks to journalist Simon Ingram to consider what journalism is doing right and wrong when covering the climate crisis. "Sell hell and you are a party pooper - sell joy and you're tone deaf." This self-contained paradox captures the entire editorial problem that journalists are facing.

As Simon says, "Climate journalism has traditionally relied on nobility of the audience, but it's folly to presume that people care about the greater good." So what techniques are there to pull people in and keep them invested? "It's not about saving the planet," Simon says. "It's about saving the human." Journalists need to reframe climate messaging away from supposed ideas of altruism toward the clearer goals of self-interest.

We can see how "words are moving quicker than the pictures" when headlines that describe crisis-level heat waves are paired with simple stock images of people eating ice cream and enjoying paddling pools. Journalism needs to inspire readers to live differently - to make them want to embrace change.

If you want to understand how the news is being created and distributed, how AI is — and can be — used in newsrooms, insights from media leaders and practical thinking on the future of journalism, as well as honest conversations about what's working and what isn't, then subscribe and follow to stay close to The Signal.

Fergus and Tom will be here every week. Find The Signal on YouTube, Spotify, Apple and wherever you get your podcasts.

Produced by Rob Fitzpatrick

Edited by James Bullock

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to The Signal, hosted by Fergus Bell and Tom Trewinnard. In this episose they consider Frontier AI, the story of Anthropic’s Mythos and the government-worrying levels of its capabilities. The power of Fable 5 and the regulation of frontier AI models. Are we at risk of losing access to US-owned technology? What about Chinese-owned “open-weight” models and the surge in demand they’ve created for Mac Minis. Should you build on the best models - and absorb the cost? - or the slightly less intelligent models that no one can turn off?

What are the risks for newsrooms and governments with “model sovereignty”? What about the “token tax” - for those people working in other languages than English? Should we think of AI as electricity, the energy behind what we all do? What AI is the safest to use? How do you get enough space, power and water to provide that service? Fergus and Tom consider Elon’s methane turbines (not a 90s indie band, btw) and the ability of governments to control how models are used.

What about the idea of publicly owned AI models? The question is, of course, is it a bubble? But how can an infrastructure be a bubble? The good news, Fable is back and Tom is happily token-maxing.

If you want to understand how the news is being created and distributed, how AI is — and can be — used in newsrooms, insights from media leaders and practical thinking on the future of journalism, as well as honest conversations about what's working and what isn't, then subscribe and follow to stay close to The Signal.

Fergus and Tom will be here every week. Find The Signal on YouTube, Spotify, Apple and wherever you get your podcasts.

Produced by Rob Fitzpatrick

Edited by James Bullock

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.