Almost three years ago, I happened to have Mustafa Suleyman as a table neighbor at a hotel breakfast in Davos. Suleyman was already one of the absolute heaviest powers in the global AI industry, as co-founder of the AI lab Deepmind. Today he is CEO of Microsoft AI.
I had no idea who he was. Instead, I tried to be polite and asked a little naively, "So what do you do?"
When Mustafa Suleyman told me he was working on AI, I quickly retorted, "So what do you think about the future of journalism?"
Suleyman did not take very long with his answer. His prediction was as shocking as it was clear: within two years, practically everything that is currently done by journalists will be able to be produced by AI.
I remember thinking the answer was a bit unrealistic, perhaps because I myself – the year was 2024 – underestimated the power of the technological shift. But the answer lingered in his head and started a larger conversation at DN's editorial office about how we should work with artificial intelligence.
Because there is no doubt that journalists need to embrace AI, just as newsrooms once embraced computers, the internet and mobile phones. But there is something in Mustafa Suleyman's prediction that is missing, and which testifies to a lack of understanding of what journalism is.
A newspaper like DN is made by people, for people.
Or to be very concrete and take a very current example: it is difficult to see Chat GPT going to Åmot in Gästrikland to depict how the leftist Ida Gabrielsson and her father Benke take a sauna. DN's reporter Björn af Kleen and photographer Linus Sundahl Djerf did that a couple of weeks ago.
During the conversation around the kitchen table, Benke, known for his open mouth, suggests that the government crisis should be solved by shoving the Centre's Martin Ådahl into the family's wood-burning sauna: "Put him in the corner, then he won't come out, and then 92 degrees!" exclaims Benke.
Ida Gabrielsson howls with laughter, and hangs up:
"Then just: sign the contract!"
I have no idea if the DN report was good or bad for Ida Gabrielsson. I don't know if it favors or disadvantages the red-greens' chances of forming a government. But I'm pretty sure the uproar over the article was about one thing: authenticity.
In the flow of perfect AI content, polished policy remarks and millions of image-poor social clips, the portrait of Ida Gabrielsson conveyed a living human smoking, swearing and laughing. The language captured the genuine, also in the growing up environment.
Sandviken is so close to Stockholm, yet so far away. It is liberating when journalism succeeds in opening doors to closed rooms and we get to listen to a person like Benke, in his own words. It's a fun and rich language, as far from the carefree Chat GPT Swedish as you can get.
I got a similar feeling when, earlier this year, I took part in Malena Rydell's interview with Anna Lindh's son David - a text that this week was nominated for the Stora journalist prize. You read and it's like you hear another person's sadness, anger and joy. It conjures up images in your head that no chatbot in the world can create. David Lindh appeared in person, just as Ida Gabrielsson and Benke are now doing.
How does such a report come about? Björn af Kleen went to Åmot for profit and loss. There it stopped. The number listed on address sites for the parents' home did not match the location. The neighbors did not want to say which house Benke lived in.
The following morning, however, a man at Tempo Åmot came to the rescue and directed Björn to the villa. Benke opened in his underpants and declined an interview.
That same evening, Björn was able to get to the SVT recording of Skavlan in Stockholm, where he knew that Ida Gabrielsson would participate.
A contact with Gabrielsson was established. After two weeks of texting, she was positive, but couldn't give a definite date. DN traveled to Sandviken again. One late Thursday afternoon, Björn ran into Ida while she was smoking outside a bus shelter in the mill town. He finally got the go-ahead for an interview the following day.
Journalism is often about making that extra journey – and gaining trust.
AI is already helping newsrooms work faster and smarter, and the pace will increase. But Chat GPT and other tools don't just lack judgement. The chatbots do not visit any places and are not trusted to have a coffee at someone's house. They are extremely connected and filled with data, but at the same time completely soulless.
When Evelyn Jones and Tomas Ramberg talk in the podcast "Alskade politik", it is exactly two living people we hear. They don't sound the same and they aren't expected to sound the same. They are anything but synthetic copies.
Mustafa Suleyman is also a passionate voice, who, in conversation with me at that breakfast, expressed strong frustration with the way the Western media reported the situation in Gaza – a human proof that journalism must not become a robotic profession. It requires presence in the places one reports from and judgment to sort and value.
Today I would have liked to ask him a counter question about how he views the dramatically falling Pisa results in the Western world, and what he thinks about the fact that more and more young people are losing the ability to get through a book and to express themselves in writing.
The writer thinks. You need to write in order to think.
I think Suleyman was right that AI is reshaping our societies, including the conditions of journalism.
But the day DN stops being made by people, for people, the newspaper loses a crucial reason why it has such a close relationship with its readers – also in this AI era.
