PUTRAJAYA: Artificial intelligence (AI) cannot replace professional journalism due to its limitations and “lack of human heart”, says Fahmi Fadzil.
The Communications Minister said the human factor of interacting between people was an important part of being a journalist that AI could not replicate.
“Journalists’ jobs can never become redundant as while AI is able to chug out professional articles quickly, it lacks the personal connection and touch that only human journalists are able to incorporate into stories.
“This includes things such as being able to have one-to-one interviews and the ability to express unique experiences when they travel to the site for the story.
“AI is mostly only able to write about 60% of an article based on facts as the remaining parts can only be filled by the human mind with emotions and personal experiences,” he said here yesterday.
Instead of doom, Fahmi suggests that journalists utilise AI to reduce their workload by helping to craft better stories with quicker and easier verifying of facts.
To this, Fahmi said he plans to hold discussions with the Malaysian Press Institute on creating more AI training sessions and modules for journalists in the country.
Meanwhile, Fahmi said there are no plans to allocate funds for “exclusive deals” that encourage popular foreign artistes to perform in the country.
Such deals were handled entirely by private companies, he said, explaining that the government’s role was to approve applications by these companies.
“Most of these exclusive concert events are organised and agreed upon between private companies that sign contracts to bring in artistes to perform in a single country at a region.”
Citing an example, he said the concert by British rock band Muse in Malaysia last year was a result of discussions held among the organisers.
Fahmi said his ministry would focus only on simplifying the approval procedures as there had been complaints about the slow process.
“Any decision to allocate funding to bring in foreign artistes is entirely up to the Tourism, Arts and Culture Ministry,” he said.
Fahmi was asked if the government would consider allocating funds to secure exclusivity deals with popular celebrities to perform in Malaysia.
