In the global survey we conducted last year about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) by news organisations, most respondents highlighted the urgent need to educate and train their newsroom on the potential offered by machine learning and other AI-powered technologies. Improving AI literacy was seen as vital to change culture and improve understanding of new tools and systems:

AI literacy is crucial. We are looking at how to better educate our journalists on everything from rudimentary coding through to data science. The more the newsroom at large embraces the technology and generates the ideas and expertise for AI projects, the better the outcome.

The message from newsrooms was loud and clear. So we decided to do something about it. That’s why we’re announcing a free training course produced by JournalismAI in collaboration with VRT News – the news department of VRT, one of the leading public broadcasters in Europe – and with the support of the Google News Initiative.

This Introduction to Machine Learning is built by journalists, for journalists, and it will help answer questions such as: What is machine learning? How do you train a machine learning model? What can journalists and news organisations do with it and why is it important to use it responsibly?

The course is available in 17 different languages on the Google News Initiative Training Centre. By logging in, you can track your progress and get a certificate when you complete the course. The Training Center also has a variety of other courses to help you find, verify and tell news stories online.

It’s a tough time for journalists and news organisations worldwide, as they try to assess the impact that Covid-19 will have on the business and editorial side of the industry. The goal of JournalismAI is to facilitate access to AI technologies and help newsrooms leverage their potential to support their work in these uncertain times. This course complements our recently launched collaborative experiment, as well as our effort to highlight profiles and experiments that show the transformative potential of AI and machine learning in shaping the journalist, and the journalism, of the future.

At the end of the course, you’ll find a list of recommended resources, produced by journalism and technology experts across the world, that have been instrumental in designing our Introduction to Machine Learning and will help you dive even deeper in the world of AI and automation. Special thanks to Nick Diakopoulos and the Quartz AI Studio for their pioneering work on AI/ML education for journalists and to Jarno Koponen, Head of AI at Yle News Lab, for his invaluable feedback during the production of the course.

And we are not done. After this course, and the previous training module with strategic suggestions on AI adoption, we are planning to design more training resources on AI and machine learning for journalists later this year. Sign up for the JournalismAI newsletter to stay updated.

In December 2020, JournalismAI launched a second training course: Hands-On Machine Learning for Journalists.

JournalismAI is a project of Polis, supported by the Google News Initiative.