News Corp chief Robert Thomson predicts significant job losses due to the growing threat from AI

Robert Thomson says artificial intelligence technology poses a substantial risk to the media industry and will hit jobs.

News Corporation chief executive Robert Thomson.

News Corporation chief executive Robert Thomson has warned of a “tsunami” of job losses due to the rise of artificial ­intelligence technology.

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia in San Francisco on Thursday, Mr Thomson said “Big Digital” had already led to mass job losses in the media industry and AI posed another huge threat.

“We’re facing another wave, in this case a tsunami, potentially, of job losses because of the impact of AI,” Mr Thomson said.

“And these are not just jobs lost, but it’s insight lost … and so it’s important that all media companies understand the ­impact.

“But it’s also incumbent on the big AI players to understand their impact.”

He noted the dramatic decline in newsroom employment in the US from 2008 to 2020 – down by at least 57 per cent – was due to digital disruption, and now AI could have similar negative impact.

“We’re in a position where there’s an even more damaging wave looming,” Mr Thomson warned.

He also said there was a need for “a lot of debate about AI in journalism”.

In recent times Mr Thomson has spoken often about his concerns with the booming AI industry, saying News Corp should be compensated for its intellectual property, which is already being used to train generative AI engines.

“We have various negotiations going on,” he said.

“We prefer to reward the journalists, not the lawyers, who are the inevitable beneficiaries.”

Mr Thomson also spoke of the dangers of using AI, which can be inaccurate and lead to the distribution of “potentially damaging content”.

“People have to understand that AI is essentially retrospective,” he said.

“It’s about permutations of pre-existing content.

“The danger is, it’s rubbish in, rubbish out and in this case, rubbish all about.

“The inputs may themselves be fundamentally flawed.”

Mr Thomson was asked if AI would play a role in producing journalistic content for its mastheads around the world, including The Wall Street Journal, and replace reporters.

“Well, it’ll have an impact in most departments in most companies,” he said.

“And so, certainly in editorial, it’s not going to replace great writing, and I think there’s some misunderstanding.

“It will replace certain simple functions; in back office and code writing, it’s clearly going to have a profound impact.”

Mr Thomson also said that with looming elections in the US, there were issues with AI providing content that was objective when covering important political events.

“The problem with AI is it can recycle subjectivity and pretend that it’s objectivity,” he said.

“We already see that in some of the AI snippets that we’re tracking.

“And I think it’s also incumbent on other news organisations to put some resources into tracking and to understanding, to divining digitally, what’s evolving, both for the sake of the value of their content, but also to see how their content may be misused or abused.”

News Corp, publisher of The Australian, in August registered its second highest year of profitability, with a surge in digital revenues and Foxtel’s subscription services growing.