On Friday, the New York Times published an article by reporters Benjamin Mullin** and **Katie Robertson headlined “A.I. Sweeps Through Newsrooms, but Is It a Journalist or a Tool?”
As is the rule for such articles, “AI” is never defined. In fact, the article collects a mishmash of various tools that run the gamut from database search tools to generative chat bots, so once again, “AI” means “any cool thing the computer does.”
This is not helpful.
The article starts with California reporter Ryan Sabalow, who used a tool called Digital Democracy to search through a database of the state legislative sessions to find how ofter lawmakers were absen…
On Friday, the New York Times published an article by reporters Benjamin Mullin** and **Katie Robertson headlined “A.I. Sweeps Through Newsrooms, but Is It a Journalist or a Tool?”
As is the rule for such articles, “AI” is never defined. In fact, the article collects a mishmash of various tools that run the gamut from database search tools to generative chat bots, so once again, “AI” means “any cool thing the computer does.”
This is not helpful.
The article starts with California reporter Ryan Sabalow, who used a tool called Digital Democracy to search through a database of the state legislative sessions to find how ofter lawmakers were absent from votes they had spoken in favour of. The article notes:
Not long ago, those questions would send Mr. Sabalow scurrying to some dreary records room or scrolling through a spreadsheet. In the dawning age of generative artificial intelligence, all he had to do was ask a machine.
…
Artificial intelligence is sweeping through newsrooms, transforming the way journalists around the world gather and disseminate information. Traditional news organizations increasingly use tools from companies like OpenAI and Google to streamline work that used to take hours: sifting through reams of information, tracking down sources and suggesting headlines. [emphasis added]
These are all different things!
Digital Democracy is a database search tool with a chat bot built atop it — the database search tool would work perfectly well, probably even better, without the chat bot, using traditional typed prompts instead. Tracking down sources is again a database search, but a tool suggesting headlines is using generative AI, which is a different thing entirely.
I sometimes think that the conflation of database search tools with generative AI is a purposeful, cynical tactic to confuse the reader and promote “AI” as the inevitable future. But more likely, most of the people doing this conflation are doing so out of ignorance — they have no idea what generative AI is, what database search tools are, what machine learning is; it’s all just “the computer did something cool” and they slap an “AI” label on it.
But whether intentional or not, this celebration of a non-defined “AI” serves as a promotional tool for a very select group of ultra-rich tech titans who are primarily shilling generative AI tools alone — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Soras, etc.
Serendipitous discovery
Those generative AI tools are distinctly different and disproportionally problematic compared to the other tools confusingly labeled as “AI.” I’ll return to that in moment, but first let’s consider the database search tools. I’m not as opposed to them as I am to the generative AI tools, but I still have deep concern about them.
It’s inarguable that searching databases can be quite useful, and programs to speed that up can be a time saver. In this instance, Sabalow was looking for a specific thing — lawmakers not voting on bills they spoke in favour of — and he was able to find many such cases quickly.
I wonder, though, what did he miss by not reading the transcripts himself?
He very likely didn’t come across dozens of interesting and potentially reportable things happening at the statehouse. I could imagine: A lawmaker drunkenly slurring his words. A sexual assault. Protestors interrupting a vote. A racist slur uttered beneath someone’s breath. And on and on. All missed, because the machine was looking for one specific thing and lacks the human awareness of the a-ha moment.
I’ll give my own example. I recently was going through death records recorded in Halifax to look for a certain kind of violent death. But as I was going through those “dreary records,” I began seeing other stories.
First it was the discovery of a dead baby found in the moat/ditch around the fort on Citadel Hill, who had died from exposure and starvation. I looked for a contemporary newspaper account for this, but found none. Sadly, infant abandonment was so common that it didn’t always make the papers.
I have since stumbled upon a presumably stillborn child that was discovered floating in the harbour not far from the sewage discharge pipe; the medical examiner wrote that he guessed it was from a poor family who didn’t report the loss and simply tossed the fetus in the toilet. I’ve seen lots and lots of both children and mothers dying at birth.
I haven’t written about this, but it has given me a deeper understanding of just how precarious infancy was, and how dangerous childbirth was. It informs my read of the time, my grip on history.
Oh, and I found something else — a tuberculosis outbreak. Again I checked the newspapers and found nothing. I’ve read medical journals talking about infectious disease outbreaks in Halifax, and while they mention some, they don’t mention this specific instance. Just the fact of the outbreak is worth writing about, but it additionally adds to the history of Halifax, and the medical, government, and social responses to such outbreaks.
Had I asked a database search tool to find me examples of the kind of violent death I was looking for, I’m confident it would have produced many of them. However, it would not have given me the insight I now have into the travails of infancy and birthing, nor would I have discovered the tuberculosis outbreak.
This kind of serendipitous discovery happens all the time. Many times, I’ve assigned a story to a reporter, and they come back to me, saying “yeah, I can do that, but when I talked to this one source, they told me about this other thing that I think is more important.”
Another of my own examples. When I started investigating Verdun Mitchell, the Halifax chief of police who killed himself in his office, I learned he had actually grown up in the county jail; his father, Malcolm Mitchell, was the jailer, and as was the practice at the time, the jailer and his family lived in a cottage attached to the jail cells.
And so I started learning about the jail. I sat for a few weeks in the municipal archives going through jail records, the jailer’s daily log (where I discovered a previously undiscovered account of the Halifax Explosion), the jail doctor’s reports, council reports on the jail, and so forth.
One thing I learned is that during Malcolm Mitchell’s tenure as jailer, five men were executed at the jail. The last of them was Daniel Sampson, on March 7, 1935. At the time, Verdun was 19 years old, still living with his parents, and working as a turnkey for his father.
I can’t prove it with documentary evidence, but I think it very probable that Verdun was present for the execution — it’d be odd were he not there. Here was a young man, in the formative years of his career; later that year, he married, moved out of the family home and was hired by the Halifax City Police as a constable. I thought I should probably learn more about that execution and about Daniel Sampson.
I spent the next eight months documenting the wrongful conviction of Daniel Sampson, how he was framed by the RCMP for a murder he did not commit, and how the state murdered an innocent man.
The result was my multi-part series on Sampson, and some of my work is included in the application to the Justice department for Sampson’s exoneration. If that is granted, it will be the only capital case in Canadian history that is acknowledged as a miscarriage of justice.
Needless to say, a machine prompted to find information about Verdun Mitchell would have never documented the wrongful conviction of Daniel Sampson.
A machine could not have read thousands of court transcripts written in longhand, transcripts that are not digitized but rather kept in cardboard boxes in “some dreary records room” in the bowels of the provincial archives.
A machine could not have walked the supposed murder scene and realized the impossible geography used to convict Sampson.
A machine would have never postulated that detective Thomas McKay, the cop who was said to have gotten a ‘confession’ out of Sampson might also have produced other ‘confessions’ from other accused people, and then go back to the dreary records room to find that indeed that was the case.
All this work — finding unexpected things in databases, reporters coming back with a better story than was assigned, making connections between things no one thought to connect before — takes curiosity, whimsy, and the actual intelligence to know when something is important, none of which ‘AI’ possesses.
Generative AI cannot truly write
Let’s return to the specific use of generative AI in newsrooms. The New York Times reporters discuss a few, starting with Axios:
Axios, the Beltway publication that has been outspokenly pro-A.I., is experimenting with the technology for its Axios Local newsletters and automating news roundups by using OpenAI’s ChatGPT to find the most relevant news stories of the day, with oversight by a reporter, said Allison Murphy, the chief operating officer of Axios.
“The efforts to automate are not about cutting quality corners. It’s not about dropping reporter jobs,” Ms. Murphy explained. “It’s about anything that isn’t human expertise: Let’s find the best, fastest way to do it.”
Axios has also developed the Axiomizer, an A.I. tool to help generate the outlet’s trademark axioms such as “why it matters” and “one big thing.” Ms. Murphy said reporters were able to chat with the tool to get recommendations and edits.
If you believe this is not about dropping reporting jobs, I have a bridge to sell you. That aside, no matter how much these ‘AI’ backers assure us that quality will be maintained, in actual fact, these tools produce crap all the time.
Look no further than The Coast’s disastrous use of AI to produce an embarrassingly and laughably error-ridden ‘Best of Halifax’ survey.
That was no one-off exception. Recall the Chicago Sun Times’s “summer reading list” fiasco. Or the “very dumb errors” on CNET’s AI-generated articles. Or MSN.com adding insulting AI-produced “polls” to news articles.
The Times’ reporters do note that:
At Bloomberg, an experiment with A.I. to generate news article summaries has resulted in dozens of corrections. A note appended to one, an Aug. 1 article about Switzerland’s reaction to President Trump’s tariffs, said: “A faulty A.I. summary was removed for misrepresenting surplus as a deficit.” And the publication removed a summary on a Sept. 22 feature about private equity because it had misattributed a quote.
But the very next paragraph places the blame for these mistakes not on the technology, but on the people who are assigned to check the AI’s output:
Bloomberg has said that 99 percent of A.I. summaries met the outlet’s editorial standards and that journalists had full control over whether a summary appeared. “We’re transparent when stories are updated or corrected, and when A.I. has been used,” the company said in a statement.
It appears that just as with ‘self-driving cars,’ Amazon’s “cashier-free” shops, and Elon Musk’s robot, the ‘AI’ tools being used by newsrooms are Mechanical Turks.
Just as with the limitations of database search tools, the reason that generative AI tools make ‘mistakes’ is because they’re simply predictive text systems and lack actual intelligence.
‘Mistakes’ are baked right into the construction of these tools; there’s no way to avoid them.
But even if ‘mistakes’ could be avoided (they can’t), they are a disservice to both reporters and readers.
Writing is an actual skill. A human skill. Every writer knows what it’s like to struggle to find the right words, the best argument and voice to express something. And often, perhaps always, doing that work leads to creative insight, a better argument, a more persuasive voice.
I commented to someone the other day that I often find that when people for whom English is a second language struggle to find the right words, the very act of the struggle conveys more meaning than a more practiced English speaker could express. That’s what it’s like for writing — the struggle results in the better expression.
As with digging through paper records at the archives, the hardship of the work, the struggle, and the messiness of writing — the humanity of it, if you will — is what’s most valuable about it. It’s how we learn, it’s how we grow. Replacing that with “AI” cheapens and degrades the process, and leaves us the poorer.
Don’t mention the vironmentenay
A new Amazon data centre in Ashburn, Virginia. Credit: screenshot from YouTube
The environmental impact of database search tools is limited compared to that of generative AI tools. The latter are so destructive environmentally that the Halifax Examiner is going to devote several articles in this series to the issue.
But for now, I’ll just note that the New York Times reporters don’t address environmental issues. As with nearly all AI hype, the environmental destruction is not discounted as something that will be solved in the future, but rather is simply ignored completely. The words ‘climate,’ ‘environment,’ ‘electricity,’ and ‘water’ do not appear in the article at all.
This is a crime against reporting. It’s like interviewing the fascinating Mr. Dahmer and not mentioning all the dead bodies — environmental destruction is as much of the essence of generative AI as murder is of the essence of Jeffrey Dahmer.
As Teresa Heffernan pointed out last week, the fossil fuel companies are backing generative AI precisely because they know the environmental issues are insolvable. All of the “magnificent seven” tech firms have abandoned their greenhouse gas reduction targets because they know operating the data centres necessary to run their models requires increasing the use of fossil fuels. And that the Canadian federal government is poised to abandon its climate targets just as it embraces ‘AI.’
The AI hype machine is done with worrying about climate change.
So on the one hand, we have a bunch of terrible uses of mistake-ridden ‘AI’ with wish-and-a-prayer, completely fictional speculation about what ‘AI’ might one day in the distant future be capable of.
On the other hand, we have the actual documented current-day destruction of the environment and acceleration of climate change because of ‘AI.”
We make choices about which of those stories we decide to report on.
This is another in the Halifax Examiner’s series looking at AI, which is the hook for our November subscription drive. Previous articles in the series are:
What is ‘artificial intelligence,’ anyway? The confusion is the point Resisting the AI push into education Ed Zitron calls bullshit on AI hype I’m with Emma Thompson. I don’t want AI to ‘fucking rewrite what I’ve just written’ either Teresa Heffernan on how AI is shaped by fiction
I hope you value this work, and value it enough to support it with your subscription or donation.
Thank you!
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NOTICED
Tim Houston is a poppy head
Premier Tim Houston speaking with reporters on Oct. 30, 2025. Credit: Jennifer Henderson
By now readers are no doubt aware of Premier Tim Houston’s foray into poppy politics.
The short of it is that a judge in Saskatchewan issued a decree against wearing Remembrance Day poppies in their courtroom, and Houston decided to weigh in, issuing a statement:
It has come to my attention that earlier this week there was an order issued prohibiting individuals working in certain court facilities from wearing poppies while on duty in those locations. This order was issued under the guise that the poppy is somehow a ‘political statement.’
This is disgusting.
The poppy is not a political statement. It is a symbol of remembrance and respect for the fallen and those who served and continue to serve our country. Poppies have been worn in Canada since 1921.
We have courts and a democracy because of the courage of those who are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in pursuit of, and in defence of, the very rights and freedoms we enjoy.
The judges who issued this order are wrong.
While I respect the independence of the judiciary, I respect veterans, the very people who made the ultimate sacrifice defending our country, our values and our democracy, more.
It is not lost on me that our veterans fought so we can enjoy the freedoms the courts uphold. That’s why I find it impossible to believe any judge would ban a symbol of respect for the fallen, our veterans and their families.
I stand firmly behind anyone who wants to wear a poppy in their workplace.
Because of the actions of these judges, if necessary, I will introduce The Nova Scotia Remembrance Observance Act that will enshrine the right to wear a poppy in the workplace from November 1 to November 11.
Houston says that “the poppy is not a political statement.” But it is a political statement. And not wearing a poppy is also a political statement. It’s politics either way.
People have different understandings of “politics.” Some see it very narrowly as partisan party politics — Liberals and PCs and NDPers and Greens attacking each other — but that doesn’t capture the full political dynamic in society.
Pretty much anything we do has a political dynamic to it, whether we recognize that or not.
I remember attending my first Remembrance Day ceremony, in 2005 at the cenotaph at the duck pond in Dartmouth. In the U.S., where I grew up, Remembrance Day is not recognized, and I was truly inspired by what I read of the history of Remembrance Day — remembering the needless slaughter of the First World War, the ugliness of war, and the importance of avoiding future war.
But then when I actually went to the cenotaph, those congregated sang “Onward Christian Soldiers.” This was just as Canadian troops were in Afghanistan. I understood the song to be a political statement adjacent to Christian nationalists fighting Muslims. I was horrified by it.
Because I still believe in the spirit of the foundation of Remembrance Day, I’ve since gone to a few ceremonies. I’ve even been to the Dartmouth ceremony, where they continue to sing that damn song. I’ve been to ceremonies on the peninsula, which were more to my liking, except that warships fly overhead, which is a corruption of the spirit of Remembrance Day. I was even at the ceremony in Toronto, the one Rob Ford appeared at just after the crack video was made public. I’m going to a ceremony tomorrow.
I understand the “white poppy” thing. I understand why people are angry about the corruption and takeover of an anti-war holiday by the military. I also understand the obviously deeply held respect people have for veterans.
But let’s not pretend any of this is not political. All of it is political. The entire point of Remembrance Day is political. Whatever view you have about Remembrance Day, whether you observe it or not, whether you wear the poppy or a white poppy or no poppy at all is political. Which ceremony you go to is political.
And the most political use of Remembrance Day I’ve encountered is Tim Houston’s statement above. It’s meta-political: trying to score actual partisan political advantage by riling up and appealing to one segment of the political response to Remembrance Day.
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THE LATEST FROM THE HALIFAX EXAMINER:
1. Nova Scotia Power profits drop due to cyberattack
A Nova Scotia Power vehicle on July 16, 2025. Credit: Yvette d’Entremont
Jennifer Henderson reports:
A cyberattack on Nova Scotia Power’s information systems discovered in April not only continues to disrupt business operations, but is impacting the company’s profits as well.
The power company’s parent corporation, Emera Inc., released financial results Friday for the three months ending Sept. 30.
Profit at Nova Scotia Power dropped 50% from the same three months last year, with the company reporting $13 million in 2025 compared to $26 million in 2024.
Nova Scotia Power said it expects to make less profit than its allowable annual rate of return on equity of 9%.
Click or tap here to read “Nova Scotia Power profits drop due to cyberattack”
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**2. **‘We’re not being heard’: Mount Uniacke residents wait on quarry expansion decision
Northumberland Capital Corporation Inc.’s quarry in Mount Uniacke. Credit: Contributed
Suzanne Rent reports:
Residents in Mount Uniacke have just days to wait until they receive news on a decision to expand a quarry 10 times its current size, which they say poses risks to the environment and their community.
In May 2022, we reported on the first concerns residents had about the expansion of the four-hectare quarry that is owned by Northumberland Capital Corporation Inc. (NCCI). The company uses the quarry to produce aggregate for construction and infrastructure projects.
The quarry was built in 2015, and residents opposed the project then but lost their appeal. In 2022, NCCI applied to expand the quarry to 40 hectares or 10 times its current size.
Since learning about the proposed expansion, residents in and around Mount Uniacke have organized to stop the expansion. They submitted comments to the Department of Environment and Climate Change, started a Facebook page, and hosted open houses in the community where the area’s MLA Brad Johns and other officials could answer questions.
On Wednesday, I spoke with Stephen Marsh, who’s lived in Mount Uniacke for more than 50 years. He said residents will get a decision on or before Nov. 12 if the expansion will get approval from the province. The Department of Environment and Climate Change has a page on the proposed quarry expansion here.
If the expansion is granted, work would start in the summer of 2026 and the quarry could operate for another 30 to 50 years.
“We feel like we’re not being heard, we’re not being taken seriously,’” Marsh said. “It feels like things are being swept under the carpet. The community feels like we’re being shoved aside, and this is being rammed down our throats.”
Click or tap here to read “‘We’re not being heard’: Mount Uniacke residents wait on quarry expansion decision.”
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3. Millbrook First Nation and MSVU join to promote Indigenous tourism education
From left to right: Joël Dickinson, Helen Long, Kelsie Johnston, Lori Francis, Dionne Ettinger, Brett Bernard, Monica Sani, Lori Paul, Cathy Martin, Art Stevens, and Chief Bob Gloade. Credit: Nicholas Jones /MSVU AV team
Madiha Mughees reports:
Millbrook First Nation and Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU) have announced a new partnership to promote Indigenous tourism education.
The Kinu Tourism Project offers a one-year certificate, a two-year diploma, and a four-year degree program to Indigenous students.
While the first cohort began in 2024, a partnership with the Millbrook First Nation was established in October 2025 to support the participation of Millbrook youth in the project.
Kinu, meaning “us/together,” is grounded in the guiding principles of Etuaptmumk (Two-Eyed Seeing, an Indigenous guiding principle).
Kelsie Johnston, the project manager for the Kinu Tourism Project, said in an interview that the program was established to address gaps in the tourism industry related to Indigenous tourism.
“There’s this huge demand from tourists to have more Indigenous tourism opportunities in terms of experiences and products, but there aren’t enough trained and educated professionals to keep up with that demand, especially here in Mi’kma’ki and in the Atlantic region,” Johnston said.
“So this new partnership is allowing high school students in Millbrook to consider taking a course before they formally enter MSVU and receive credit for it, even if they haven’t gotten their high school diploma or equivalency,” Johnston said.
Last summer about 20 high school students from Millbrook visited the campus. They stayed overnight and experienced MSVU firsthand.
Click or tap here to read “Millbrook First Nation and MSVU join to promote Indigenous tourism education.”
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Government
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On campus
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Mount Saint Vincent
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NSCAD
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Saint Mary’s
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Literary Events
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In the harbour
Halifax 03:30: One Eagle, container ship, sails from Pier 41 for New York 05:30: Muntgracht, cargo ship, arrives at Fairview Cove from St. John’s 06:00: Tropic Lissette, cargo ship, arrives at Pier 42 from Philipsburg, St. Croix 10:30: Jamaica, cargo ship, arrives at Fairview Cove from Valencia, Spain 11:00: Rt Hon Paul E Martin, bulker, sails from Gold Bond for sea 11:00: CSL Tacoma, bulker, moves from anchorage to Gold Bond 14:30: Algoma East Coast, oil tanker, arrives at Irving Oil from Saint John 15:30: Morning Cornella, car carrier, arrives at Autoport from Goteborg, Sweden 16:00: Muntgracht sails for sea 21:30: Morning Cornella sails for sea 23:00: Tropic Lissette sails for West Palm Beach, Florida
Cape Breton 09:00: Radcliffe R. Latimer, bulker, arrives at Mulgrave from Georgetown, PEI
Footnotes
In recognition of Remembrance Day, the Examiner won’t be publishing tomorrow. This is totally a political statement.