Rush or Reflect? What Deadline Reporters and Investigative Journalists teach us about AI

Deadline reporters and OpenAI's ChatGPT 4o both deliver fast, excellent results. Same day for a deadline reporter, milliseconds for the AI.

Investigative journalists and OpenAIs ChatGPT o1 take longer and dig deeper. Sometimes weeks for an investigative journalist. Often seconds for the AI.

After hours and hours of banging on both models, as well as decades leading deadline reporters and investigative journalists, my experience so far leads me to an immutable conclusion: one is just as valuable as the other.

And, counting Emmys is no way to measure their utility.

• GPT 4o is a so-called “System 1 AI”— with honed, intuitive and near-instant predictive outputs.?
• GPT o1 is a newer “System 2 AI“ and, as with an investigative journalist, we afford it more time to be deliberate and analytical.?

By design, System 2 AI’s are proudly slower, patiently thoughtful and harder to manage (in terms of compute resources and expense).?

I used the exact same “zero-shot” prompt in both ChatGPT 4o (System 1) and ChatGPT o1 (System 2):?

• ChatGPT 4o delivered an excellent output in about two (2) seconds and 462 words (approx 616 tokens). ?
• ChatGPT o1 delivered a more detailed, thoughtful, output in about six (6) seconds and 684 words (approx 912 tokens). ?
• Twice as long to process the same prompt. Along the way, indicating its step-by-step thinking.

System 1 Deadline Reporters generally work with more straightforward data and cached insights. "I can see it. It's a fire. They are getting a handle on it now. I know because my experience tells me the color of the smoke changes from black to grayish white with water."

System 2 Investigative Reporters, however, sift through vast amounts of data, double-check against training instructions and deliver more nuanced outputs—even if it takes longer. "This is the 6th such fire in the same block in the last 415 days. Three firefighters have been injured here in that same timeline. Although arson is blamed for the previous fires, no arrests have been made. Damages to properties here already exceed 14 million dollars."

Were we talking about AI Systems or newsrooms? Both. The point is to conflate the two, making the analogy memorable and clear.

System 1 AIs keep interactions snappy, accurate and fast enough to have a real-time dialogue with it. It's not better. Just different. More instant utility. Fewer costs.

System 2 elevates the quality of results. Again, not better. Just different. And, more costly with added compute.

As we integrate AI into business strategies—TV journalism, marketing, HR, Finance and analytics—understanding when to optimize for speed vs. depth can make or break the experience or the budget or both.

Days, milliseconds, weeks or seconds. It's about time.

*I'm not a 10-thousand hour AI subject matter expert, but I am a super-user with about 2,000 hours of "fingers on keyboards" using AI tools and many more hours of online courses and certifications.

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