LA Times owner plans to add AI-powered ‘bias meter’ on news stories, sparking newsroom backlash

Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who blocked the newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris and plans to overhaul its editorial board, says he will implement an artificial intelligence-powered “bias meter” on the paper’s news articles to provide readers with “both sides” of a story.

Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who blocked the newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris and plans to overhaul its editorial board, says he will implement an artificial intelligence-powered “bias meter” on the paper’s news articles to provide readers with “both sides” of a story. Soon-Shiong, the biotech billionaire who acquired the Times in 2018, told CNN political commentator Scott Jennings — who will join the Times’ editorial board — that he’s been “quietly building” an AI meter “behind the scenes.” The meter, slated to be released in January, is powered by the same augmented intelligence technology that he’s been building since 2010 for health care purposes, Soon-Shiong said. “Somebody could understand as they read it that the source of the article has some level of bias,” he said on Jennings’ “Flyover Country,” podcast. “And what we need to do is not have what we call confirmation bias and then that story automatically, the reader can press a button and get both sides of that exact same story based on that story and then give comments.” Soon-Shiong said major publishers have so far failed to adequately separate news and opinion, which he suggested “could be the downfall of what now people call mainstream media.” The comments prompted a rebuke from the union representing hundreds of the Times’ newsroom staffers, which said Soon-Shiong had “publicly suggested his staff harbors bias, without offering evidence or examples.” “Our members — and all Times staffers — abide by a strict set of ethics guidelines, which call for fairness, precision, transparency, vigilance against bias, and an earnest search to understand all sides of an issue,” the Los Angeles Times Guild said in a statement Thursday. “Those longstanding principles will continue guiding our work.”