Ep11 - The Opposite of AI Slop: AI, Journalism, and Government Transparency

What does AI have to do with democracy? More than most people realize. In this episode — recorded on My Robot Teacher's one-year anniversary — we're joined by Kim Bisheff (Journalism, Cal Poly SLO) and Emmy-award winning professor Foaad Khosmood (Computer Engineering, Cal Poly SLO), the team behind the Digital Democracy Project, an AI-powered tool that makes state legislative proceedings searchable, transparent, and accessible to journalists and ordinary citizens alike.In this episode:What the Digital Democracy Project is, how it works, and why it won an EmmyAI as a civic tool: using machine attention to shine light on the government proceedings nobody has time to readWhy AI didn't start with ChatGPT — and why that history matters             How Kim uses AI in the journalism classroom to teach story-finding, accountability reporting, and the politics of summarization                   The hard lessons of the social media era — and how public-interest          technologists are trying not to repeat them                                   Jargon as an enemy of transparency — and AI as a potential democratizer of dense government language                                                   The difference between AI built for engagement and AI built for the public good                                                                        "AI is not a monster to be feared. It's a monster to befriend."                                                                                My Robot Teacher is hosted by Sarah Senk and Taiyo Inoue, sponsored by the California Education Learning Lab, and produced by editaudio.                                                                                                 📄 Full transcripts available on Substack:                                     https://calearninglab.org/myrobotteacher/🌐 More about the show: https://www.myrobotteacher.ai                 📨 Email us! We'd love to hear from you! [email protected]🔔 Subscribe for Extras: https://www.youtube.com/@myrobotteacher