Fourteen years ago, when I started as a young reporter, journalism was different.
Seventeen years ago, when I studied Public Communication at the University of Guyana, there was no ChatGPT. There was no AI assistant waiting to write a headline, summarize an interview or suggest a sharper lede. There was only a notebook, a deadline and your own mind.
Finding the angle was the job.
Writing the lede was the job.
Thinking was the job.
You could spend hours staring at a blinking cursor before finally finding the opening sentence that brought an entire story to life.
Today?
I can upload a transcript, ask AI to identify the strongest angle, produce three headlines, write a polished article, proofread it, improve the grammar and even translate it, all in less time than it once took me to type my first paragraph.
And here's my confession: I use artificial intelligence every single day.
Not occasionally.
Not "only for headlines."
Not "just for grammar."
Not "only to transcribe interviews."
Every day. For almost every part of my workflow.
There. I said it.
Because I think many journalists in Guyana and across the Caribbean are quietly having the same relationship with AI while publicly pretending otherwise.
We're already censoring ourselves.
Not governments.
Not editors.
Ourselves.
Listen to conversations in newsrooms and you'll hear carefully crafted disclaimers.
"I only use it for headlines."
"I only use it to rewrite press releases."
"I just use it to check grammar."
Maybe that's true. Maybe it isn't.
But why are we so uncomfortable admitting it?
Is AI somehow less acceptable than spellcheck?
Less ethical than Google?
Less legitimate than the internet itself once was?
Around the world, some of the largest media organizations already have AI-powered news presenters, synthetic voices reading bulletins and automated systems producing financial reports, sports stories and election updates.
Meanwhile, we are still debating whether it's acceptable to admit we asked ChatGPT to improve a paragraph.
Perhaps the bigger story isn't AI. Perhaps it's our denial.
We keep saying journalists won't be replaced by AI. I think we've been asking the wrong question. Parts of our jobs already have been. The routine work, the first drafts, the headlines, the summaries, the transcription, is increasingly done by machines. The real question is whether we continue to own the thinking behind the journalism.
Tasks that once required years of experience can now be completed in seconds.
The scary part isn't that AI can write.
It's that younger journalists may never experience what older generations did.
The frustration of rewriting a lede fifteen times. Learning why one sentence works and another doesn't. Developing instinct instead of prompting a machine.
I worry about that.
There's another truth we don't talk about enough. AI doesn't magically turn a poor writer into a great journalist. In my experience, it simply makes average writing more polished. The ideas are still average. The questions are still average. The storytelling is still average. Good journalism has never been about perfect grammar; it's about curiosity, judgment and knowing what matters.
Ironically, I've found that AI is most powerful in the hands of people who spent years learning to write without it. A good writer can use AI to save time, challenge assumptions, tighten arguments and explore angles they might have missed.
In that sense, AI doesn't replace talent—it amplifies it. My experience is that AI doesn't make bad writers good. It makes good writers better.
But that raises another uncomfortable question. If the next generation never develops those foundational writing muscles because AI does the heavy lifting from day one, what exactly will AI be amplifying ten years from now?
Then there's the environmental cost, perhaps the least discussed consequence of our AI obsession. Every prompt we type, every image we generate and every model we query relies on energy-hungry data centres operating around the clock.
The debate has already reached the Caribbean. In Trinidad and Tobago, proposed AI data centre projects have sparked public concerns over electricity demand, water use and the long-term environmental footprint of powering the next generation of artificial intelligence.
It's a reminder that AI isn't just changing how we work; it's changing what our societies must build and power to sustain it.
As an editor, I see incredible potential in AI. It saves time, improves efficiency, catches mistakes, organizes information and allows journalists to focus more on reporting than formatting.
Those are genuine benefits.
But I also wonder whether we are slowly outsourcing the very muscles that made journalism journalism.
Critical thinking.
Storytelling.
Originality.
Judgment.
When the machine suggests the angle before you've even considered one yourself, are you still leading the process—or simply approving its suggestions?
Maybe the relationship has quietly reversed.
Maybe people are no longer using AI.
Maybe AI is using people.
That sounds dramatic until you realize how often we instinctively ask a chatbot before asking ourselves.
Then there's another uncomfortable question: should readers be told when AI has been used?
Some argue absolutely. Others say AI is simply another tool, no different from Microsoft Word or Grammarly. There is no global consensus.
But there probably should be.
Transparency has always been one of journalism's most valuable currencies.
If trust is the product we sell, disclosure should become part of the package. Or readers won't care at all.
That's the uncertainty.
Technology has always changed journalism—from typewriters to computers, from fax machines to smartphones,from newspapers to social media.
AI is simply the fastest and most disruptive evolution we've ever seen.
The challenge isn't stopping it. That won't happen.
The challenge is deciding how much of ourselves we're willing to hand over in exchange for convenience.
I still write.
I still report.
I still edit.
And yes, after AI produces a draft, I often rewrite sections, verify facts, reshape the narrative and, as I like to say, put the soul back into the story.
But I would be lying if I claimed AI wasn't now part of my daily work.
So I'll say publicly what many won't.
I use artificial intelligence every day.
Maybe it's time more of us admitted it too.
Disclosure: Artificial intelligence was used to help write this piece, which was then reviewed, edited and finalized by the author.
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