TycheManual:AI

What is the role of AI in Tyche Insights?

Artificial Intelligence has a role in data storytelling processes - from research, to content creation, to editing, to ensuring that content is accessible and more. We want to balance that use with risk management, avoiding AI use where it could cause concerns.

Our concerns about the use of AI are relatively straightforward:

• AI-created articles may contain or use copyright content that Tyche Insights is not permitted to use
• AI-created articles may come from AI systems that don’t allow Tyche Insights to redistribute the content
• AI-created articles may contain suspect content (hallucinations)

We will lay out our AI usage guidelines as a starting point. We want pilot participants to comment on these guidelines and where they did or did not work.

Where can AI be used?

• During the process to envision a story - “I want to study the Pittsburgh public transportation system. What are some of the issues or concerns that have been brought up about the system? What other research topics have other authors studies for other cities?”
• Performing any kind of data wrangling or transformation to get the data ready - “convert the data found on pages 8 and 9 of this pdf into a CSV table, making sure that all data is converted as numeric” (*of note - any use of AI in readying and transforming source data should receive the same quality control as any other non-AI ingestion and transformation of data)
• Testing content for clarity- "What is the readability of this article and what suggestions would you have for transforming the article to make it more readable?”
• Ensuring that an article conforms with style guidelines - “Test this article against the style guidelines associated with content and form that are expressed on this web page and identify if there are other stylistic inconsistencies”
• Testing an article for bias - “Identify if there is any language that suggests bias in how the story expresses conclusions or in word and sentence choice”
• Creating visualizations and images - “Create a basic bubble plot using data in this table, specifically A for the X axis, B for the Y axis, and C for the bubble size, using a pastel palette”

Where should AI not be used?

• To create the article mostly or fully - “Write a 1000 word article on Pittsburgh’s public bus routes and how they do or don’t meet the needs of lower socio-economic citizens and commuters”
• To gather quotes and references that are taken at face value without subsequent research and validation - "Gather every quote that Mayor Smith has made about the defunding of the parks between 2023 and 2025”

Evolving our AI Guidelines

These are the initial guidelines. Please engage with the organizers if you have questions or alternate approaches, or if you have an AI usage scenario that is outside the guidance above.