By Javaun Moradi
“Whether you pursue automations in engineering or storytelling, you will be uncomfortable and face difficult decisions.”
My colleague John is a software engineer and was initially skeptical of AI. He now uses end-to-end AI automation to build software. His AI workflow retrieves issues from our ticketing system, creates an execution plan, writes the code, adds or updates automated tests, checks the code for correctness and formatting, and presents the code for his review in a pull request. John reviews the work at each step. Once he approves the pull request, that kicks off more automation, testing, then deploys the new software to production, and finally updates and closes the ticket.
That is the software development equivalent of starting with a story idea and having AI take it through concepting, research, synthesis, outline and first draft, revisions, copyediting, and then queuing it for publication.
The classic software tradeoff is that you either get speed or quality. With automation, my colleague John is moving 3 to 4 times faster and with similar or higher quality. He’s also having more fun. There are downsides. AI automates the drudgery that would have given him a mental break. The work that’s left is all heavy thinking. He has to meticulously review everything the AI creates, and he often goes home exhausted. Like the rest of us, he worries that AI might make us dumber in the long run.
Full article: https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/12/automation-arrives-in-newsrooms/
