AI cannot replace the work of good journalists and academics because they don’t generate new knowledge. This was the assessment of Kira Alberts, Research Coordinator at the Centre for Research on Democracy (CREDO). Speaking to Radio 786 on the dangers of AI in the 2026 Local Government Election, Alberts explained that AI does not generate new knowledge, all it does is summarise and repackage existing information available on the internet, or draws from the data it has been trained on.
Alberts goes on further to note that AI becomes especially dangerous in a municipal election because the data they are trained on can be biased and only be based on national election data. She says the information that AI is drawing on becomes a smaller pool and therefore those biases becomes a lot more skewed, and information becomes more outdated or potentially false.
“Ultimately, what we also need to consider is the fact that political journalists or academics are held to account. Their work goes through editorial or peer review, and they are bound by professional codes such as the press code or research ethics. When something goes wrong, they’re expected to correct and are held to account, which absolutely does not happen in the case of AI.”
