LA Times owner plans to add AI-powered ‘bias meter’ on news stories, sparking newsroom backlash [Video]

LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who blocked the newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris and plans to overhaul its editorial board, says he will implement an artificial intelligence-powered “bias meter” on the paper’s news articles to provide readers with “both sides” of a story.

Soon-Shiong, the biotech billionaire who acquired the Times in 2018, told CNN political commentator Scott Jennings – who will join the Times’ editorial board – that he’s been “quietly building” an AI meter “behind the scenes.” The meter, slated to be released in January, is powered by the same augmented intelligence technology that he’s been building since 2010 for health care purposes, Soon-Shiong said.

“Somebody could understand as they read it that the source of the article has some level of bias,” he said on Jennings’ “Flyover Country,” podcast. “And what we need to do is not have what we call confirmation bias and then that story automatically, …