Students from across the country packed into the Conaway Center at 1104 S. Wabash for a summit on artificial intelligence on Wednesday, Sept. 25.

The NBCU Academy hosted the live event, offering a variety of panels surrounding AI and how it impacts students, journalists and other communication professionals.

Newsroom leaders from NBC and Telemundo were in attendance, to appear on panels, meet with students and make sure the show ran smoothly behind the scenes. 

The event offered resume help to students, as well as served as a networking opportunity. Then, starting at 12 p.m., the three panels commenced, which featured professionals from various companies speaking on AI’s impact. 

The college is one of over 40 academic partners and was picked to host the summit. 

Students from New York, Texas and Georgia came to Chicago for the event, which was packed with Columbia students and also students from DePaul University and other area colleges.

TRANSCRIPT

Adriah:

Three, two, one and Columbia College Chicago is live.

NBCU Academy just finished an AI summit right here in the 1104 South Wabash building, gathering students from all over the country to learn about the future of AI in journalism.

The summit focused on educating young professionals, many of whom are journalists, on both the potential risks and benefits on using AI in the newsroom.

While there were over 100 people at the Conaway Center for the in-person segment, there was also a virtual option, allowing even more people to absorb the pros’ knowledge.

Over the course of the event, students got to network not only with each other, but also with highly recognized NBC professionals from Chicago and beyond.

The AI summit also had a number of NBC executives in attendance, including Rashida Jones, the president of MSNBC. Also in attendance was NBC 5 President Kevin Cross, who is also an alumni of Columbia College Chicago.

There were three panels at the event, covering topics ranging from their own personal uses of AI to how to use it in the job search.

While there were plenty of NBCU representatives on the panels, they also included experts from other non-news organizations who had insight on the topics discussed.

The panels focused on navigating the ethics of utilizing AI in journalism and how these big news organizations are using it to aid their storytelling and audience engagement. Both in-person and virtual attendees were also invited to ask each panel their own questions.

The panelists covered a broad range of subjects today. The most consistent, however, was their own personal tips and tricks for journalists of how to use AI in the future.

Adriah Hedrick reporting with ChronTV.

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