Can average intelligence keep up with artificial intelligence?

That’s the question journalists should be asking on behalf of the American public about a growing technology that’s become essential to everything from national defense to figuring out the title to a song by humming a few bars into your phone.

Retha Hill, an Arizona State University professor of digital journalism, teaches on the subject, and she’s worried that we’re all missing the point.

“It’s our job (as journalists), like right now, to educate people on the promise and peril of AI,” Hill said to a crowd of about 60 people recently at CultureHUB near downtown Phoenix.

Hill was being recognized by the local chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists for her induction into the larger organization’s Hall of Fame this summer for her trailblazing career that includes a stint as the founding editor of Washington Post Newsweek Interactive and vice president for content of BET Interactive.

“The way we are reporting on it, it’s either like, ‘Oh, here’s this new thing, you can run your stove with AI!’ Or........

© Arizona Republic