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Leonid Bershidsky is putting AI into Bloomberg’s newsroom. He says the technology belongs ‘in the servants’ quarters.’

Source: Meduza

Leonid Bershidsky is one of Russia’s best-known media executives. He was editor-in-chief of the newspaper Vedomosti in its early years and of the magazine Smart Money, launched the online outlet Slon.ru, and published the Russian editions of Newsweek and Forbes. He moved to Ukraine for work in 2012 and emigrated to Germany in 2014.

Bershidsky is now a translator and fiction writer. He also works at Bloomberg, where he is integrating AI at one of the world’s largest news organizations. He spoke with Elizaveta Osetinskaya — who once worked under him — about business in the 1990s, George Orwell’s novel 1984, his own columns, his book Provereno na zhivotnykh (“Tested on Animals”), and much more. The interview runs more than two hours. 

This is Osetinskaya!

Perhaps the most significant part of the conversation dealt with artificial intelligence. Bershidsky’s job is to deploy AI and free journalists from routine work. He also has strong opinions about the technology’s place. A few excerpts:

  • “I have enormous respect for any effort to develop [new, more advanced AI models]. People have to test the limits and try new things, reaching for a result that doesn’t exist yet; you can’t halt progress by force.”
  • “I’m trying to do my part to make sure this thing [AI] knows its place. I believe its place is in the servants’ quarters.”
  • “Human beings aren’t probabilistic. They can take risks like drunken sailors. They’re often irrationally wired, crazy, sometimes self-destructive — and all of that is what keeps a person half a step ahead.”
  • “I don’t think you can tuck the basic human element out of sight, markets included. Every market rests on greed and fear, two human emotions. […] One way or another, you’re feeding one of those two sides. I don’t think models can fully satisfy either instinct. There will always have to be a part that’s entirely human.”
  • “Intrusions from the real world [into the world of AI] are absolutely necessary for all of this to work. It’s not just robots trading with robots. That’s not how it really works, even if it looks that way sometimes. Someone has to supply the big ideas, the philosophy behind your trading. None of this is going away, because in the end this is a human world. You can’t erase people from it and expect them to bow out willingly. It’s built into human nature.”

At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.

If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at [email protected].

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