Over the past year we’ve seen the worst onslaught of media collapse since 2008, with partial or total layoffs at the Los Angeles Times, Sports Illustrated, Popular Science, Forbes, the Intercept, Vice, Vox, Pitchfork, the Messenger, Buzzfeed, Bustle, and the list goes on and on. The reasons are many — dwindling readership, general economic uncertainty, etc. — but what it really all comes down to is that no one has come up with a good profit model for digital publication.

In a post-Napster media landscape where the audience typically expects content to be free, subscriptions won’t cut it, so in the end it all comes down to clicks. The more clicks that come in, the more clicks may or may not go to ads, and the more ads a publication can sell. Therefore, many orient their content strategies around that which will gather the most clicks. Not the most important information, or the best story. Not societal value or even personal ideology. It’s all about those clicks.

So enters the infamous clickbait — the checkout aisle impulse candy that no one needs and maybe don’t even want, but can’t resist. It’s so sweet and colorful, they can’t help but click. “11 Movies You’ll Definitely Hate-Watch.” “You’ll Never Believe What This 90’s Celebrity Did This Time.” “This Weird Trick Will Put Your TikTok On Fleek.” A tremendous amount of creative energy goes into producing the relentless barrage of clickbait, and all of a sudden a slew of writers who studied Capote and Woodward and Didion find themselves scrawling out “14 Things You Should Be Ashamed Of, Alan” for seven cents a word.

Because the current media paradigm rewards quantity over quality, even journalists who don’t end up in the clickbait mines are frequently spread far too thin to produce anything of value. There was a time when reporters performed most of their work out in the world, digging up information about a story in order to put together something substantial.

Not anymore. Now they have to churn out four stories or more a day in order to fill the maw of the 24-hour-news-cycle, so instead of being out in the street getting the facts, they’re sitting in front of a computer screen refabricating press releases and stories from other outlets.

The result is bad for everyone. Journalists fill their hours pouring out drivel. Publication reputations suffer as the value of their content diminishes. Readers are less and less informed, which leads to the problems attendant to a weakened fourth estate that we’re already seeing today — misinformation, failing trust in institutions, and the decay of democracy.

And to make matters worse on an employment level, the clickbait bombardment is increasingly produced by AI, eliminating much of the low-level work that was once the bread and butter of media novices but is increasingly relied upon by even seasoned journalists as newsroom budgets evaporate. Next come the layoffs, and then even more of the content burden is taken up by uninspired, frequently inaccurate AI. Readers notice the failing quality, clicks fall, and the race toward the bottom continues as the investment firm in charge scrambles to right the ship by cutting costs yet again…

Everyone loses in the current scenario, and while there don’t seem to be a whole lot of signs that the situation will change for the better anytime soon, the fact is that the very cause of much of the problem could be the solution: AI could save journalism — if those in charge of the industry will allow it.

In theory, it’s rather simple. If websites must have their clicks, so be it — let the robots make the clickbait. This frees journalists to focus on creating work that offers actual humanist value. Stories that are satisfying rather than soul-sucking to produce; that inform the audience rather than merely fill a hole in their content stream. Instead of dashing off ten listicles or a handful of barely researched articles a day, journalists could once again take their time crafting stories that matter. Let the toaster make toast while the chef concocts a fine meal.

Now everybody wins: websites get their clicks, journalists are doing work they enjoy, and audiences receive both content-candy and high-caliber information. Who knows what benefits could follow? There’s a lot of social value in good journalism.

This only works, of course, if the publishing powers that be actually reinvest the money saved via AI back into a newsroom full of humans. Instead of viewing artificial intelligence as a means to eliminate staff and cut costs, it must be seen as an opportunity to improve assignment quality, freeing up journalists to go back to good reporting.

But here’s the rub: a media that is driven by profit-motive rather than social responsibility won’t do that. If the goal is to maximize profit for investors, a publication will be forever under pressure to trim costs, and as we’ve already seen, it is typically done at the expense of quality journalism.

So while many in my profession may call heresy on my advocacy for ceding work to machines, I suggest that the problem we face isn’t the arrival of AI in publishing, but the persistence of the profit-motive. Until we decouple the need for profit from news, the news will be whatever sells papers — and whatever costs the least to produce it.