After 3 years, I can no longer call myself a journalist

Today, I am starting my internship at NATO SHAPE. And while this is an exciting new chapter, what I have not fully processed is that I am also stepping away from an identity that stayed with me through everything else.

I graduated from two universities. I worked in different roles. I switched projects more times than I can count.  But throughout all of that, I was a tech journalist.

I never planned it. I was meant to join a governmental cybersecurity unit. The government fell. The contract was never signed. Through a chain of unlikely circumstances, I ended up at Živé.sk.

It was not necessarily a childhood dream. I simply loved writing. I wanted to work on technology. And I had a clear intention: to bring conversations about tech ethics, security, AI and societal impact into a Slovak environment where they were largely missing. I assumed it would be temporary. Looking back, I cannot imagine a better place for me at that time.

Writing. Investigating. Asking uncomfortable questions. Translating complex technological issues into language the public can understand. Operating in the public sphere and carrying responsibility for how issues are framed. It all converged in this role.

The numbers tell part of the story:

300+ articles.

Dozens of interviews and podcasts.

Numerous conferences, panels, and debates.

Hundred of thousands of reads, listens and watches. 

But what those numbers really represent is not volume. They represent persistence. Returning again and again to the same core questions: Who benefits? Who bears the risk? Who is not in the room? And what happens to trust when systems scale faster than responsibility? That was the real work behind the statistics.

For three years, I dove into stories that many overlooked or avoided entirely. AI cameras quietly entering schools. Dangerous AI toys flooding the Slovak market. Digital addiction, TikTok risks, nudify apps. Even the most harrowing: child pornography, a tragedy that continues to grow unnoticed in Slovakia.

These were not just “tech stories.” They were stories about society, ethics, and human vulnerability. About the consequences of innovation without oversight, curiosity without guidance, and a public conversation that hadn’t yet caught up with technology.

And, most importantly, conversations with remarkable experts from diverse spheres — technology leaders, cybersecurity professionals, AI ethicists, policymakers, social innovators, psychologists and people working directly with vulnerable communities.

I had the privilege to speak with voices such as Stephanie Hare, Kate Kallot, Amy Hogan-Burney, Ramona Ratiu, Alžbeta Solarczyk Krausová and many others who approach technology not only as engineers or executives, but as actors shaping society.

Those discussions repeatedly confirmed one thing: technology debates are never purely technical. They are about governance. About ethics. About power. About responsibility.

That is why I am genuinely grateful that my very last podcast was with Zuzana Juráneková from IPčko. We spoke about AI and young people. About fear of becoming irrelevant. About loneliness in an age of constant connection. About what it means when young people turn to AI not for efficiency, but for emotional substitution. And her message was disarmingly simple.

Lift your head from the screen. Look around. Be present. There might be someone next to you who does not need a smarter system, but a human being who notices them. Someone who asks how they are. Someone who offers help. Who sees their pain and accepts them.

We live in a time of deep mistrust. We scroll past suffering. We assume someone else will step in. We are hyperconnected, yet often emotionally absent. If there is one thing I take from my years in journalism — and from that final conversation — it is this:

No technological progress can replace basic human attentiveness. No innovation compensates for indifference. No strategy works if we stop seeing one another.

As I begin my internship at NATO SHAPE, I carry that with me. Titles change. Institutions change. Roles evolve. But the responsibility to remain critical, to ask difficult questions, and to stay attentive to the human consequences of our decisions — that remains.