(Thanks to Lizka's recent post for the inspiration!)
The Tarbell Center for AI Journalism supports journalism that helps society navigate the emergence of increasingly advanced AI. We're hiring for two roles running our flagship Fellowship Program:
Cillian asked that I write a post like this, but he did not review it in advance. As such these are entirely my personal thoughts and don't necessarily represent the views of Tarbell or my coworkers.
I'm not going to spend any time here trying to convince you that AI might be the most important technology ever invented, or that it could very possibly lead to human extinction. Welcome to the EA Forum, there are 3,762 other posts like that.
Tarbell focuses on news media, primarily text, and we especially value prestigious legacy outlets with a long institutional history. We don't focus on social media, podcasts, video streaming, or any other "new media". To many people this seems backwards: The newspaper industry is dying, no one gets their news from the New Washington Times Post anymore, they just watch Twitch streams and listen to Joe Rogan, and we should focus on that instead.
My response to that is, "Yes, someone should absolutely do that!" If legacy news media sounds really boring to you and you're really excited about making TikTok videos instead, then you shouldn't work at Tarbell. (But maybe finish this post first, so you can at least say you've considered all the arguments.)
There are three main ways you can learn about events in the world:
Careful reporting with stringent fact-checking is what creates our shared reality. If a major newspaper writes "X happened," I am reasonably certain that X did in fact happen![1] I think most people feel similarly: As much as someone might think a particular news outlet focuses on the wrong topics or frames their stories deceptively, most people still take it for granted that if an event is being reported, it did actually happen. Then we can all discuss that event and decide what it means.
Having a shared reality of some basic current events is extremely important for living in a society. People often bemoan how different parts of society (e.g. Trump-supporters and non-Trump-supporters) are living in "different realities". While I do think we're edging in that direction, I also think we're all still mostly in the same reality, because almost all of these people still believe the news. They might not read it, and they might not believe the parts where they already have strong opinions, but if a major paper says, "An earthquake struck Los Francisco," very few people will say, "I won't believe it until my friend tells me they saw the earthquake."
For most of human history this is not how the world worked: It's a precious and valuable fact about our society, and therefore we should both (1) appreciate it and (2) leverage it for doing good in the world.
I'm not going to spend too much time on why it's important to communicate to the public about AI. Lots of organizations have come to a similar conclusion, and if you feel confident that humanity will achieve existential safety without the knowledge or participation of the vast majority of humans, then you shouldn't work at Tarbell.
Tarbell is not an advocacy org: We're trying to grow the community of AI journalists writing about different topics from a variety of perspectives. We often fund reporting[2] that we disagree with or don't think is the absolute most important thing. Why?
If you thrive as a vocal advocate and get frustrated by enforced neutrality on contentious topics, then you shouldn't work at Tarbell.
Getting the basic stuff out of the way:
The more interesting thing that I didn't expect, and that you might not expect either, has to do with Tarbell's location at the intersection of "EA culture" and "journalism culture". As someone coming to Tarbell from the EA culture side, I'm still working on finding the right middle ground for me personally. The two cultures don't exactly conflict, but they do emphasize different values:
Some toy examples of how these cultures can create tension at their intersection:
Every org has its own internal culture, and you'll encounter quirks like this wherever you work. But it's useful to know this going in: If you think journalism culture sounds really dumb and annoying, then you shouldn't work at Tarbell.
In summary:
I mean this sentence literally and minimally. It mostly applies to specific, isolated events, and much less to analysis, op-eds, and the overall framing of a story. It also doesn't mean that their choice of what to cover is a good one! I'm just saying that the thing they said actually did happen.
Both directly through grants and indirectly through our fellowship program.
"EVERYONE DEAD! More at 11."