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Shakeel Hashim

​As artificial intelligence grows more advanced, the technology and the people making it are increasingly consequential.​ We believe journalism will play a crucial role in helping the public understand AI — and in holding companies and policymakers to account.


Today we are thrilled to announce Tarbell Grants, a new program to fund original reporting on AI and its impacts.


Tarbell Grants will offer awards of $1,000 - $15,000 to support such reporting. We are looking to fund impactful investigations about AI, with a particular interest in scrutinizing current and future harms from frontier AI models, the inner workings of leading AI companies, lobbying efforts shaping AI policy, and explanatory reporting that helps the public understand complicated topics in AI.


Applications will be evaluated by a panel of experienced journalists and editors: Shakeel Hashim, Nathaniel Popper, Yi-Ling Liu and Timothy Lee.


All journalists are welcome and encouraged to apply, whether staff reporters or freelancers. You can learn more about the grants here, and apply here. Grants will be evaluated on a rolling basis, and we aim to evaluate all grants within a month.


We’re grateful to the Future of Life Institute for generously supporting ​the first round of Tarbell Grants. Our donors have no involvement in the grant selection process.

The Tarbell Fellowship exists to support impactful journalism on emerging technologies, especially artificial intelligence. To date, we've done that through our programme for early-career journalists, providing training in journalism and AI and supporting placements at major news outlets.


We're now delighted to expand our offerings beyond the early-career stage and provide support for experienced journalists looking to cover these important topics. We're thrilled to announce the launch of our journalists-in-residence programme and introduce our first two journalists-in-residence: Nathaniel Popper and Shakeel Hashim.


Nathaniel was formerly a reporter at the New York Times, where he covered Silicon Valley and Wall Street. He has written two books, including the forthcoming “The Trolls of Wall Street: How the Outcasts and Insurgents Are Hacking the Markets”, and is now looking to move to the AI beat. He's particularly interested in reporting on what's happening inside leading AI companies.


Shakeel has a background in tech and business journalism, having worked as a news editor at The Economist, growth manager and newsletter writer at Protocol, and newsletter writer at Finimize. Most recently, he was head of communications at the Centre for Effective Altruism. He is now looking to return to journalism, with a particular focus on AI policy.


We're excited to provide Nathaniel and Shakeel with the support they need to do impactful journalism on AI. Both are also helping run our early-career fellowship and exploring new opportunities for Tarbell to support reporting elsewhere.


We are accepting applications for future journalists-in-residence on a rolling basis. If you're interested and think you'd be a good fit, please get in touch.


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