Welcome to Transformer 2.0
We're now a team of reporters and editors dedicated to covering the power and politics of AI
When I launched Transformer a year ago, it was with a simple mission: provide decision-makers with the information and analysis needed to anticipate and steer the impacts of transformative AI.
AI systems are already transforming the world in countless ways. And at Transformer, we believe that society might be on the cusp of developing even more advanced systems — tools with unprecedented capabilities that will radically reshape society.
We do not claim to know how likely any of this is, or on what timeframe we might expect it to happen. But we do think that the chances of developing such systems in the coming decades are substantial enough to warrant taking seriously.
In the past year, we’ve made an effort to take AI seriously, and to provide useful journalism and analysis that helps you make sense of it all. The response has been remarkable, with thousands of you signing up to receive our analysis each week.
I’m immensely grateful for all your support — and incredibly excited today to announce Transformer 2.0. We’re shifting from being a (mostly) one-person, once-a-week newsletter, into a team of reporters and editors dedicated to covering the power and politics of AI.
Don’t worry: the weekly newsletter you know isn't going anywhere (though you’ll see some design tweaks starting this Friday). But we’re going to start publishing many more reported features and analysis pieces that dive deep into a wide range of AI topics.
We’re kicking off with Jonathan Stein’s timely look at the feasibility of chip location verification as a way of cracking down on chip smuggling — an idea that’s received bipartisan support in Congress, but is opposed by trade groups.
Pulitzer Prize-winner James Ball, meanwhile, has a fantastic piece on the (often misguided) debate about AI’s environmental impact. And last week Nikita Ostrovsky explained why a team at the UK AI Security Institute recently criticized the state of AI scheming evaluations.
We can publish all this thanks to our new Transformer team — an incredible group with experience at many of the world’s top publications.
Jasper Jackson joins us as managing editor from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, having previously run teams at The Guardian and New Statesman. And Celia Ford, formerly of Vox and Wired, is our new Bay Area-based reporter — her neuroscience background perfectly suited to decode the complex technical details of AI. Her first piece on the fight over SB 53 is essential reading on one of the most important AI bills in the US right now.
We’re also introducing an external opinion section, which launches tomorrow with a piece from Rumman Chowdhury and Mala Kumar. We envision this as a forum for incisive debate about transformative AI from a diverse range of expert perspectives. Our opinion section is edited by Jamie Condliffe, who has shaped coverage at The New York Times, Sifted, Protocol, and MIT Technology Review. (If you’re interested in contributing an op-ed, see our guidelines here.)
As these pieces hopefully demonstrate, our aim is to be the definitive source for coverage of transformative AI — one dedicated to explaining what’s happening in AI and why it matters.
With this new, expanded roster of contributors, we’re excited to platform a diverse range of perspectives and opinions. Transformer’s staff members and contributors don’t agree on everything, and we all feel deeply uncertain about many of the biggest topics in AI. But we’ll endeavor to explain our views, fairly represent other perspectives, and ultimately trust you, our readers, to make up your own minds about what to believe. And we’re always looking to hear your own opinions, via comments, emails, or on social media.
A practical note: while we’re publishing significantly more, we won’t flood your inbox. By default, you’ll only receive two, occasionally three, emails a week: the weekly briefing and one or (if it’s a busy week of news) two stories from the website. To see everything we publish, bookmark our homepage or follow us on social media (X/BlueSky/LinkedIn). You can also follow all of Transformer’s team on social media — more details on our About page, where you can also see details about our funders and ethics policies.
I’m very excited about working with Jasper, Celia, Jamie and all our external contributors to turn Transformer into the leading publication covering the power and politics of AI. I hope that our work will be useful, informative, and help you make sense of the extraordinary time we’re living through. If you have any feedback, please get in touch: shakeel@transformernews.ai.
Thanks, as ever, for reading — and welcome to Transformer 2.0.
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Excited about this!