Friends, Romans, countrymen, I’m hiring a new writer. Could be you, could be a friend or acquaintance. Please take a look and pass this around.
ChatGPT has 900 million weekly users. Claude has tens of millions. The government, not to mention God knows how many companies, rely on these models every day to carry out tasks as diverse as military targeting to the management of oil wells. And it’s not just the breadth of their reach that’s compelling, it’s the depth. Regular people are forming intimate relationships with chatbots, allowing them to shape their politics, social life, and even their grasp on reality itself. On the business side, we’re in the midst of outsourcing entire classes of work to the major underlying models, while some in tech, including some of the people working on these models, speculate we’re approaching a world of the “permanent underclass.”
Yet very few Americans, outside of a relatively small in-group in Silicon Valley, know anything at all about the philosophy shaping these products and their leaders. While billions of people and entire swaths of the economy come to rely on just a handful of cutting-edge models, we don’t know what the models and their makers believe.
Henceforth, this will be a major focus of Pirate Wires.
We’re looking for a full-time writer / reporter to cover the philosophy of the technology industry, and Silicon Valley, with a focus on the ideas shaping AI in particular. We’re less interested in the standard model horse race, and more interested in how the people building this technology think about everything from American politics to the nature of human consciousness, as well as the obvious power dynamics and politics at play. For instance, how are Effective Altruism, non-dualism, AI safety, and other ideological frameworks shaping these companies’ decisions and, by extension, how the world works?
This is a rare, well-paid position that offers an ambitious reporter the chance to peel back the curtain on literally the ideas that are shaping the future of humanity — while enjoying the sourcing and networking opportunities that come with sailing under the Pirate Wires flag.
Requirements
You should have a track record of writing compelling, tech-centered stories for national outlets or premier trade publications.
Well-sourced at major AI labs.
You should be curious about the various sects and echelons of San Francisco’s intellectual culture.
An understanding of how major LLMs work, including how they are trained to adopt specific behaviors.
It would be very challenging to execute this job well without being based in San Francisco. For the right person, it could be possible.
Can get along with the honestly somewhat outrageous personalities I continue to hire (sorry it is what it is).
Expectations
You should plan to file ambitious, magazine-worthy features at a regular cadence.
Your stories should contain exclusive, “holy shit” journalism that reveals what people in power believe and why that matters.
You should expect to work in a fast-paced, startup environment with frequent, bordering-on-chaotic collaboration, including co-bylines on your stories.
If you are coming from legacy media, you should expect to have your assumptions about the world and what is “acceptable thought” challenged by a convivial group of people who may disagree with you. But the tradeoff for leaving the Borg is outsize influence over the tech industry and the White House, as well as the ability to talk to basically whomever you want.
Competitive pay
And you get to work with the sickest team in media
If I just described you, apply here
-Solana