Silicon Valley turns to new media to sell AI 

Silicon Valley is embracing nontraditional media to sell its vision of technology as concerns mount over artificial intelligence’s impact on the workforce, economy and environment. 

Tech and business leaders are turning to everything from podcasts to Substack blogs to avoid the traditional media and get more control over their preferred narratives on AI.

OpenAI’s recent acquisition of the viral technology podcast “TBPN” underscored this trend, with the AI firm declaring last week that the “standard communications playbook just doesn’t apply to us.”

“TBPN,” launched just last year, hosts a daily livestreamed podcast and features some of the biggest technology leaders, such as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who does not typically talk to media outlets otherwise.

The push for influence comes as voter sentiment about technology — especially AI — plummets, forcing companies such as OpenAI to rethink public outreach.

Tech companies “know that there is a backlash against” them, Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation, told The Hill in an interview. 

“The data centers have become very contentious in many communities across the country,” West continued. “So the tech sector understands it needs to invest in public outreach because at the election, their issues are becoming controversial.” 

Recent polling shows U.S. voters feel just as negatively, if not more so, about AI as they do about other controversial subjects, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The polling also suggests voters do not trust either political party to handle the technology. 

The numbers, mixed with the public backlash, are a wake-up call for the AI industry, which has largely forged ahead with development so far under little regulation. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told the “Mostly Human” podcast last week he “miscalibrated” the mood of distrust when it comes to AI.

“There’s at least a group of loud people online who really don’t trust the government to follow the law,” Altman said, discussing the company’s deal with the Pentagon. “And that feels like a very bad sign for our democracy.” 

In less than a year, “TBPN” surged in popularity in Silicon Valley, making it an attractive platform for OpenAI’s strategy to combat fears about AI. 

Hosted by entrepreneurs John Coogan and Jordi Hays, the podcast livestreams for three hours daily, giving tech founders a unique and unedited platform to speak on.

Hays and Coogan do not consider themselves journalists but are not afraid to voice their opinions on the firms they cover, The New York Times reported in a company profile last year. 

The hosts also were hesitant to conduct interviews with the Times reporters for that piece. It stated that Coogan pointed to how their Silicon Valley peers think of legacy media outlets such as the Times as “the enemy.”

Frequent “TBPN” guests include tech leaders such as Altman, but also federal officials such as Defense Under Secretary Emil Michael and Michael Kratsios, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Having guests such as Michael and Kratsios is notable because the officials do not speak frequently with the traditional media.

Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of AGI deployment, said in a blog post that the “TBPN” acquisition will “help create a space for real, constructive conversation about the changes AI creates — with builders and people using the technology at the center.” 

The podcast deal follows a string of other media ventures on the part of technology companies looking to make their case and own a slice of the already crowded ecosystem. 

Venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z, created a dedicated “New Media” in-house team, which includes an eight-week fellowship program, and a Substack page with more than 200,000 subscribers. 

“Our goal is to build the best turnkey media operation in venture: a single place where founders acquire the legitimacy, taste, brandbuilding, expertise, and momentum they need to win the narrative battle online,” the company said last year. 

The shift to new media platforms builds upon Silicon Valley’s pushback against a legacy media system they say distorts or misrepresents them. 

In new media, according to a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz, “offense is always better than defense.” 

“We’ve spent many years fretting about our results being leaked,” Horowitz said last month. “Old media tries to please every audience, old media is terrified of upsetting people and new media only cares about being interesting.” 

Days ahead of the “TBPN” deal, entrepreneur and “All In” podcast co-host Jason Calacanis urged company founders to “not talk to the press” but “go direct and do long-form podcasts.” 

“Wired and the NYT are as biased as Fox News and MSNOW these days,” Calacanis wrote on the social platform X while criticizing a WIRED magazine piece. “This is a function of their need to pander to one side to survive, be it through $3-a-month subs or rage-baiting ad-based stories.”

“Founders: If you talk to the NYT or WIRED, they will trash and misrepresent you 95% of the time in order to get more subscribers and page views,” Calacanis continued. “It is what it is.” 

Since purchasing X, which had been known as Twitter until 2022, tech billionaire Elon Musk has amplified this perspective, repeatedly telling online users, “You are the media now.”

Musk, a former adviser to President Trump, has described X as “citizen journalism,” noting that users can write long-form articles on the platform. 

When previously reached for comment, the press email for Musk’s AI firm xAI automatically responded with “Legacy Media Lies.” 

Tech moguls wading into the alternative media landscape may be new, but the pattern of the world’s wealthiest innovators purchasing parts of the media is nothing unique. 

Some tech moguls are not shying away from legacy media, but rather seeking to have a more direct voice from the top. 

“Wealthy people want to influence the information system,” West remarked. “They know that the way in which people get information affects the conclusions that they draw.” 

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, while Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne own Time magazine.

Paramount Skydance, led by David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, bought Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN. Paramount Skydance also owns CBS. 

All of these deals have drawn concerns over how the tech leaders might influence coverage, especially given the declining trust in mainstream media. 

As for OpenAI, the company maintains “TBPN” will have editorial independence, but online users expressed skepticism given the podcast will report to Chris Lehane, the company’s chief global affairs officer and a longtime political consultant. 

“They [OpenAI] may not be too overt but everybody knows their interests,” West added. “They want to promote AI, they want to open data centers, they don’t have to lean too hard on hosts for hosts to understand where the owner is coming from.”