Part 1 is here.
One need not be overly suspicious to surmise that the annual Bilderberg Meetings—the seventieth such meeting, recently concluded in Madrid with a heavy artificial intelligence (AI) component among its attendees—function as an incubator for mega-trends that have a strong tendency to quickly spread and hardwire themselves into society.
A major case in point: Just as the 2024 Bilderberg gathering came and went from 30 May to 2 June inclusive, headlines were, and still are, popping up to announce that OpenAI, a company owned by 2022–2023 Bilderberg Meetings attendee Sam Altman, is making scores of deals with media companies that will enable its ChatGPT bot to access the news content of those companies.
Precisely what such partnerships will mean in terms of how news is formulated and presented, and how working journalists and the legal landscape may be affected, is not altogether clear—yet.
But this much is clear: AI has been simmering at Bilderberg ever since the group’s 2015 Austria meeting, and nearly every meeting in the decade since then has featured some variation of AI and related technological matters—culminating in two AI topics topping the thirteen-item 2024 Bilderberg agenda: “State of AI” and “AI Safety.”
Investor and Bilderberg Steering Committee member Peter Thiel, who helped fund Open AI’s initial development phase, was in Madrid for this year’s Bilderberg gathering, as was Peter Lee, president of research for Microsoft—the company that chipped in a cool $1 billion when OpenAI in 2019 transitioned from a non-profit to a “capped-profit” for-profit entity, amid internal and external concerns that going into a for-profit mode would jeopardize the company’s solemn-sounding promises that OpenAI would be designed to benefit all of humanity and not become another plaything for the super-rich.
Assessing AI
This second installment of Bilderberg: Beyond the Meetings explores the basic “who and what” regarding certain big media outlets’ collaboration with OpenAI, with an emphasis on key Bilderberg connections and a glimpse at where this AI-news media “marriage” may be heading. (For AI-related breaking news items from time to time, tune in to this writer’s weekly UK Column News reports on Fridays).
About Altman
Some basic facts and observations about Altman:
• Samuel Harris Altman, 39, is an American entrepreneur and investor best known as the CEO of OpenAI since 2019. Altman is considered to be one of the leading figures of the AI boom. Given the fact that AI has been discussed in some manner at Bilderberg for nearly ten years—and in view of the sudden explosion of AI on the world scene, flowing relentlessly into virtually every tributary of society—Altman and his AI-news venture should be closely monitored.
• OpenAI says it’s “an AI research and deployment company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence—AI systems that are generally smarter than humans—benefits all of humanity.”
• ChatGPT is a chatbot and virtual assistant developed by OpenAI and launched on 30 November 2022. Based on large language models (LLMs), it enables users to refine and steer a seemingly genuine conversation towards a desired length, format, style, level of detail, and language.
Notably, LLMs are a type of AI program that can perform natural language processing, using deep-learning algorithms and machine learning. LLMs are trained on large quantities of data, such as web pages, articles and books, to learn connections and patterns between words and phrases—thereby allowing them to mimic human intelligence and understand and generate human language.
AI and the Legacy Media
Several of the news organizations entering into deals with Open AI are themselves Bilderberg participants, Whether a given news company is a Bilderberg regular or a newcomer, a taxpayer-funded corporation or a private enterprise, what these press attendees have in common is that they routinely leave the public trust at the door during Bilderberg’s ultra-exclusive and often elusively-located meetings and collaborate with a key planning, networking and deal-nurturing organization within the world power structure; yet these same media organizations attending Bilderberg still claim that they “speak truth to power,” which, under such collusive circumstances, is a total and utter impossibility.
For the record, those news organizations with more than a fleeting linkage to Bilderberg, and which have entered into deals with OpenAI, are:
• Germany-based Axel Springer, the parent company of the journal Politico and a Bilderberg perennial (Politico is a Capitol Hill news journal in the U.S. with a Brussels subsidiary) This writer’s previous installment of Bilderberg: Beyond the Meetings noted that Axel Springer is making a major effort to fully enter the U.S. media market;
• The Atlantic magazine, represented at Bilderberg annually by former Washington Post writer and historian of communism Anne Applebaum;
• The Financial Times, which not only has maintained a steady Bilderberg presence via its chief economics commentator Martin Wolf and several others, but also collaborates stateside with Chicago’s Pritzker Forum on Global Cities;
• Le Monde, the French newspaper of record that’s been represented at Bilderberg several times over the years; and
• Prisa Media, a Spanish media conglomerate that also has participated at Bilderberg.
What follows is an outline of just some of the pertinent details about many of the media titans that are getting involved with OpenAI. When one realizes the complexity behind these and other legacy media outlets’ collaboration with Altman’s OpenAI—in terms of their ownership, reach and assets—it becomes clear that integrating OpenAI into the mass media ecosystem will create an omni-present phenomenon where it will be increasingly difficult to find any legacy news agency that is not heavily reliant on AI.
The Atlantic, Vox and the FT
On 29 May 2024, Reuters reported that OpenAI had “signed content and product partnerships” with The Atlantic magazine, a long-established Boston and New York journal steeped in statist-internationalist propaganda, and with Vox Media, a 13-year-old U.S.-based, largely digital mass media company headquartered in Washington D.C. Vox is owned by the U.S.-based cable giant Comcast Corporation (through its NBCUniversal subsidiary) and by the Penske Media Corporation.
Such agreements provide OpenAI with access to news content and archives for the purpose of training OpenAI’s language learning models.
Taking into account the fact that major media outlets have been hungry to get more than their usual meager share of internet-distribution revenues, Reuters noted:
Such partnerships are not only crucial for the training of AI models; they also can be lucrative for news publishers, which have traditionally been denied a slice of profits internet giants earn for distributing their content.
And it’s no big surprise that the City of London-based Financial Times is among those signing deals with OpenAI. FT’s agreement with Altman’s company will license FT’s content “for the development of AI models and allow OpenAI’s ChatGPT to answer queries with summaries attributable to the newspaper,” as Reuters noted.
$10 billion News Corp. behemoth
OpenAI also has signed a deal with mass media conglomerate News Corp., which owns the Wall Street Journal. Founded by Rupert Murdoch, News Corp. is a U.S.-based mass media and publishing company in mid-town Manhattan. Operating across news media, book publishing and cable TV, News Corp.’s notable assets include Dow Jones & Co., which publishes the Wall Street Journal; and there’s News UK, which publishes the Sun and the Times, as well as the Sunday Times; along with major book publisher HarperCollins. The Murdoch media enterprise’s overall revenue was $9.88 billion in 2023.
News Corp. also owns News Corp Australia, which controls more than 150 major and smaller newspapers, weeklies and dailies across the whole of the Lucky Country. That represents almost total saturation, which raises a major concern: If large media conglomerates that already have massive news-dissemination abilities can saturate entire nations, or at least large regions within nations, with AI-connected news narratives—and assuming those narratives are based on the same worldview, regardless of whether you’re reading a newspaper or watching TV—then a highly monopolistic and monotonous news “product” may very well emerge, resulting in “reporting” that’s even more homogenized than now.
With that scenario in mind, consider what News Corp. owns in terms of U.S. media (list not necessarily complete):
- The New York Post,
- Barron’s,
- Marketwatch,
- Investor’s Business Daily,
- Private Equity News,
- Dow Jones Newswires,
- Dow Jones Indexes,
- a 10% stake in the Dow Jones Industrial Average itself;
- and no fewer than seven other Dow Jones-listed entities.
Unfair advantage?
According to an impartial technology website, SearchEngineLand.com, which covers all aspects of digital marketing, advertising technology and related matters, the various news brands partnering with OpenAI “will likely gain an unfair advantage—in the form of featured content and citations—in ChatGPT,” especially if ChatGPT Search becomes a viable alternative to Google’s widely used search engine.
Furthermore, that website, in a post dated 5 June 2024, explained how much OpenAI’s news partnerships have grown, while mentioning a newspaper association which, in turn, is linked to scores of media organizations and directors throughout the world:
OpenAI has announced 30 significant deals with tech and media brands to date, including three in the past week with Vox Media, the Atlantic and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers . . . .These partnerships will undoubtedly lead to greater discoverability in OpenAI products — think: featured content and citations (links) in ChatGPT. As we’ve seen from the Google-Reddit deal, brands with partnerships tend to get favorable placement, which is good news for those with such deals but bad news if you’re competing against them.
Those thirty news entities, besides the ones already cited in this article, also include the ubiquitous Associated Press (AP) wire service.
AP’s reports are used in almost every imaginable news outlet, print and broadcast; others on the “List of 30” include (the list has some limited academic, governmental and news industry organizational connections):
- The American Journalism Project,
- Arizona State University,
- Atlassian,
- Bain & Co.,
- BuzzFeed,
- Consensus,
- Dotbash Meredith,
- Figure,
- G42,
- GitHub,
- the Icelandic Government,
- Microsoft,
- Neo-Accelerator,
- Opera Press,
- Reddit,
- Shutterstock,
- Sanofi & Formation Bio,
- Salesforce,
- Stack Overflow,
- Stripe,
- Upwork,
- and, as noted above, the far-reaching World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).
And that’s not all
As if that isn’t a sizable enough list of partnerships at this relatively early juncture in OpenAI’s collaboration with media entities and hi-tech companies, etc., the website Originality.AI has revealed that OpenAI also is partnering with Apple, as well as with TIME magazine (OpenAI therefore will receive access to TIME’s immense 101 years of archived content). Notably, TIME’s owner, World Economic Forum board of trustees member and billionaire Marc Benioff, also owns Salesforce which, as noted above, is partnering with OpenAI as well.
Focusing on OpenAI’s news deals, the American Journalism Project—another organization devoted to reinvigorating what’s widely described in legacy media circles as a “news desert” caused by the decline and closure of local print and broadcast news outlets—had this to say about the deal it reached with OpenAI in July 2023:
OpenAI is committing $5 million to the American Journalism Project to support the expansion of AJP’s work […] The collaboration aims to establish lines of dialogue between the local news industry and OpenAI, and to develop tools that could assist local news organizations.
“To ensure local journalism remains an essential pillar of our democracy, we need to be smart about the potential powers and pitfalls of new technology,” Sarabeth Berman, the American Journalism Project’s CEO, added, sounding a cautiously optimistic note.
The Associated Press’ deal with OpenAI will enable OpenAI to license AP’s massive archive of news stories, which really drives home how widespread OpenAI intends to be by integrating its products with the legacy media syndicate.
AP, founded in 1864, is considered to be the largest news agency in the U.S. and among the most influential in the world—though the legacy media, despite its image of vast influence, has been experiencing an erosion of public trust and a notable drop in readers and viewers, a factor that goes a long way in explaining this near-obsession of news outlets seeking AI agreements.
In a joint statement, OpenAI and AP noted:
The arrangement sees OpenAI licensing part of AP’s text archive, while AP will leverage OpenAI’s technology and product expertise.
To be sure, some concerns are being raised. The AI “tools” involved in these agreements “have raised concerns about their propensity to spout falsehoods that are hard to notice because of the system’s strong command of the grammar of human languages. They also have raised questions about to what extent news organizations and others whose writing, artwork, music or other work was used to “train” the AI models should be compensated,” AP noted.
And the U.S. Federal Trade Commission recently told OpenAI it “had opened an investigation into whether the company had engaged in unfair or deceptive privacy or data security practices in scraping public data — or caused harm by publishing false information through its chatbot products,” as AP reported, in an ironic situation where AP is partnering with an organization despite it being under government scrutiny.
TIME’s deal with OpenAI is described as “a multi-year content deal and strategic partnership to bring TIME's trusted journalism to OpenAI’s products, including ChatGPT,” a TIME-OpenAI joint news release noted. “Through this collaboration, OpenAI will gain access to current and historic content from TIME's extensive archives from the last 101 years to enhance its products […] The new partnership furthers TIME’s commitment to expanding global access to accurate and trusted information.”
TIME Chief Operating Officer Mark Howard stated:
Throughout our 101-year history, TIME has embraced innovation to ensure that the delivery of our trusted journalism evolves alongside technology. This partnership with OpenAI advances our mission to expand access to trusted information globally as we continue to embrace innovative new ways of bringing TIME’s journalism to audiences globally.
“We’re partnering with TIME to make it easier for people to access news content through our AI tools, and to support reputable journalism by providing proper attribution to original sources,” Brad Lightcap, Chief Operating Officer of OpenAI, added.
As for WAN-IFRA (the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers), it announced “the launch of a broad-based accelerator program for over 100 news publishers in partnership with OpenAI. This ‘Newsroom AI Catalyst’ accelerator program is designed to help newsrooms fast-track their AI adoption and implementation to bring efficiencies and create quality content,” a WAN-IFRA news bulletin said, while noting:
The era of AI, and especially generative AI, brings significant opportunities for newsrooms and publishers: AI can assist in creating and improving content or help to do deeper analysis of information and data. It can also enhance the user experience on news websites. Newsrooms also use AI to find new formats for delivering information. But there are, at the same time, new challenges for journalists, publishers and society, like the potential growth and spread of misinformation and topics around privacy, copyright, bias and others.
The Newsroom AI Catalyst accelerator program “is not just about the opportunities; it’s about addressing these challenges. It will assist 128 newsrooms across Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and South Asia,” WAN-IFRA also explained.
To give some idea of WAN-IFRA’s impact as it fully adopts AI, it’s comprised of 76 national newspaper associations, 12 news agencies, 10 regional press organisations, and numerous individual newspaper executives in 100 countries. The association was founded in 1948, and, as of 2011, represented more than 18,000 publications globally.
Curiously, WAN-IFRA describes its objectives in a manner that suggests it’s a government collaborator in the broad sense:
[…] to defend and to promote freedom of the press, to support the development of newspaper publishing, and to foster global co-operation. It has provided consultation for UNESCO, the United Nations, and the Council of Europe.
Military intel man joins OpenAI board
Meanwhile, on 13 June, Open AI announced that a former National Security Agency director (2018–2024), retired U.S. Army Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, “has joined our Board of Directors. A leading expert in cybersecurity, Nakasone’s appointment reflects OpenAI’s commitment to safety and security, and underscores the growing significance of cybersecurity as the impact of AI technology continues to grow.”
But in response to Nakasone’s hiring, former NSA analyst-turned-dissident Edward Snowden, addressing his high volume of followers, blew the whistle via X, indicating that he sees trouble on the horizon in terms of OpenAI and the constitutional liberties and privacy of the general population.
“Do not ever trust @OpenAI … You have been warned,” Snowden tweeted.
Nakasone is regarded in establishment power circles as a leading expert in cybersecurity, technology advancement, and global cyber defense. He was pivotal in the creation of U.S. Cyber Command in his Army career and became the longest-serving leader of USCYBERCOM, also leading the National Security Agency.
Nakasone’s fellow OpenAI board members include:
- Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellman, a former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation;
- attorney Nicole Seligman, who represented President Bill Clinton during his 1999 impeachment trial; and
- Larry Summers, a former U.S. Treasury Secretary under Clinton, current Group of 30 member, former Bilderberg Steering Committee member, past World Bank chief economist, past Harvard president.
Specifically, Nakasone—who’s also close friends with regular Bilderberg attendee and Council on Foreign Relations member Jen Easterly (currently the Biden administration’s Director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security)—will join the OpenAI Board’s Safety and Security Committee, which is responsible for making recommendations to the full board on critical safety and security decisions for all OpenAI projects and operations.
In conclusion, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the legacy media syndicate, or what one might call the mass media cartel, is well aware of its potential demise and is pulling out all the stops by hitching a long ride with AI, to lock in a more dependable and larger revenue stream, largely in the interest of raw survival.
However, in so doing, it runs the huge risk that the resulting media products of this far-flung media syndicate will look and sound even more the same, no matter which outlet you read, watch or hear—since the rigid internationalist ideology, in pursuit of monopolistic world governance, that is fed into AI will guarantee that the same message emanates from AI.
Put another way, globojunk in, globojunk out. Thus, the legacy media’s AI adventure may be its ultimate doom. Dare “we, the people” hope and work for that finality? The question, alas, seems to answer itself.
Image: Banner asking whether Bilderberg controls Norway, 2010 | GGAADD | licence CC BY–SA 2.0
