Wrapping my mind around A.I. — telling the story and documenting the history
Fundraising letter from the Chiron Return journalism project
Dear Friend and Listener/Reader:
I’m mostly settled into my new digs in the Harshaw House in the hinterlands of upstate New York.
First, thanks to all who are subscribers and donors to the Chiron Return journalism project. Thanks to your direct reader support, I am able to do the relevant, in-depth kinds of coverage that I do. And my work has a distinction: I always cover the spiritual angle. That’s the place where you intersect with the issues as people, and where the social impact happens.
Spiritual also implies self-awareness and the potential for healing and growth.
This letter is for you if you’ve considered being a donor to my work at the level where I could actually allocate the funds for a specific purpose. And if you’ve considered initiating or reviving your paid subscription or being a one-time or monthly contributor, you’re invited to read on.
As you know, we’ve been tackling the A.I. problem for some time. Following the guidance of a client deep in the industry (who is involved in creating and fixing products on the business-to-business side), I pulled together a team and began amassing articles on the issue.
This publication is called Ice Nine News. Discussion of those articles is ongoing and we have a wide sense of the situation as a result. (If you want to be part of that discussion, reply to this email.) Ice Nine is an effort of Chiron Return, the nonprofit newsroom associated with Planet Waves, which also publishes Planet Waves FM. The astrology business is separate.
As I have said many times, meaning is context — and that is my specialty.
If you were pleased with my work on the “covid” operation — my team thoroughly debunked the fraudulent PCR test and was one of several to independently nail what I call the missing virus problem — you will like what we’re doing here.
In the covid era, we created the only actual, thorough daily chronology of the crisis (going back to events in 2006) and kept you informed every single day (for 1,185 days running) of developments for more than three years running. Always present in my work is the human dimension, which is what matters most. This is where the rest of the media falls flat.
After a lot of reading, discussions, and watching interviews, on top of 10-years of intensive media studies training with the McLuhan family, I have a sense of what’s going on with the A.I. onslaught that began in January, and going back well before the release of ChatGPT in 2022. By this, first I mean I understand the basic elements of the technology and its history, including the financial angle.
This has included a review of astrology charts even back to the term “artificial intelligence” 70 years ago and also its original creators. The 70th anniversary is Aug. 31 and I’ll have a special report over two days, on Aug. 28 and 29.
For potential donors
Meanwhile, I’m here to get your attention if you have considered funding my project. Many of my readers and listeners donate to ProPublica, NPR, PBS and other public interest journalism projects. Some of you subscribe to the guy who wants to convince you that dinosaurs never existed.
I know there are people who steward over family charitable trusts. Others have included nonprofits in your estate planning. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization in good standing are authorized by New York State to solicit and accept donations from the public anywhere.
Chiron Return is a small organization with a fantastic portfolio.
My work as a public interest journalist goes back to 1983 and my coverage of the proposed resettling of Love Canal, the king of toxic waste disasters. I still work on this story every year.
Chiron Return maintains a database of corporate documents (kept on paper and hosted in three locations) available via our home page (scroll down on the right). You know what I am capable of as a journalist and as an investigative editor.
We need to fund several important projects.
First, Ice Nine News needs to be built out as a searchable content system. This will take development work and a better server. As part of this, the Chiron Return website needs an update.
Second, the A.I. content we have amassed needs to be sorted and tagged.
Third, we need the help of a professional researcher to back fill Ice Nine News and construct our own A.I. chronology.
Last, we need an additional editor to help update the publication (we can afford one right now, who also donates some of her time). There are a few other items — such as travel to important conferences.
For this, I have set a fundraising goal similar to what we did annually during the “covid” era — $50,000 for the first year. We did a heck of a lot with that modest funding, which came from you, our readers and listeners. Note, we can accept funds in cryptocurrency.
Then there is my work.
All of the above is ongoing preparation for my own work on the most important layer: the human impact of what is in truth a rolling technological disaster. We have been covering the number of young people who are using A.I. agents as boyfriends, girlfriends, therapists and plagiarism assistants.
This will only result in the dulling of social and intellectual skills, which are already pretty dim. The digital disembodiment problem is leading to more self-obsessed, angry young people who are disconnected from themselves and one another. This calls for serious coverage, which is not happening anywhere else. I don’t mean complaining, I mean a true understanding, expressed with the sensitivity and perspective that I always bring to my work.
A debt to the future
We owe it to the future to record what is happening today. After reviewing countless hundreds of articles, I am sure this story is not being told.
Please reach to me directly if you want to be a major donor. My best contact is by email to efc@chironreturn.org copied to efc@planetwaves.net. Please make your subject header bold and clear. You can also reply to this email.
If you are former paid subscriber to this Substack and want to get back on board, or have considered offering us a one-time or monthly tithing, thank you for doing so.
Know that I seek not just your financial contribution but also sharing a vision of what journalism should be, and can be. If it violates your better judgment to have an astrologer lead this kind of effort, try me and see how that works out.
Your faithful reporter,
I am very grateful for your reporting and journalistic rigor. Your intellectual integrity and generous heart really show through. I am a paid subscriber to Planet Waves and will continue to do so. I look forward to reading, and listening to your podcasts, and interviews. Glad your move to a new home base has worked out so well. Love the pictures!