LinkedIn Creator Accelerator Program Application
What makes your content helpful, valuable and interesting to other members on LinkedIn? Why is LinkedIn a good place for it and what makes your perspective unique?
We live in a world where fabricated truths are still truths to those who choose to believe them, and where the events of the world are perceived to unfold differently based on one’s political persuasion and media preference. The same event can polarize and separate communities, irrespective of the facts of what happened. From mask mandates to reproductive rights, the peaceful transition of power to the sovereign rights of territory and even the authority of the news itself, an increasingly conflicted and violent world is communicated by increasingly conflicted and violent imagery.
My content exists on the bleeding edge of what’s possible in the creation of entirely digitally created photographs and videos, and has true ‘stopping power’ inside of a public news feed. It has continually pushed the boundaries of what’s possible with neural network technology, and leverages artificial intelligence to further a conversation about the ethics and responsibility of those who create.
LinkedIn has consistently proven to be a place where such ethical conversations can be successfully motivated, as well as a singular place where such interested and relevant communities exist.
How do you interact with your community and start conversations on LinkedIn or elsewhere online?
I aspire to pose questions, ensure that no comment is left behind, and actively seek to bring others from my network into the conversation. I participate in others’ conversations, develop threads, and further discussions wherever they may originate through insight and guidance based on my own experiences. I engage privately and publicly, as well as ensuring a tone of curiosity, empathy and respect, and encourage the sharing of visual responses in helping others follow along as much as possible. And while impact-driven visual material may generate the stopping power to fuel engagement within a scrolling mobile feed, it's the conversation and discussion which makes my network come back over time, especially when those discussions are timely and connected to broader topics happening in the world.
What idea or concept would you want to create over the 6 weeks and how do you define success for your project?
I am a creator and designer of entirely digitally fabricated images, primarily using the neural network tools Midjourney and Deep Nostalgia. By day I am the Head of Product for NBC News. I am looking to create a large and meaningful discussion on the ethics of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the creation of photographic images across newsroom communities of journalists, editors and those involved in the gathering, production and distribution of the information which fuels the modern news cycle.
To achieve this, I want to create four things:
Create awareness of such tools inside of large-scale newsrooms, and position myself as an authority for the production of such images.
Create a meaningful, public discussion on the ethics of these technologies when it comes to news reporting, and attempt to establish an early, broad set of guidelines for how to think about these tools, both as producers but also as institutions able to educate users.
Create a number of large-scale, entirely digitally fabricated photo essays related to recent events (The Ukrainian Crisis, Climate, Coronavirus) which explicitly blur the line between what’s real and fabricated as a motivator for discussion.
Work with the LinkedIn team to understand how to better leverage the platform in order to reach as many news professionals as possible with this conversation.
How does your project drive the conversation around the future of work, technology & innovation forward, and who is the audience for your project?
I am interested in reaching those who work in newsrooms. Not just journalists and editors, but also those in product teams, engineers, data scientists and other support staff involved in the production and distribution of news.
My proposed project drives forward a clear and focused conversation around a news means of photographic production, atypical from those of traditional means, and potentially ethically questionable when it comes to depictions of the truth. Technology is not just a means of creating something new, but it’s also a means by which we can leverage our curiosity to talk to each other. The future of work is already highly networked, but very often the means of having public discussions on the ethics of news gathering and production is not.
My work presents a unique opportunity to leverage the scale of LinkedIn’s community to establish the beginnings of an ethical point of view on machine learning and artificial intelligence in the context of image production far beyond the simple conversation around retouching and digital editing. If anything can be created, how is a user to know what’s real? Is there a case for communicating the use of such tools to users when they see such images? How would such a mandate be enforced, if at all? What are the continued risks of the abuse of such technology when it comes to the articulation of the truth?
How would the resources (funding and support) from the Creator Accelerator Program help you bring this concept to life and start conversations with your community?
If our discussion has scale, it can have impact and make a difference. I believe the curiosity and desire to have the ethical conversation already exists within newsrooms, but it doesn’t happen across different newsrooms, only within individual ones. LinkedIn’s scale offers the opportunity to have a brand-independent conversation across newsrooms, and across the political spectrum, as well as to reach decision makers and those with boots on the ground in the field.
I am interested in working with the LinkedIn team to understand how to reach more of this community with my work, but also to foster conversations between journalists and across newsrooms, independent of my involvement. I seek to be a catalyst for this discussion, but the goal is clearly for it to grow beyond my control.
This is a critical and timely conversation to have, and one which requires the funding and support which only LinkedIn is uniquely positioned to offer. By creating awareness, building communal conversation, creating material examples for discussion, and leveraging the LinkedIn team’s proprietary insight, we can accelerate our curiosity around these new technologies in service of doing the right thing in communicating the events of the world to ever polarized audiences.
