About Keeping AI Honest
AI is being built at the speed of a product launch and governed at the speed of a committee. This is the record of what happens in the gap.
What this is
Keeping AI Honest is a rolling news wire. Item by item, as it happens: the laws being written and the ones being gutted, the safeguards labs promise and the ones they ship, the power and water behind every query, the people on the wrong end of an AI system's decision — and the advocates, researchers and organizers who are doing something about it. And because criticism without a better way is only half the job, we report the practice too: the standards, policies and choices that make AI work for people, gathered on how to use AI ethically. Each item is short, dated, sourced and linked. Every Thursday, the weekly pulls the record together and says what it adds up to.
We cover two stories that usually get told apart. One is AI's cost to the living world: data centers, grids, aquifers, emissions. The other is AI put to work for the living world: conservation, wildlife, climate. They belong on the same page, because the honest answer to "is AI good for the planet?" is a ledger, not a slogan.
Why we aren't neutral
Most tech coverage says it's neutral. It isn't — it just takes the industry's side by default, because the industry sets the agenda, owns the launch calendar and buys the ads. We'd rather say out loud which side we're on.
People and the planet first.
That means we're pro-human: for the worker, the patient, the tenant, the kid and the artist when a system is deployed on them without their say. It means we're pro-earth: we count the megawatts and the gallons, and we treat a community's water as more important than a company's roadmap. And it means we're pro-accountability: a safety promise is a claim until someone checks it.
It doesn't mean we're anti-technology. Plenty of what lands on this wire is AI doing real good. A model that finds a poacher's trail or a methane leak is a story we want to tell. We're not against the tool. We're against the bill landing on people who never got a vote.
A side, not a spin
Taking a side changes what we pick and what we say about it. It never changes the facts. Every item keeps the reporting and the opinion apart: the body is what happened, attributed and linked; Why it matters is our take, labeled as ours. Industry PR is labeled PR. Industry-funded research is labeled as industry-funded. When we get something wrong, the correction is appended and dated. Advocacy that bends facts loses the argument the moment anyone checks — so we make checking easy. The full standards.
Who's behind it
Keeping AI Honest is edited by Joe Balewski and published by Whitley Row LLC, which also publishes Anything Engine Optimization, a news wire about AI search, and operates Cited, an AI-search consultancy. Neither gets coverage here. Keeping AI Honest takes no money from the companies it covers.
Wire items are sourced and drafted with AI help under a written charter, and the editor is responsible for every one of them. Yes, we see the irony. We'd rather use the tool in the open, under rules, than pretend we don't.
Send us something
Seen AI doing harm — or someone standing up to it? joe@whitleyrow.com. Tips are credited by name or handle, every time, unless you'd rather we didn't.