How to apply

Use the form bellow to apply to the Algorithmic Accountability Reporting fellowship.

Remember: We are looking for journalistic research and stories that follow a narrative – as opposed to theoretical hypothesis or academic research. Practical, real-life cases will be positively valued.

Here we are asking you to provide an overview of the story you’d like to research, your research plan and goals. The central topic of the fellowship is the relation between AI and power structures, as well as the value chain it is built on. We are looking for research projects that:

• Focus on the influence and power structure of AI.
• Take place in Europe.
• Take into account the impact of AI on society.
• Bring new information to light, or that provide the point of view of people who are rarely given a voice in the debates on AI.

Possible research topics could be:

• Influence of big tech corporations on politics and the drafting of legislation, e.g., identifying pressure groups that manage to slow down the development or limit the scope of specific regulations, such as the watering down of the EU AI Act.
• Structural and systemic oppression of women, racialized people, or other vulnerable groups, exacerbated by the use of AI, e.g., automated software in public administration that systematically targets non-nationals in fraud detection.
• Powerful industry leaders, such as big tech companies, facilitating the surveillance of groups, e.g., analyzing major contracts between regional or national governments and private firms that allow the mass scanning of citizens’ personal data with automated tools, such as computer vision algorithms or remote biometric identification (RBI).
• Discrimination by automated systems in the fields of: health, education, finance, work, human resources, etc., e.g., public authorities using AI-powered apps to review welfare benefits.
• Exploitation of data workers and algorithmic management platforms to systematically replace traditional labor models, e.g. hospitals automatically allocating care services to save employment costs; the erosion of creative freelance work caused by AI tools in the fields of translation, illustration, graphic design, marketing, etc.
• The political impact of European decision-makers and lobbyists who promote longtermism and effective altruism ideologies.

What we are not looking for:

• Theoretical and/or academic research (e.g. “What is the political economy of AI”).
• Information on commercialisation and manufacturing of tech products, such as hardware (e.g. “Nvidia releases new version of microchips”).
• Major tech announcements without researching its impact on society (e.g. “Meta plans to open a data center in X”).

You can find all the details about the application here.