Editorial Independence and Funding

1. Our Commitment

• Distilled AI decides what it publishes. Funders don’t.
• We test arguments from every side of the AI debate against evidence and logic. That only works if no funder can buy a conclusion.
• This policy covers every video, clip, Clip Library entry, and web page Distilled AI publishes.

2. What Funders Can’t Do

No funder may do any of the following, directly or through anyone else.

• Choose the topics, content, framing, or conclusions of anything we publish.
• See, comment on, or approve scripts, drafts, edits, or captions before we publish them.
• Choose, require, or approve the experts or guests who appear.
• Influence when, where, or how we publish or promote anything.
• Ask us to change or remove published content, except through our public corrections policy, which anyone can use, or to fix a breach of the legal limits on charitable money in section 3.

3. What Funders Can Do

• Share information and ideas with us the same way any member of the public can. We don’t have to use them.
• Report an error or a standards problem through the corrections policy, on the same terms as everyone else.
• Get reports on how we spent their money and what we published. Those reports never include unpublished drafts, scripts, or editorial conversations.
• Hold us to the legal limits on charitable money. We don’t use charitable funds to support or oppose candidates, to lobby, or for anything that isn’t charitable or educational.

4. Funding Doesn’t Depend on Viewpoint

• No funder may end, cut, or hold back funding because of the viewpoint of anything we publish.
• The only exception is a breach of the legal limits in section 3.

5. No Promotion, No Special Treatment

• No video has to mention, feature, or promote a funder.
• We hold funders’ arguments, research, and staff to the same standards as anyone else’s. We don’t go easier on them, and we don’t go harder on them to prove a point.
• Whenever a video or web page covers a funder, its staff, or its work, it says that the funder supports us. Videos say it on screen or in the caption.

6. Same Terms for Every Funder

• Every funder gets these same terms, whichever side of the AI debate it’s on.
• We turn down money that comes with editorial control.
• Any paid partnership carries the platform’s paid-partnership label and follows this policy.

7. Who Funds Us

• Our disclosures page lists every current funder, what its money supports, and the independence terms in its grant agreement.
• We welcome funding from across the AI debate on the terms above.

8. Where We Disclose

MIRI, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, funds us now. We disclose its support in these places.

Videos a host also posts on their own channel carry the same disclosures.

9. Who’s Responsible

• Distilled AI is run by Distilled Ventures LLC, a New York company owned by Avisha NessAiver.
• Avisha, as project lead, is responsible for editorial decisions and for this policy.
• Questions go to hello@distilledai.org.