analysis Silicon Valley billionaires can't judge journalism if reporters refuse to buy in Published April 23, 2026 6:45AM (EDT) Peter Thiel is launching Objective AI, which would function as a paid "truth tribunal" for people aggrieved against journalists (Nordin Catic/Getty Images for The Cambridge Union) There is a persistent belief in certain corners of the tech world that complex social problems can be eliminated through computation. Right now, there are plenty of aggrieved founders, venture capitalists and MAGA -adjacent influencers who feel that journalism is one of those messy problems. And so a group of powerful men in Silicon Valley with a demonstrated willingness to retaliate are trying, once again, to bend the Fourth Estate to their will. The pitch is that better tools would enable us to separate fact from falsehood more efficiently. Give it enough data, the argument goes , and the machine will find a bias-free path to truth.…