Timothy B. Lee is an independent AI journalist and newsletter writer who runs Understanding AI, a Substack newsletter with over 263,000 subscribers that explains how artificial intelligence actually works - minus the hype and minus the doom. Drawing on a rare combination of a computer science master's from Princeton, two decades of tech policy reporting at outlets like Ars Technica, the Washington Post, and Vox, and an instinct for clear, jargon-free prose, Lee has become one of the most-read independent voices in AI journalism. His superpower is translating complex machine learning concepts into accessible explainers that neither oversell nor undersell the technology.
Jon Stokes is a 25-year veteran of online media who co-founded Ars Technica in 1998 with Ken Fisher, helping build it into the internet's premier tech publication before selling it to Condé Nast for $25 million. An engineer turned journalist turned product builder, he holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering from LSU alongside two master's degrees from Harvard Divinity School in early Christian history - a combination that explains his unusual range: equally comfortable dissecting CPU microarchitecture, AI policy, Second Amendment law, and New Testament scholarship. Today he's co-founder and CPO of Symbolic AI, runs a Substack newsletter on AI and crypto with 13,000+ subscribers, and serves as a fellow at Open Source Defense.