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Fall 2025
Wearing a winter parka, Ghael Fobes is standing outside the Washington Bureau of NBC News, with the U.S. Capitol building in the distant background. Wearing a winter parka, Ghael Fobes is standing outside the Washington Bureau of NBC News, with the U.S. Capitol building in the distant background.
Fall 2025 On the Side

AI for the Better

Under a Marshall Scholarship, Ghael Fobes ’17 is studying the ethics and efficacy of AI usage.

Written by:
The Lawrenceville School

Ghael Fobes ’17, who established L10 News as a Lawrenceville student and is now an associate White House producer with the NBC News White House Unit, was selected as a 2025 Marshall Scholar in December. The Marshall Scholarship program was created by an Act of British Parliament
in 1953 as a living memorial to former U.S. Secretary of State Gen. George C. Marshall and American assistance provided following World War II. The scholarship allows up to three years of fully funded graduate study in any academic topic at any university in the United Kingdom. Fobes was one of just 36 students selected from around the country.

A 2022 graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, Fobes plans to pursue two master’s degrees – in data and artificial intelligence (AI) ethics and in future governance – at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He began producing for NBC News as an intern in college. In his current role, he has a firsthand perspective on the role that AI is playing in journalism today.

“I think the effects right now are pretty wide-ranging and pose some great opportunities and challenges,” Fobes says. “For example, we’ve been using artificial intelligence tools at NBC News to make transcription more efficient and effective. We also use them to help verify the provenance
of social media content. As for challenges, I think anybody using social media has seen a flood in content created with generative AI. That presents significant obstacles to journalists’ ability to quickly determine the veracity of content.”

Building upon his Marshall experience, Fobes hopes to return to NBC News ready to lead an innovation office embedded in the network’s newsgathering operation. “My goal is to develop ethical workflows that enhance our ability to gather and present news, focusing specifically on expanding efforts to combat digital misinformation,” he says.

— Kelly Homan Rodoski/
S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications