Fable Ban Reversed + Dr. Dana Suskind on Parenting With A.I. + Prediction Market Drama

15:12Nora Ali:Yes. And Dean Ball, former Hard Fork guest, former Trump administration AI advisor, soon to be OpenAI employee, had a great post about all of this just a few days ago where he made the point, which I thought was reasonable, that like the government should have some role. It's reasonable to expect that in the future, when these models are very powerful and have very scary capabilities, that the government will want to take an active role in deciding what can and can't be sold. that seems reasonable.

15:40Alex Kantrowitz:Yeah, and I think there's a good argument that that moment is now, that the models are now capable enough and scary enough that the government has an interest in addressing it.

15:48Nora Ali:Totally, but Dean made the point that you actually need technical experts in government to make that happen. You need people who are capable of evaluating and running the safety tests on unreleased models to determine what they are and aren't capable of, and right now, at least according to Dean, we don't have that.

16:04Alex Kantrowitz:Well, Kevin, I have some great news, because on Monday, none other than Mark Andreessen himself joined the U.S. Defense Policy Board, which will put him in regular conversation with Pete Hegseth and other government officials. And so now Mark can finally get to the bottom of this and demand that the government drop this de facto licensing regime.

16:27Nora Ali:Do you think he'll be running any of the safety evaluations himself? I'm terrified to find out. So there's one other twist of this story, And it's something I'm really interested to get your take on, which is the whole China angle. Because the other backdrop of these discussions between the U.S. government and the U.S. AI labs is that these Chinese models are getting pretty good. So recently, we saw a new model out from the Chinese company ZAI called GLM 5.2. You know, people are saying that this is, you know, one of the best open source models out there. There's been a little bit of what I would consider overheated reporting that suggests that it's as good or better than some of the frontier models from the AI companies in the U.S.

17:10Nora Ali:I don't think that is probably true, but it is at least in the sort of same tier of consideration. And so there are people who are saying, well, this is going to be a big problem because at the same time, the U.S. government is pulling American models off the market that are very powerful. We now have these Chinese open source models that customers, big businesses can use for much cheaper, that are just as capable and that are not in danger of being clawed back by the U.S. government. What do you make of this?

17:40Alex Kantrowitz:I think this is basically BS. Like, I do. I think it feels like a lobbying tactic from people who want to get the American models back into production. I have seen no credible reporting that the Chinese models have kept up. Even when I've read the reporting that we've seen over the past week out of the Wall Street Journal and others, there aren't numbers in there that would lend credence to it. What there are is a handful of people saying these models are really good. And look, I'm sure these models are pretty capable. I'm sure they're more capable than the open source and Chinese models of a year ago.

18:12Alex Kantrowitz:But we learned during the DeepSeek freakout that a reliable way to get attention in AI discourse is to wave your hands and say the Chinese are catching up. The Chinese are catching up and everyone will pay attention to you. But when you look at how the Chinese are building these models, the theory just doesn't hold because you have to keep in mind these what these Chinese companies are doing is distilling American models. Yes, they're getting in there and they are scraping the responses of these chatbots and they're using those to make their own chatbots. So the best Chinese models are kind of like American models once removed.

18:44Alex Kantrowitz:And that is why they're always going to be at least a little bit behind the frontier. And let me say one more thing, Kevin, while I'm all worked up, which is I'm increasingly coming to think about like the whole AI market in as like two like systems. There's the frontier and there's everything else. OK, and if you're if you're truly at the frontier, we will know because you can see it in the benchmarks. You can see it in the revenue figures of the companies that are selling this stuff. That is where the actual value is. And then there's everything else, which is the million little open source models, the distilled models, the Chinese models, and they're just a step behind.

19:24Alex Kantrowitz:And look at the revenues of those companies. There's an insane amount of competition, and it's not as good as the best. And so in my view, these Chinese companies that we're talking about right now, they're firmly in the everything else camp. That's not to say they aren't getting better over time because they are. But if you're going to tell me right now that this is as good as a mythos, I'm going to need to see the damn numbers. Right.

19:43Nora Ali:I think that's right, but I'm also like, I'm not quite as skeptical of this fear of China catching up as you are, in part because I think these distillation tactics appear to work. You get a model that is almost as good as the original. If the Chinese companies are able to keep doing that, I think there's a plausible case that they will shrink the time, the sort of gap between the American frontier and the sort of open source frontier. Maybe it's nine months now. Maybe in the future that becomes six months or three months. I think that sounds plausible to me. I also think that there are a lot of businesses right now who are really freaked out about what is happening with Fable and with GPT 5.6.

20:26Nora Ali:and they are saying to themselves, well, if we were to sort of go with the latest American models at all times, not only are we paying a premium for that, but it could be yanked away by the government with no explanation and no due process. And it would totally screw up all of our workflows and all the software that we're building on top of those tools. So I did actually talk to someone recently who works at an American tech company, not one of the AI labs, but like a solid big American tech company who is saying that they're actually spending a lot more time with these open source Chinese models, not because they're as good as the frontier models, but because you can download them, you can run them on your own hardware, and they're pretty good for a lot of tasks that don't need the absolute capability frontier that you would get from a Mythos or a GPT 5.6.

21:15Nora Ali:So I think that in this moment where there's so much uncertainty coming out of Washington, I think a lot of companies that rely on these tools are going to take a hard look at the Chinese models and see whether they might be good enough for some percentage of what they're doing.

21:29Alex Kantrowitz:Yeah, that makes sense. You know, like the American economy has been so strong for so long, in part because the government has mostly been safe, boring, and predictable. And the Trump government is not those things, right? We saw this during tariffs, right? Where like the American businesses were having similar problems because they couldn't predict how expensive their products were going to be on any given day based on what the tariff of the day was, right? And now we have the LLM restriction of the day, and it's causing similar havoc in the economy.

21:55Nora Ali:So I think one obvious link between the actions of the U.S. government and the China subplot here is that maybe there's a possibility that the U.S. government restricting access to these frontier models from American companies actually doesn't allow China to catch up. Maybe it slows China down because if they are so reliant on distilling from, you know, Claude and the GPT series and other leading American models, maybe not having access to those models will hurt them. So is there any sense in which you think this action by the Trump administration could actually widen the gap between the U.S. capabilities frontier and the sort of Chinese open source frontier?

22:37Alex Kantrowitz:I mean, maybe, but that is an extremely ham-fisted tactic for accomplishing that goal. The United States government has many levers it can pull if it feels like Chinese companies are attacking its companies. Like, for example, they could sanction companies that they believe have caught distilling. They can prevent them from selling their wares in America. They can get allies to do the same thing. We saw Anthropic the other day send a letter complaining that Alibaba has apparently been doing wide-scale distilling of clod, and the hope there is that the government will intervene. So that is how these things are traditionally done.

23:11Alex Kantrowitz:While it is true, I suppose, that this is going to make it harder for Chinese companies to distill the next models, there are still all of these other reasons why, at least for me, that's the worst way to go about it. Right.

23:23Nora Ali:That makes sense to me. I mean, the argument that I would make against that point is like, what matters is not just the capabilities frontier of the internal models that the companies in each country have. What matters is sort of the deployment frontier. And for a society to really harness the benefits of AI, you have to be able to use the models. Like, you have to be able to deploy them inside big companies. You have to be able to deploy them inside consumer products. Like, people have to be able to use them. It is not just, like, which lab has in their basement the most capable model that nobody else can use.

23:59Alex Kantrowitz:Right. And all of this happened at a time when companies and government institutions around the world were using these very powerful models to improve their cybersecurity defenses, right? I mean, like, that's one of the reasons why this issue feels really urgent is that there was an ongoing project to protect the critical infrastructure of the United States and its allies. And that was yanked away while at the same time we're selling advanced chips to the Chinese to help them catch up.

24:23Nora Ali:So I think there's one silver lining to this story for me is that for years now, you and I have been sort of hoping against hope that the U.S. government would stop just sort of talking about AI as this unalloyed good that was just a normal technology that was going to supercharge the economy, that they would actually start to pay some attention to the risks of these powerful AI systems. That is happening now, for better or for worse. The government is now firmly aware that these models do pose risks. They are sort of thinking about cybersecurity, but I imagine they are also thinking about bio-risk and other types of risk.

25:03Nora Ali:So I think that there is a sort of way to spin this whole saga as a clunky, ill-advised first step on a good path, which is like the government is waking up. These models are very powerful. They can be very dangerous. They're going to get more powerful and more potentially dangerous as time goes on. And so I think what we're seeing now is sort of a fumbling attempt to kind of do something. And I think they will come up with better ways of doing this over time, I hope anyway, that this is not sort of the permanent structure of the AI licensing regime in the United States. But at least they are not just pretending that this is just a normal technology anymore.

25:46Alex Kantrowitz:That is true, and I'm glad that it's the case. But at the same time, this same administration has been pushing to allow the export of more and more advanced chips to China, which will allow China to train more powerful models over time. And they're doing that at the same time as they are preventing good models from being used by our allies like Britain and other countries. So there is still an extreme level of incoherence in the administration's position, in my opinion. Well, you can't win them all. That's true.

26:17Nora Ali:When we come back, a conversation about AI and parenting. Do you know where your children are?

26:22Alex Kantrowitz:I have children.

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28:17Nora Ali:Well, Casey, I'm very excited for our guest today, who is an expert on the intersection of parenting and AI. This is a topic that I've been wanting to explore on the show for a while now, in part because it's just become a big part of my social life, is talking with other parents about how we are or aren't exposing our kids to technology, including AI and chatbots. So today we have on the show our guest, Dr. Dana Susskind. She's a pediatric surgeon and childhood development expert. She's a professor at the University of Chicago and the founder and co-director of the TMW Center for Early Learning and Public Health.

28:56Nora Ali:She's also an author, and she has a book coming out soon called Human Raised, Nurturing Connection, Curiosity, and Lifelong Learning in the Age of AI. And when I heard about this book, I thought this is just the person we need to tell us slash me how we should or shouldn't be using AI with our children.

29:16Alex Kantrowitz:Absolutely. Because in addition to all of that, Kevin, Dr. Suskin is a parent to eight children who are now all grown up. So this is somebody who has a lot of expertise in this subject.

29:27Nora Ali:Yes. So I think this is an important conversation today, but I think it's about to become much more important because there's just a lot of AI products and tools aimed at young kids that are making their way to the market and are going to become, I predict, more popular in the next few years. So already we've seen Miko and Luna, which are two AI-powered robots that are designed for kids. And we've got all these sort of child-specific companions and chatbots with names like Ascii and Ello and Hey Otto. And we're just starting to see a lot more products using AI that are aimed at children. And I think for a lot of parents, that is creating a lot of anxiety because how the heck are we supposed to know which of these things are going to, you know, help our kids grow and develop and which are going to turn them into glorified slop cannons?

30:15Alex Kantrowitz:Yeah, and that's what you don't want is a slop cannon child. Yeah, heaven forbid. But here's what I'll say. If your child is a slop cannon, you need to read this book.

30:25Nora Ali:It's true.

30:25Alex Kantrowitz:Let's bring her in.

30:32Dr.

30:33Nora Ali:Dana Susskind, welcome to Hard Fork.

30:35Dr. Dana Suskind:Thanks so much for having me.

30:36Nora Ali:So you've got this new book coming out, Human Raised, which is about parenting and sort of child development in the age of AI. And I was so excited when I heard that this book was coming out because as the parent of a now four-year-old, I see this issue coming for me in a way that makes me quite nervous. And so I was so happy when I heard that you were starting to do the research about what we as parents should think about our children potentially using AI, which I think is going to be a bigger issue for me as my kid gets a little older, but is already an issue for a lot of parents I know. So first of all, like what made you want to pursue this topic as someone who's long been interested in childhood development?

31:22Nora Ali:it.

31:22Dr. Dana Suskind:Yeah. So I'm a cochlear implant surgeon. And you may say, well, why exactly are you on this or even thinking about this issue? But early in my career, I started noticing profound differences in the outcomes of my own patients. So I would do the same surgery, same technology, same parents loving them. And the outcomes of the children were so profoundly different, with some of them being able to develop language and others not. So that experience actually brought me into this incredible world of brain development and neuroscience that shows that human connection is not just a nice to have. It is the foundations of how we learn and how we learn to be human.

32:05Dr. Dana Suskind:And so my whole career has been focused on that and supporting parents and caregivers in that important role. And then suddenly AI comes onto the scene. For the first time in human history, we have technology that can actually mimic that interaction that has traditionally wired our children's brains. And now I'm like, oh, we need to probably step back and really think about what is happening in our children's worlds because the choices that we make at this moment is going to determine what our species look like. Dr.

32:37Nora Ali:Soskin, can I run some scenarios by you from my own parenting journey and you tell me whether I'm being a bad father or not? So there's no such thing. The two primary ways that I'm using AI with my four-year-old right now, one is to just like answer random questions that he asks. We're in like a big question phase right now. So the other day, he, you know, he asked me, where does wind come from? And I realized I actually don't know the answer.

33:05Alex Kantrowitz:That's like a hard question. Yeah.

33:06Nora Ali:So I pull up an AI model and I ask and, you know, I get back this answer and it's about like, you know, air pressure. And I'm like, okay, this is for a four-year-old. Could you like, you know, dumb it down a little bit? And it gives me a great answer. You know, we tell him the answer and he has the answer to his question. Now he gets to like repeat it to all his friends. That's, you know, option one.

33:24Alex Kantrowitz:By the way, yeah, on his playground, the kids are obsessed with where he comes from. It's a hot topic over there.

33:29Nora Ali:It's made him quite popular at preschool. So the other way is just like creating stories for him. So, you know, one of the things that these models are quite good at is like you give it some, you know, guidance. I want a story about a kid this age who has a best friend who's a dinosaur, and they go off and they play soccer together or whatever it is. I would do one where his best friend is the wind.

33:50Alex Kantrowitz:I think that could really hit. I could land clearly with him right now.

33:54Nora Ali:So are either of those examples of AI use in parenting of a young child going to harm my son?

34:03Dr. Dana Suskind:Absolutely not. Okay. So first of all, those are great examples. And, you know, I put in this book, I tried to really also give grounded and practical frameworks. And one of the frameworks that I give parents to sort of think about AI in general is sort of an evergreen. I call it hope. H is human connection is irreplaceable. It is what we need to protect and double down on. But O is owning your imperfections. As I said, kids don't grow through perfection. they grow through. I don't know about you, but I am a very imperfect parent, but now I know it's really good for my kids. P is protecting the early years.

34:42Dr. Dana Suskind:Those first years when you get 85 % of the physical brain being built, we've got to be extra careful about what we let in. But lastly is E. If you're going to use it, use it to enhance, not replace. You're really using this technology to enhance your relationship, fill in the gaps of knowledge that you may or may not have. And that's a great way. This book, in my view, is not at all anti-tech. I'm an implant surgeon. I build AI tech. I'm all about it. But how do we use it to deepen our relationships and support us in this important role?

35:14Nora Ali:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. And it is compatible with, I guess, my own sort of vague optimism about AI in the lives of kids. And, you know, I see a lot of parents right now with a lot of anxiety about AI that seems like it is borrowed from this earlier era of like the screen time debates or the debates about sort of addictive social media platforms for kids. And to me, it just feels fundamentally different what AI is as a technology and what it is capable of doing for children. Like, I just think back to my own childhood and like I was a nerdy kid who loved to learn stuff. And if I had had like a chatbot that could have taught me about the Bernoulli effect in a way that was like enjoyable and entertaining to me, like I would have done that and I would have been happier than going to my, you know, world book encyclopedia and looking up that fact.

36:08Nora Ali:Like, so I think for the curious kids out there, my sense is, and please tell me if you agree with this, like that this could be an incredibly enriching technology for them if it is designed well and if parents are sort of in the loop of how their kids are using it.

36:22Dr. Dana Suskind:I mean, 100%, I agree with you. I think to your point, this, you know, people go to the social media as the best analogy, and I get it. But I think a better analogy is actually processed food. You know, processed food is a continuum, right? There's whole wheat bread, which is processed, but it's still nourishing. And then you've got the ultra-processed variety, you know, the Doritos and, you know, Twinkies, which are good occasionally. But the truth is, is that in the same way, AI is a huge spectrum. I mean, not only being able to provide answers as a chatbot, but lifting invisible labors off of parents and teachers to diagnostics.

37:03Dr. Dana Suskind:I come from the world of medicine where it's transformative. I think people are really focused on the AI companions, which I get, which I am concerned about in terms of crowding out that necessary human connection. But that's a really, that's a small part of what AI is. I mean, you can have socially assistive robots that help children with autism learn to read, you know, social cues to better connect with other humans. That's an amazing example. So I think to your point, it is a spectrum and it's not a monolith.

37:36Alex Kantrowitz:I'm curious though, like where, if anywhere, are you like drawing the bright lines? Like where are you saying like, you know, do this, don't do that? Yeah, that's pretty easy right now.

37:48Dr. Dana Suskind:We are at the very beginning of this tech revolution and AI companions in the, you know, AI toys that, you know, claim to be better alternatives to screen time, that feels like a pretty hard no. You know, I think the thing that we can learn from social media is that, you know, we need to take a precautionary principle. You've got to show me it's safe before I'm going to let it into the developmental sanctuaries of our kids because the stakes are just way too high, even higher than social media, in my opinion.

38:25Nora Ali:Yeah. What about like smart devices that are not meant to be plush toys, but like my, you know, my kid loves talking to Alexa and asking for various children's songs that are intolerable to adults, but that he loves to play on repeat. Like, is that the same thing or is that different because it's not pretending to be a companion or a stuffed animal?

38:49Dr. Dana Suskind:I mean, I think it's, it's how, how much, I mean, it's a slippery slope. But I think we can all agree that, you know, Alexa playing songs when you're around or even if you're not around is probably a fine thing. At this point, it's more just the crowding out of the human interaction that I'm very concerned about.

39:11Nora Ali:Yeah. My kid would otherwise be asking me to play the Blippi garbage truck song 400 times. So I'm somewhat sympathetic to that.

39:20Alex Kantrowitz:You know, you've mentioned that we're pretty early in many ways in the development of this technology, but I also know that, you know, you're really concerned with some of the things that you're seeing. Is this a moment where you feel like the government has a role to play in regulating the technology? And if so, what do you think that role should be?

39:39Dr. Dana Suskind:No, absolutely. I think we know in Norway they've actually set out a law that there's no gen AI in the school system in the early years. And in the same way, I think we're seeing that in the U.S. I mean, in some ways, this really mirrors the industrial food revolution. When the food revolution happened, you know, initially there was no guardrails. And eventually we started the Pure Food Drug Act. And then eventually we got, you know, the little, what is it called? Nutrition labels. Nutritional labels. The nutrition labels. I mean, these are the things that, you know, are going to happen. It just we're just at the very beginning, but hopefully we'll start seeing it.

40:23Alex Kantrowitz:What do you think of the Norway approach? Like, does it seem wise to say like, hey, until we've done a little bit more research, we're going to keep like kids under 16 from using chat GPT in schools for any reasons. Does that does that seem wise?

40:35Dr. Dana Suskind:I mean, I think it's taking a scientific approach. I don't think they're saying no, never. I think they're saying, wow, this is happening so fast. Let's take a step back. We know what works. I mean, look, if we didn't know how to educate humans, I would get it. But I think they're just taking a prudent approach. And I'm a scientist who is about innovation. I just, you know, I think about what happens in medicine and we're much more, you know, thoughtful when we have a new drug on the market. It's not like we have to say, ooh, I wonder what's going to happen to my child if I give them this new medication.

41:18Dr. Dana Suskind:I'm not sure why, you know, this new technology, which is so incredibly powerful. It's amazing, right? But we have to acknowledge that it's a powerful technology that we need to understand what happens to us. I think the story of AI is as much about technology as it is about understanding what it does to humans. And I think that's what Norway is saying.

41:42Alex Kantrowitz:Well, let's try to give parents some practical advice. you suggest that when parents are trying to figure out whether a particular AI tool or product is suitable for them, they should ask themselves six questions. So what are the questions that parents should be asking?

41:59Dr. Dana Suskind:Sure. So because I'm a surgeon and I love acronyms, it's called DETECT. So what is the DETECT method? D is design. You know, what is this tool designed for? You know, is it interacting directly with your child or is it helping you? do you really need it? E is, was it ethically trained? T is, were there any troubles with this technology in children? E is, what is the evidence? Does it really do what it's supposed to do? C is confidentiality. What happens to your child data? And lastly is T, what is it teaching from a value standpoint? And that detect method is used so that parents can quickly and easily figure out, is this something that they want in their child's life?

42:44Alex Kantrowitz:All right, so I want to see if we can apply your detect framework to like an actual AI thing that is in the market right now. There is something called CradleWise, which I learned about from a tweet by Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, and he has a baby. And he tweeted that they had bought, quote, a lot of silly baby things that we haven't needed, but definitely I recommend a CradleWise crib and a lot more burp racks than you think you could possibly need. As for the cradle-wise, though, this is apparently a smart crib that uses AI to detect early signs of a baby waking up and automatically starts a gentle bouncing motion and soothing track to get them back to sleep.

43:22Alex Kantrowitz:So if we were to use your framework, doctor, how would we rate a cradle-wise?

43:30Dr. Dana Suskind:All I can say is I wish I had been there when I had one. Yeah.

43:33Alex Kantrowitz:Not having my children.

43:34Dr. Dana Suskind:So what is it designed to do? In some ways, it's designed to support the parents by helping the child sleep. E, how is it trained? I think it's probably ethically trained. Is there any evidence that kids have had trouble?

43:48Alex Kantrowitz:Not that I'm aware of, but I haven't so much as Googled it yet. But that would be a thing to do, would be to sort of investigate whether there have been any problems with the device. Problems? Yeah.

43:57Dr. Dana Suskind:Yeah. So, and what the evidence were, and probably some researchers have looked to see, does it keep kids asleep? Do they have any problems? And I mean, I think long and short of it, I think that that feels very aligned with using technology to enhance, not replace Sam Altman's parenting, allow him to have a good night's sleep, let the baby sleep. So just hearing it very, you know, for the first time, it sounds like a good thing.

44:26Alex Kantrowitz:It seems okay. I'd say I would take a bed that would actually gently bounce me and rock me back to sleep when I wake up in the middle of the night because whatever I'm doing now is not working for me.

44:33Nora Ali:You just have to update the firmware on your eight sleep. I'm Googling this right now, and it seems like there have not been serious problems with the Cradlewise Smart Bassinet, although it does say that it has proprietary linens. You cannot buy cheap third-party crib sheets because the mattress is a nonstandard shape.

44:52Alex Kantrowitz:You know, Cradlewise was one of my favorite songs in The Sound of Music. That was Cradlewise. Oh, yeah. Anyway. Hey, listen.

44:59Dr. Dana Suskind:Listen, it's either that or like me. my late husband and I had three kids in our bed at one time and I don't know if I had cradle wise we might have had more sleep

45:09Nora Ali:wow that's wild that's heroic yeah seriously I think this falls for me into the category of like it makes you a better parent it does actually make you a better parent to get six hours of sleep in a night

45:22Alex Kantrowitz:here's what I'm going to say do not overclock your cradle wise so it starts shaking incredibly quickly even if it seems like it would be kind of funny. Don't do it.

45:31Nora Ali:I mean, I do think eventually we will need some kind of like a TV rating system for AI products. And I'm curious whether you've heard anyone suggest that or whether you have any ideas about how that could be implemented.

45:48Dr. Dana Suskind:Yeah, 100%. Actually, I talk about the good housekeeping seal of approval, which actually came out of the industrial food revolution and suggests that we actually need something similar. And I've heard of different groups talking about doing it. Common Sense Media, I think, is thinking about it and others. Maybe you all should be doing it.

46:10Alex Kantrowitz:The hard fork seal of approval.

46:13Nora Ali:I mean, I think one of the hardest things is that these models are generally useful. Like they can do amazing things that are very good for kids. They can teach them science. They can teach them to read. They can, you know, give them creative outlets. And they can addict them or become, you know, harmful companions or shut out the rest of their human friends because it's just so fun to talk to the AI companions. So I just think, like, I want the AI companies thinking more about parental controls and visibility because I think parents should know what their kids are talking about. But I think as with screen time, I think there's this sort of dangerous tendency to flatten every product into a single verdict, which is like, you know, it really matters what your kid is watching on their screen.

47:00Nora Ali:It also really matters what your kid is talking to AI about. And I think the more that parents can be aware of and respond to that, rather than just saying like, this product is okay and this product is bad, the better off kids will be.

47:13Alex Kantrowitz:Well, and, you know, Kevin, that actually brings up something interesting, which is that, you know, earlier during this interview, you brought up the Bernoulli effect. Yeah. And I thought that I could imagine a lot of children listening to this and racing to their AI, you know, to find out what it is. So I thought I would take this opportunity as a human who wants human connection with children to share what the Bernoulli effect is. And what it is, and you guys already know this, but it's, and honestly, Kevin, it's more commonly called the Bernoulli principle. so I don't want to embarrass you, but it really is sort of known as the principle.

47:45Alex Kantrowitz:And it states that for a fluid, such as air or water flowing smoothly, an increase in the fluid speed is accompanied by a decrease in its pressure. So, children, I hope that you heard that and have internalized that and are not going to ask AI about it.

47:57Nora Ali:It's what allows airplanes to fly. Exactly. Didn't you learn that in middle school science? Yeah. Okay, let's get back to Dr. Susskind here. I just had to say that. We just like to do our little bits and just force our guests to suffer through them. Okay.

48:12Dr. Dana Suskind:Well, you want me to tell you an interesting story? Yes. Related to knowledge? Yes. So in our center, we've built this really cool computer adaptive tool that measures what parents know about child development in all domains. It's very predictive of what parents do and child outcomes. So we use it in lots of research. So recently, we haven't published it yet, we had Claude take the, it's called the speak, to see how Claude would do. And so I'm going to ask you all, do you think Claude did really well, mediocre, or not so great on its knowledge of child development?

48:49Alex Kantrowitz:Really well. I would say well, yeah. You're right. It aced it. Claude did incredibly

48:55Dr. Dana Suskind:Claude aced it. And so because we didn't want the story to be, oh, you know what, now Claude can parent, because that's not the message. The message is Claude can obviously be a resource. So when parents have a question, oh, you know, X, Y, and Z about child development, they can confidently ask Claude and Claude will give a right answer.

49:21Nora Ali:I mean, that tracks 100 % with my own experience of these tools, which is that they are often more seasoned and more confident about parenting advice than I am and that they've been a very good resource for me when I'm feeling stuck or I'm trying to deal with some behavioral thing that I don't know how to deal with or I just need a little backup. I can just go to Claude or Gemini or ChatGPT and ask the question. Usually the answer it gives back is pretty good. Um, Dr. Susskind, I want to ask you about the title of your book, um, which is essentially a provocation as I read it that says that basically as AI tools become more normalized, um, this idea of being human raised, this is going to become, uh, rare.

50:07Nora Ali:And maybe something of a luxury where like if you are born into a family with a certain level of security and privilege, you will get sort of the human experience of having human parents. And if you are not, you will be raised by the machines. Am I reading that right? And is that what you think is likely to happen?

50:30Dr. Dana Suskind:Well, I'm writing this book so that hopefully it will not happen. But yes. So in the same way as 100 plus years ago, you never question if the food on your table was organic or farm-raised. And then suddenly, you know, fast forward with the rise of altered processed food and suddenly organic was that for children with privilege. In the same way, my concern is that artificial alternatives will become the cheap calories of brain nutrition and human raised and human connection will become a luxury item. And we just can't allow that to happen. Every child deserves to have parents and caregivers who love them raising them.

51:16Dr. Dana Suskind:Not to say that AI can't support those parents and support, you know, some of the development, but I think we need to be very careful because we've seen this story before.

51:28Nora Ali:Well, Dr. Susskind, thank you so much for coming on and for your great book, Human Raised. I think this is a topic that a lot of parents are really interested in right now. And so I predict it'll do pretty well.

51:39Dr. Dana Suskind:Thank you so much. Thanks so much. Thanks for coming. Great to see you all.

51:46Nora Ali:When we come back, scandals and controversies abound in the world of prediction markets. We'll recap it all on our new segment, Against All Odds.

52:46Alex Kantrowitz:From leadership to AI to the uncertainty of it all, tune in for convos that go deeper than your typical work advice. Find Work Life, a podcast from TED, wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is supported by Jira Biatlassian. Your AI agent can write code in seconds, but if it doesn't know what you're trying to solve and why, those are simply seconds wasted. Jira provides the context agents need to do the right work the first time. Try it free at jira.dev. That's J-I-R-A dot D-E-V. These days, you can chat with AI about almost any business problem. But only Rippling AI is built to solve them.

53:26Alex Kantrowitz:That's because Rippling AI is built on your live global workforce data. So it doesn't just uncover insights into your business. It uses them to take complex actions across your departments. Ready for AI that isn't all talk? Head to rippling.ai slash hardfork and get AI that turns insight into action. That's R-I-P-P-L-I-N-G dot A-I slash hardfork Sign up today

53:56Nora Ali:Well, Casey, one of the other stories that keeps on giving are prediction markets This has been a source of nonstop entertainment and scandal this year And so we thought we would introduce a new segment Where we round up all the latest news and scandals about prediction markets And we're calling that segment Against All Odds

54:22Nora Ali:okay well casey i think we should start this uh segment by looking at a recently released ad from the prediction market company polymarket and uh i'm just gonna play this for you if you could ask one question so we start with rick rubin

54:43Dr. Dana Suskind:Can the U.S. win it all?

54:47Alex Kantrowitz:Can France find the glory? Can France find football or soccer?

54:51Nora Ali:Can the traditions survive? Can the traditions survive?

54:56Alex Kantrowitz:Will the world be better off four years from now?

54:57Nora Ali:Sort of a Benetton ad of gambling. A series of questions appears on screens. Will borders matter in 100 years? Do aliens exist? Will Messi win again? Will tradition evolve? got a Kanye West song in the background, which is a choice.

55:21Nora Ali:The people who never stop asking are the ones who find answers.

55:28Nora Ali:Now, Casey, did that ad make you want to open up an account on an offshore crypto-denominated prediction market and start gambling with your savings?

55:37Alex Kantrowitz:I find this ad so offensive. Like, the way that it presents prediction markets as, like, first of all, like, grounded in concepts of, like, multiculturalism and togetherness, you know? It's like, it has this sort of almost, like, mystical feel of, like, if we could just all get in the same room and gamble together, maybe wars wouldn't happen anymore. You know what I mean? Like, that's the feeling. And I truly don't get it at all.

56:03Nora Ali:It's very sad that they didn't feature the actual customers of Polymarket who are like troops on active duty in war zones.

56:10Alex Kantrowitz:Or like middle schoolers.

56:11Nora Ali:Yeah. People in Bad Bunny's Super Bowl entourage. Yeah.

56:17Alex Kantrowitz:My like sort of half joke for like the official marketing tagline of any prediction market should just be betray your friends. Because that's the way to make money on a prediction market. You found out something you're not supposed to know, get on a prediction market. Yeah. Go make some money. That's the ad I want to see, is screw over someone close to you.

56:34Nora Ali:Yeah, well, my second question about this is how much do you think they paid Rick Rubin, and do you think they paid him in polymarket credits or in dollars?

56:42Alex Kantrowitz:I'm going to guess it was in the millions, Kevin.

56:45Nora Ali:Yeah. Yeah. You don't think Rick Rubin just did this one for free as a sort of testament to his commitment to craft and creativity and the artist's dream?

56:54Alex Kantrowitz:No, Rick Rubin produced the Beastie Boys. He has not had to work in a very long time.

57:00Nora Ali:So these ads from prediction markets are just inescapable. I was watching the World Cup on TV over the break, and just like every other ad is now for some kind of prediction market or gambling site. It is wild. But there's also been more than advertising happening in prediction markets. I want to talk about this incredible story that David Siegel at the New York Times recently wrote called The Donking of a Truth Machine, which is about a very silly but serious and high stakes controversy on Polymarket, the very company whose ad we just saw. And it all boils down to this seemingly crazy question.

57:41Nora Ali:Did a guy in a video say the word donk? So the backstory here is that there is a professional gamer named Daniel Krishkovets, whose nickname is Donk. and back in April there was a an active betting market on polymarket about whether during the broadcast of this video gaming tournament someone would say the name donk now crucially donk was not participating in this video game tournament so because if he was participating it would seem

58:13Alex Kantrowitz:very likely that at some point someone would say the word yes so this is the kind of sort of silly

58:18Nora Ali:market that often happens, you know, will this word be uttered during a CEO's earnings call? Or will the White House press conference say the word, you know, some word? And people bet on this. It's, you know, it's a time-tested form of gambling on these websites. But this particular market, the donk market, went sideways because there was this very long, seven-hour-long gaming tournament stream, and it appeared that Donk was not mentioned. But then somebody on this market was like, wait a minute. At one point, the commentator doing the play-by-play on this gaming tournament appeared to stumble over the word don't, and it sounded like Donk to this person.

59:05Nora Ali:Now, could you please?

59:06Alex Kantrowitz:No, here's what I'd like you to do. I'd like you to say a sentence with the word don't, but make it sound like Donk.

59:13Nora Ali:Donk look back in anger.

59:15Alex Kantrowitz:Okay, very good. Thank you.

59:17Nora Ali:You can go on now. Okay.

59:22Nora Ali:So this started a very fierce argument about whether this commentator had actually said donk or whether this was just a slip and whether an accidental donk is still a donk for the purposes of resolving this. And so this big fight occurs, and David goes into this fight in very amusing detail in his story. But to boil it down, basically, whenever there's a contested market where the resolution isn't clear on Polymarket, there is a system called the Optimistic Oracle, where basically the people who hold this special crypto token called UMA can vote on disputed outcomes.

1:00:03Alex Kantrowitz:Just at the end of the sentence, I just wanted to jump out a window. I just have to say that. Just learning all of that information, I truly want to forget I've ever learned that information.

1:00:14Nora Ali:None of those words are in the Bible. Truly. So basically the way this works is the more of these UMA tokens you have, the more voting power you have in these disputed markets. And basically this is their way of sort of trying to inject some sort of a fair resolution criteria into these markets where it's not exactly clear who is supposed to win and who is supposed to lose.

1:00:39Alex Kantrowitz:And the fair criteria is whoever amasses the most UMA tokens is the arbiter of truth.

1:00:46Nora Ali:What a great system. Yes, it's a crazy way to run a market. You're essentially like giving the power to resolve these markets and determine who gets paid out or who doesn't to like the richest people on the platform or at least the people who have spent the most money on this meaningless crypto token. Anyway, so this one resolved in predictable fashion, which was that a company called Uma Rocks amassed a bunch of these tokens and announced that it was going to vote no on this question of whether Donk was uttered on this gaming stream, which led to a bunch of follow on no votes. So the no's won out in the end, but it was sort of a rigged resolution.

1:01:26Alex Kantrowitz:So there's even like a form of gambling and how this thing gets resolved is what it sounds like.

1:01:31Nora Ali:Yes, you can gamble on the gambling mechanism. It sort of turtles all the way down.

1:01:38Alex Kantrowitz:When I was very, I don't know what it was, but when I was young, I just sort of decided that gambling was not going to be for me. And to watch the way that the world has transformed over the past 20 years to turn absolutely everything into gambling, I just like continuously feel like I'm losing my mind. Yes. Because here's the thing, you will lose money. Statistically, you will, this is not going to turn out well for you. And yet like now some meaningful portion of our economy is now just people who have decided to lose money that way. Why don't you lose money on journalism? Buy a subscription to a publication!

1:02:09Alex Kantrowitz:At least you'll get something in return other than suffering.

1:02:12Nora Ali:But you won't get the satisfaction of amassing UMA tokens in order to resolve the criteria for the market on whether donk was uttered during a video game broadcast, and that's what really counts in today's day and age. Well, that's true.

1:02:23Alex Kantrowitz:So what else is going on here in Against the Odds, Kevin?

1:02:26Nora Ali:Well, speaking of polymarket, Casey, would you believe we have another polymarket scandal? I'd believe it. So a couple weeks ago, there was this great investigation in the Wall Street Journal about Polymarket and specifically their strategy for social media marketing. They have done for a while now these social media videos where they'll pay a creator to film a video of themselves making a bet on Polymarket. And the journal actually went back and looked at those bets to determine, A, whether they were real, whether these bets actually happened on Polymarket. and B, whether if they had been real, the people making these bets would have won or lost money.

1:03:04Nora Ali:Oh, I can't wait to find out. So they analyzed more than 1 ,100 videos from 10 creators, and they found that although 70 % of these videos showed a bet being placed, none of these bets were real. These were all fake bets. 118 of the videos showed the creators winning, and the video suggested that these people would have won almost$900 ,000 in total. but in reality if those bets had really been placed these same people would have lost more than 166 000 so it's like i mean in some sense it's like every ad you've ever seen for like a casino where it's just like people celebrating winning right just making it rain tossing hundred dollar bills in the air yes but it turns out that you do not always win on polymarket and you are not always happy and tossing money everywhere but i love that first of all this was a really great

1:03:54Alex Kantrowitz:story by the journal. And second of all, what I love about it is that it shows the actual surefire way to make money on Polymarket, which is to make a video as a creator in which everyone is lying about everything, and then you'll really rake it in.

1:04:10Nora Ali:The other guaranteed method for making money on Polymarket? Insider trading. But that one doesn't play as well on camera. Okay, we have one more prediction market story this week. This one was broken by our colleagues at the Times, Mike Isaac and David Yaffe Bellany. This one is about Meta. The headline is Mark Zuckerberg directed Meta to create a prediction markets app. Mike and David report that after seeing the success of prediction markets, Mark Zuckerberg got the bright idea to build his own. Two people with knowledge of the matter at Meta said that Zuckerberg had recently dispatched a small team to create a smartphone app similar to Polymarket and Kalshi, where instead of wagering real money, the app would rely on a kind of video game-like fake money point system.

1:04:55Nora Ali:But the company, they reported, had not ruled out the eventual use of real money. Betting the app is internally called Arena and would be functioning independently from Meta's existing social networking apps. Casey, what did you make of the Meta Arena story?

1:05:10Alex Kantrowitz:So this was a great scoop. And I think the truth is, I don't know how big of a reaction I should have to this because Meta does stuff like this all the time. Whenever a hot new thing comes out, they spin up their own version of it. Sometimes it works, like with Instagram stories or with Reels, which was its answer to TikTok. Many, many other times, it just completely fails and flops. I don't know what is going to happen here because as we've just been talking about, these prediction markets are becoming extremely popular. And I imagine that the version of it where you can't lose real money will be less popular, weirdly, than the one where you can lose all your money.

1:05:47Alex Kantrowitz:But I suspect that if it is successful, one, they will absolutely do real money wagering. I think they're probably salivating over that prospect. And two, it will come to meta social networking apps. And you will see, you know, little carousels for this in your Instagram and your Facebook. I just think— I love this.

1:06:02Nora Ali:Like, imagine you're on Instagram and you see a post of your friend with his new girlfriend. And right below it, there's like a market for like how long will this relationship last?

1:06:10Alex Kantrowitz:Totally. Totally announcing your engagement. And then it's like, what's the two year odds on this one, gang? Yeah, no, that is so perfect. And they would absolutely do it. You know, the ethos at Meta, and I know this from speaking to them, is they believe that if people are doing it, then we should respect that they're doing it and let them do more of it and encourage them to do more of it. And they almost don't care what that thing is. But if you want to make a bet, if you want to make endless bets, and there's a chance you'll talk about it on Meta Properties where they can show you an ad and maybe even take a cut of your prediction, they're absolutely going to do it.

1:06:42Nora Ali:I just love that this is a company that has been mired in lawsuits about the addictive nature of their platform, especially for young users.

1:06:51Alex Kantrowitz:And is currently mired in dozens of these lawsuits around the country.

1:06:56Nora Ali:It's like, you know what sounds like a really great next focus area for us? Gambling. Gambling.

1:07:01Alex Kantrowitz:The famously addictive behavior. I was laughing, though, because there was a story, you know, after you guys had this scoop that came out and said that, you know, some meta employees were really concerned. You know, they were really disheartened to learn that their company was exploring a prediction market app of all things. And I was like, well, is this somehow going to interrupt you from the important work of sending push notifications to 13 year olds in the middle of the night telling them to check Instagram? Do we really need to protect that from the prediction market?

1:07:29Nora Ali:I'm horrified to learn that there's gambling going on in this establishment.

1:07:33Alex Kantrowitz:You know, if kids, you know, spend too much time on these prediction markets, Kevin, they might not have time to get an eating disorder.

1:07:39Nora Ali:so we really got to watch the trade off here wait you are laughing but that is literally something that the the ceo of kalshi recently said wait really yes wait what did he say the ceo of kalshi recently literally compared uh gambling on kalshi and other prediction markets as the cure to instagram addiction he said he said the way to think about it is the more that people spend time on Kalshi and prediction markets, the less they're spending time brain rotting on Instagram. Wow. And Mark Zuckerberg heard that and he said, ¿Por qué no los dos?

1:08:17Alex Kantrowitz:The cure to one addiction, Kevin. Another addiction. Anyway, I'm sure this will end well. Yeah, well, everyone involved, I would just, you know, start preparing for your testimony to Congress that you'll be giving eventually. Probably not soon, but eventually. And that's something you truly can bet on, Kevin. But I wouldn't use real money.

1:08:41Nora Ali:All right. That is Against All Odds, our new and possibly final installment of our Prediction Markets Roundup.

1:08:58Alex Kantrowitz:There's no playbook for modern work, but on the podcast Work Life, company builder Molly Graham talks with operators and leaders from the most well-known companies like Facebook and Instacart about how they make decisions, redefine success, and navigate change as tech's impact on work continues to grow. From leadership to AI to the uncertainty of it all, tune in for convos that go deeper than your typical work advice. Find Work Life, a podcast from TED, wherever you get your podcast. AI agents work fast, but they burn time and tokens searching for context from scratch on every task. The teamwork graph in Jira by Atlassian gives your agents the full picture.

1:09:39Alex Kantrowitz:What's been decided, what's in progress, what the spec actually says. The result? 44 % more accurate agent results with 48 % less token usage. Same team, smarter agents. Try it free at jira.dev. That's jira.dev. These days, you can chat with AI about almost any business problem. But only Rippling AI is built to solve them. That's because Rippling AI is built on your live global workforce data. So it doesn't just uncover insights into your business. It uses them to take complex actions across your departments. Ready for AI that isn't all talk? Head to rippling.ai slash hardfork and get AI that turns insight into action.

1:10:24Alex Kantrowitz:That's R-I-P-P-L-I-N-G dot A-I slash hardfork. Sign up today.

1:10:54Alex Kantrowitz:at youtube.com slash hard fork. Special thanks to Paula Schumann, Pui Wing Tam, Brooke Minters, and Dahlia Haddad. You can email us at hard fork at nytimes.com on whether you think we'll say donk on next week's episode. Donk.

1:11:12Nora Ali:Jinx.

1:11:25Thank you.