What’s Next for OpenAI + Binance Is Binanceled + A.I. Is Eating the Internet

24:08So my understanding is that if you are a bank or any kind of financial institution in the United States, you have to do what are called KYC and AML. You have to know your customer, which is basically, you know, if you're setting up an account, we have to have your ID or in some other way verify who you are. And AML, anti-money laundering, which is basically, are you on some sanctions list? Are you a drug trafficker? Are you an arms dealer? Are you someone that we may not want to be transacting with? And that Binance basically looked at those requirements and said, like, no, we don't want to do any of that.

24:43Yeah, pretty much. They had all sorts of loopholes in their system that allowed people to open accounts on Binance without doing any of that. The sorts of people who are opening accounts, you know, people operating in sanctioned countries like Iran, Cuba, Syria, people linked to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, all of these sorts of bad actors were using the platform pretty freely for years and years. And Binance wasn't that interested in stopping them. And it was a classic sort of startup mentality of like, let's grow as fast as we can, not worry too much about the potential legal repercussions of this.

25:17And, you know, that's sort of what got us to where we are today with Binance. You know, David, I was reading about this case, and I saw that the Department of Justice pointed in their case against the company to this 2019 chat conversation in which a Binance compliance employee said, quote, we need a banner. Is washing drug money too hard these days? Come to Binance. We got cake for you. And I guess my question is, how common is that for compliance employees to put that in writing? I mean, look, that's arguably not even the best thing that a Binance compliance employee put in writing. I mean, when the SEC sued, there was a famous quote from a Binance compliance official cited in their lawsuit that went something like, we're running a fucking unlicensed securities exchange in the US, bro.

26:04So it's like a whole genre of like ridiculous stuff that Binance employees have put in writing over the years, essentially copying to the various crimes. So I guess my question, David, is like, how did they get away with this for so long? Like, you know, other people who have been following the crypto industry for, you know, years and heard about this sort of open secret of Binance. But they really were in operation for a very long time. They had lots of customers, as you said, the biggest crypto exchange in the world, you know, billions of dollars passing through their platform. How did this carry on for so long?

26:38I mean, part of it is just that law enforcement in the U.S. moves very slowly. I mean, these investigations that have, you know, sort of finally culminated this year were going on for years and years and years. But Binance is, you know, largely an overseas company. CZ, the founder and CEO who just pleaded guilty, he's very secretive. There was a concern for a long time, almost certainly, that it would be difficult to extradite him were he charged. He's been holed up in the UAE for the past year, which doesn't have an extradition treaty with the U.S. government. And so what's been going on are essentially, you know, talks between the company and all the various agencies in the U.S.

27:14that were going after it. Like, how can we reach some sort of deal that will resolve this illegal behavior or hold the company accountable, but also not kind of like drag this out in a sort of unmanageable way? And so I think that partly explains some of the delay. And in the meantime, like Binance claims to have cleaned up its act, hired a bunch of new compliance guys. They've got, you know, a fancy former federal prosecutor running the compliance operation now. And so their story is like, we've turned over a new leaf. Right, because back in June, the Securities and Exchange Commission had also sued Binance, right?

27:49And it also made this series of claims against the company. Does that get resolved with this deal, or is that also still ongoing? So that's one of the most interesting things about this, actually. The SEC's case has not been resolved. And remember, the SEC is the most aggressive federal agency in the U.S. going after crypto. Some are arguing that what the SEC essentially is trying to do is force crypto out of the U.S. entirely. And that SEC lawsuit had some really kind of bombshell claims about Binance, including that the company was commingling customer funds with corporate accounts in a way that had a lot of echoes of what happened to FTX.

28:27And the SEC was not part of this big settlement that was announced last week. And the charges against Binance and against CZ did not include any references to this commingling or misuse of funds. And actually in Binance's sort of like PR response to all of this, you know, they had executives tweeting things like, yeah, you know, we may have facilitated some money laundering. But the government doesn't say we stole money from customers. You know, we're not FTS. But in the crypto industry, that's a huge flex not to commingle funds. That's you. It's almost unheard of in this industry. It's a it's a huge flex.

28:59And we just found out last week that Kraken was doing something similar. You know, that's another big Kraken exchange. Oh, my God. Wow. So I know you've got all your money in Kraken. I had all my money in Kraken. So I used to cover the banking industry and something that was pretty common, especially in sort of the early 2010s, was that banks would just commit some crimes and then they would make a deal with the government and they would agree to pay, a bunch of money, and maybe an executive or two would step down. But then things would continue on. The bank wouldn't go out of business. This was sort of part of the cost of doing business if you're a big bank, is sometimes you have to pay penalties when your employees do things that are illegal.

29:39So is that the likely outcome here, is that CZ steps down, Binance goes through this sort of image rehab process, and they come out the other side of this? Or do you think this actually could be the end of the exchange. Binance is certainly going to live on in some form for the foreseeable future. There's a new CEO named Richard Tang, who has actually been sort of groomed to be CZ's successor for a long time. So it wasn't a surprise to anybody that he was the person picked. And he's a former regulator. And, you know, he's already started doing interviews and trying to kind of cast himself as the sort of like compliant face of this new business that's sort of emerging from this kind of difficult period.

30:19It's sort of remarkable that, you know, a week that saw the biggest company in crypto pay a nearly$5 billion fine, have its chief executive step down and like face prison time, that that was spun by a lot of crypto investors as good news, because it was not the worst case scenario of what could have happened to Binance. You know, what people have been afraid of for months in the crypto world was that the U.S. would indict CZ and that he would hole up in Dubai and try to avoid the charges, essentially becoming a fugitive, that Binance would then lose a lot of its licenses to operate in other countries around the world, which, you know, aren't fans of companies run by international fugitives, and that, you know, essentially the exchange would shrink, that money would move off of it, there'd be this kind of void in the center of the crypto universe, and, you know, it would create a lot of uncertainty about the future of the whole industry.

31:09And that hasn't happened. You know, CZ has stepped down and faced the music, and Binance, in theory, can operate as normal. Now, we'll find out the extent to which its business was contingent on the fact that it was facilitating money laundering, and there's going to be a U.S. government monitor installed to oversee operations for the next three years as well. And so, will Binance be able to keep up business as usual under those circumstances? It's hard to say. I mean, to underscore your point, though, you know, to me, the big referent here obviously is the collapse of FTX. That was the other sort of big exchange where somebody went to prison.

31:45But FTX like barely exists anymore. Right. It's like absolutely a shell of its former self. And maybe it'll come back after they sort of emerge from bankruptcy proceedings and there's something to be salvaged there. But FTX, as we knew it, was basically done as soon as, you know, the exchange collapsed. Binance, it doesn't seem that way. And like, you know, this deal that they've reached, it feels like it's more than a slap on the wrist. But it does not seem like it is the end of Binance as we know it, unless you believe that CZ was such a force of personality and was so central to this company that it's just not going to be able to compete with him in prison anymore.

32:19But at the same time, if you have crypto, like where else are you going to put your money? Like, is there any sort of feeding frenzy of other crypto exchanges saying, hey, Binance is over, bring your money over here? I mean, there was a little bit of a victory lap from some other crypto executives. I think the number that I saw is that there was about a billion dollars in outflows from Binance after these criminal charges were announced. And that's just a drop in the bucket. I mean, this is a company that by some estimates, custodies about$65 billion in customer assets. And so for a billion to flow out one day, it's just not that big a deal.

32:54And so there hasn't been any sign that customers are, you know, leaving Binance in droves. Yeah, my favorite reaction to the Binance news came from Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, which is the sort of the regulated big crypto exchange in the U.S. And he was sort of taking a victory lap after this settlement between Binance and the Department of Justice. And he said, the industry can finally close the chapter of bad actors. and i thought to myself that's pretty ominous you sure you sure there aren't any more bad actors out there you sure you got them all because to me it just seems like the hits keep coming for bad actors in crypto yeah also like in this weird way it almost seems like uh binance customers had all factored this possibility into their uh holdings being held at the exchange right like you would have expected to see more money come out the fact that it didn't sort of indicates to me that's like, yeah, like eventually they're going to get popped for money laundering violations.

33:50It's like remarkable that they, you know, the customers like actually believe what Binance is saying, because I mean, for months and months, you know, every time there was a story about the fact that the Justice Department was closing in on Binance, you know, CZ would respond by just tweeting the number four, which was a reference to another tweet in which he kind of listed his priorities for the year 2023. And number four was ignore fear, uncertainty and doubt or FUD, which is the catch-all that crypto investors use to dismiss any criticism. And so CZ would just tweet that every single time there's any negative story about Binance.

34:24And now a lot of those stories have been proven completely true. He was in the crosshairs of the government. He has pleaded guilty to committing all these crimes. And he's no longer the CEO of the company. And yet, even after this, there are people tweeting, thanks so much for what you've given to the industry, CZ. We still appreciate you. This guy just admitted to having allowed terrorist groups to launder money on his exchange. And he's being hailed as this conquering. In fairness, those people were members of Al-Qaeda. But they did thank CZ for his work over the years. I mean, I don't know if you guys saw CZ's statement on Twitter after all this happened.

35:01But he had some line about how he would be happy for any startup founders to come to him. And he'll offer advice and do some informal coaching on the side. Well, and he'll have a lot of time in prison to do that mentoring. You know, his calendar has never been clearer than it's about to be. Yeah, he actually said he was very pleased about that in this post. Okay, so more seriously, what is CZ doing right now? Where is he and is he going to prison? So we don't know exactly where CZ is right now, but he's somewhere in the United States. Initially, the magistrate judge who was overseeing his guilty plea allowed him to return to the UAE while he awaits sentencing, which will be sometime next year.

35:39But the government then said, wait, no, we don't want this guy in the UAE. He's a potential flight risk. And so we want to keep him in the U.S. until he's sentenced. So we're still waiting for, you know, a higher level judge to kind of make a determination on that. I think we can expect news on it in the next few days. And then we'll have to wait to the sentencing to see, you know, how many years he gets. But, you know, we're talking potentially something in the range of like 18 months, two years in prison. the government has the option of pushing for more. But that's generally, I think, what people are expecting based on the nature of the crime that he pleaded guilty to and the fact that he did plead rather than fighting this at the trial.

36:18And so that's very different from the 30, 40, 50 years that Sam Bankman-Fried potentially faces after getting convicted at his trial. So, David, the last time you were on the show to talk about this, Binance was saying that it was going to fight all the allegations against it vigorously. And now here it is capitulating to the government. So what's your sense of what happened in between? So, you know, the disappointing answer is that we don't totally know. I mean, we do not have a clear window into those kind of confidential discussions between Binance and the government. But it's true from reporting that I was doing earlier this year, around the time a huge number of Binance executives kind of quit as a group, that CZ was telling people, I don't want to leave.

37:00I want to hold on to power. And if it means becoming a fugitive, then I'm prepared to do that. And that was part of the reason that there was this kind of exodus of top executives from Binance. And that was sort of the state of affairs in kind of like, you know, mid to late summer, when talks with the government work were falling apart. What happened between then and now, we don't know exactly. But it's true that like a lot of pressure has come to bear on CZ. I mean, there were those executive departures, that's sort of a big sign of, you know, people kind of lacking faith in your vision for the company.

37:31And, you know, again, this is sort of in the realm of speculation now, but, you know, this guy had to sort of contemplate a life on the run, essentially. And maybe that just wasn't super appealing. So, again, it's not we don't have like a satisfying explanation for what changed. But, you know, you can sort of see how, you know, he might have come around to that view. So stepping aside from Binance specifically, David, every time we have you on this show, we talk about something horrible and criminal that has happened in the crypto industry. And we ask what it means for the future of the crypto industry.

38:08And the sort of general vibe is like, well, it's not good. And yet the crypto industry seems to be chugging along just fine. In fact, the price of Bitcoin is up more than 120 percent this year. People are still paying thousands of dollars for NFTs like the Bored Ape Yacht Club. Why is crypto, despite all of this villainy and all of this treachery and all of these lawsuits and settlements and potential jail time, why is crypto not doing worse? Well, I think so much about the state of the crypto markets has to do with narratives and what people are thinking and believing at a certain point. And of course, nobody really understands why markets go up or down.

38:50It's a mystery even in traditional finance to some degree. But the narrative that crypto investors have chosen to believe is the one that Brian Armstrong was advancing, which is that we're washing out the bad guys. And actually, this is good news for crypto because we're kind of turning over a new leaf and the industry is going to be cleaner going forward. And then the other sort of dominant narrative in crypto right now has absolutely nothing to do with Binance or FTX. It is about the possibility that the SEC may approve something called the Bitcoin Spot ETF, which is an exchange-traded fund, like a financial instrument through which you can invest in Bitcoin and potentially other cryptocurrencies if others of these ETFs are approved.

39:33And the crypto industry thinks that this is a way to get more people into crypto investing in this kind of indirect way that financial - don't have to bother with like converting your dollars into Bitcoin or Ether. You could just, you know, use your broker to buy shares in this Bitcoin ETF. Yes. Just like you would buy, you know, a mutual fund or something. Totally. Totally. And like financial advisors would be more comfortable with this sort of outcome. And, you know, huge companies like BlackRock are trying to get these ETFs approved. And it's like a real sign of like major institutions in the financial world kind of adopting crypto to some degree.

40:11And so that's sort of a, you know, an optimistic sign for the industry. And basically, you know, the SEC, unsurprisingly, had tried to block these ETFs from being approved, but recently lost a big legal fight with a company that wants to offer one. And so now it looks likely that some of these ETFs could get approved as early as January. And so there's a lot of excitement in the crypto world that this will mean like billions of new dollars coming into crypto investing, essentially. You know, various analysts have sort of disputed those projections, but like that's one of the narratives that's kind of propelling the current optimism in the markets.

40:45It does seem like optimism in crypto is strongly related to, is there a new get-rich-quick scheme available? And so it sounds like this could be the next one of those. Yeah, well, that's the long-term problem, right? Is that this doesn't have anything to do with the use of any of this technology. It just has to do with the sort of short to medium-term chance that like more money will come in and everyone's bag will get a little bit more valuable. Yeah, I mean, my own instincts have been to, you know, pile on and to say there's nothing there if you take away all of the gambling. But the fact that this industry has not died, the fact that, you know, crypto, you know, prices, some of them are up in the past year, despite all of this, it does seem to signal to me at least that there is some hope remaining among investors, you know, some of whom are probably, you know, diehard crypto evangelists who just can't let go.

41:36But I do think there's still a lot of money and optimism flowing into the crypto industry. And I just that's the part where I just feel like maybe my own instincts are not right here because clearly someone is still buying out there. So, David, can you just give us a sense of like who is still who is still participating in this industry even after all these scandals? I think it's a lot of the same people who've been there all along. And it's, you know, the kind of like hardcore crypto people that you see on Twitter who are like obsessed with charts showing that, you know, numbers are going up and that, and that sort of thing.

42:12It's, you know, it's, it's people who have had skin in the game for a long time and like really need the industry to succeed. And, you know, I have not seen any evidence that like the recent price increases have anything to do with like new people coming in, But that's not to say that like crypto can't ever achieve that. And so there could be a future for this industry beyond the gambling. It's just like hard to be super confident in that. My last question for you, David, as someone who spends a lot of time thinking about cryptocurrency and who also is referred to just by his initials, are you worried that you could end up in federal prison for some crime?

42:49I am very, you know, actually for that's all I have to say. All right, David, thank you so much for coming back. We look forward to discussing the next instance of crypto villainy on the show with you. All right, thank you. After the break, how AI generated content is eating the internet.

43:22so casey i don't know if you remember a few months ago when we were talking with ben smith the editor-in-chief of semaphore about how ai was going to sort of change and possibly destroy the the online news ecosystem oh yes this is a topic that you and i have both been interested it in because this is our industry after all. And I think this was a week that something really clicked for me in this respect, which was that AI generated content is not going to eat the internet. It is eating the internet actively as we speak. And some of it may already have happened. AI is having a Thanksgiving meal.

43:58It is chowing down on the World Wide Web. It's true. AI ate the internet and left no crumbs, as the kids say. It came hungry and it left full. Incredible. So there are three things that happened in the past week that made me think, okay, okay, we've got to talk about this on the show. The first one was, of course, the debacle out of Sports Illustrated. Now, Sports Illustrated, I don't know if you're a big reader of Sports Illustrated. It's my favorite thing to pick up when I'm at the dentist's office. And I was a subscriber for many years back in my sports phase. I was I got the foot. You remember the football phone?

44:34When you subscribe to Sports Illustrated, they would send you a telephone in the shape of a football and you would sort of pick up the top half of the football to make phone calls. You remember this? No. OK, did you have a great time? Just look up the Sports Illustrated football phone. Iconic 90s culture. Okay. So this week, the publication Futurism reported that Sports Illustrated, which has gone through a bunch of, you know, ownership changes in the past few years, appears to have published some articles with fake authors who had AI-generated headshots and who may have also filled their articles with AI-generated text.

45:09One of these articles, which was a review of different kinds of volleyballs, said that the sport, quote, can be a little tricky to get into, especially without an actual ball to practice with. Honestly, it had not occurred to me before I read this story. News you can use. It's helpful if practicing volleyball to have a volleyball. Futurism looked into some of the authors behind some of these strange articles and found that several of the authors appeared to have been AI-generated. Their headshots were for sale on a website that sells AI-generated photos. And Sports Illustrated's publisher told Futurism that these were not AI-generated articles, but that they came from a content partner called Advan Commerce, which is basically a content marketing company, and that Sports Illustrated had paid them to write these articles and that they were going to cut off their contract with Advan and that they had learned through their investigation that Advan had writers use a pen or pseudonym in certain articles to protect author privacy and that they were removing the content while they investigated it.

46:19So it is apparently the case that if you are writing an article for Sports Illustrated about volleyballs, you may be at such risk that you need to not only use a pseudonym, but also go onto a headshot website and buy an AI-generated photo for yourself. Casey, what do you make of this? This story is, it is funny in some ways, but it is also so sad. Like the truth is, I am not a huge sports fan anymore, but man, I really was as a kid. And Sports Illustrated was an absolute pillar of American journalism. Iconic magazine. Some of the best sports writing ever in our country was in this magazine. And this magazine is so old that it was novel that there were pictures in the magazine.

47:00That's how old and distinguished this thing is. And you fast forward to the AI era and you have it, it's basically like, my understanding is that Sports Illustrated is now owned by something roughly equivalent to the Shineheart Wig Corporation from 30 Rock. Where Sports Illustrated is just like sort of an Excel spreadsheet that exists like somewhere in a really Byzantine corporate structure. And, you know, you want to talk about a horrible euphemism, a content partner? Like you've just hired someone to pollute your hallowed brand with a bunch of articles fill of affiliate links. So you can just sort of draft off of the prestige and credibility that you once had to sell as many fricking volleyballs as possible.

47:45And you're not even going to do the work of testing the volleyball yourself. Like you could not imagine a more cynical media business. If you tried absolute props to the people at futurism who also revealed similar shenanigans at CNET earlier this year, they've been doing it. all over this stuff. And obviously it bothers us as media people who want to see real jobs in media and who want to see a really thriving information ecosystem with lots of good journalism in it. But man, if you were a consumer these days and you were just Googling around and you do have an actual interest in buying a good volleyball, this is what you're up against now is that the worst people in the world are trying to trick you into clicking on sludge and they're using big brand names like Sports Illustrated in order to do it.

48:30I think it is gross. I think all of these people should resign and we should just say no to AI content spam garbage. Yeah, it is really sad. So Sports Illustrated has gone through some ownership changes. As I said, it is currently published by The Arena Group, which is a New York-based media company whose other brands include Men's Journal, Parade, and TheStreet.com. This is sort of one of these conglomerates that has just been sort of buying up distressed media properties on the cheap. and turning them into essentially SEO farms, right? Companies that exist to get links onto Google, then to derive ad revenue and affiliate revenue when people click through to those links or go buy a volleyball or something.

49:12It is a part of the news industry that I don't think anyone is particularly proud of, but that does unfortunately still make some money. And so that's why you see these sort of, I would say like, you know, half-assed attempts to just do this stuff, crank it out as cheaply as possible, in some cases using AI. Yeah. But it's not just formerly hallowed media brands that are taking advantage of AI-generated content to spam Google with a bunch of garbage. This week, we also saw a big controversy around what people are calling an SEO heist. Casey, did you see this story? I did see this story. I mean, there's basically nothing I love more than a heist story in general.

49:51And once you tell me it's a search engine optimization heist, Well, let's just say you've got my full attention, Kevin. Yeah, new sequel to The Italian Job just dropped. Yeah, so tell us about Ocean's 15 here. Yeah, so this story came from a content marketer named Jake Ward, who posted on X last week that his company had just pulled off an SEO heist that stole 3.6 million in total traffic from a competitor. He went on to explain how they did it. And Casey, you're going to want to just brace for this because this is truly one of the grossest sequences of events I've ever heard of in the media business.

50:29So Jake Ward's company went to a competitor's blog and they downloaded basically a list of all of the articles on the site, all of the URLs. They then used an AI writing platform to write blog posts based on the keywords. They did this for 1 ,800 articles, basically using AI to kind of paraphrase an entire website. Plagiarize might be another word people would use, but go ahead. Yes. So they built this sort of near replica of this competitor's website. And according to Jake Ward, they stole a huge portion of the traffic from this apparently legitimate website. Now, a couple of caveats here. This person, Jake Ward, is apparently the founder of some sort of SEO consulting firm called Content Growth.

51:17And he's also a co-founder of the AI-generated writing service that he used in this experiment. So he's obviously sort of promoting his services here, trying to get attention. Even if people hate him, maybe they're still contacting his company for help with their SEO heists. And we still don't have any sort of independent verification that this is actually how this heist worked. But I would say this, for me, struck a note of kind of like, man, I knew stuff like this would happen. I just thought we had a little more time to prepare ourselves. I mean, go back to the archives of the show. This is one of the things that we just said would happen, is that AI would be used to generate pages by the thousands and thousands and just flood the Internet.

52:01I will say I had not considered this sort of more vampiric approach where you target a website that is doing well and just sort of click a couple buttons to say plagiarize this and reap the rewards in Google. But once again, if you surf the web, this is just now the garbage that you are being confronted with. And it is up to Google and the other search engines to try to muster some sort of defenses against this. And I would say so far doesn't seem like they're doing a great job. Yes, and that actually brings me to the third domino that fell this week in the AI is eating the internet narrative, which is specifically about Google and not some strategy to sort of hack Google, but the ways in which AI generated content is ending up at the top of Google results.

52:47So this was brought to my attention by previous Hard Fork guest Ethan Malek, who posted on X the other day that if you do a Google search for the Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakaviovole, who is famous for his rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, which you've probably heard, the first image that you see in the Google Images pane is a AI-generated image of this singer that was taken from the MidJourney subreddit. Which I'm sure is exactly what his family's wishes were when he passed away. Yeah, so not a real photo of him. I also did some testing on this because I was just curious, like, what other kinds of AI-generated content is sort of floating up to the top of Google search results.

53:32I noticed that if I search for Freddie Mercury, who is the dearly departed lead singer of Queen. I know who Freddie Mercury is. Well, if you search Freddie Mercury Pride on Google, you get a AI generated image of Freddie Mercury at the 2023 San Francisco Pride Parade, which obviously he did not attend because he did. He'd have been huge news if he did. Yes. So, Casey, what do you make of the sort of multi-pronged, multi-front war on real content on Google, whether it's coming from brands like Sports Illustrated, from content marketers like this guy Jake Ward, or from just the way that AI-generated content is getting indexed and ranked from sites like Reddit?

54:19Well, here is the challenge that the search engines face, and I do think it's a legitimate one. they do not want to ban all generative AI produced works, right? Like we both think that this stuff can be used for cool and creative things. Some of those things will be posted to the internet. Those things should be searchable on Google, right? The challenge for Google is that we're in a moment where we have a great deal of trouble separating what is generative AI versus what is not. And even if you can decide which is which, you then do have the problem of like, well, how are you going to rank this?

54:52And I think that Google has not yet figured out what are the set of signals that we are going to use to prioritize so that if you search for this Hawaiian singer, where should the generative AI art of him appear? Now, I think you and I would both argue not at the top, maybe not even on the first pages of results, maybe somewhere, maybe with a flag that says this is a synthetic image, but not there. But look, we have been saying for months that it did not seem like the search engines have a plan for this stuff. And now that we are beginning to live through the early stages of it, it's just very clear to me that they still do not.

55:22Yeah, and this actually is sort of something that I think I got wrong. I thought that the biggest challenge to Google from generative AI was going to be that people would prefer going to chat GPT when they have to look something up or go try to figure out some travel plan or something. I thought that their biggest vulnerability was in the search portal itself, right? What box do you type into when you are looking for an answer on the internet? You know, I think maybe I was a little premature or a little overexcited about that. It seems like plenty of people are still going to Google, even though ChatGPT, I would say for certain types of queries, at least for me, works better.

56:01But I would say the bigger issue for them is just that the entire ecosystem that Google is trying to index and serve you results from is just being degraded very quickly by an influx, a surge of AI-generated content such that, like, if they don't figure out a way to filter this stuff out or at least to label it, people are just going to get sick of going to Google. It's going to be like going to a very sad mall where all of the flagship stores have just been replaced by little weird kiosks and people trying to scam you. It's going to feel very different in Google search results if they don't get a handle on this.

56:39Yes, but let's play this out just a little bit further because what happens in that world that you suggest? And by the way, Kevin, I am somebody who is using ChatGPT as a replacement for Google search in a lot of cases, and I'm surprised daily by how good it is at that. But let's say that this world comes to pass. More and more people start doing what I'm doing that kind of spreads around the world. Well, Google gets to have its cake and eat it too because it is not just a portal to the web as it exists. It is also building its own replacement for the web. It is accessible today via BARD. And so even if the web withers and dies, and I would argue that it is withering and dying right now, Google still gets to cash all of those checks because it owns the sequel, right?

57:18It owns today's platform and it owns tomorrow's platform. And the reason that I think this matters just beyond, you know, Google's continued dominance into a new era of computing is that I think that this actually disincentivizes them from fixing the web. Like this is why I do not actually think the web winds up getting better because on a fundamental level, Google will not care. Now, if Suna Pichai was sitting across the table. Say more about that because I don't get what you're saying here. You're saying that they don't care if Google search results get worse because people aren't going to be searching the way that they do now?

57:52Because over time, and this is going to take 10 plus years, Kevin, but over time, they're going to figure out how to monetize Bard and whatever becomes the successor to Bard, right? Like the Google search bar might just search Google's language model before it goes out to the web. They're going to figure out a way to monetize all of that, right? And the fact that search results have been corrupted by a bunch of generative AI nonsense, it doesn't matter to them because over time they're going to route more and more people to their own language models with its own monetization. And the digital publishers who are on the web today, they're just going to be an afterthought.

58:23So what I'm saying is don't be surprised if the web just continues to get worse and worse because Google knows that generative AI is the future and that is where the investments are going to be. I'm sure they'll put up their blog posts, oh, look at all the things that we're doing to sort of help you tell what's fact and what's fiction. That's true. But we are in the middle of a 10-year transition, and I'm telling you, it does not end with the web as we know it in a healthy place. But I don't get what you're saying there because these language models, when you ask them, you know, where do I go on vacation or what's the best kind of volleyball to buy, they don't have any intrinsic answers in their knowledge graphs.

58:54They have to go out and use the Google search index to figure out what to tell you. Right? Am I getting something wrong? No, you're totally right. What I'm telling you is you'll just never see that web page. Like that information will be accessed by the AI and it will be delivered to you by the AI. The webpage itself will never be visited. No publisher will ever make any money off of that. But then won't the answers be worse? Maybe. I mean, we'll just have to see. Like I do think sort of what become the reliable sources of knowledge in a world where publishers can no longer make money is a really good and important one.

59:24And that probably is maybe one of the biggest challenges to the scenario that I'm painting coming into practice. but there's a lot of free static information on the internet that, you know, I mean, like, how many, like, how-to articles are on the, you know, how to change a doorknob, how to, like, you know, install a faucet, all of this kind of stuff, a huge percentage of people's web surfing, it just all goes, it is all just delivered to you by the AI, and the billions and billions of dollars that publishers make, they're just not going to make them anymore, man. Yeah, I worry about that, too.

59:56But I also think this is in some ways the only silver lining I see here is that this influx of AI generated content may finally force Google to start caring about search result quality in a way that they have not, to my knowledge, for the past several years. Like, I don't want to make the mistake that I think sometimes people make of saying like, AI is killing the Internet. We need to like get rid of it and go back to what it was before, because the before picture here is still not very good. And in some ways, I think this could be a spur to Google and other companies to really start caring about search result quality.

1:00:30At the same time, the issue you brought up is very real. Where are publishers going to make money in order to be able to hire humans to write good articles if all of the traffic that they used to get from Google just disappears? Yeah. And let me say, every time I talk about this or write about this, I always hear from folks at Google who are very frustrated. From their perspective, search results have never been as good as they are today, and they love to point to all these things they've done. And what I would just say to those folks is like, yes, you have obviously made improvements to search over the years, but I am just telling you, ask your friends and family how they feel about the search results.

1:01:03Because I don't know anyone who feels like Google is better today than it was five years ago, and I wish the Google folks would spend more time reflecting on that. Yeah. Well, I'm going to go enlist my content marketing firm to scrape all the archives of Platformer and create a better near replica of your website and steal all your subscribers. And I am calling Olympic volleyball players to ask them what is the best volleyball because at this point, they're the only people I trust, Kevin. I still think Wilson from Castaway is the best volleyball. Certainly best supporting actor in the film among the volleyballs.

1:02:01Hey, gang, before we go, we're planning another round of our segment, Hard Questions. That's where we listen to your ethical quandaries and dilemmas about technology. and try to offer you some advice. But this time, we're planning to bring on a very special guest to help us out. And I'll just say it, it's a celebrity. So if you have a situation you're dealing with, a technology situation, some way technology is showing up in your life and you're just not sure how to handle it, send us a voice memo. Let us know your name, where you're from. Email it to us at hardfork at mytimes.com and it could appear in an upcoming episode.

1:02:34Now, Casey, what is a good example of a hard question that someone could write in and ask us about? Such a good question. I do not have something on the spot. Okay, let me just take a minute. Let me take a minute. You could say it was a hard question about hard questions. Let me take it. Yeah, yeah. Okay, let me just say it. Do you have a partner who won't stop talking to an AI chatbot and you feel like it's getting a little flirty? Yeah, that's the kind of thing we're looking for. Please don't ask us for tech support advice. We cannot fix your broken printer. And I would also say the last time we did one of these call-outs, we got so many submissions that were some variation of, like, is it ethical to use ChatGPT or some other generative AI tool at my job?

1:03:15And I will just say it, we got too many of those. Yeah, it should make us physically uncomfortable to read if it's going to be about can you use ChatGPT. We'll say that. So thank you in advance. And as Casey said, you can send those to us as voice memos, and you can email those to hardfork at nytimes.com. Thanks, Forkers.

1:04:04at Jeffrey Miranda. You can email us at hardfork at nytimes.com.

1:04:35Thank you.