The Discord Leaks, San Francisco Safety, and Kate Crawford on AI

23:06Morgan conference. That's correct. Yeah. But they're bankers. That's their job. I know. I get it. But I would love to see him in government. I think he's a really decent man. He's also very spicy. I've spent a lot of time with him. He's very spicy. He likes to get into arguments, which is great. Anyway, he's very accessible in that regard. He doesn't mind mixing it up, as they say. Okay, let's get to our first big story.

23:31The man who allegedly murdered a Silicon Valley tech executive is in jail. Earlier this month, the founder of Cash App, Bob Lee, was stabbed to death on the streets of San Francisco. As the Bay Area mourned his death, some prominent tech personalities, most especially Elon Musk, were quick to blame the killing of the city's leadership. It supposedly lacks approach to crime. Among them, Elon, as I said, Jason Calacanis, who posted an all caps tweet accusing city officials of, quote, enabling rampant violence. But there's one problem. On Thursday, police arrested a man, they say, killed Bob Lee.

24:02He wasn't an unhoused person suffering a mental episode. He was another tech consultant who knew Lee personally. Reports say that Lee and his accused killer, Nima Momeni, argued about Momeni's sister prior to Lee's death. Our condolences to Bobsley's friends and family. Unfortunately, the information had a great story. He's been caught up in this fight, you know, over this thing. He became a symbol of violence in San Francisco immediately. Everything about this is terrible. It seems to be a personal beef what happened. It's shocking nonetheless. But you don't want these pet theories to show up.

24:36He did the same thing around the Pelosi attack, all this violence towards people. They jump to this, it's a crime. It's the homelessness. Not just waiting to find out. The tech guy's trying to make San Francisco into a hellscape. It's got enough problems, it is, it is, including homelessness. And the mayor just got, in federal court, just said she couldn't clean up people off the streets, for example. So she's contending with legal issues, fentanyl crisis, all kinds of things. And this just added to the pile. I immediately went to the data. And the reality is the murder rate for a city of one million people is not especially high or low in San Francisco.

25:11Having said that, and your opinion matters more here than mine because you spend a lot of time there. I live there. I've lived in L.A., San Francisco, Miami, New York, now London. San Francisco for me is a distant fifth. That's the only place I would not live again. And whenever I go back there, and I only go back about once or twice a year now, I am shocked at how many severely mentally ill people are on the street in front of a building where there are billionaires. And I find that it's somewhat dystopic. Downtown. Yes, downtown. But if you look at the data. Yep, let me read the data. Local police data recorded 56 homicides each in 2022 and 2021.

25:51And that's a rise of 36 % over 2019. For comparison, Columbus, Ohio recorded 140 last year. That's quite a bit more. And Indianapolis recorded 226. St. Louis. I know. And Duval County, Florida is apparently quite a dangerous place to be. But property crimes such as burglary and larceny are up, according to the San Francisco PD, but still below 2017 levels. Certain areas of the city, I'll speak to this, like the Tenderloin, some parts of Soma, not all, downtown, because nobody's downtown. It's a really bad situation. You go to every city. Storefronts are closed. People aren't in offices, et cetera.

26:31That's an issue. But my neighborhood has cleaned up a lot. Like, it's much better since the pandemic. And the area where he was killed, when that happened, if you remember me saying to you, there's no way this was just that I know this neighborhood. It's not a dangerous neighborhood. It's a desolate neighborhood. But I always felt it was like somebody new, like because it was such a it wasn't where you would imagine you'd run into something like that in any way. You know, we were talking about reading this, David Sachs, what he said on his All In podcast where he blamed it. And he said, I'm not going to play it because I don't want to listen to him blather on inaccurately.

27:05He said it was a psychotic homeless, possibly a psychotic homeless person, which is, and then he used it to attack the city because a lot of them want to run for office. They want to run the city, essentially. So I find it incredibly sad that they continue to do this around attacks like the Paul Pelosi one. And it's just heinous to do things like this, especially around someone who died or was hurt either way. Yeah, the politicization of everything is obviously discouraging because at the end of the day, I mean, the thing that's rattling here is a young, you know, someone's son was wandering around bleeding to death.

27:43He wasn't. He wasn't wandering around. He was – this guy took him where he murdered him. But go ahead. Sorry. Yeah, but wasn't he looking for help after he'd been stabbed? He was, yes. But this is a very empty part of the city. I can't, I don't know how to describe it. My first thought when I heard about this was I was just really sad for the guy and that his life, you know, is being politicized or his death, I should say, is being politicized. That's kind of sad on its own. But my first thought was the tech community is much more dangerous than the San Francisco community. These guys want to talk about that.

28:12The tech community and this belief that they're saviors and shouldn't be subject to regulation and their success at avoiding all regulation has resulted in a lot of unnecessary death of kids and children and tremendous damage to the commonwealth. It's the tech community that's the menace, not San Francisco. And of course, they were immediately going, well, not in this, after doing that, same thing with SVB. After doing very irresponsible things, they're like, see what we did made a difference. And here they're like, see what we pointed out made a difference. I'm like, all you did was take a guy's death and use it for your own selfish purposes and just to scream.

28:48You know, Elon Musk is the worst of them. But, you know, there's definitely – there was a really interesting story at the same time in – I think it was the Times. Yeah, Aaron Griffith did it about alleged fraud in Silicon Valley. Charlie Javis at Frank was arrested last week, speaking of J.P. Morgan, in charge of falsifying data. Founders of Slink Softer was arrested last month, charged with defrauding investors or upcoming fraud trials of the co-founder of Headspin. Carlos Watson of Ozzy Media was arrested on fraud charges. Elizabeth Holmes is head of deposition. Of course, Sam Bankman freed.

29:21There's a lot of people, you know, this dishonesty going on. But it's also compounded by these people on the top just deciding to be trolls in a way that's really disturbing. Yeah, it's not. Yeah, you get to this certain level of influence. And again, it's more, let's shitpost our local government. Let's shitpost our state government. Let's not offer any solutions. Let's shitpost our government making up stories about what could or could not be true. And then in our notes, you have the actual text of this person's statements. And I apologize, I got to read it. we don't know what happened yet, but I think we suspect, and I would bet dollars to dimes, that this story very similar to the case found in LA recently where a young one was basically stabbed for no reason by a psychotic homeless person who had been through a revolving door of jail and criminal justice system who should have been locked up, who was arrested multiple times, but not kept locked up because of this push for decarceration.

30:21Push for decarceration. We have more people locked up in this nation than I think the other 10 nations, biggest nations combined, we absolutely need a prison release program in this nation. And then to use terms like psychotic and homeless, and by the way, this was not a psychotic homeless person. This was an acquaintance. This is, yeah. So it's, again, it's just not. And then this is the last thing. So they are setting loose on us, a predatory criminal or a psychotic element that jeopardizes our safety and makes these cities unlivable. They, meaning the tech community? No, the government. The tech community is setting loose?

30:55I mean. No, government. The government is. Yes. That's my point. The tech community is a much bigger threat to our society right now. But on the whole, if you look at crime in America, over any extended period of time, it's been going down. Yeah. There's no solutions. That's what it is. It's never about solutions. It's all about accusations. It's about recall Democrats and put libertarian weirdos, i.e. me, in office. Yeah. And do nothing about it. And then be authoritarian. Like the fact that that Musk is doing this and at the same time Russia just convicted someone 25 years for dissent. They don't care about that.

31:35They don't care about they don't attack Russia for that. In any case, it wasn't a psychotic homeless person. All you bros who did this. We look forward to all your next monologues about cracking down on the culture of tech entrepreneurs who don't think the rules apply to them. That's what we need to crack down on. Anyway, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, a popular app is in the news for national security risk, but it's not the one you think. And we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Kate Crawford, about the planetary cost of artificial intelligence. You'll enjoy that conversation.

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34:36Scott, we're back. The U.S. national security state is in disarray in that they're not like sneaking around, in fact, over discord. Last week, the FBI arrested 21-year-old Air National Guard Jack Tashira on charges of unlawfully copying and possessing classified defense records. Authorities said Tashira uploaded the documents to the app Discord, where he shared them in a private chat room that you can have there that included about 20 people, many of them young men. The online group shared an interest in guns, video games, and frequently posted racist and anti-Semitic memes. The documents provide some insight into the war in Ukraine, although they don't know which ones are real or not, including a bleak assessment of Ukraine's upcoming spring offensive.

35:15There are also some reveals around the U.S.'s ability to spy on Russia. Apparently, we're good at it. And evidence that U.S. is spying on its alley is not a surprise, of course, but embarrassing. I'd love you to comment on these document leaks. Other leakers like Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Reality Winner leaked to journalists and wanted their leaks to have large social impact. This leaker seemed to have clout with teens. He wanted to impress teens and school them. So talk to me about this, because there's a whole young men thing in here. There's a whole security thing in here? I found this really upsetting, and I think it calls on a number of issues.

35:49The first is obviously in the short term, they're going to have to review the protocols around who has access to classified documents. 1.2 million people in our government have access to classified documents. And it's actually been expanded since 9-11 because they found some of the red flags that were ignored around 9-11 were because interagency shareability wasn't happening. So they actually lowered and loosened the requirements for who has access to classified information. But I'm sure they'll address that sooner rather than later. The issues that it really brings up, I think, that are more interesting is one, again, if you look at the pharmaceutical industry worth a couple trillion dollars and has a big impact on our society, massive regulation, hundreds of millions of dollars to get through FDA hurdles to get anything on the shelves.

36:35If you look at the restaurant industry, Once we have 20 locations, you have to disclose the number of calories. If you want to put out a product, any sort of consumer product, it has to go through testing. If you want to launch a car, you have to have all sorts of emission standards, airbags. The industry that is worth more and has more influence than any of these industries has absolutely no regulation or guardrails. And the question I would put forward is similar to sex trafficking. If we had a carve out from 230 on national security, I would bet, I would speculate that organizations and platforms, including Discord, could use an LLM, a large language model, to recognize this type of data.

37:20And before it gets forwarded or out of control, move in and flag it for human review. But because there is no need, there is no incentive. It costs too much. The zero to land speed record of young dumb men getting in trouble and causing huge damage has never been greater. We have given every kid in this nation a car that no longer goes 60 miles an hour, but goes 600 and said, no airbags, have at it. And it also goes to a larger issue. And that is younger people have less opportunity to get together with people offline. In general, the offline analog to anything online is much safer, much better, much more empathetic, much more loving.

38:07These kids were into Christianity and they were into guns. If they had been in a gun range and started yelling out anti-Semitic tropes, someone at the gun range would have said, cut that shit out. And this is why you don't say that shit. If they had been at church, in a church group, and laid out on the table, hey, I have information about the Ukrainian war effort. someone in that church would have said, this is dangerous. Come here, speak to me. But what you have online is absolutely no guardrails. So you take every terrible impulse, poor judgment that young men especially demonstrate in spades, and it goes from zero to really fucking awful faster than ever before.

38:48I have mixed feelings about the Edward Snowden stuff, the Reality Winner stuff, Chelsea Manning. Some of it, you know, the government was saying they were not doing things that they were doing. I don't know what they could have done otherwise in many ways, except become what is considered traitorous. At the same time, this seemed to be done for just... Social status. Social status. And you're just like, what? And also, what happened to you that this is how you are? This is what you think about the government. It's like too many online conspiracy tropes, but it's sort of like, wow, you were in a position of authority at some point, And this is what you do with it.

39:26You know, this is your thing just to impress 15 teenagers and have status among them. If you read some of the articles, the Washington Post had one of someone in that group, a young guy, and his quotes were heartbreaking. Like, he was cool. He was tough. He was our guy. And I was like, oh, my God, your life is so small on your little online service. It's getting smaller and smaller because, you know, lack of male role models, lack of of offline socialization, lack of potential for romantic interests, all of these things are guardrails. All of these things, when you're in person with people, whether it's a Boy Scout troop, whether it's an after-school program, whether it's a male, a man who takes an interest in your life, whether it's the prospect of a romantic relationship, all of these things serve as guardrails, where you start behaving in a more societally accepted way.

40:15And when you go online and can begin clotting with other extremists from around the world, and there's no safeguards. There's no - I agree. Snowden and Assange, that was different. They saw themselves as people who were deeply disturbed by what the state was doing, took a risk. I think they knew they were taking a risk. This is a kid who made a series of terrible decisions and he's probably, Kira, going to be in a basement cell in a max, super max federal prison for the rest of his life. He may never - No, not the rest of his life. Apparently it's not. It's a long time. This is the end of his adulthood, really.

40:48His life was ruined. Yeah, his life is ruined. His life is ruined. Although he's become a right-wing, look, Marjorie Taylor Greene thought he was a hero for doing this. The thing is, you don't know what's real and what's not mixed in there. That's the thing. It's like, who knows? He was copying some things down. It's just like, oh, God, this just makes it even more confusing. One interesting detail in the documents, there was a U.S. intelligence assessment that repeated an internal claim from the Russian government that says social media platforms catch less than 1 % of fake Russian accounts. if a claim is true.

41:19And who knows? It comes from Russia. Who knows? They're probably bragging on things. It's a pretty damning indictment of Meta's efforts to combat disinformation. It could also reflect poorly on Twitter's mass layoffs. Who's to say? Like, who's to say, right? In that area. And then in the other area is the names, this right-wing hate group kind of mentality. The group was called Thug Shaker Central. It's a racist anti-gay joke about a gay porn thing, I think, I believe, where the documents shared they, it was called bear versus pig for a Russian slur about Ukrainian people. You know, that was also disturbing sort of disguised in the military.

41:55And I'm not surprised necessarily. There's a survey that found more than one third of all active duty troops reported witnessing white nationalism or racism within the ranks. This is not a surprise either. But it's just sort of this attitude towards our country that's just so, I don't expect you to be raw, raw patriotic. I'm not. But it's this idea of Armageddon almost, right? Like what anything goes. And again, it's linked to that stuff we were talking about earlier. It's a lack of respect for institutions. It's a lack of appreciation for shared stories. And quite frankly, the liberal press is guilty of some of the reason why people don't feel as good about America as they should.

42:34And these young people, they don't have the same economic prospects that my generation had. They don't have the same opportunities for socialization. And so they find each other, they engage in extremist content, and it just sort of the zero to 60 from bad impulses and poor judgment to something really damaging is just much more fluid online. And look at, you make bad judgments on alcohol. So look at the guardrails we put in there. You're not supposed to drink under the age of 21. Cigarettes, adult content. I mean, we age gate the military. We have all sorts of guardrails. I mean, I know this sounds stupid.

43:10David, you know what I think would have saved this? If this kid had had a girlfriend. Yeah, maybe. And where do 21-year-olds? I gotta say, both my sons are nicer with their girlfriends. I love them having girlfriends. You know what? They get their shit together. The prospect for companionship and, quite frankly, sex makes men behave much better. And also, a woman who tends to be a little bit more thoughtful and more engaged in slow thinking says, should you really be copying confidential national security documents and putting them on Discord? You know, it's just, but these kids have no opportunities or fewer and fewer opportunities to build offline relationships with each other.

43:43Yep. And we're mammals. We're meant to be in each other's presence. And, you know, you just, if you have sons and you think about it, you see firsthand what fucking idiots they can be because of, you're literally, your role as a father and as a mother is to be their prefrontal cortex. Yep. And the problem is every piece of bad judgment can take a firecracker and turn it into a fucking nuclear bomb online. Right. Agreed. It can go to millions of people. It can do tremendous damage. And all of that, when they say these things, if they said these things in a group of people, of normal people in the community, someone in the community would intervene and go, no, this is wrong.

44:25And this is why it's wrong. And this is why I'm going to get involved in your life. But online, it's like, well, let's find all the other crazies. Yeah. There are some great places online to find community. There really are, but this is just so toxic. You know, it's going to get worse. So we need to talk to our friend of Pivot.

44:46Kate Crawford is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research Labs, a research professor at USC Annenberg and author of Atlas of AI, Power Politics and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. Welcome, Kate Crawford. You and I have talked many times. Let's start like some basics. Everyone's familiar with generative AI like ChatGPT, but help bring us back to the basics. How do you define artificial intelligence? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a common misperception with AI that it's, you know, this set of mathematical or sometimes magical functions in the cloud. But actually, these are profoundly material systems that have very real impacts.

45:28They use lots of human labor, lots of natural resources like energy and water, and of course, a gigantic amount of data. So part of what I think is really useful with understanding AI is really breaking it down into its component elements, really demystifying it and moving away from the kind of super intelligence hype that's happening at the moment to really say, you know, these are sociotechnical systems. People build them. They build them on all of these resources. Let's look at how they work. And I think that's a really good way to start to unpack a lot of the kind of gloss that gets attached to this term AI.

46:07All right. So explain, you can call it big data machine learning, cloud computing, and now a janitor of AI. Explain the differences for people. And now that we're finally talking only about something like ChatGPT, what it means for the field. Hmm. Well, there's a really long history here. We could go back to the Dartmouth conference in the late 1950s. We could look at the first phases of AI that were really focused on expert systems that were about modeling human understanding. So you would literally try to teach a computer linguistic principles, you know, this is how language works. Right, sure.

46:48We start to see this really big shift that happens in the 1970s and 80s that takes off with the popularization of the internet, which is this idea of really just probabilistic modeling. So effectively trying to guess the next word in a sentence, you know, doing this type of mode of brute force AI, which is much closer to what we're seeing with things like GPT. So we could get super technical about how generative AI works, but the important thing to understand is that these are essentially gigantic probabilistic models. They don't understand language. They're much more interested in predicting things, predicting the next word in a sentence, predicting the type of image that you might be requesting.

47:31And it's not coming from a basis of understanding all language or understanding all art history. Or the intelligence of humans. It's a very different form of interpretive ability. I think even the word intelligence can actually be a bit of a trap here. I mean, intelligence has its own gnarly history as a term. And I think it can become a real cul-de-sac where people try to anthropomorphize these systems when actually they are very large statistical analysis at scale. Yeah, I always say it's not real. They're not real people. I say it like I don't know. Regular people are getting that idea. So is ChatGPT a radical technological advance from your perspective?

48:11You know, that's a really good question because the idea behind ChatGPT has actually been around for decades. I mean, we could go back to Joseph Weisenbaum who created Eliza, you know, in the 1960s at MIT, which is essentially a chatbot that just used simple scripts and was designed as a therapist that would basically ask your questions back to you. And Weisenbaum wrote at the time that he was shocked how easily people were taken in by this. He said it was basically creating delusional thinking and quite normal people. And like, why would people believe this? And what we have now is decades later, a huge shift in computational scale, a huge shift in available data, which means much better modeling of speech, much better modeling of ideas, information, things that these systems are trained on.

49:03And they are trained on truly, I mean, we're talking about data sets the size of the internet itself. So think about putting that in a blender and you're really getting an idea of how much data these things are working with, with the foundational model. So perhaps what's new here is not so much the idea, but the difference that scale can make. I'm curious what you think of this AI pause movement. Mm-hmm. So this is a very big deal in the AI world. So basically over a thousand scholars and business leaders signed the letter that said, pause for six months. I didn't sign it. And here's why. It's really framed in this kind of apocalyptic tone.

49:48Essentially, it talks about this idea of incredibly powerful digital minds ending human civilization. And I think this is a massive distraction from what we really need right now, which is how do we actually regulate these systems? What impacts are they going to have right now on things like misinformation and security? So I think in some ways it's sort of drawing us away from the bigger issues that are underlying these questions. I also noticed that Elon Musk was one of the first people to sign, you know, asking for a pause. And he just said in an interview, it's going to kill us all. It has the potential of civilizational destruction.

50:26And then two weeks later, he announces that he's training his own AI model called X. So I'm like, hmm, this seems to be... That doesn't surprise Scott or I, but go ahead. No, it's not surprising, but I think it points to some mixed motivations about why people are signing that letter. But if there's something really useful here, it's that there are concerns. And I think you'll see several more letters start to circulate before the end of the year from different types of communities. Just as a follow-up, it feels as if we'd be smart to get out, at least not ahead of it, but develop some sort of regulatory oversight and not make the same original sin of the internet and have no regulation.

51:09is there a model we can look at in terms of an industry for let's say okay we're charged with establishing some sort of regulatory oversight that lets a thousand acorns bloom and keeps our lead in this and creates economic growth and i'm actually excited about this technology i think it could be an unbelievable unlock across health care medical research you know you name it what what could we do to ensure that we don't make this the mistakes of the past with other emerging technologies. Right. Well, I mean, you're pointing to exactly this issue of balance. You know, how do we ensure that those benefits are possible with the types of guardrails that we need?

51:49And there's different theories that have been circulating around, but one of the core things, America still doesn't have basic comprehensive federal data protection laws, right? So we can think about the GDPR in Europe. You know, that would allow us to have much more control over how our data is being used to train these models. So there's a proposed American Data Privacy and Protection Act, the ADPA, I think that's definitely a step in the right direction. But, you know, I wonder if we need something a little more urgent. And for example, the White House has had a domestic policy council for decades that kind of coordinates policy across diverse and, you know, different sorts of areas, including criminal justice, healthcare, education.

52:33You could imagine something like an AI policy council that would go across these domains. It can't be called an information council, though, because look what happened there, right? Well, exactly, right? We know how that goes. But you could think about what's happening with AI in the Department of Education, in transportation, in labor, in the SEC, in the FTC. You've got all of these different agencies and groups seeing different parts of the elephant. So how do we quickly harmonize a sort of a policy vision across all of those components. And I think, honestly, trying to do this quickly is one of the most important things right now.

53:10Now, the EU is streets ahead. They've got their AI Act, which should be becoming law essentially by the end of this year. But even there, they started framing that, you know, three years ago plus, and they're now racing to catch the generative AI framework. So they've been at it. We tend not to do anything. Because, you know, let's talk about who benefits from the efforts. Because one of the issues I keep focused, I said, let's stop talking about student term papers and it killing us. Because really, that's not a concern. Either of them is not the biggest concern we have. But who controls and owns it?

53:42Who benefits are these large private companies, which I do agree with Elon on. And although he wants to be one of them, I don't want to be in his camp because I think he's just mad he's behind and they didn't want to do what he wanted to do. How do you share them across society? Because this is really, again, our information, right? It's ours that these private companies are using to benefit themselves and then vomit it back up at us in some fashion. And then if you could talk, you just mentioned environmental impacts. Add that in because then we'll pay for that too if there are impacts, not them.

54:15Well, this is one of the questions that the research field has really been pointing to for years, which is concentration of power. So you could go back to the first dot-com boom and you could look about how many players were there and kind of, you know, making money from pets.com or whatever it might be. And then you start to see that number start to shrink. And you could think about sort of the big data moment, the deep learning moment. We really start to see fewer and fewer companies who are really at the forefront. And now we are looking at one of the most concentrated industries in terms of who can do generative AI at scale.

54:50Now, the interesting counterpoint to this is the number of open source models that are starting to be released. And that, you know, we can raise questions there too around, okay, if it costs so much in terms of energy, in terms of human labor to try and make these things work and to build in some guardrails, And that happens, you know, at multiple layers in these technical models. Are people going to be able to do that in the open source models? And what is that going to do to these broader public harms and risks that many of us have been flagging? So I think in the end, you're looking at the moment at a kind of an interesting turn, which is, are we going to see the gains just go to the same big tech players?

55:35And of course, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Adobe has just released a model. I mean, it really is the kind of, you know, all the big players are in this now. This is everybody is playing this game to win. But then you've got this open source question. And so, again, we've seen this play out historically before. But I do think that if we start to see these models being able to be trained with less data and with less energy, which is key, then it opens up some more space. For everybody, for innovative young companies. That's right. What are you most excited about? Where do you think the, just talking about trying to be a little bit glass half full here, where do you think the most disruptive change for good lies in terms of this new technology?

56:22Well, the things that, I mean, I'm going to speak personally here. The things that I use these sorts of large language and large multimodal models for is like summarization. Extremely good at, you know, give it a long document, get a really concise answer. coding. I haven't had to code for years. It takes me all the way back to when I was learning this stuff in my late teens, early 20s. What is amazing is that the hot programming language in 2023 is English. You can literally just write the program that you would like to produce, and you'll get that. That is exciting to me. I think that actually...

57:00Sounds like spreadsheets. It's like spreadsheets. Who uses an abacus anymore except for Scott? Well, they're kind of cool. But yeah, I mean, I think in some ways, I think it's more transformative than a spreadsheet. I think you really have to think about some of the biggest technological changes that we've experienced. I mean, a lot of people compare this to, say, the iPhone or, you know, the Internet. I tend to go further back. I kind of think about this in relation to, say, the creation of artificial perspective in the 1400s. It literally changed how we represented the world. And that's why I think these models are so powerful.

57:40And Scott, you know, there's some big upsides there, but there's also some very big social questions that we have to get ahead of. Because if they just get released and they just go and do their thing, we know that a whole lot of problems can emerge. So this is why research and guardrails are so important. 10 years from now, if you were to make a prediction for AI, where it is. Besides killing us all, apparently. Cara, you know, I don't know. It's been such a hectic year. I mean, I don't know how much sleep you guys are getting, but I've just never seen anything. New AI people must be crazy. I've never seen anything this fast.

58:16I've been in this field for almost two decades. This is unlike anything else. I think it's really difficult to make a 10-year prediction. But I do think that the things that keep me up at night are not, you know, machines that are going to run the world. It's going to be people who haven't done enough of the work to actually think about the really complex social interactions that are already happening with these systems. Here's what I'm scared of. The people who run the machines keep me up at night. If you're somebody who wants to get, say, from A to, you'll never get to Z, but wants to get some elemental or some basic foundational knowledge of AI, what LLMs would you suggest experimenting with?

59:04How do you get to not letter Z, but letter D or E quickly? Well, I'm a big fan of experimentation. So there's different types of models out there. As we know, there are ungrounded ones that just will give you answers and you won't know where the source comes from. There are so-called grounded models that are connected to search results that will give you a different kind of set of answers. But honestly, one of the things that I'm really excited about is how do we put this in this broader social and cultural context? And that means you need to read further afield. That's part of kind of what we're doing with our Knowing Machines Research Project is really trying to show people, okay, let's think about how you might actually interact with a model yourself.

59:46How do you start to look at training data and understand how it maps the world? And then how might you start to think about how you'd use these systems differently? In some ways, I think we need this kind of rapid increase in literacy. And it's not just going to be about focusing narrowly on the tech. It's going to be looking at what does this do to the public sphere? What does it do to the media? What does it do to democracy? That's the piece we need to be thinking about. Yeah, I try and use it every day. And I just think it's fascinating. And I'm a big believer that AI is not going to take your job.

1:00:18Someone who understands AI is going to take your job. So I think my advice to any young person would be is, Kate is suggesting, experiment with this and get good at it. It's a weapon. You want to be trained in it. 100%. It is like using the internet in the early days. Anyway, the Atlas of AI is available everywhere. And Kate is on Twitter and Mastodon. Thank you, Kate Crawford. It's great to see you both. Thanks, Kate. Yeah, that was really interesting. The one thing I thought most interesting was coding. Like you say, I want a program that does this and it does it for you. Like you don't need to, just like you don't need to fix, you know, there's a lot of things you don't need to do anymore that you used to, you know, basic research, the internet help, for example.

1:00:56That's really interesting that you could code without learning to code. Why bother? Because it does it for you. Anyway, just thought that was interesting. Not sure if you want to code with me, Scott. But in any case. I'll melt with you, but I won't code with you. Okay. One more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

1:01:19Support for the show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business. This is where Odoo comes in. It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odoo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. That means CRM accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload.

1:01:47No more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part is that Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process. It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

1:02:23Support for the show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business. This is where Odoo comes in. It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odoo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. That means CRM accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload.

1:02:51No more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part is that Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process. It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

1:03:30Okay, Scott, let's do some wins and fails. I'm going to start with a fail. Russian journalist Vladimir Akharomirza was convicted and sentenced to 25 years on charges of treason after he criticized the war in Ukraine. He's in jail, obviously, for political views. He's very sick. He was poisoned, too. It's depressing, the whole thing. And, of course, American journalist Evan Gersovich remains in jail in Russia. The U.S. ambassador to Russia finally visited him, but also in potentially trouble to get the same kind of sentence for treason. What kills me is all these people talking about free speech in this country and then giving an easy time to Russia.

1:04:09It's sort of like the people who maybe on the left who are censorious and then the people who actually pass terrible laws around gays and trans or whatever they happen to or abortion. We need to focus on Russia, like what they're doing here. And they are the global thugs of this world, I think, and getting closer and closer to China. I can't believe what these families are going through with their relatives just convicted in a kangaroo court. You know, at least we have courts that have problems, but they're not kangaroo courts. In any case, that is my fail. That is my fail. All right. Any wins?

1:04:47Oh, happy birthday, Alex. That's nice. And Louis' birthday is coming up soon. And they're really wonderful kids, as I've always said. And so Louie's going to be 21 and Alex is 18. So they're on their own now. They're on their own. They're boys. They'll be home. Good luck, boys. Enjoy. I've done all that I can for you. Anyway. My win and fail both fall under the same kind of umbrella. And that is if you have high blood pressure, you just become much more vulnerable to a series of health outcomes. If you're pre-diabetes. I mean, there's just certain things. Absolutely. If your body mass index is over a certain level, you're just prone to all sorts of bad health outcomes.

1:05:29And I think there are some things in our nation that are basically high blood pressure. And unless we address them, we're just going to have a series of bad outcomes. We can never be truly healthy. And I think that reinvesting in young people and giving them opportunities to be more economically and emotionally viable, especially young men, is a huge issue. I think some sort of common sense gun regulation. But far and away, the number one for me, and it's become a litmus test for who I'm going to vote for and who I'm going to give money to, is until we restore something resembling modern progressive rights for 51 % of our nation, specifically a woman's right to choose, I just think we're going to have terrible outcomes everywhere.

1:06:07I just can't see how we move forward and claim to be a progressive, empathetic nation when we are rolling back women's rights. It is so counter to every modern, thoughtful, societal movement around the world, whether it's Ireland, whether it's Mexico. It's just, it's so incredibly discouraging. And we have always held onto this cold comfort that it couldn't happen here, and it is happening. And so my fail is in Florida, my state where I'm a resident, just passed an incredibly, where the governor just signed a very restrictive abortion law with very few exceptions. It's a bill banning abortions after six weeks.

1:06:46Both my children, we didn't know we were pregnant until after six weeks. That is correct. Me either. And not only that, I mean, as if to say, you know, and a big fuck you to women, if the exception of rape or incest, you have to show a police report. Documents. Yeah. To prove incest. And in the case of the life of the mother, two doctors, Two doctors must sign off on an abortion. And Florida is a wonderful, diverse state, huge state. And the fact that they've basically outlawed choice, it means to me that Florida is no longer part of a modern functioning democracy. And they did it under the dark of night.

1:07:25They didn't do it. They did it 11 o 'clock at night. He didn't do it because he knows it's a losing issue in elections, right? So he's trying to do it and then get credit among the people he needs to please and yet not let everybody else know. But we're going to hang this around his neck. 100%. And I believe it was a stupid move for him. And granted, I have some bias here. But the reality is one of the best examples of minority rule is that the vast majority of Americans believe in a woman's right to choice. And the nation is headed the other way. It is the best example of minority rule in our nation, maybe with the exception of assault weapons.

1:08:01And then my win is on the same subject. It is now a litmus test for me. Janet Protosawitz, I think is her name, was elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court and flipped it to a more progressive body. And it was basically Wisconsin voters, and there's Republicans outnumber Democrats here, which is a tell for how America feels about this. It was really about choice and a little bit about gerrymandering. But America has said, how can we pretend to be an economically viable? I mean, this not only goes to just basic human rights, it goes to our economy. It goes to our ability to have functioning households.

1:08:36It goes to our ability to have kids who are raised and loving, economically secure households. And I'd like to think, and my win here is that Wisconsin, which is sort of a purple, slightly reddish hue, has said, okay, this is just out of control. She won by a lot. She won by a lot, too. It wasn't a little. It wasn't a squeaker. No, this really is. And I'm hoping - Young people. I'm hoping this represents a bottom on this and that the demo in democracy is going to kick in here. And then more people— I don't know, Scott. They're relentless. These people are relentless. Well, but we have justice and righteousness on our side, Kara.

1:09:17And I do think that America gets it right over the long term. These people are fucking relentless and they'll stoop to no—they'll stoop to every low possible. But go ahead. Sorry. I think they're relentless. Yeah, but I have a lot of faith in our system, not over the short term, but over the medium and the long term. And I do think that this is, I think people are waking up to the fact that our fears are being realized. And again, we all sort of took this cold comfort that, oh, it couldn't happen. I even think a lot of Republicans weren't expecting it to go this far. And I think that I'd like to think Florida is a terrible example of where it can go.

1:09:54But Wisconsin hopefully represents a turning point. And anyways, my win is that essentially the voters of Wisconsin have decided to ideologically flip their Supreme Court because they have – they are, in my opinion, concerned and worried about the constant – we're the only nation. I think we're the only nation in the world that hasn't been taken over by religious fanatics where rights are being taken away. You just – that's never happened in the history of America. No, it hasn't. We've always granted rights to people, additional rights to people. So anyways, my fail is what is an incredibly restrictive, primitive, just no way around it, misogynistic law that's been passed in Florida, the great state of Florida, which is feeling less great today.

1:10:39And I'm hopeful around the flipping the election of someone, a Democrat to the Supreme Court in Wisconsin. Yeah, well, you know who the only person is saying this is a real loser for us? is, but Donald Trump. Trump's the only one who gets it. Someone who's familiar with the topic. Allegedly. He's the only one. And the rest of them, it's like a suicide pact these people have. I don't even understand it, but they're relentless. They are just relentless. And now they've got a lot more allies like Musk and others. So they're just lying their way right to the top, which is really depressing to me. Anyway, we'll see.

1:11:17That's a really good one, Scott. I really appreciate that. We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. And don't forget, we were nominated for a Webby Award, and we need you to vote for us at the link in the bio. We're losing. We're like in third right now. Okay. Well, what are you going to do? Do I got to make my jokes dirtier? Is that what's going on here? Make your jokes dirtier. Jesus walks into a restaurant and says, I need a table for 26. And the waitress says, there's only 13 of you.

1:11:48and he said, yeah, but we all sit on the same side. Oh, my God. That's a terrible Jesus joke. You need to up your Jesus jokes. Do you know what car he drives? Honda, of course. A Chrysler. Okay. Vote for us. Next time I'm in West Virginia, I'm going to do that one because they would laugh at that one. That's a good one. I like that. In any case, please vote for us. Okay, Scott, that's the show and Jesus jokes. We'll move back to dad jokes very soon, hopefully. We'll be back on Friday for more. Scott, read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Neiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Indertot engineered this episode.

1:12:26Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Miel Saverio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Optionality!

1:12:48Support for the show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business. This is where Odoo comes in. It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odoo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. That means CRM accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload.

1:13:16No more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part is that Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process. It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

1:13:51Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce and more. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.