Latest / Ctrl-Alt-Speech / The Haidt of Hypocrisy

Transcript

The Haidt of Hypocrisy · Ctrl-Alt-Speech

• 0:00
  Ben Whitelaw: So Mike, since we've last spoken, I've been dabbling in some new apps, some new social media apps that are apparently about bringing back the nostalgia of the two thousands internet.
• 0:11
  Mike Masnick: Oh, okay.
• 0:12
  Ben Whitelaw: must remember it.
• 0:13
  Ben Whitelaw: Well, it was a heady
• 0:14
  Mike Masnick: I, I, do remember it well, though.
• 0:15
  Mike Masnick: It makes me feel old that we were having nostalgia for that time period.
• 0:19
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, the pixels were larger, the harms were mostly spam.
• 0:23
  Ben Whitelaw: It was, you know, it was a nice time, a calm time.
• 0:26
  Ben Whitelaw: there's these new apps that are kind of bringing back that, that feel, that vibe.
• 0:30
  Ben Whitelaw: And I've been trialing one called Perfectly Imperfect, which looks a bit like MySpace and is a, it's kind of a magazine type vibe.
• 0:38
  Ben Whitelaw: The prompt on the perfectly imperfect app is one I'd like you to answer start today's podcast.
• 0:45
  Ben Whitelaw: And it is rec question mark.
• 0:49
  Ben Whitelaw: Ask question mark event question
• 0:52
  Mike Masnick: Oh,
• 0:53
  Ben Whitelaw: So the idea being you can, you know, suggest an event to go to'cause you're cool and hip, or you can provide an ask to the, achingly cool group of users on perfect imperfect, or you can ask for a recommendation.
• 1:06
  Mike Masnick: Oh, oh, how,
• 1:07
  Ben Whitelaw: will you choose?
• 1:08
  Mike Masnick: It's very broad.
• 1:10
  Mike Masnick: I will go with an event, uh, that I think people listening to this podcast will be interested in, especially if you're in the Bay Area, which is that later this month, Stanford is having their annual trust and safety research conference.
• 1:24
  Mike Masnick: And, it's always a really good time.
• 1:26
  Mike Masnick: It's sort of, it's different than Trust Con.
• 1:28
  Mike Masnick: It's a very different kind of event.
• 1:29
  Mike Masnick: There's some overlap, but it's, it's just always such a really nice event, really great group of people.
• 1:34
  Mike Masnick: I always have such great conversations there.
• 1:37
  Mike Masnick: and, I'm not gonna reveal exactly what it is, but we are, we will be revealing something during that event that I think some people might find.
• 1:46
  Mike Masnick: Uh.
• 1:46
  Ben Whitelaw: A tech dirt special.
• 1:48
  Mike Masnick: uh, yeah, you know, Opia special.
• 1:51
  Mike Masnick: Something, something good.
• 1:52
  Ben Whitelaw: Ah, very nice.
• 1:53
  Ben Whitelaw: Very nice.
• 1:54
  Ben Whitelaw: I think that would go down very well on perfectly imp.
• 1:56
  Ben Whitelaw: Perfect.
• 1:56
  Ben Whitelaw: There's an era of mystery,
• 1:58
  Mike Masnick: yeah.
• 1:59
  Mike Masnick: A little, a little,
• 2:00
  Ben Whitelaw: little tease.
• 2:01
  Mike Masnick: A little tease.
• 2:01
  Mike Masnick: There we go.
• 2:02
  Mike Masnick: So, uh, what about you?
• 2:03
  Mike Masnick: Do you have a rec ask or event for us?
• 2:06
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, my, recommendation is to not get three hours of sleep at night because you tend to not be able to read as much about the week's news and concept moderation as you'd often like.
• 2:19
  Ben Whitelaw: So I'm, I'm coming on this high on adrenaline, low on insight, but let's, let's see how it
• 2:24
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, but you're supposed to use those, those times that you're awake in the middle of the night, maybe dealing with little people in your house to, to then read as
• 2:32
  Ben Whitelaw: Uh, you are right.
• 2:34
  Ben Whitelaw: You're right.
• 2:34
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm doing it all wrong.
• 2:43
  Ben Whitelaw: Hello and welcome to Control Alt Speech, your weekly roundup of the major stories about online speech, content moderation, and internet regulation.
• 2:51
  Ben Whitelaw: It's September the fourth, 2025, and this week we're talking about Nigel Farage visiting the capital AI companies collaborating over safety and whether the evidence against smartphones stacks up.
• 3:03
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm Ben Whitelaw, the founder and editor of Everything and Moderation, and I'm with Mike Masnick, who is both Achingly Cool and somebody who goes to research conferences.
• 3:13
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 3:13
  Mike Masnick: Like going to academic research conferences is cool and hip.
• 3:16
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 3:17
  Mike Masnick: Okay.
• 3:18
  Ben Whitelaw: It's a, it's a Venn diagram with a very small overlap, I'd say.
• 3:21
  Ben Whitelaw: but I actually haven't been to the Stanford Trust and Safety Research Conference.
• 3:25
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm a bit jealous that you're going again.
• 3:26
  Ben Whitelaw: uh, is there anything you're particularly looking out for or are you going just to kind of get a general sense of what researchers are talking about?
• 3:32
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, I mean it's, it's more the latter.
• 3:34
  Mike Masnick: there's always a lot of really interesting stuff because you know, it is very focused on the research side of it, but it includes like research from not just academics, but also the companies and, and other folks as well.
• 3:44
  Mike Masnick: And so you really begin to get a sense of like.
• 3:47
  Mike Masnick: Some of the more creative things that are happening or like creative interventions and, how well those work.
• 3:53
  Mike Masnick: There's always a lot of really interesting people there.
• 3:55
  Mike Masnick: It's smaller than trust con, so it's a little bit more intimate and you end up having, you know, a lot of really good conversations.
• 4:02
  Mike Masnick: And so, yeah, I'm, I'm really looking forward to it.
• 4:05
  Mike Masnick: It's always, a really good event.
• 4:06
  Mike Masnick: and always like a good, Like trust con is at the beginning of the summer kind of thing, and then this is at the end of the summer, and so you know, it's sort of like the, beginning and end of, of summer in trust and safety.
• 4:17
  Mike Masnick: and I think, I think I saw, I, I'm saying this now without confirming it, but I think like Dave Wilner is giving the keynote this year, which is always, you know, he's always fantastic.
• 4:27
  Mike Masnick: so it should be a really good, good event overall.
• 4:29
  Ben Whitelaw: Dave was one of the very early kind of trust and safety folks at Facebook and is doing some pretty cool things with, AI content moderation.
• 4:36
  Ben Whitelaw: so that will be fun.
• 4:37
  Ben Whitelaw: academia and research actually is a very useful kind of preempting of today's, controlled speech.
• 4:44
  Ben Whitelaw: We're gonna talk a lot about, scientific evidence of research and grounding trust and safety in.
• 4:50
  Ben Whitelaw: policy, uh, and policy and research.
• 4:52
  Ben Whitelaw: And I think that's something that, is a kind of nice segue onto, some of our first stories.
• 4:57
  Ben Whitelaw: Before we do though, just wanna talk about the, famous and anonymous reviewer from our last podcast.
• 5:04
  Ben Whitelaw: if listeners weren't tuning into that, you might have heard me get a little bit, jealous perhaps.
• 5:10
  Ben Whitelaw: I think that's fair to say.
• 5:10
  Ben Whitelaw: A little
• 5:11
  Mike Masnick: think, I think that's right.
• 5:13
  Ben Whitelaw: a little bit, uh, upset about the fact that one of our reviews from one of our listeners,
• 5:18
  Mike Masnick: A very nice review.
• 5:19
  Mike Masnick: Let me
• 5:19
  Ben Whitelaw: really nice
• 5:20
  Mike Masnick: one of the nicest reviews that the podcast has received,
• 5:24
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 5:24
  Ben Whitelaw: Really nice.
• 5:25
  Ben Whitelaw: Did not mention me at all.
• 5:26
  Mike Masnick: right?
• 5:27
  Mike Masnick: Yes.
• 5:28
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, and, and I didn't expect to hear anything.
• 5:31
  Ben Whitelaw: We, we
• 5:31
  Mike Masnick: Well, well, that's because you, you thought I wrote it, so let, let's be clear here.
• 5:35
  Mike Masnick: You Facelessly accused me of, of sock puppeting that review because it was very nice to me.
• 5:43
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm still not a hundred percent sure that that's not, is what happening now.
• 5:47
  Ben Whitelaw: But somebody, uh, emailed in claiming to be OMI Hilo, who, who was the username from, that review And, I was gonna kind of read out what he said.
• 5:59
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm not gonna explain any more.
• 6:02
  Ben Whitelaw: Who he is and what he's doing.
• 6:03
  Ben Whitelaw: But he's working trust and safety for a major platform and he says this, he said, sorry I did not give credit to Ben in my review.
• 6:10
  Ben Whitelaw: I do appreciate him.
• 6:12
  Ben Whitelaw: I think I might have written the review when he was off, but I do appreciate his insight too.
• 6:18
  Ben Whitelaw: it, it's, it's a, I appreciate OMI kilo writing in, and I've had a bit of back and forth on email.
• 6:26
  Ben Whitelaw: the way that that email is written doesn't convince me that somebody wasn't writing that with a gun to their head.
• 6:34
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, I do appreciate him.
• 6:36
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 6:36
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 6:38
  Ben Whitelaw: I might go back through the podcast episodes, Mike, and just see if you might have said something similar in a, in a similar kind of construction.
• 6:45
  Mike Masnick: Ben, I appreciate you.
• 6:49
  Ben Whitelaw: I do appreciate you.
• 6:51
  Mike Masnick: I do, I do so much.
• 6:52
  Mike Masnick: Appreciate you.
• 6:55
  Ben Whitelaw: um, so that clears things up it wasn't you.
• 6:58
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm, I'm, you know, I'm happy to say that that.
• 7:00
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm 95% sure that that is the case.
• 7:03
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, and I'm very grateful to, mackayla for writing in with his review.
• 7:07
  Ben Whitelaw: you like the podcast, if you listen to it regularly, please do leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts.
• 7:13
  Ben Whitelaw: You can leave us a rating on Spotify.
• 7:15
  Ben Whitelaw: You can write some words on Apple or the other platforms where you might listen.
• 7:19
  Ben Whitelaw: Very much helps us, be discovered on the platforms and we are seeing, increasing amounts of listeners find us.
• 7:25
  Ben Whitelaw: our numbers are, are going up steadily, and that's all because of.
• 7:28
  Ben Whitelaw: ratings and reviews that you're giving us.
• 7:30
  Ben Whitelaw: So massive, massive help for that.
• 7:32
  Ben Whitelaw: Also, great to have some emails in and some contact from potential sponsors.
• 7:37
  Ben Whitelaw: We've been talking about making the podcast sustainable trying to make it, a kind of.
• 7:41
  Ben Whitelaw: Self-sustaining thing.
• 7:43
  Ben Whitelaw: and we've had some really great, companies get in touch about becoming sponsors over the next couple of quarters.
• 7:48
  Ben Whitelaw: So, thanks to to those folks for getting in touch.
• 7:51
  Ben Whitelaw: right, so let's get onto this week's stories, Mike.
• 7:53
  Ben Whitelaw: We're gonna talk about, as I said, the evidence, the academic evidence around some of these big topics that we talk about on control of speech every week.
• 8:00
  Ben Whitelaw: in doing so, we're gonna talk about some of our favorite pantomime villains on control or speech.
• 8:07
  Ben Whitelaw: People who, our listeners have heard us talk about.
• 8:10
  Ben Whitelaw: They've heard you, give your views on let's say, and, uh, I'm very much looking forward to hearing how you feel about this first one.
• 8:18
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, the big story this week, is.
• 8:21
  Ben Whitelaw: Jim Jordan's much touted house judiciary committee hearing, and now as I mentioned at the top of the episode, haven't had a lot of sleep, haven't done as much reading as I would've liked, and I purposely steered clear of this kind of circus that was taking shape.
• 8:36
  Ben Whitelaw: in your fair, your fair country.
• 8:38
  Mike Masnick: with your countrymen.
• 8:40
  Ben Whitelaw: my country, man, that's fair.
• 8:42
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, I would love to hear your take on it.
• 8:45
  Ben Whitelaw: and then there was a kind of interesting.
• 8:46
  Ben Whitelaw: Letter that was written, which we wanted to dive into as well.
• 8:49
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 8:50
  Mike Masnick: And, and the letter is more interesting than, the hearing, the hearing was, was garbage.
• 8:53
  Mike Masnick: There was no reason to watch it.
• 8:55
  Mike Masnick: It was a complete circus.
• 8:56
  Mike Masnick: It was Jim Jordan doing what Jim Jordan does, which is sort of putting on a theatrical show that has very little basis in reality.
• 9:03
  Mike Masnick: and you could see that even from the fact that, you know, and so, so the framing of the committee was about, European censorship.
• 9:12
  Mike Masnick: Of tech companies, whatever, it, it doesn't matter.
• 9:15
  Mike Masnick: it was all sort of garbage and made up.
• 9:18
  Mike Masnick: and as is the, standard practice with US congressional hearings, the majority gets to choose basically three witnesses, and the minority party gets to choose one.
• 9:32
  Mike Masnick: So the deck is already stacked.
• 9:34
  Mike Masnick: oddly, the witness list was very, very last minute.
• 9:38
  Mike Masnick: You know, last week they only showed Nigel Farage and Terry Brion as invited.
• 9:45
  Mike Masnick: He did not come, uh, which.
• 9:47
  Ben Whitelaw: Cherry didn't show.
• 9:48
  Mike Masnick: It did not show.
• 9:49
  Mike Masnick: He said he had a, on short notice was, was unavailable.
• 9:52
  Mike Masnick: Um, and then they, they filled it in with a couple other people and, they didn't even announce the one, witness from the Democrats until the morning of, I mean, the night before I was looking, and it was David K, who's a wonderful, very thoughtful.
• 10:09
  Mike Masnick: professor and and expert on free speech and had been the, UN's Rapporteur on freedom of expression for many years.
• 10:17
  Mike Masnick: just a super thoughtful and knowledgeable guy.
• 10:19
  Mike Masnick: And of course he was mostly ignored the.
• 10:23
  Mike Masnick: As this goes, like at one point someone asked him how many classes he's teaching this semester, which is like, why, how is that relevant to this discussion?
• 10:33
  Mike Masnick: Uh, you know, and so most of the panel was garbage.
• 10:36
  Mike Masnick: Nigel Farage put on a show and then left early.
• 10:39
  Mike Masnick: The Democrats made fun of him for leaving early and for refusing to say if he was gonna go have lunch with the president.
• 10:46
  Mike Masnick: and so then they were mocking him, and then after he left for an emergency meeting that he, he couldn't stick around at the hearing for, it was later reported that he went to go do a, TV news hit on GB news.
• 10:59
  Mike Masnick: Uh, which you can give me your impression of GB news, but I get the sense that it's sort of a Fox News standin, kind of thing.
• 11:08
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, that's a fair response.
• 11:10
  Ben Whitelaw: I couldn't give you my take without swearing.
• 11:12
  Mike Masnick: Right.
• 11:12
  Mike Masnick: Well, you know, hey, we can swear here.
• 11:15
  Mike Masnick: Uh, but you know, it was all sort of for show and nonsense.
• 11:19
  Mike Masnick: And as certainly some of the Democrats on the, committee made clear, it's pretty crazy to be attacking, liberal democratic.
• 11:29
  Mike Masnick: Countries in Europe as being these strict sensors at a time when authoritarians around the world, including here in the US, are abusing every lever of power they can to silence, dissent, and, stifle free speech.
• 11:45
  Mike Masnick: And so that was made clear by the Democrats and of course Jim Jordan, you know.
• 11:50
  Mike Masnick: Just would ignore all of that and focus on the supposed evils of the DSA.
• 11:55
  Mike Masnick: There was, it was very clear at times that like, I mean, you know, since the, panel was sort of supposed to be about the DSA, but then Nigel Farage was there who does not live in the EU anymore because, partly because of Nigel Farage, you had this whole Brexit thing.
• 12:12
  Mike Masnick: You might remember it Ben, uh, you know, but.
• 12:15
  Ben Whitelaw: Every day, every day.
• 12:17
  Mike Masnick: so, so the DSA does not apply in the uk.
• 12:19
  Mike Masnick: Now you have the Online Safety Act, and I've said plenty about my problems with the Online Safety Act.
• 12:24
  Mike Masnick: but then Farage was complaining about people who were arrested not under the Online Safety Act, which is not a law that I think even leads to people being arrested.
• 12:34
  Mike Masnick: and certainly not under the DSA, but under, like, you know, existing laws that have been around for a while.
• 12:39
  Mike Masnick: And I have.
• 12:40
  Mike Masnick: Reasonable complaints about some of those laws.
• 12:42
  Mike Masnick: And I have in the past, and I've, I've mocked your fair country, about some of those laws in the past.
• 12:47
  Mike Masnick: But it was, it had nothing to do with like internet laws.
• 12:50
  Mike Masnick: and so the whole thing was just kind of this nonsense show trial sort of thing that Jim Jordan is, sort of famous for, is not worth paying attention to if you didn't pay attention to, but.
• 13:03
  Mike Masnick: Out of that.
• 13:04
  Mike Masnick: there was a really interesting thing which we did wanna talk a little bit about, which was a letter that was put together by a bunch of academics.
• 13:11
  Mike Masnick: and there are actually two letters.
• 13:13
  Mike Masnick: one that was sent to the committee and, and Chairman Jordan in particular, and another that was then sent to the eu effectively informing them of this letter and to the European Commission.
• 13:25
  Mike Masnick: And it basically lays out in a very, it is a bit academic and it is a bit policy wonky, but basically lays out how this, the entire thread.
• 13:35
  Mike Masnick: Of the argument that Jim Jordan was making about how the DSA is designed for censoring conservative viewpoints, which was the argument that he was making, is utter nonsense.
• 13:47
  Mike Masnick: and now I have been clear over the years that I have called out the problems with the DSA, and I've certainly called out Terry Brion and the way that he, tried to, use the DSA for what clearly seemed to be censorship purposes.
• 14:02
  Mike Masnick: And I think this letter actually does a really, really nice job.
• 14:07
  Mike Masnick: not that Jim Jordan will pay attention to it, but it does a really nice job of threading the needle between saying, here's what the DSA actually says.
• 14:15
  Mike Masnick: Here's what the DSA actually allows, and here's what the DSA does not allow,
• 14:20
  Ben Whitelaw: Mm-hmm.
• 14:20
  Mike Masnick: simultaneously calling out Terry Brion, in particular for going above and beyond.
• 14:27
  Mike Masnick: Not in a good way, uh, but going beyond what the DSA actually allows and implying it allowed for censorship when it does not.
• 14:36
  Mike Masnick: And so part of the letter is effectively saying it would be nice if the DSA were a little more explicit about what it does not allow and that it does not allow for censorship and that it is content neutral or content agnostic.
• 14:49
  Mike Masnick: in how it, the enforcement works, and a lot of it's just about risk mitigation.
• 14:53
  Mike Masnick: And I'm a little bit torn on this personally because.
• 14:57
  Mike Masnick: I agree that that is the intent of the DSA.
• 15:01
  Mike Masnick: I agree that that is, you know, that the process to put together the DSA is way more thoughtful than like anything that the US does in terms of regulation, certainly internet regulation, it was years of back and forth and years of thoughtful approaches.
• 15:15
  Mike Masnick: You know, the point that I had made from early on, and I still stick by this, was that parts of the DSA were written.
• 15:22
  Mike Masnick: In a way that was so vague and so unclear and so open to interpretation that it was only a matter of time until someone tried to use it for censorship purposes, which is what we saw with Terry Brion.
• 15:34
  Mike Masnick: And I think the letter does a nice job of basically saying, you know, Brion clearly went too far.
• 15:38
  Mike Masnick: And then.
• 15:39
  Mike Masnick: Suffered political consequences, from that.
• 15:41
  Mike Masnick: Right.
• 15:42
  Mike Masnick: You know, he, lost his job very soon after he started to do that, and, people were pretty clear about going after him.
• 15:48
  Mike Masnick: And so they sort of, the, the letter argues that the, political process worked and limited his ability to abuse the law.
• 15:55
  Mike Masnick: I still am not a huge fan of the DSA, but I think that this letter is, is a very good one and thoughtful in, threading that needle, in a very careful, nuanced way, which of course will go completely over Jim Jordan's head if he ever even reads it.
• 16:10
  Mike Masnick: but I, but I thought it was interesting and it's signed by a ton of academics, a ton of actual experts in the field, which again, is another reason why Jim Jordan will ignore it.
• 16:19
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I mean it for context, for people who weren't following the Terry Britton story that we talked about.
• 16:25
  Ben Whitelaw: the whole kind of narrative that has been building over the last couple of years.
• 16:28
  Ben Whitelaw: This is, commissioner Britton who used to, be in kind of charge of the DSA within the eu and who in 2023 said that, the social media platform should remove hateful content and the DSA is not about removing hateful content.
• 16:44
  Ben Whitelaw: And so, there was other issues where he kind of went up against Elon Musk and wrote kind of.
• 16:50
  Ben Whitelaw: Odd letters, which we, flagged at the time, about the importance of Twitter and its, actions around the European elections at the time and, kind of threatening Twitter in a way that felt odd.
• 17:02
  Ben Whitelaw: and which kind of led to Elon Musk, uh, kind of reacting in kind, let's say.
• 17:07
  Ben Whitelaw: There was a bit of a kind of mano and mano,
• 17:10
  Mike Masnick: Reacting in an Elon Musk way.
• 17:13
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 17:14
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, I miss that guy.
• 17:16
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, and both of them actually.
• 17:19
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, and so yeah, so it is, it's fascinating that this, group of academics who, as you say, are, super reputable in the field and who not only are, are, based in Europe, but also include academics in the us which is, you know, fascinating that it's, US academics kind of, calling out, I guess, where the DSA has merit and what it's for in a very, kind of nuanced way, in a way that not a lot of Americans, I would say, Beyond yourself and, and some others would actually, would actually do.
• 17:48
  Ben Whitelaw: And so the, the fact that they've got together and organized in this way is, is really interesting.
• 17:53
  Ben Whitelaw: And you know, it's, it's a really helpful, I guess, addition to the ongoing transatlantic beef that, uh, our, our countries have and, the EU has with the US as well, which I think we're gonna see play out over the next kind of six months as some of those trade.
• 18:11
  Ben Whitelaw: Implications as that we've talked about start to kind of come to the surface a bit more.
• 18:16
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, I, I think there, there will be a lot more, and it, it's, you know, this is a, a thoughtful, nuanced approach, from experts in a world that doesn't believe in thoughtful nuance or experts.
• 18:29
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, exactly.
• 18:30
  Ben Whitelaw: And that is a very helpful segue onto our next story.
• 18:34
  Ben Whitelaw: we talked about Jim Jordan.
• 18:36
  Ben Whitelaw: Our next story is about, our other persona non grata or yeah, I haven't read Anxious Generation, I'll be honest.
• 18:44
  Ben Whitelaw: I've read a lot of commentary about it, but I know you have, and I know you're not a, you're not the biggest fan of Jonathan Hyde.
• 18:50
  Ben Whitelaw: And so.
• 18:50
  Mike Masnick: I, I have no problem with the man.
• 18:52
  Mike Masnick: I have a problem with what he says.
• 18:54
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 18:55
  Ben Whitelaw: play the ball, not the man as they say.
• 18:57
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, so here's March 20, 24 book.
• 19:00
  Ben Whitelaw: The youngsters generation has.
• 19:02
  Ben Whitelaw: sold millions of copies, as, as many people will know, many of our listeners would've have read it.
• 19:06
  Ben Whitelaw: And his argument that the kind of mental health and attentional decline of children can be put down to social media and phones has been taken up, significantly by parents who, who kinda have this, I guess, feeling and see this day to day, and also by teachers.
• 19:22
  Ben Whitelaw: Who are, are kind of on, on the front lines in terms of this stuff in schools.
• 19:26
  Ben Whitelaw: And so it's very, very interesting and helpful, that this week we had a pretty definitive piece by the Times educational supplement.
• 19:34
  Ben Whitelaw: The, UK journal, magazine for teachers looking exactly at this.
• 19:40
  Ben Whitelaw: And so I wanted to kind of, share a bit about what this piece said and what it kind of purports to do.
• 19:45
  Ben Whitelaw: the kind of TLDR on it is that basically.
• 19:48
  Ben Whitelaw: Lots of professors and academics do not agree with Jonathan Het and what he comes out within his book and is very critical of kind of the his claims.
• 19:57
  Ben Whitelaw: And, and that's something you've talked about Mike before.
• 19:59
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm very interested in your, in your take and.
• 20:02
  Ben Whitelaw: What they say basically, their academics from Oxford, Cambridge, the University of Bath, Washington Brown.
• 20:08
  Ben Whitelaw: It is like some of the, best professors in, in their fields, all of them that have been quoted in this piece, say the data that Haight uses in his book is noisy, that there are lots of other contributing factors to, what it is that he, he says the data is doing that he doesn't reference that he over claims on that data, which obviously is, never good.
• 20:31
  Ben Whitelaw: and that there are some children who are more affected than others, by things like social media and phones, which again is something you talked about, you know, the situational factors that kids and their lives and, and how they exist.
• 20:41
  Ben Whitelaw: can lead to changes in mental health and, and lead to the kind of suicides or, or deaths that we've talked about on this podcast in quite, tragic terms.
• 20:49
  Ben Whitelaw: So the piece is a long one.
• 20:51
  Ben Whitelaw: It's, it's a fascinating kind of, pulling of, lots of different threads about, whether Jonathan Heights claim should be believed.
• 20:57
  Ben Whitelaw: And if we're to believe what, these academics say, Mike, we should take it with a big pinch of soul.
• 21:02
  Ben Whitelaw: You must be pretty happy with that.
• 21:05
  Mike Masnick: I mean, yeah.
• 21:07
  Mike Masnick: granted, right, there's some confirmation bias, right?
• 21:09
  Mike Masnick: And so I, I had written right as the book came out, I was asked to write a review for it for the Daily Beast last year.
• 21:17
  Mike Masnick: and I went, I covered a lot of this similar ground in terms of like the book is just, it's shoddy.
• 21:23
  Mike Masnick: It's, it's not, it's not a strong book.
• 21:25
  Mike Masnick: And I, and I quoted some of the same people, when I wrote my review of it and this, what struck me about this, so first of all, for people who don't know, TES tests is like, it's well-respected.
• 21:37
  Mike Masnick: It goes back to it's over a century old, and it's sort of like the, primary educational.
• 21:44
  Mike Masnick: Journal, in the uk it's a, it's a, big deal.
• 21:47
  Mike Masnick: And this, the quotes in here are, I mean, astounding how directly people call out.
• 21:54
  Mike Masnick: I mean, there's one that says, when I read the book, I found it really hard to believe it was written by a fellow academic, this, these are not people pulling punches.
• 22:02
  Mike Masnick: The other one said, the work of John Height doesn't come up unless it's the butt of a joke.
• 22:08
  Mike Masnick: I mean.
• 22:08
  Mike Masnick: Like this is not, like people are not
• 22:12
  Ben Whitelaw: They're not pussy fitting around, are they?
• 22:13
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 22:15
  Mike Masnick: and throughout this article it just, you know, rips to shreds like all the different bits you know, the, claims that he makes and it goes through why they're just not supported by the evidence.
• 22:26
  Mike Masnick: And the academics here are very clear that there are things that are worth studying and there are things that are.
• 22:32
  Mike Masnick: Worth understanding, but he's way overclaiming the impact and it's just not seen in the data, which is, you know, a point that I and many others have raised as well.
• 22:43
  Mike Masnick: And I think it's just a, a really, really damning article.
• 22:48
  Mike Masnick: in a really respected source from a, a whole long list of respected academics.
• 22:54
  Mike Masnick: and so it'll be interesting.
• 22:56
  Mike Masnick: I mean, he more or less, dismisses it.
• 22:59
  Mike Masnick: and, you know, and any sort of academic criticism, he, Completely brushes off and ignores and, and he can do that because his bank account, I'm sure is huge as this book has sold a ridiculous number of copies and is talked about.
• 23:14
  Mike Masnick: And you know, I found it interesting that basically the same day that this.
• 23:19
  Mike Masnick: article came out Political had an article, which I find an interesting contrast to it, which says it's titled There's Only One True Bipartisan Issue Left.
• 23:29
  Mike Masnick: And it argues that the one true bipartisan issue is that Jonathan Het is right, that.
• 23:35
  Mike Masnick: You know, smartphones and social media are terrible for kids.
• 23:39
  Mike Masnick: And so, where the academics here are saying that this is complete garbage and is not supported by the evidence, the political class, and I would say the media class as well have completely embraced it, and there's an element here that I think.
• 23:54
  Mike Masnick: is just pure confirmation bias and, and, height.
• 23:56
  Mike Masnick: Even in the, the TES article more or less says like, well, you know, everyone knows this is true, like in their heart.
• 24:05
  Mike Masnick: And it's like you need evidence to support these things.
• 24:08
  Mike Masnick: And like, just the fact that people believe it doesn't actually make it true, you know?
• 24:12
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 24:13
  Mike Masnick: and so I think we're, in this world right now, which is a little scary, especially, you know, for people who deal in disinformation and conspiracy theories, and how do you deal with that and how do you respond to misinformation?
• 24:26
  Mike Masnick: This is one of the most successful misinformation campaigns around.
• 24:30
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 24:31
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I, I've got some thoughts on that.
• 24:33
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, so I'm, I'm watching the jury, which is a program where two juries watch a reenactment of a trial, at the same time without knowing each other exists.
• 24:44
  Ben Whitelaw: Right.
• 24:45
  Ben Whitelaw: It's a kind of interesting social experiment.
• 24:48
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, and I haven't got to the end yet, but I was, when I was reading this TES piece, I was thinking about how in Jonathan, hes world, you would just let the 12 jurors decide the outcome of the case without seeing any evidence that that's, that's kind of the analogy, right?
• 25:05
  Ben Whitelaw: It's like putting a jury in a room and letting them kind of use their own person experience to decide.
• 25:11
  Ben Whitelaw: Whether somebody is convicted and jailed, whether the evidence says so or not.
• 25:16
  Ben Whitelaw: Let's, let's, is it a bit like that?
• 25:17
  Ben Whitelaw: Right.
• 25:18
  Ben Whitelaw: And, and hate's like book in many ways is.
• 25:22
  Ben Whitelaw: I was thinking like a bit like the content that he so worries about that, that children are consuming on platforms.
• 25:29
  Ben Whitelaw: Like it's, it's almost like the equivalent, it's the book equivalent of, viral content, right?
• 25:33
  Ben Whitelaw: It's easily digestible.
• 25:35
  Ben Whitelaw: It's based on kind of loose truths.
• 25:37
  Ben Whitelaw: it kind of pres on people's insecurities, which, you know, some of the most viral Content that reaches millions of people does and it pitches groups against each other.
• 25:46
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, parents, people who know and have suffered at the hands of social media versus those who maybe have benefited.
• 25:52
  Ben Whitelaw: And so he's almost doing exactly what the platforms have done in, in many ways.
• 25:58
  Ben Whitelaw: And the thing that is, uh, he's kind of concerned about and trying to, stop children from suffering, from, he's doing the adult book of equivalent of that, which I think is kind of interesting.
• 26:07
  Ben Whitelaw: and yeah, he, his narrative is winning out.
• 26:09
  Ben Whitelaw: As you say, the narrative of Jonathan had is, More powerful and some of the academics talk about this in the piece is more powerful than the more, kind of reflective, more hard to discern subtle evidence that, that is there for people to read it.
• 26:24
  Mike Masnick: yeah.
• 26:25
  Mike Masnick: And you know, it reminds me of something and I wrote about this.
• 26:28
  Mike Masnick: In my sort of wrap up piece about Trust Con, I had multiple conversations at Trust Con that really stuck with me from people in trust and safety who were talking about how much damage to trust and safety.
• 26:41
  Mike Masnick: Heights Book has done and that I, it hadn't even occurred to me.
• 26:45
  Mike Masnick: I think before that I obviously had problems with the book.
• 26:48
  Mike Masnick: I thought it was misleading.
• 26:49
  Mike Masnick: I thought that people buying into it was, was leading to really bad policy and, very problematic outcomes.
• 26:54
  Mike Masnick: But it, it hadn't occurred to me how directly it was negatively impacting the work of trust and safety professionals in that it was effectively saying that.
• 27:03
  Mike Masnick: They don't exist, right?
• 27:05
  Mike Masnick: It's just saying that like the internet itself, social media is just inherently bad for kids
• 27:11
  Ben Whitelaw: Hmm.
• 27:12
  Mike Masnick: all the work that trust and safety professionals put in to actually creating thoughtful, compelling interventions that are helpful and that, do protect kids and do help kids, Be safe.
• 27:25
  Mike Masnick: Feel safe.
• 27:25
  Mike Masnick: All of these things are completely dismissed and it's this idea that like anything that the kids are using online must be bad.
• 27:33
  Mike Masnick: Um.
• 27:33
  Mike Masnick: and you know, when you have all the, political class and the media class buying into that, it wipes away the field of trust and safety and, acts as if it doesn't exist or that it can't do anything when, they spend so much time, the number of people working on child safety initiatives that are having real impact, that are completely ignored by the book and, and in fact dismissed by the book.
• 27:55
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 27:56
  Mike Masnick: and so the number of people who mentioned that it was doing real harm to the entire field, it, it really stuck with me.
• 28:04
  Ben Whitelaw: And, and so it was kind of come up in conversations and, and was felt to have like impacted the discussion in companies.
• 28:10
  Ben Whitelaw: That's fascinating.
• 28:11
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 28:12
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 28:12
  Mike Masnick: I mean, the result of the book is you have, I mean, multiple politicians.
• 28:16
  Mike Masnick: I think Barack Obama put on the top of his, must reads of
• 28:20
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 28:21
  Mike Masnick: and Bill Gates talked about, you have all these people talking about it as if it's this, accurate, factual book.
• 28:27
  Mike Masnick: And it's so terribly written, but that, that's a side note.
• 28:30
  Mike Masnick: It's just not, it's not well written.
• 28:32
  Mike Masnick: But, it leads to this, this sort of dismissal of the idea that there is a role for people within the companies to do stuff.
• 28:38
  Mike Masnick: it assumes that the only way to deal with this is to have policy makers do these outright bans, which again, like a lot of the evidence suggests, will actually make things worse rather than better.
• 28:49
  Ben Whitelaw: Well, that's the thing.
• 28:50
  Ben Whitelaw: Not only has it affected trust and safety professionals in the way that you are talking about there and the, the way that you heard at Trustcom, but I was thinking about the timings of the book and his recommendations and, the extent to which that might have impacted the regulatory conversation now.
• 29:04
  Ben Whitelaw: Right.
• 29:04
  Ben Whitelaw: So, so March, 2024, the book comes out, sets out this problem that many people have, heard of, and then it suggests kind of three.
• 29:12
  Ben Whitelaw: ideas for solving this.
• 29:13
  Ben Whitelaw: Right.
• 29:14
  Ben Whitelaw: As far as I understand it, like his ideas were an increase in the age of which like kids,
• 29:18
  Mike Masnick: To 16.
• 29:19
  Ben Whitelaw: yeah.
• 29:20
  Ben Whitelaw: Are, are kind of adults online to 16.
• 29:22
  Ben Whitelaw: Age verification is posited as one of the answers, which we've talked about has large issues.
• 29:29
  Ben Whitelaw: we're seeing that there out in lots of ways.
• 29:31
  Ben Whitelaw: And then the phone free schools idea, which we've again discussed and has very significant holes and, you know, some schools are already using, so you know why there needs to be a blanket, approach that I don't know.
• 29:44
  Ben Whitelaw: Those are his three ideas.
• 29:46
  Ben Whitelaw: you know, we've seen an increase in people talking about all of those things.
• 29:50
  Ben Whitelaw: I would say, in that time.
• 29:52
  Ben Whitelaw: And I wonder if we'll look back and say, you know, to what extent was anxious generation responsible for some of these kind of wrong turns in, in the road when we came to regulating the internet?
• 30:04
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 30:05
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 30:05
  Mike Masnick: I, I think it's a huge deal.
• 30:07
  Mike Masnick: I mean, here in California the state.
• 30:09
  Mike Masnick: Senator, representative, I forget which, who passed the law, banning phones in schools here in, California, came to the hearing carrying his book.
• 30:20
  Mike Masnick: You know, the, like, it's clearly having an impact.
• 30:23
  Mike Masnick: And the thing, and I had in my review of the, book I wrote about this.
• 30:27
  Mike Masnick: the first half of the book is sort of trying to lay out the problem and it presents a whole bunch of evidence.
• 30:34
  Mike Masnick: And, and as I point out in my review, it's very cherry picked and it ignores counter evidence and, I think really misrepresents the evidence, which is what the academics in this TES piece are saying as well.
• 30:45
  Mike Masnick: The thing that really got me though is that the second half of the book, there's a weird interlude between the first half and the second half where it just talks about like spirituality and how kids need to be more spiritual, which is just like, I don't know, based on something.
• 30:58
  Mike Masnick: It's, yeah, it's really unclear.
• 31:00
  Mike Masnick: but then the, the latter part of the book is all the policy recommendations, which he presents no evidence.
• 31:07
  Mike Masnick: In that section of the book to support those.
• 31:09
  Mike Masnick: These are all just sort of like, well, you know, I think so, and that was the part that got me for everyone talking about like how the book is so full of evidence.
• 31:17
  Mike Masnick: The policy recommendations are not based on evidence at all.
• 31:19
  Mike Masnick: The policy recommendations.
• 31:21
  Mike Masnick: mean, the whole book feels rushed, but that section feels especially rushed.
• 31:24
  Mike Masnick: And it's just kind of like he waves off, like, he mentions the concerns about age verification, but waves them off in a sort of like, oh, you know.
• 31:33
  Mike Masnick: These nerds can nerd harder and figure out a way there must be a way to do age verification that is privacy protective and, doesn't actually grapple with the actual challenges of that.
• 31:43
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, and you know what as well?
• 31:45
  Ben Whitelaw: Nigel Farage said exactly the same thing in a, in, in an interview recently about the Online Safety Act.
• 31:52
  Ben Whitelaw: He, he said, you know, there has to be a tech answer.
• 31:56
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, age verification has its issues because of the v VPN problem, but there has to be a tech answer.
• 32:02
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, like none of these guys, men seem to be able to kind of take the evidence for what it is.
• 32:09
  Ben Whitelaw: And continually to kind of strive for some sort of magic potion or, you know, that is gonna fix these, various harms.
• 32:19
  Ben Whitelaw: If they listen to controlled speech, they would know that that is not the case.
• 32:23
  Mike Masnick: And I will, just throw out there too really quickly.
• 32:25
  Mike Masnick: I wrote about this a few weeks ago, but, since we're, promoting academics and thoughtful, reasonable academics here today, uh, Steve, Belvin, I think is how you pronounce his last name, who's a computer security expert, just like one of the most respected guys in the field, released a paper a few weeks ago, which didn't get much attention.
• 32:43
  Mike Masnick: I did write about it, but I didn't see it.
• 32:45
  Mike Masnick: Written about anywhere else about the idea of privacy, protecting age verification, and basically explained how you would do it and then why it wouldn't actually work.
• 32:56
  Mike Masnick: And so it, it, it was sort of this like, yes, it is possible to create something that you could call privacy protecting, but the practical.
• 33:03
  Mike Masnick: Realities of it is that you can't do it in a way that actually works.
• 33:07
  Mike Masnick: It was a very thoughtful paper and again, an important contribution.
• 33:10
  Mike Masnick: 'cause you have people out there saying, oh yes, of course there's a way to do privacy, protective, age verification, and yet this security professional sort of walk through the different possibilities.
• 33:19
  Mike Masnick: And it's like, this will not work, this will not protect privacy for these exact reasons.
• 33:25
  Mike Masnick: And I, I, you know, we're, we're.
• 33:27
  Mike Masnick: seeing this where the, experts are, again, being thoughtful and nuanced and, presenting expertise and, the world wants easy, simple, answers that are probably wrong.
• 33:38
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, and we'll include that report, that research in our show notes as ever with all of the links from today's podcast.
• 33:46
  Ben Whitelaw: And, shout out to, to all of the outlets that we're obviously talking about today.
• 33:50
  Ben Whitelaw: That's, it's there.
• 33:51
  Ben Whitelaw: Coverage and their reporting.
• 33:52
  Ben Whitelaw: That means we can kind of do controlled speech in, in this way.
• 33:55
  Ben Whitelaw: So, yeah, not a lot of reason to be, chipper or to be, you know, happy from those two stories, Mike, but there's a bit of lightness I think, in our the next three stories, which are all about ai.
• 34:06
  Mike Masnick: don't know if there, okay.
• 34:08
  Mike Masnick: I'm, I'm wondering how you get lightness outta this next one, but, okay.
• 34:12
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 34:13
  Ben Whitelaw: Maybe not lightness.
• 34:13
  Ben Whitelaw: I mean, these stories are all about the kind of way that AI is seeping into very human moments that we all experience, like, doctor's appointments and like death and grief and all of these things.
• 34:26
  Ben Whitelaw: and I think.
• 34:27
  Ben Whitelaw: Yes, it's, they're complex.
• 34:30
  Ben Whitelaw: But as we'll find out, there are some upsides.
• 34:32
  Ben Whitelaw: It's just about how we, go about them.
• 34:34
  Ben Whitelaw: So, do you wanna talk first about, the rest of world piece that you, you read
• 34:38
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, this is really fascinating.
• 34:40
  Mike Masnick: It's a long read, it's not a quick one, in rest of world called my Mom and Dr.
• 34:44
  Mike Masnick: Deep Seek.
• 34:45
  Mike Masnick: and it's a very personal story about the author's mother.
• 34:49
  Mike Masnick: who lives in rural China and has significant health problems, and has had health problems for a while.
• 34:56
  Mike Masnick: And, to go to a doctor, it's a very long and involved process, has to travel for like two hours each way.
• 35:03
  Mike Masnick: and how she has just started using deep Seeq, which is the popular Chinese AI tool, which, made a big stir this year because.
• 35:13
  Mike Masnick: Was developed much more inexpensively than the big foundation models that we usually talk about, and yet had quality that was on par with them.
• 35:22
  Mike Masnick: and so the article goes deep into talking about how the author's mother was, using deep seek for medical advice, and sometimes getting.
• 35:32
  Mike Masnick: Bad advice sometimes getting good advice, but always getting some advice and how much what the mother kept pointing out was that.
• 35:40
  Mike Masnick: It wasn't condescending to her, whereas like, it's not even just the travel to the doctor, that was the problem.
• 35:46
  Mike Masnick: It was that she would travel to the doctor and the doctor would talk to her for, just a couple minutes and, not in a human way, just sort of looking down at you, do this, do that, do that, and, and, not hearing you, not, having a better discussion with you.
• 36:00
  Mike Masnick: whereas deep Seek was always there.
• 36:04
  Mike Masnick: Always be to if.
• 36:08
  Ben Whitelaw: Hmm.
• 36:08
  Mike Masnick: And so I, I came outta the article really conflicted because there's this element of like, yeah, going to the doctor is sometimes a pain.
• 36:15
  Mike Masnick: And I've certainly experienced where like doctors feel very dismissive and they're, in there for a very short period of time.
• 36:22
  Mike Masnick: They never have time to really talk, or like, raising concerns with them.
• 36:26
  Mike Masnick: Like I had a, a, you know, minor medical issue last year that I ended up having to go see a bunch of doctors for.
• 36:33
  Mike Masnick: Over and over again.
• 36:34
  Mike Masnick: Like I would come in with a whole bunch of questions and I would never even get a chance to ask them because the doctors would, they had like a script that they would run through and there was no moment in which you were allowed to ask questions or discussion.
• 36:46
  Mike Masnick: Like I remember one where like I was literally like the doctor walked me to the front desk.
• 36:51
  Mike Masnick: at the end and like handed me off to the front desk to like set up the next appointment without ever giving me a chance to say anything.
• 36:58
  Mike Masnick: And I was like, I, like, I, feel like I'm, you know, a cog in the machine.
• 37:02
  Mike Masnick: And so I could totally see where it's like, oh, I, I can actually talk to.
• 37:08
  Mike Masnick: Something and get thoughtful answers, even if they're wrong.
• 37:11
  Mike Masnick: and so there's like a part that everyone reads this and it's probably horrified because it's like you don't take the medical advice, you know, like you can't trust it, but you have to recognize the human aspect of it, of like a human wants to feel heard and the medical system, the way we have it now, isn't always working that way.
• 37:27
  Mike Masnick: Now, I, I had told you right before we started as well, like I do have a counter example, which was last year when I went for my, physical, my annual physical.
• 37:36
  Mike Masnick: The doctor came in and had asked at the beginning, are you okay if I record this using an AI tool?
• 37:42
  Mike Masnick: And at the end of the, physical, we'll go through the notes together and make sure that it accurately captured everything.
• 37:49
  Mike Masnick: and she said to me like, if we do it this way, I can spend more time talking to you, rather than typing in the notes.
• 37:55
  Mike Masnick: that is exactly what happened.
• 37:57
  Mike Masnick: Where, we did the physical and, and then we reviewed the notes and it was, it was good, it was accurate and it captured everything, I think, in more detail than, I would normally get if she was typing the notes and we actually had time to, talk.
• 38:09
  Mike Masnick: And I actually felt very comfortable with the.
• 38:11
  Mike Masnick: You know, and the physical is usually a little longer than, you know, other kinds of doctor's appointments.
• 38:15
  Mike Masnick: So, so maybe that was different too, but like, it, was, so I think in that case it was like the technology was assistive, not replacing, but I understand why people are, seeing the technology as something that is like, it just makes them feel more comfortable.
• 38:33
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, my wife is a doctor and we, you know, she has lots of doctor friends and the thing that they all say, particularly those who are gps, the kind of general practitioners, the kind of first line of defense here in the uk, most of them within NHS, is that people just wanna talk.
• 38:48
  Ben Whitelaw: they're not really looking for necessarily, a kind of medical advice per se, but they're looking to be heard.
• 38:55
  Ben Whitelaw: And there's a, you know, there are specific people that go to doctor's appointments and they're often people who are, less heard in society.
• 39:03
  Ben Whitelaw: so the doctor's role, according to, again.
• 39:05
  Ben Whitelaw: This kind of self-selecting sample of friends is that, doctor's appointments are about being heard in the way that you're kind of describing.
• 39:11
  Ben Whitelaw: And here in the UK you get 15 minutes for an appointment, so you know, you've
• 39:15
  Mike Masnick: That's longer than the US by the way.
• 39:17
  Ben Whitelaw: Right.
• 39:18
  Ben Whitelaw: Is it okay?
• 39:19
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, I mean, that's either way you've gotta speak pretty fast.
• 39:22
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, and, and the validation, I think is what, this piece.
• 39:26
  Ben Whitelaw: brings out for me is like the validation that people want and the fact that, they want to know that yes, this is an issue and that they're not going mad Is, is often.
• 39:36
  Ben Whitelaw: The first step.
• 39:37
  Ben Whitelaw: and that's interesting because we hear a lot of commentary and analysis about how these foundational models are, too subservient and too kind of sycophantic.
• 39:46
  Ben Whitelaw: And, you know, they say, well done, Ben, on, on, you know, what a, what a great suggestion that is.
• 39:50
  Ben Whitelaw: here's a few tweaks to it.
• 39:52
  Ben Whitelaw: I think your average person, in the healthcare context, doesn't mind that at all.
• 39:56
  Ben Whitelaw: would be my bet, you know, Certainly in this case for deep seek and this woman in, in China, there was no qualms at all with the model saying, yeah, that's, that's a problem.
• 40:06
  Ben Whitelaw: I can understand that you're in pain or that you're suffering.
• 40:08
  Ben Whitelaw: that's often the first thing.
• 40:10
  Ben Whitelaw: We forget that, um, that, that that's maybe where these AI models have, have a.
• 40:14
  Ben Whitelaw: are better than humans.
• 40:15
  Ben Whitelaw: my only other thought on that, Mike, was like, so much of the AI model safety question has been discussed in relation to children.
• 40:24
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, we hear people, you know, the suicides we, we touched on where, children are left unsupervised and they are given advice that is unsuitable for them.
• 40:34
  Ben Whitelaw: This is a case where an adult has voluntarily used the model and continue to use it despite being told by her daughter that it's not safe and that she shouldn't follow that advice.
• 40:43
  Ben Whitelaw: What do we do in this situation?
• 40:44
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, it's very hard to regulate an adult using piece of technology in this way.
• 40:50
  Ben Whitelaw: the Jonathan Heights of this world, are gonna find that pretty hard to regulate or to advise platforms to amend their policies to cater for because she's, you know, in her sixties or seventies, like, so the, it's a really fascinating piece on a, on a lot of dimensions, I'd say.
• 41:07
  Mike Masnick: yeah.
• 41:07
  Mike Masnick: I think it's, it's worth thinking about.
• 41:09
  Mike Masnick: I don't think there's an easy answer to this.
• 41:11
  Mike Masnick: I mean, like, once again, you know, sort of complexity and nuance
• 41:14
  Ben Whitelaw: think we need an, there is no easy answer Bell or, or something else
• 41:18
  Mike Masnick: the, the bell is already taken.
• 41:20
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I know.
• 41:21
  Ben Whitelaw: I'm, maybe there's a, I'll have a think.
• 41:24
  Mike Masnick: Aon, you know, like air horn, you know, something, something.
• 41:28
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 41:29
  Ben Whitelaw: To compliment the bell to make, you know, the podcast a bit more, um, interesting orally.
• 41:35
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, but, but yeah, you, you're totally right.
• 41:38
  Ben Whitelaw: It, it's that all over again.
• 41:40
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, let's go onto the kind of the next AI story then, which again, maybe it's hard to claim, is a kind of nice, uh, story.
• 41:49
  Ben Whitelaw: Uh, but, I'm gonna try and convince you that
• 41:51
  Mike Masnick: be.
• 41:52
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, it is.
• 41:53
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, so.
• 41:54
  Ben Whitelaw: As many of our listeners though, there's a growing trend of AI bots that are being kind of trained On the, voices and the text outputs of dead people, people who have died and they're called dead bots.
• 42:09
  Ben Whitelaw: I dunno if that's the best or nicest term for them, but that's kind of the way that we've come to describe them.
• 42:14
  Ben Whitelaw: some people are calling it the digital afterlife industry, which seems a bit more, a little bit more poetic, a little bit more fitting perhaps.
• 42:21
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 42:21
  Mike Masnick: But just feels euphemistic in so many ways, right.
• 42:25
  Ben Whitelaw: Either way, whatever we're calling it.
• 42:27
  Ben Whitelaw: this NPR piece that we read this week has predicted that there is gonna be rise in this industry.
• 42:32
  Ben Whitelaw: It's going to, uh, increase exponentially and that it's gonna become commercialized very, very quickly.
• 42:39
  Ben Whitelaw: a report that's linked to the, the piece says that this is an industry that's gonna be.
• 42:43
  Ben Whitelaw: $80 billion within the next decade.
• 42:45
  Ben Whitelaw: So a massive industry.
• 42:47
  Ben Whitelaw: And, the bots that we're seeing being created at the moment are, a mix of kind of, personal, you know, people who are, who are missing loved ones, but also people who are being kind of created to advocate for particular causes, which I had no idea about.
• 43:03
  Ben Whitelaw: You know, so examples are given around, Victims of road safety accidents who are being brought back, to give presentations and talks about things that they, previously, wrote or, or said, people who were killed and therefore are being used and kind of wheeled out to talk about gun laws and, and the unsuitability of those.
• 43:21
  Ben Whitelaw: And so it's a really interesting, again, quite kind of complex article about where.
• 43:28
  Ben Whitelaw: Deadbolts can be used to, memorialize somebody to have them, bring back memories of somebody who, who's lost and to kinda keep their, memory and their ideas and their voice and their personhood alive, but also perhaps how they could be used in ways to, advocate for causes and, concerns that maybe.
• 43:46
  Ben Whitelaw: Are not what we'd all want to, um, be used for or, or, you know, in a way that is perhaps not even explicitly something that those people have advocated for.
• 43:57
  Ben Whitelaw: right.
• 43:57
  Ben Whitelaw: So there's, when privacy laws are, so I would say so basic and we have so much discussion about them, it seems mad that we have this emerging industry of, that kind of uses the text and images and, outputs of dead people, you know?
• 44:11
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 44:12
  Mike Masnick: It, it feels very exploitive, right?
• 44:13
  Mike Masnick: I mean, it is like, it, it's, you can see how it would be abused and the article itself talks about the possibility of using it in advertising.
• 44:21
  Mike Masnick: Can you imagine like your dead grandmother, like coming to you to like advertise something like.
• 44:27
  Ben Whitelaw: What?
• 44:28
  Ben Whitelaw: What do you think?
• 44:28
  Ben Whitelaw: Somebody will use our voice to advertise Mike, when we are gone.
• 44:32
  Mike Masnick: I mean, there, there is, right?
• 44:33
  Mike Masnick: Like I did go through this thought exercise of like, well, what happens, you know, if I, when I die, like, do I care?
• 44:41
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 44:41
  Mike Masnick: And I'm, I'm not sure if I do that much, like, you know, like, but I can understand why people would.
• 44:47
  Mike Masnick: But I'm not sure.
• 44:48
  Mike Masnick: You know, once I'm, gone, I'm gone.
• 44:49
  Mike Masnick: You know, if, if you wanna make up a fake Mike Masnick bot, like go, go for it.
• 44:55
  Mike Masnick: Uh, you know, uh,
• 44:58
  Ben Whitelaw: tires,
• 44:59
  Mike Masnick: yeah.
• 45:00
  Mike Masnick: Because you know my enthusiasm for tires.
• 45:04
  Ben Whitelaw: really good car tires.
• 45:06
  Ben Whitelaw: That's, that's, I would buy car tires off you,
• 45:08
  Mike Masnick: It's funny, I'm literally trying to buy new tires for my car right
• 45:11
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 45:11
  Mike Masnick: as we speak.
• 45:12
  Mike Masnick: And for some reason I couldn't get the website to work.
• 45:14
  Mike Masnick: So yeah, I have thoughts on tires all of a sudden, but,
• 45:18
  Ben Whitelaw: I didn't even know that.
• 45:19
  Mike Masnick: now whoever wants to, wants to, uh, make a bot has me saying that, so, so you can, you can do that.
• 45:26
  Mike Masnick: Um, yeah, it's, it's sort of strange.
• 45:28
  Mike Masnick: I think this is just one of those things that society is gonna have to adapt to.
• 45:31
  Mike Masnick: you know, and like there are like science fiction books about the idea of like.
• 45:35
  Mike Masnick: Uploading yourself to the cloud and like that was more in the, the idea of like, you know, turning yourself into, an immortal being, you know, with your brain in the cloud.
• 45:46
  Mike Masnick: But this is like, kind of, sort of like that because there are questions of if you upload your brain, is that really you, like Cory Rio had a book about this very topic many years ago, not many years ago, I don't know how long ago, five, 10 years ago.
• 46:00
  Mike Masnick: That really raised some of these issues as well around like, what does it mean to upload your brain to the cloud?
• 46:07
  Mike Masnick: That's like if you're choosing to do it.
• 46:09
  Mike Masnick: But what if in these cases, what if you know your family is doing it?
• 46:13
  Mike Masnick: I think it raises a whole bunch of really interesting questions.
• 46:15
  Mike Masnick: I don't think there are easy answers and in the US at least the article talks about.
• 46:20
  Mike Masnick: you know, sort of the state of here, we usually refer to'em as publicity rights laws, which were initially intended for.
• 46:26
  Mike Masnick: Like, can you make, a famous person advertise or, appear to, endorse a product.
• 46:33
  Mike Masnick: and there are questions about when they're alive.
• 46:35
  Mike Masnick: Then when they're dead, some of those laws don't apply after someone has died.
• 46:39
  Mike Masnick: And there was a whole legal dispute about like Marilyn Monroe and could you put a fake Marilyn Monroe into a commercial?
• 46:46
  Mike Masnick: and so, I don't think we as a society have figured this out yet.
• 46:50
  Mike Masnick: And I think it's going to be more of a challenge.
• 46:53
  Mike Masnick: And as with anything, there are.
• 46:56
  Mike Masnick: Complexities, nuances and you know, everyone who thinks there's an easy answer to this, discovers that your easy answer probably has a whole bunch of trade-offs that you haven't considered.
• 47:07
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I, I can just imagine Charlie Brooker sitting back and like laughing at this.
• 47:12
  Ben Whitelaw: Do you know, you know, Charlie Brooker, the, the guy who wrote Black
• 47:15
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 47:16
  Mike Masnick: I mean, this is like classic black mirror fodder, so,
• 47:19
  Ben Whitelaw: yeah, there's a whole episode in which like, a woman's boyfriend dies in a car accident and she brings him back as a kind of AI generated, synthetic person, like.
• 47:30
  Ben Whitelaw: I think Charlie Brooke has got a, a lot to, you know, he's got a lot of this responsibility is him for this stuff, I think.
• 47:38
  Ben Whitelaw: I wonder if we can get him on the podcast one day.
• 47:39
  Ben Whitelaw: That'd be
• 47:40
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, that would be great.
• 47:41
  Mike Masnick: That.
• 47:41
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah.
• 47:42
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, but yeah, so I think I tried, I think I convinced you there that there was an, an element of likeness and maybe, uh, you know, niceness to that use of ai.
• 47:50
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, the final story we touched on is, the companies who are gonna have to think about all of these use cases and, and how they're responding to it.
• 47:57
  Ben Whitelaw: Right.
• 47:58
  Mike Masnick: Yeah.
• 47:59
  Ben Whitelaw: again, I think a positive development in the industry.
• 48:02
  Mike Masnick: Yeah, I think this one is really fascinating.
• 48:03
  Mike Masnick: It's based on, both Open AI and Anthropic, which is sort of the two of the leading foundation model AI companies.
• 48:11
  Mike Masnick: Um, and this is based on an article in TechCrunch.
• 48:13
  Mike Masnick: They apparently agreed to allow each other to safety test each other's models,
• 48:20
  Ben Whitelaw: Hmm.
• 48:21
  Mike Masnick: of time where they opened it up via public, API.
• 48:24
  Mike Masnick: They gave each other access to it to a version of the models without all of the safety guardrails.
• 48:31
  Ben Whitelaw: Right.
• 48:31
  Mike Masnick: there were some, but they left open, you know, they gave a sort of, open version that they would use internally for safety testing and allowed each other to test.
• 48:40
  Mike Masnick: And then each of them released a report about what they found about the opposing models.
• 48:45
  Mike Masnick: this was really just a fascinating concept beyond what they found.
• 48:51
  Mike Masnick: And like, they have different reports, but like, this, this model did this, this model did that.
• 48:55
  Mike Masnick: Just the fact that like these two companies, which are competitors and philanthropic, was founded by ex OpenAI people who felt that OpenAI was going in the wrong direction.
• 49:02
  Mike Masnick: Um.
• 49:02
  Mike Masnick: Just the fact that the two of them got together and agreed to open up each other's models to be safety tested by the other is something I don't remember ever hearing of in like a trust and safety context.
• 49:12
  Mike Masnick: I don't think we've had like, you know, Facebook letting Twitter people, safety tests their systems and, you know, I mean, it's a different context with AI than social media, but it just struck me as a really, really interesting experiment.
• 49:27
  Mike Masnick: I'm not sure.
• 49:28
  Mike Masnick: You know, it sort of comes across, like some of the quotes read to me, at least.
• 49:32
  Mike Masnick: I, maybe I'm reading between the lines in ways that like, a little bit of snarkiness towards each other and it, feels like There was like a grudging agreement to do this and like neither, neither side is entirely happy with it, but they did it and they released the research on it and I just thought we're entering a really interesting world in which that kind of thing is possible and that that is an idea that people are considering this sort of, allowing competitors to safety test your systems.
• 49:59
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, I mean, playing devil's advocate here, Mike, is this something that they might have done just to appease, regulators so they can say, Hey, maybe that you don't have ways of checking our models in, or auditing our models in, in ways that, you agree on yet, but hey, we actually did this, or we let Anthropic do it, or we let open AI do it.
• 50:19
  Ben Whitelaw: So we are trying.
• 50:21
  Mike Masnick: yeah, I don't, I don't know.
• 50:22
  Mike Masnick: I didn't get that sense.
• 50:23
  Mike Masnick: It is possible that there was a regulatory component to it, but I think if it was really designed to sort of get regulators off their back.
• 50:30
  Mike Masnick: I would picture them doing it in a slightly different way, which would be more designed to sort of appease regulators.
• 50:35
  Mike Masnick: I didn't get that sense from this.
• 50:38
  Mike Masnick: It may be true.
• 50:39
  Mike Masnick: but my guess is that this was just like an actual intellectual exercise that both companies, and their security teams were sort of excited about the possibility of testing each other's models.
• 50:50
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, that is interesting.
• 50:51
  Ben Whitelaw: If that is the case, and you know, like you say, there is so much heat on those companies right now.
• 50:56
  Ben Whitelaw: There is so much emphasis on how they approach safety, that to have them look under each other's hoods is.
• 51:02
  Ben Whitelaw: I think a positive thing, we can definitely say that.
• 51:04
  Ben Whitelaw: So, hey, we got there eventually Today we, we've ended on a bit of a bright note, and we need to take that into next week, Mike.
• 51:12
  Mike Masnick: All right.
• 51:14
  Ben Whitelaw: We'll try our best to do so.
• 51:15
  Mike Masnick: try to find brighter, happier stories.
• 51:19
  Ben Whitelaw: Yeah, we are, we are somewhat beholden to the news agenda, as ever on control of the speech.
• 51:23
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, that brings us to the end of today's episode.
• 51:26
  Ben Whitelaw: Mike.
• 51:26
  Ben Whitelaw: We, have covered a whole RAF of stories, including our, our, good friends, Jonathan and, Jim.
• 51:32
  Ben Whitelaw: Um, we've tried to lift up.
• 51:35
  Ben Whitelaw: Good academia, and the imports of an evidence-based.
• 51:39
  Ben Whitelaw: And, uh, we'll continue to do that in control speech as ever.
• 51:43
  Ben Whitelaw: raise us and review us listeners, wherever you get your podcast.
• 51:46
  Ben Whitelaw: And, uh, we'll hopefully see you next week for more of the same.