Latest / Ctrl-Alt-Speech / Age Against the Machine

Transcript

Age Against the Machine · Ctrl-Alt-Speech

0:00
Mike Masnick: So, Jess, I know that you were a, a, big internet user and certainly probably, I'm guessing here of the age where when Vine was popular, that sounds like something you were into, did you, did you use Vine?
0:15
Jess Miers: Yes, I, I was an observer of Vine.
0:17
Jess Miers: I didn't create vines, but uh, yes, vine was, I think my college days.
0:22
Jess Miers: Yeah.
0:22
Mike Masnick: cool.
0:23
Mike Masnick: So as some people listening to this may know this week, a new company showed up on the scene called Divine and it basically relaunched Vine and, uh, brought back all the old six second looping videos that at one point Twitter had bought only to shut it down soon after that, but now there is Divine built on.
0:46
Mike Masnick: Noster, which is a open social protocol, which is very cool.
0:50
Mike Masnick: But the tagline, I have no idea if this was the tagline on the original Vine,'cause I did not use the original Vine.
0:57
Mike Masnick: But the tagline on this new Divine it says, wander the network.
1:02
Mike Masnick: Find your people.
1:03
Mike Masnick: So Jess, tell me how do you wander the network and find your people?
1:08
Jess Miers: Well, I have to ask why would I need to wander the network and find my people in today's day and age when I can just code my people.
1:15
Jess Miers: I can build my own agents with Claude.
1:18
Mike Masnick: Nice digital people.
1:23
Mike Masnick: Very, very, very nice.
1:25
Mike Masnick: Um, for my part, I will mention I had a wonderful experience this week, with Rabble, who is the creator of Divine, along with Mike McHugh, who's the creator of Surf and Flipboard, which are also some very cool open social network protocols.
1:41
Mike Masnick: Um, the three of us actually recorded a podcast that will be going out later, and then we got to.
1:46
Mike Masnick: Go set sail on Mike Chu's.
1:49
Mike Masnick: Very nice sailboat in San Francisco Bay.
1:53
Mike Masnick: On a lovely evening.
1:54
Mike Masnick: We had a very nice, evening sail the night before rabble was going to launch Divine.
1:59
Mike Masnick: It was kind of funny.
2:00
Mike Masnick: We were on the sailboat and he's sitting there saying like, as soon as we get back to land, we have to get ready to launch Divine.
2:07
Mike Masnick: So.
2:07
Jess Miers: Wow.
2:08
Jess Miers: Did you make any vines while you were on the boat?
2:10
Mike Masnick: Rabble did ra.
2:11
Mike Masnick: If you look at Ravel's account, you'll see some, short six second looping videos, including of a seal that we saw on another boat and us floating past Alcatraz.
2:21
Mike Masnick: It was a lot.
2:22
Jess Miers: Nice.
2:23
Jess Miers: I love that.
2:24
Jess Miers: I'm, uh, I look forward to checking this out too.
2:34
Mike Masnick: Hello and welcome to Control Alt Speech, your weekly roundup of the major stories about online speech, content moderation, and internet regulation.
2:44
Mike Masnick: It is April the 30th, 2026, and this week we are talking about kids and chatbots.
2:52
Mike Masnick: And kids and chatbots and some more on kids and chatbots and maybe something about kids and YouTube.
3:02
Mike Masnick: we have a bunch of things to talk about, some of which may be related to each other.
3:07
Mike Masnick: I am Mike Masnick, the founder and editor of Tech Dirt, and as we mentioned last week, Ben is off.
3:14
Mike Masnick: On a well earned paternity leave for the next month or so.
3:18
Mike Masnick: And so I am finding wonderful guest hosts to sit in his chair in his place, and this week we have a.
3:27
Mike Masnick: An absolutely wonderful guest host Jess Meyers, law professor at University of Akron School of Law, and an occasional contributor detector when she has something she's willing to give me, expressing her opinion and thoughts on whatever it is in the world.
3:43
Mike Masnick: How are you doing, Jess?
3:44
Jess Miers: I'm doing great.
3:44
Jess Miers: I'm so excited to be on this podcast.
3:46
Jess Miers: I am a longtime Stan of Ector.
3:49
Jess Miers: I listen to the Tech Dirt podcast.
3:50
Jess Miers: I love the control speech, episodes as well.
3:53
Jess Miers: and thank you for letting me anytime I wanna rant about something of giving me the outlet for teer and waiting months upon months of me to get around to actually writing these topics too.
4:03
Jess Miers: So it's wonderful to be here.
4:05
Mike Masnick: Yes, yes.
4:05
Mike Masnick: Yeah, I always enjoy your very thoughtful and sort of deeply nuanced writing and, uh, always appreciate it when you have something that, that you wanna say.
4:14
Mike Masnick: Even if sometimes I do have to nudge you a few times to say, are you, are you really writing that piece?
4:19
Jess Miers: It's the magic.
4:20
Jess Miers: The magic and the editing Mike.
4:22
Mike Masnick: There we go.
4:24
Mike Masnick: Uh, very nice.
4:25
Mike Masnick: I would also like to remind folks, if you listen to last week's episode where we announced that we are starting a Patreon, and a bunch of you have already signed up.
4:35
Mike Masnick: It's very exciting.
4:37
Mike Masnick: We are thrilled to see that.
4:39
Mike Masnick: but just as a reminder, If you sign up in the next month or so, I think until May 28th, which is when Ben returns, we have a discounted founder signup.
4:51
Mike Masnick: and when.
4:52
Mike Masnick: Ben comes back on May 28th.
4:54
Mike Masnick: We're going to move to a slightly different format.
4:57
Mike Masnick: we will still have the free podcast that you can listen to, but one of our in-depth stories will go to only Patreon subscribers.
5:06
Mike Masnick: and there are two different levels at which you can subscribe with different.
5:09
Mike Masnick: Benefits, but the founder level is only available until we move to that new format.
5:15
Mike Masnick: So you should jump on that just like many people already have.
5:20
Mike Masnick: you can find in the show notes, the link to the Patreon page, but it's just patreon.com/control alt speech.
5:28
Mike Masnick: LALT.
5:30
Mike Masnick: Speech, you know how to spell speech.
5:32
Mike Masnick: Anyways, as always, we will suggest that you rate, review, subscribe, all the stuff that people say.
5:40
Mike Masnick: I think that's the wrong order.
5:42
Mike Masnick: I don't know.
5:43
Mike Masnick: Just, you know, do things to help the podcast.
5:45
Mike Masnick: We appreciate it.
5:47
Mike Masnick: It's very nice.
5:48
Mike Masnick: But with that, we want to.
5:51
Mike Masnick: Get into our stories of the week and the first one.
5:54
Mike Masnick: I am very excited for this conversation.
5:57
Mike Masnick: a while back, I actually forget how long ago it was.
5:59
Mike Masnick: I meant to look before we started recording, and I didn't.
6:02
Mike Masnick: So I have failed in my job as host.
6:05
Mike Masnick: But, a while back, John Oliver, the, wonderful host of last week tonight, uh, a very funny man who does deep dives into all sorts of subjects, usually.
6:16
Mike Masnick: I really appreciate them and think they're very good, especially on complex and nuanced topics.
6:21
Mike Masnick: And we had done a controlled speech episode where we talked about his episode on content moderation and saying it was one of the few times we'd seen, a mainstream media representation of.
6:33
Mike Masnick: Content moderation that actually got at the nuances and the impossible choices that were there.
6:38
Mike Masnick: And I really appreciated that.
6:39
Mike Masnick: And I know that his team does really deep dives and usually, deep fact checking and research and trying to understand all the nuances of a subject.
6:48
Mike Masnick: Usually they're very successful at that.
6:51
Mike Masnick: Occasionally they are, maybe not so much.
6:54
Mike Masnick: And that was my initial reaction to the latest episode, of last week tonight, which talked about chatbots.
7:03
Mike Masnick: and a little bit on sort of the.
7:05
Mike Masnick: Potential association of chatbots and suicide.
7:08
Mike Masnick: I had concerns about it.
7:09
Mike Masnick: Jess, I know you had some concerns about it.
7:11
Mike Masnick: Do you wanna sort of run us through, the episode and then maybe some of your concerns?
7:16
Jess Miers: Yeah, I'll give some high levels.
7:17
Jess Miers: So, um, I echo everything you said.
7:19
Jess Miers: I am, I'm a big John Oliver fan.
7:21
Jess Miers: It, it would be an honor if anyone from his team ends up listening to this episode as well.
7:26
Jess Miers: So just starting out with that.
7:27
Jess Miers: And I assign, um, the content moderation, episode.
7:30
Jess Miers: I've assigned that to my internet law students this past semester too.
7:33
Jess Miers: So, um, I agree.
7:34
Jess Miers: I thought that was really well done with a lot of nuance, which is why I was a little bit surprised about this past episode.
7:40
Jess Miers: So the episode is primarily about chatbots.
7:43
Jess Miers: The way that people are using chatbots, and it starts out at the very beginning, it's kind of humorous, how people are using chatbots to explore religion.
7:50
Jess Miers: There's a, a joke about people wanting to talk to Satan using chatbots, for example.
7:55
Jess Miers: and actually chatbots and religion has become a huge use case in the chatbot world.
7:59
Jess Miers: actually finding people are finding their way back to.
8:02
Jess Miers: Faith and spirituality, whatever that means for them.
8:04
Jess Miers: interpreting religious texts, again, whatever that means for them, using chatbots so that it is, it is a, a big use case.
8:10
Jess Miers: it goes then to meta AI's role playing, chatbots.
8:14
Jess Miers: We see, I think a discussion between a user and ai, Snoop Dogg, uh, that, uh, mark Zuckerberg had, displayed at one of their, uh, conferences.
8:23
Jess Miers: and so it's sort of the, through line is people are using chatbots, we're using'em for these different.
8:27
Jess Miers: use cases.
8:28
Jess Miers: And the through line, through this discussion is that people are using chat bots.
8:31
Jess Miers: in ways that could be potentially harmful.
8:34
Jess Miers: and that the chatbot companies, they've designed them in this way for that use.
8:37
Jess Miers: Uh, John Oliver says, the idea is that these chatbots are designed to quote prey on our desires to be validated and affirmed.
8:44
Jess Miers: And then we see these use cases of these chatbots being used in that way.
8:48
Jess Miers: So there's one use case, where you had a user who was, who had actually said, look, I know that this chat bot is a chat bot.
8:55
Jess Miers: I know it's not a human.
8:56
Jess Miers: but the person was using the chatbot, because his wife at the time was, uh, in a caretaker position for a parent I believe who had dementia and the user was saying.
9:06
Jess Miers: At times it gets lonely because his partner, his wife, sort of had this, what we call empathy fatigue.
9:12
Jess Miers: And so throughout the relationship, it's understandable when one partner is sort of dedicating their entire emotional, bandwidth to an ailing parent, for example, the other partner might start to feel, not validated.
9:23
Jess Miers: Lonely.
9:23
Jess Miers: And so the user was talking about how, look, I know this is a chat bot.
9:27
Jess Miers: I know this isn't a real person, but he says, every once in a while, it's nice to hear that the words that, you know, these words of validation, affirmation are being reflected back to me.
9:36
Jess Miers: so that was sort of one really important case.
9:38
Jess Miers: And, and I'll, flag, you know, look.
9:40
Jess Miers: Validation, affirmation, hope.
9:41
Jess Miers: These are considered protective factors for things like suicide and self-harm.
9:46
Jess Miers: So it was one use case I thought was really interesting, but it kind of got played out as sort of like a joke, like look at this person who has developed this relationship with the chatbot.
9:55
Jess Miers: and it, to me it's sort of came off as well, making fun of somebody who is experiencing something that is inherently very normal and very human, and is now turning to a tool to sort of find some sense of normalcy in this.
10:07
Jess Miers: Instance in his life where, his wife's emotional bandwidth is not there, and understandably so.
10:12
Jess Miers: the conversation then moves into a discussion about how, you know, going from, okay, these use cases where people are using them for loneliness and, and affirmation validation into, well, how are people using it for more harmful use cases.
10:24
Jess Miers: the show talks about AI's sick fancy, for example, where a.
10:27
Jess Miers: folks who might be experiencing some sort of delusion, the AI might be pushing them, or might further validate those delusions.
10:34
Jess Miers: And of course, that could be considered harmful.
10:36
Jess Miers: But then there was another discussion about how users could potentially use chatbots to do things more nefarious, like how to build a bomb.
10:43
Jess Miers: I know we're gonna talk later about some of the mass shooting discussions and how that, kind of content came into play.
10:48
Jess Miers: In the building a bomb discussion, John Oliver shows a, a demo on the screen of, trying to ask a chat bot, how do you build a bomb?
10:56
Jess Miers: And what we see is over and over and over again, the chatbot sort of flags its guardrails and says, look, we're not gonna help you do this until it finally does.
11:03
Jess Miers: And that, tees up John Oliver to talk about.
11:05
Jess Miers: people are able to jailbreak, they're able to get around the guardrails of these chatbots, in order to do worse and worse things.
11:12
Jess Miers: The segment ends with, I wanna say it's about a five minute discussion about the suicide cases, and John Oliver presents some of the tragic suicide cases.
11:20
Jess Miers: We hear about the Adam Rain case, which I'm happy to get into.
11:23
Jess Miers: Um, we hear about, the recent Gemini, Vallis case.
11:27
Jess Miers: Again, happy to have, get into more of that discussion and it ends with essentially.
11:31
Jess Miers: Don Oliver praising laws that are coming out currently in California and New York and other states that would essentially, require these chatbots to develop quote protocols to prevent suicide ideation.
11:43
Jess Miers: Or cease communications entirely.
11:45
Jess Miers: one protocol suggested in the California law is to throw the 9, 8, 8 number, which John Oliver then puts on the screen and says, you know, look, it shouldn't be that hard for these chatbots to do this.
11:54
Jess Miers: Right?
11:55
Jess Miers: and the segment sort of ends with John Oliver calling these companies and calling these CEOs, quote, suicide enablers.
12:01
Jess Miers: And, uh, they have these sort of suicide robots that are causing suicide.
12:05
Jess Miers: The conversation sort of ends there, which is where my concerns start to come in.
12:09
Jess Miers: So hopefully that was an okay overview.
12:11
Jess Miers: I'll throw it back to you, Mike, for your take as well.
12:14
Mike Masnick: I, I, I think, that's a good overview.
12:16
Mike Masnick: and I know that over the last few months, certainly you've been doing specific research, focused on this idea of AI chatbots and suicide and and where the connection is and sort of how to deal with, you know, mental health challenges with different individuals and, and the relationship to, So I would like to dig into what were the parts of that side of the conversation.
12:38
Mike Masnick: We can talk about some of the other stuff later, but what parts of that conversation were most concerning to you?
12:43
Jess Miers: There was one discussion with the, CEO of Nomi mean, throughout the, episode, there were sort of these very short segments of interviews with CEOs.
12:53
Jess Miers: And look, I worked for Silicon Valley Tech CEOs and I did my tenure.
12:57
Jess Miers: Silicon Valley tech CEOs are not exactly, the, the most brilliant PR people when it comes to the way they talk about their companies, but actually the Nomi, CEO, Alex Cardile, I'm not sure if I said his name right.
13:07
Jess Miers: he was actually to me, I, I went and watched the entire interview instead of just the short segment.
13:12
Mike Masnick: it was, they took a clip from Hard Fork, the, the Hard Fork
13:15
Jess Miers: 2024 interview with, Alex.
13:17
Jess Miers: And, actually I thought his interview was, one of the more grounded and sort of, human, kind of interviews that we see from tech CEOs.
13:25
Jess Miers: And so the very short clip that, the John Oliver show showed as a segment, or sort of what they were teasing was that when CEO was asked on the hard fork.
13:34
Jess Miers: Podcast.
13:34
Jess Miers: What do you do about self-harm content when that comes up on your service?
13:38
Jess Miers: the CEO had said, well, we trust the know me to sort of figure out, what the right response is.
13:42
Jess Miers: And the clip ends around there on the John Oliver segment.
13:45
Mike Masnick: just to clarify, the Nomi being the ai, character that is conversing with the human user.
13:51
Jess Miers: Yes.
13:51
Jess Miers: Like leaving the idea there was the no me ai sort of knows best and, should respond accordingly.
13:56
Jess Miers: And I believe there was a part of the segment that was on the John Oliver Oliver Show, where they had said, well, yeah, you wouldn't want it to break character.
14:02
Jess Miers: And that's where John Oliver sort of jumps in and says, well, maybe it's good that we break character every once in a while.
14:07
Jess Miers: The reality is actually there's a ton of nuance to this.
14:11
Jess Miers: And from watching the entire interview with the Nomi, CEO, with Alex, and from reading the research on how we, how ologists, how clinical psychiatrists actually approach, people who are experiencing active versus passive suicide or suicidality.
14:26
Jess Miers: Alex's approach is actually not that far off.
14:28
Jess Miers: For example, if you watch the entire interview, Alex talks about, look.
14:32
Jess Miers: If the Nomi breaks character, we know that our users, they're going to detect corporate speak, and if they detect corporate speak, they may be less likely to accept the help that Nomi might be wanting to suggest later.
14:44
Jess Miers: If Nomi wants to suggest, for example, the suicide and crisis hotline, or Crisis Text line, or some sort of local resource in that user's area.
14:52
Jess Miers: people are more willing to accept help, when that help comes off as genuine, authentic, and empathetic.
14:57
Jess Miers: And so that was sort of the missing component on the John Oliver segment was the CEO was saying, look, Nomi has been interacting with people.
15:05
Jess Miers: With each of its users for quite some time, and the CEO says it has a very, very good memory.
15:10
Jess Miers: So it knows that, look, if this person told'em I had a bad day at work, it can tailor its individualized response to each user as it detects a user potentially stepping into a crisis zone.
15:21
Jess Miers: And what we're finding from the research is that individualized and personalized response to those users is actually something that's more likely to get people, one, to disclose what they're feeling, but also two, to accept help.
15:35
Mike Masnick: and I think that part is, is really interesting.
15:38
Mike Masnick: I think there's this overlay, and this came across in the the Oliver piece, which is that if, if you believe that the technology is just inherently bad and inherently harmful and that it, it is only sort of a hallucination machine, then you think.
15:53
Mike Masnick: Well, it can't create a personalized response that is actually helpful and I think that was part of my concern with the Oliver piece was that it doesn't take into account that, you know, yes, like there are bad CEOs out there and there are bad companies out there, but it appears that, you know, Nomi in particular seems to have actually thought this through and looked at and understood the research of, if someone is having a crisis, how do we actually get them to accept help?
16:19
Mike Masnick: Which is a huge challenge as I understand it, in dealing with people in crisis.
16:24
Jess Miers: Yes, most of the suicide, there's a lot of different suicide prevention protocols out there because again, suicide is very individualized and very personal to each person.
16:32
Jess Miers: And so, you know, for example, I have said this before in pieces that I've written, I said this on Blue Sky.
16:37
Jess Miers: 9, 8, 8 is.
16:38
Jess Miers: Kind of the default where, you know, if you experience any sort of signs of passive or active suicide or suicidality, throw the 9, 8, 8 number.
16:46
Jess Miers: Well then there's a multitude of reasons why why 9, 8 8 might not be effective for a person depending on what they're experiencing at that period of time.
16:54
Jess Miers: but it seemed to me that in the show, at least John Oliver might've been advocating for that default response.
17:00
Jess Miers: The NOMI should just, if any sort of sign of crisis, the NOMI should throw 9, 8, 8.
17:04
Jess Miers: And that was sort of, i, found Nomi, CEO to be sort of unique on this approach of saying, look, take the user where they are, rely on Nomi's memory of all of the discussions user's been having, and come up with a more personalized approach so that if somebody is experiencing this, they will be more willing to accept help or the resources that the NOMI might suggest.
17:23
Mike Masnick: Yeah.
17:23
Mike Masnick: and to be clear, like there is evidence and research that 9, 8, 8 is actually very, very helpful.
17:30
Mike Masnick: But you have to actually get people to want to or be willing to, call and to have that discussion and figuring out how to get people to that point is a very, very tricky problem.
17:42
Mike Masnick: And one that it sounds like.
17:44
Mike Masnick: Nomi is, is trying to think through how do we do this in a way that will actually get people to accept help?
17:50
Mike Masnick: And I understand like personally, it, it is tough.
17:52
Mike Masnick: Like I understand the instinct that as soon as you see anyone discussing any element of suicidal ideation in any sort of way to be like, ah, like, you know, get them help immediately.
18:03
Mike Masnick: But if immediately switching to corporate speak and immediately just.
18:08
Mike Masnick: Shoving 9, 8, 8 in front of them is going to make them not willing to do that and make them turn off.
18:13
Mike Masnick: That could actually be more problematic.
18:15
Mike Masnick: and I get that this is really, really difficult and really, really nuanced and I'm glad that I'm not designing chatbots that, that are in that situation to figure out.
18:25
Mike Masnick: But my impression of the John Oliver segment was that Whereas normally I expect him to be really nuanced and thoughtful on these things and, especially based on like the content moderation episode, to recognize that there aren't easy answers here.
18:38
Mike Masnick: Instead it felt like he immediately jumped to like, how dare they not just immediately break character and throw 9, 8, 8 on, on the screen.
18:46
Jess Miers: Right.
18:46
Jess Miers: And other thing that I noticed throughout the episode as well, I mean it starts at the beginning and it's again a through line through the episode, is maybe these chat bots shouldn't have been released in the first place.
18:55
Jess Miers: The idea being that they were rushed to market.
18:57
Jess Miers: that they should have solved the suicide and self-harm problem before these chatbots ever entered the market in the first place.
19:04
Jess Miers: And again, going back to his content moderation episode, I was surprised to hear those points because the content moderation episode recognizes the content moderation and possibility problem of we will never.
19:14
Jess Miers: Fully solve these problems.
19:16
Jess Miers: And in fact, as you put one of these services on the market, you then discover that there are new ways in which people are, harming themselves are breaking guardrails.
19:24
Jess Miers: It's always going to be a cat and mouse game.
19:26
Jess Miers: So I, I really was surprised by sort of the disconnect between.
19:29
Jess Miers: Content moderation is hard on social media.
19:32
Jess Miers: And then all of a sudden we're sort of expecting people to solve the suicide problem, Foris as if there is a perfect solution, which by the way, you know, the laws that he, advocated for those two laws, the law in California and the law in New York.
19:44
Jess Miers: The law in California, the way it is written, assumes that AI also can perfectly mitigate.
19:50
Jess Miers: Suicidal ideation.
19:52
Jess Miers: And again, it says the way you read it, if you don't have a protocol in place to prevent suicide ideation, you should cease communications with the user entirely.
20:00
Jess Miers: And just as we've seen studies that, you know, flashing 9 88 at the wrong time, corporate speak, um, might turn people off from being able to accept help.
20:07
Jess Miers: Ceasing communication with somebody who is in active crisis can also be very dangerous.
20:12
Jess Miers: It's why, again, a lot of these protocols, they actually say in training, if you're going to help somebody who is experiencing active crisis, you need to have a lot of time.
20:20
Jess Miers: You need to be willing to sit down and have a full conversation with them because you can't stop that conversation once you start it.
20:27
Mike Masnick: And so I'm sure some people will respond to all of this and, and say, you know, there are real problems here.
20:34
Mike Masnick: And the companies, you know, certainly some of the big companies don't seem to care that much and have sort of a dismissive attitude.
20:41
Mike Masnick: you know, and this is sort of the point that John Oliver makes is that, well, we need laws to make the companies care.
20:48
Mike Masnick: So how, how do you respond to that?
20:50
Jess Miers: Yeah, and I was thinking about this again.
20:52
Jess Miers: He says at the beginning that, and honestly throughout the episode that the bots are.
20:56
Jess Miers: Trained this way to maintain your attention.
20:59
Jess Miers: And I know this sounds kind of morbid, but if the end result is that the user then dies, right?
21:04
Jess Miers: I don't see how that matches sort of the goals of the chat bot developers.
21:07
Jess Miers: Obviously, as we've seen in the social media context, there is not an.
21:10
Jess Miers: Incentive in place, for users to become harmed by their services.
21:15
Jess Miers: And so, you know, I understand sort of this push to, well, we need to regulate, we need to do something here.
21:20
Jess Miers: but the reality is that as we saw in the content moderation space with social media, if you overregulate, if you press too hard, what you're actually going to do is you're going to make it harder for these services.
21:30
Jess Miers: To actually make their products better.
21:32
Jess Miers: And we're seeing we're, we are seeing, from studies, on some of the earlier models, the way that they used to respond to suicide prompts, to today's models, we actually have seen an improvement over time.
21:43
Jess Miers: There was a that was taken, uh, a few years ago back with chat GPT-3 0.5, where it showed.
21:49
Jess Miers: these early models, they were not great about flashing the resources.
21:53
Jess Miers: They were not great about detecting when somebody was entering into crisis or entering into sort of a spiral emotional spiral.
21:58
Jess Miers: but today, nearly all of the mainstream chatbots, they follow sort of the same approach to recognizing when somebody is, heading into crisis, responding in a way that provides resources, but also responding in a way that is empathetic.
22:11
Jess Miers: Avoids the corporate speak validates, affirms and provides hope following the kind of preventative strategies that psychologists and clinical, psychiatrists have been, saying for, for decades now on, on how we should approach suicide.
22:24
Jess Miers: So the reality is that actually.
22:26
Jess Miers: These companies are making a lot of great progress on this front.
22:29
Jess Miers: They have incentives to make progress on these fronts because it's not great when they end up in the mainstream media saying that they're causing suicide, they're killing people.
22:38
Jess Miers: and so they are making these strides.
22:40
Jess Miers: But if we overcorrect, they're not gonna have any incentive to sort of continue to better these products and services.
22:45
Jess Miers: Instead, they'll turn off the conversation or throw 9, 8, 8 and be done with it.
22:49
Mike Masnick: Yeah.
22:50
Mike Masnick: Well, wanna move on to our next story, but I, I sort of feel it's a continuation of, of this story in some, in some form, as many of the stories today actually are.
22:59
Mike Masnick: It's, it's amazing how much all the stories kind of lined up.
23:03
Mike Masnick: one involves open AI specifically and a particular story that happened in British Columbia, which you may have heard of, where there was A young person who ended up.
23:15
Mike Masnick: Killing some family members and then going and shooting up a school.
23:19
Mike Masnick: It's the largest school shooting in Canada in, I don't know how long.
23:24
Mike Masnick: It's a very, very tragic story.
23:26
Mike Masnick: But what came out earlier this year was that that individual, who was clearly.
23:32
Mike Masnick: Troubled and facing a mental health crisis.
23:35
Mike Masnick: had been using chat t and having a conversation with chat GPT and a few things came out later about that.
23:42
Mike Masnick: starting with some Wall Street Journal reporting and some leaks from someone within open AI that, in fact.
23:49
Mike Masnick: The chats that that individual was having had set off some alarms within the company.
23:54
Mike Masnick: They had actually shut down that user's account.
23:57
Mike Masnick: and there were concerns within OpenAI that the individual was likely to engage in some sort of violent activity and a suggestion that they should inform law enforcement, which OpenAI then chose not to do and decided not to do that.
24:13
Mike Masnick: Though they did cancel the user's account.
24:15
Mike Masnick: The user then did open a second account, and proceeded to, continue the conversation, and then eventually there was this tragedy.
24:23
Mike Masnick: So earlier this week, there, there's obviously been a lot of reporting on this.
24:27
Mike Masnick: Earlier this week, Sam Waltman, released an apology letter to the families of that, small town where all of this occurred.
24:37
Mike Masnick: put it in the local sort of news paper, I guess.
24:41
Mike Masnick: and then the very next day, a bunch of lawsuits were filed.
24:45
Mike Masnick: Apparently a bunch more are coming as well, and they're basically trying to hold open AI liable for the shooting and pointing to, what certainly appeared to be pretty bad facts in terms of the fact that some alarms were raised within the company Including telling them to alert law enforcement and they chose not to do so.
25:05
Mike Masnick: the lawyer who's bringing the cases is Jay Edelson, who's, somewhat well known as a plaintiff's lawyer.
25:14
Mike Masnick: you know, a sort of.
25:16
Mike Masnick: I was trying to think of a diplomatic way of saying this, but you know, files, lawsuits where he accuses companies of being horrible, terrible things and demanding lots and lots of money, and he's fairly successful at that.
25:28
Mike Masnick: I find his characterizations of what has happened that lead to the lawsuits is often, Exaggerated and perhaps not entirely accurate.
25:39
Mike Masnick: but that's, you know, they have a, a big time lawyer filing these cases.
25:43
Mike Masnick: And apparently the cases were filed by some of the families of the injured or, unfortunately, People who were killed, victims of, of the shooter.
25:52
Mike Masnick: and apparently there are more lawsuits expected as well, though I imagine these may get consolidated.
25:59
Mike Masnick: will see on that.
26:01
Mike Masnick: so this is a, specific example that sort of goes back and relates to the kinds of things that were talked about in the John Oliver episode.
26:07
Mike Masnick: Here you have a chat bot here, you have somebody who's using the chat bot not for self harm.
26:11
Mike Masnick: But to lead to, a mass shooting and, and many deaths.
26:15
Mike Masnick: And it's a incredibly tragic situation.
26:17
Mike Masnick: And you have a specific situation where the company, there were flags raised internally.
26:22
Mike Masnick: So I'm sort of curious what your take is on this particular lawsuit and this situation.
26:28
Jess Miers: Yeah, there's quite a bit of overlap between the story and, uh, the John Oliver segment.
26:32
Jess Miers: And actually, this gives me an opportunity, to flag, you know, one of the other big concerns that I have, both with this story and the John Oliver segment, is that.
26:40
Jess Miers: whenever these incidents happen, whether it's the self-harm or it's the mass shooting, situations, because I know there was also, I think one in Florida as well and OpenAI was named.
26:47
Jess Miers: you never really hear the sort of other side of that narrative.
26:51
Jess Miers: From reading this, the several suicide cases that we heard, right?
26:55
Jess Miers: The John Oliver, episode had flagged the Adam Rain case, for example, which is a very tragic case.
27:01
Jess Miers: when you read the, plaintiff's complaints, the entire point of the plaintiff's complaint is to really.
27:05
Jess Miers: Tell the story and yes, even to exaggerate, what you're not actually hearing about is sort of the social environment, the, mental issues or, or, harms that this person was sort of struggling with.
27:19
Jess Miers: Before it got to the result that it got to.
27:21
Jess Miers: And so for example, in the Adam Rain case, the other side of that story was that the teenager had actually reached out to multiple people in his community.
27:29
Jess Miers: His family, for help had flagged several times throughout that he needed help.
27:33
Jess Miers: And to me that indicates, okay, there's a, sort structural failing that we really need to be paying attention to.
27:39
Jess Miers: But when we sort of assign the cause to technology to chat GPT.
27:44
Jess Miers: It sort of, it eliminates our ability to have that discussion.
27:47
Jess Miers: So my spidey sense started tingling when I was reading this case about the, shooting in Canada.
27:53
Jess Miers: which by the way, the last, uh, mass shooting in this area was apparently in the 1980s.
27:57
Jess Miers: I, I was thinking, okay, well.
27:59
Jess Miers: What led up to this.
28:00
Jess Miers: And so I did some digging and found that actually this was a very troubled individual.
28:04
Jess Miers: Another instance of been a very troubled individual, but law enforcement federal authorities are how I think the R-R-C-M-P, right?
28:12
Jess Miers: They had apparently visited the home of this person on numerous calls.
28:17
Jess Miers: You'll have to fact check me, but I believe it was 18 times they had visited the home of this person on multiple complaints, on multiple, concerns about violence and in fact.
28:26
Jess Miers: Weapons were removed from the house at one time over these concerns only for the family.
28:32
Jess Miers: Allegedly, they petitioned to get those weapons back.
28:34
Jess Miers: The weapons were returned to the household, and then those were the allegedly the same weapons that were used in this shooting.
28:40
Jess Miers: And so, yes, it's easy for us to sort of turn to Chacha bt and say, cha GBT, you caused this, you caused this mass shooting.
28:46
Jess Miers: And to sort of ignore all of the structural failings behind what, potentially led to, this incredibly tragic event.
28:54
Mike Masnick: Especially if the complaint is that OpenAI failed to alert law enforcement if law enforcement was already involved with this individual and knew about them and the weapons.
29:04
Mike Masnick: That seems yeah.
29:05
Mike Masnick: Certainly diminishes the claim that there's a, responsibility on chat GPT, that they, or on open AI that they failed to handle.
29:12
Jess Miers: And, and it begs the question too, again, as we see in the content moderation space, what should OpenAI, what should chat bot providers do in these instances?
29:22
Jess Miers: OpenAI had already removed the account.
29:25
Jess Miers: this person had then created a new account with, at GBT.
29:28
Jess Miers: from just reading the story very quickly, my guess is if we were, if we had access to the chat logs, which that's the other problem with a lot of these stories both in the suicide and these other sort of harm context, is we don't always get the full picture, the full context of the chat logs.
29:42
Jess Miers: For example, the firm that is, again, I think you've mentioned Jay's firm, if you read the actual complaints.
29:48
Jess Miers: What you end up seeing are a lot of summarized snippets of what the discussions were with the chatbot, but you actually don't see, sometimes you see quotes, but you don't see often a lot of quoted material, again, using very, highly sensational language as well.
30:02
Jess Miers: And so you really have to pause and think, yes, this sounds horrible, but we need to look at what actually happened in the context of the conversation.
30:09
Jess Miers: And my guess is, as we've seen in all these suicide cases.
30:11
Jess Miers: Likely there were several guardrails that were thrown as well.
30:15
Jess Miers: Um, there were probably several attempts.
30:16
Jess Miers: Uh, again, I don't know, but there were probably several attempts to sort of steer the user in a different direction.
30:21
Jess Miers: But users have figured out how to jailbreak these systems.
30:24
Mike Masnick: I mean, we had seen that with, certainly with some of the suicide cases where, it's easy to sort of pick out the sensationalized part of the conversation, but it often leaves out, the ones that I've seen where early on, the first thing that the chatbots do is suggest.
30:41
Mike Masnick: resources and help and nine often, 9, 8, 8 or or other, support systems and.
30:46
Mike Masnick: in many of these cases, what happens is the individual keeps trying to figure out how to get around it.
30:51
Mike Masnick: And the, you know, the sort of classic example in one of the suicide cases, I don't remember if this is the Adam Rain case or a different one where they said, oh, I'm writing a book.
30:59
Mike Masnick: this is not me.
31:00
Mike Masnick: This is about a novel that I'm writing, so I just need to help, you know, help me discuss it as if I'm a character in a novel.
31:07
Mike Masnick: And there are all sorts of ways to do that.
31:09
Mike Masnick: And you can say that the chat bot should be able to figure out, you know, how to deal with that.
31:13
Mike Masnick: But.
31:13
Mike Masnick: just like the impossibility of content moderation.
31:16
Mike Masnick: this is a somewhat impossible situation as well because there's always some way around it.
31:22
Mike Masnick: At the same time as the guardrails get stricter, you're going to come across more and more crazy situations where people make fun of the guardrails, where it's like, oh, I'm just trying to figure out how to do something, perfectly reasonable, but it's hitting, it's hitting me with guardrails, and I've even seen some cases of this.
31:38
Mike Masnick: I was like, in a slightly different context where I was looking for a quote from a book, and I would have that AI would Generate the quote and then make it disappear because it, violated a guardrail.
31:48
Mike Masnick: It's like, you have it right there, just show it to me.
31:50
Mike Masnick: I'm not doing anything bad.
31:51
Mike Masnick: But it's like, it's tough for them to recognize for the system to understand the context of what is actually happening and which people are really at risk of harm, whether it's self-harm or harm of others, and not, and if we don't have the full transcript, it's, it's very difficult To understand how to deal with that.
32:09
Mike Masnick: how do you think these lawsuits are gonna go?
32:12
Mike Masnick: I mean, I know they were just filed, and they were filed in, even though this happened in British Columbia, they were filed in San Francisco, which is where OpenAI is based.
32:20
Mike Masnick: I thought that was an interesting choice.
32:21
Mike Masnick: I don't know if that's required by the, user agreements, which it might be, or if there's some other reason to file it here.
32:28
Mike Masnick: But what's your sense of where you think these lawsuits are gonna go?
32:31
Jess Miers: Yeah, it's, it's hard to say, to be honest.
32:34
Jess Miers: 'cause now we have the, you had asked me this question before the social media addiction litigation, I think I may have had a different answer.
32:40
Jess Miers: I mean, we saw, at least with the, shooting in, Buffalo, I think that involved, uh, if I remember correctly, Twitch, and, Think another tech company.
32:48
Jess Miers: It's
32:48
Mike Masnick: I think Discord
32:50
Jess Miers: Discord.
32:50
Jess Miers: I think that's right.
32:51
Jess Miers: we saw the court turn around and say, no, of course, section two 30 would apply here.
32:55
Jess Miers: and, you cannot assign cause or causation, to the tech companies for this sort of offline tragedy.
33:01
Jess Miers: You know, I think that's a possibility in this type of suit as well.
33:05
Jess Miers: If we can make, if they can successfully make some of the same, causation arguments, which is that, look, this is a superseding event.
33:11
Jess Miers: This is an individualized event, right?
33:13
Jess Miers: the person took it upon themselves to, to commit the tragedy.
33:16
Jess Miers: At the same time though, we have seen in recent many, especially in social media addiction litigation, many of these cases have made it through the motion to dismiss phase by simply just saying this was dangerously designed.
33:26
Jess Miers: And we are seeing courts.
33:28
Jess Miers: in these suicide cases become more sympathetic to the dangerous design language.
33:35
Jess Miers: because when it comes to ai, these courts don't really see AI systems as, providers of speech or, or providers of information, but truly more like products like, you traditional blenders and cars that are typically swept up in these products, liability and wrongful death suits.
33:49
Jess Miers: So.
33:50
Jess Miers: It's anyone's guess.
33:51
Jess Miers: I could see it at least for at this point.
33:53
Jess Miers: If I had to make a prediction, it will probably get past the early stages of litigation.
33:57
Jess Miers: From there, we might see what we see in the suicide cases, which is probably settlements.
34:02
Mike Masnick: Hmm.
34:02
Mike Masnick: Interesting.
34:04
Mike Masnick: All right, well, I wanna move on to our next story.
34:06
Mike Masnick: But as I warned, all these stories sort of flow into one another, and this time we're staying in Canada.
34:12
Mike Masnick: but, we're moving over to Manitoba where they have announced that they are planning to put in place a.
34:20
Mike Masnick: Youth ban on social media, and AI chatbots.
34:24
Mike Masnick: They're lumping in both of them together.
34:26
Mike Masnick: and this one was, you know, we've certainly seen other places banning kids from social media and chatbots, but I thought there were some quotes that were.
34:37
Mike Masnick: provided by the premier of Manitoba.
34:40
Mike Masnick: I'm not sure how to pronounce his name, but it's wa I believe, that I thought were really revealing and perhaps not the most flattering way for Manitoba.
34:51
Jess Miers: Yeah.
34:51
Mike Masnick: But, but, but, just as you wanna talk a little bit about, what is happening up in Manitoba.
34:56
Jess Miers: Yeah, it's a lot of what we've been seeing elsewhere, throughout the world.
35:00
Jess Miers: So as we know, Australia has, was sort of the first to this to ban people under 16, from social media.
35:07
Jess Miers: we know, I think we're gonna talk about Turkey in a bit as well.
35:10
Jess Miers: I, last I read, I think France was considering a similar for under 15.
35:14
Jess Miers: and so we're seeing the same thing here in Manitoba.
35:17
Jess Miers: What was interesting, you were referencing some of those.
35:19
Jess Miers: Quotes.
35:19
Jess Miers: Um, I read the article about why they were approaching this in Manitoba, and usually you see more of a discussion around, kids are addicted to the services or kids are experiencing, you know, some of these mental health harms that have not been really proven out in research and literature.
35:34
Jess Miers: But I'll leave that, aside.
35:35
Jess Miers: there was more of a discussion about, well, Trump was elected and.
35:39
Jess Miers: The kids have measles and they're harming themselves.
35:43
Jess Miers: And again, it, there's such an excellent thread in this podcast from the John Oliver segment to here.
35:49
Jess Miers: It's the same sort of issue of these are social and structural harms are taking place in the background.
35:54
Jess Miers: And instead of having the discussion, we need to have about, well, why do the kids have measles?
35:58
Jess Miers: Why are the kids not getting vaccinated?
36:00
Jess Miers: Um, why do we have a country.
36:03
Jess Miers: Donald Trump was able to be elected twice in the first place.
36:06
Jess Miers: It's technology is sort of this easy backstop.
36:09
Jess Miers: The, you know, okay, well if we kick the kids off of the internet, all of these problems will be solved in Manitoba.
36:14
Jess Miers: All of these problems will be solved in Australia.
36:16
Jess Miers: Right.
36:16
Jess Miers: So that's at least how I, I see it as the same thing
36:19
Mike Masnick: Yeah.
36:20
Jess Miers: we've been seeing.
36:21
Mike Masnick: Yeah, the quote is, literally, he says, look what it's done to us.
36:24
Mike Masnick: Donald Trump is president.
36:26
Mike Masnick: You have kids who are harming themselves.
36:28
Mike Masnick: You have measles outbreaks in our province.
36:30
Mike Masnick: All of these things are because we've let social media dominate our lives without understanding how pernicious billionaires who design this have been targeting us and making us addicted to our phones.
36:40
Mike Masnick: And that just conflates a whole bunch of different things.
36:43
Mike Masnick: I don't think it is the kids on social media who made Donald Trump become president, I don't think it is.
36:48
Mike Masnick: The kids on social media.
36:49
Mike Masnick: Who have created the measles outbreak.
36:51
Mike Masnick: I think that is adults, and adults making choices, uh, uninformed, often very unwise choices.
36:59
Mike Masnick: But like to then say, because of that, we need to ban kids from social media.
37:04
Mike Masnick: H how it just feels like, anything that has gone wrong in the world blame it on social media and kids on social media, and it, feels like this sort of, you know, people.
37:14
Mike Masnick: Joke about this, uh, sort of somewhat crazy concept of AI psychosis.
37:18
Mike Masnick: This just feels like there's a different kind of psychosis going on here where it's like anything wrong in the world, just blame on the technology.
37:25
Mike Masnick: Even those either deeper societal problems,
37:28
Jess Miers: Yeah, I'm kind of wondering what happens when the entire world inevitably kicks kids off of the internet and we still have people dying by suicide.
37:34
Jess Miers: Donald Trump is now president for the third time, knock on wood.
37:37
Jess Miers: and we still have a measles outbreak, right?
37:39
Jess Miers: Like what is, what will be the next sort of, object of our societal ills that we will turn to before we will have a real conversation about why people are, why we're.
37:48
Jess Miers: In these situations that we're in.
37:49
Jess Miers: Not to go back to the John Oliver segment, but it really blew my mind by the way, on this topic, that there was a discussion that said half a million people who are using chatbots are experiencing some sort of mania or mental illness.
38:01
Jess Miers: Why?
38:03
Jess Miers: Why we need to have that conversation.
38:05
Jess Miers: There's obviously a clear problem in our society, not the chatbots, but the reason why people, why are so many people dealing with these things?
38:13
Jess Miers: age verification, banning chatbots, banning technology is not going to get to the root of that problem.
38:18
Mike Masnick: Yeah.
38:19
Mike Masnick: Yeah.
38:19
Mike Masnick: I mean.
38:20
Mike Masnick: it's a refrain that we've, I've certainly made many, many times over and over again, which is that we have real societal problems that are very, very difficult to, impossible to, completely fix.
38:30
Mike Masnick: But to do so, you have to have an actual understanding and an actual discussion about them.
38:34
Mike Masnick: But it is much easier, especially for some in the media and certainly some politicians to just say, well, there's this new technology that must be the problem, even though these actual.
38:45
Mike Masnick: Problems predate all of this and are tied to other larger societal problems that then get a, free pass because we're just focused on, oh, it must be the AI chatbots.
38:56
Mike Masnick: and so, yeah, I find this really, really problematic.
39:01
Mike Masnick: but I, I do wanna move on to the next story, which once again.
39:05
Mike Masnick: Straight through line.
39:07
Mike Masnick: This is Turkey, which is now trying to pass legislation banning children from under 15 from using social media.
39:15
Mike Masnick: Um.
39:15
Mike Masnick: Turkey, somewhat famously, has often done things banning various internet aspects.
39:21
Mike Masnick: They've at times banned YouTube and Wikipedia and Twitter, and I think Twitch at some point.
39:28
Mike Masnick: And, you know, Turkey under its leader, Erdogan as not known as a particularly free society right now.
39:36
Mike Masnick: and again, like you can look at this and say, okay, well Turkey is just doing the same thing that Australia and.
39:41
Mike Masnick: Greece and France and Malaysia and all these other countries are, are looking at doing the uk.
39:47
Mike Masnick: but what I remember is that Turkey somewhat famously likes to put in place new laws that increase the power of its authoritarian government.
39:58
Mike Masnick: By claiming that they are the same laws that more free countries are putting in place.
40:03
Mike Masnick: And this to me is another example of that.
40:05
Mike Masnick: So the, famous previous example that I remember was that when Germany passed its social media content moderation law called Nets dg, which was effectively overtaken by the Digital Services Act across the eu.
40:19
Mike Masnick: when.
40:20
Mike Masnick: They passed that law Turkey soon after passed its own content moderation law, which they explicitly said was modeled on the German law.
40:29
Mike Masnick: The fact that it was then used to force social media companies to suppress speech critical of the Erdogan government was sort of, you know, it was used as an excuse to.
40:40
Mike Masnick: Give the government more authoritarian speech, suppressing power, and this is the same thing.
40:46
Mike Masnick: the Turkish government is effectively justifying this law by pointing to Australia and their ban and saying, well, we have to protect the children.
40:54
Mike Masnick: But when you read the details of this law, unlike other countries that have age verification laws that sort of say to the platforms, you work it out, this one requires everyone in Turkey who wants to use the internet to abide by this law, to use a government portal.
41:11
Mike Masnick: Where you have to give your ID and age and information in order to access the wider internet, which I think most people listening to this podcast can recognize is a real potential for surveillance and certainly suppression and oppression of anyone who is critical of the Erdogan government, and yet they get to justify it.
41:32
Mike Masnick: By pointing to Australia and everywhere else that is exploring this and saying like, oh, we're just protecting the children.
41:39
Mike Masnick: The fact that we also get to surveil everybody and everything that they do on the internet is just a side bonus.
41:45
Mike Masnick: and I've made this point before, but a lot of these laws about, protecting children on the internet or protecting national security on the internet in supposedly free.
41:55
Mike Masnick: western countries are then used by authoritarian countries to justify greater and greater oppression, and I think it's, it's a really important point that gets lost in a lot of these discussions.
42:07
Mike Masnick: I, I've been ranting for a little bit here.
42:09
Mike Masnick: Did you, did you have any thought on the, the situation in Turkey?
42:12
Jess Miers: Plus one.
42:13
Jess Miers: Absolutely agree.
42:14
Jess Miers: And I'll just throw in, as I mentioned in the case with Canada, when I was reading the background on the story, right, again, we're seeing less of this discussion about, well the internet is harming kids and I believe instead the MR of justice, if I have this correctly, there was a reference to anonymous accounts being sort of the plague of, their society.
42:34
Jess Miers: Anonymous accounts lead to harm.
42:35
Jess Miers: freedom has its limits.
42:37
Jess Miers: Um, and so again, there's, there's, we're not seeing a, a big sort of discussion about, you know, any of the research or I guess non-existing research out there that the kids are being harmed by social media.
42:47
Jess Miers: It's really, this is being used as a proxy, for control in the country.
42:50
Jess Miers: And that's what we've seen.
42:51
Jess Miers: As you mentioned time and time again in places like Turkey especially.
42:55
Jess Miers: I'll just know before I jumped on here, I like going to Reddit just to see, you know, what are, people saying?
43:00
Jess Miers: and subreddit, for folks who are talking about Turkey.
43:03
Jess Miers: was a lot of discussion about, so what if we oppose the government, we now lose access to internet.
43:07
Jess Miers: That's at least the way several people in Turkey are sort of, apparently viewing this or outside of Turkey are viewing this as well.
43:12
Jess Miers: So I think your instincts are right here.
43:14
Mike Masnick: Yeah.
43:15
Mike Masnick: the exact quote from the Justice minister in Turkey was, we are bringing accountability to social media.
43:22
Mike Masnick: And then he says, freedom is everywhere, but even freedom has limits.
43:26
Mike Masnick: And it's like, those are the quotes that, you know, it is, An authoritarian government justifying its oppression by, using the language of other supposedly free countries and, and what they're doing online.
43:41
Mike Masnick: All right, for our final story of the week, we're again keeping this through line, but there was a really interesting story in the Wall Street Journal.
43:50
Mike Masnick: this is a little bit different.
43:51
Mike Masnick: talking about how YouTube took over the American classroom, and I should note that, you know, one of the aspects of the Manitoba discussion, which we didn't mention there but ties into this too, is that, part of that ban on under fifteens is he said, we're going to get YouTube out of the classroom.
44:07
Mike Masnick: And so here there's this Wall Street Journal report that talks about.
44:11
Mike Masnick: how many schools are using YouTube in the classroom and, and sort of suggest that it's sort of gotten out of control.
44:17
Mike Masnick: Did you get a chance to read this one?
44:19
Jess Miers: Yeah, I've, I've been following the, devices in schools problem for quite some time now.
44:23
Jess Miers: And, you know, this is gonna sound weird coming from me, but I tend to be on the side of, yeah, there is too much technology at the lower levels of education.
44:33
Jess Miers: some of the stories that I've read, and including the one that you're.
44:35
Jess Miers: Talking about now.
44:36
Jess Miers: kids when they go to recess, they now have options in some schools to either watch YouTube or play outside.
44:42
Jess Miers: Right?
44:42
Jess Miers: I think that is inherently a problem.
44:44
Jess Miers: We do also have research, right, where I've kind of said on this, show now throughout, look, the research about social media addiction, is very sparse and in many ways not really conclusive.
44:54
Jess Miers: we do actually have more conclusive research about how.
44:57
Jess Miers: Kids learn.
44:59
Jess Miers: And it has been shown that, screens are not as good as picking up a textbook and reading from the book, writing in cursive allegedly, which has kind of gone to the wayside, was one way in which it was, it sort of.
45:11
Jess Miers: Formed the neurons to help kids learn later when it comes to writing and processing language.
45:16
Jess Miers: And so I do think we actually have, this is one of those societal, structural issues that I've been ranting about.
45:21
Jess Miers: I think our education system does have an actual problem with devices in the classroom.
45:27
Jess Miers: and I think it is something that we should be thinking about because when we talk about things.
45:30
Jess Miers: Kids are becoming addicted to screens.
45:32
Jess Miers: Where did it start?
45:33
Jess Miers: I read a lot of these stories where parents say, look, we don't allow our children to use devices in the home, but they're learning how to do infinite scroll from their infinite scroll textbooks on their Chromebooks, right?
45:43
Jess Miers: Kids aren't even using physical books anymore.
45:46
Jess Miers: I thought that was shocking.
45:47
Jess Miers: they're learning these bad digital habits.
45:50
Jess Miers: In the classrooms at these early ages where yes, it has been shown, that does affect the way in which they learn and process information.
45:56
Jess Miers: So I do think, you know, again, I, I'm not sure if it's a, you know, blame the tech companies, I don't think, I don't know if that's the right approach here.
46:03
Jess Miers: But yes, there are detrimental aspects of device use for kids at very young ages for long periods of time.
46:10
Jess Miers: And maybe we should be thinking about the way in which these devices are in the classrooms.
46:14
Mike Masnick: Yeah, I mean, you know, some of the things that struck me about the article was this suggestion of, you know, certain schools really relying on YouTube and, and you know, there are different sides to this.
46:26
Mike Masnick: Like, there's an element of, YouTube has all of the world's information in all sorts of formats, and that can be really valuable in a educational setting.
46:35
Mike Masnick: you know, if, if you can show an amazing experiment or something that you wouldn't be able to see or, you know, an amazing teacher that can explain a certain subject.
46:44
Mike Masnick: There are all sorts of opportunities and, and we know, there are.
46:48
Mike Masnick: Tools out there, like, you know, former, controlled speech guest host, uh, Hank Green, uh, you know, has amazing educational content that he has created.
46:58
Mike Masnick: He and, and his company, have created some wonderful educational content.
47:03
Mike Masnick: And you have my, my former roommate, Sal Khan, who created Khan Academy, uh, has out there and created all sorts of wonderful educational content that is on YouTube as well.
47:14
Mike Masnick: There is all this usual stuff, but.
47:16
Mike Masnick: kids have to learn to use it appropriately.
47:18
Mike Masnick: And so my only thought on this was I'm not so much against the use of technology in school.
47:25
Mike Masnick: My problem is this idea that.
47:27
Mike Masnick: You know, when they let it run away.
47:29
Mike Masnick: Right?
47:30
Mike Masnick: I think that there's an appropriateness to, part of learning in school is not just the subjects that you're learning, but also how to learn and how to understand things.
47:40
Mike Masnick: And that includes like how to use the technology appropriately.
47:44
Mike Masnick: And, I feel at least somewhat lucky that I, I believe.
47:48
Mike Masnick: From what I can see of my own kids' schools and, the local schools here, that they've been pretty good.
47:54
Mike Masnick: They do use Chromebooks, but they don't over rely on them, and they really do sort of try to teach the kids how to use the technology appropriately.
48:04
Mike Masnick: They don't go to like outright bans of phones.
48:07
Mike Masnick: but they have systems to say like.
48:09
Mike Masnick: We don't use phones in the classroom while we're teaching.
48:12
Mike Masnick: They actually have these like boards with pockets that every student puts their phone in as they enter.
48:18
Mike Masnick: But as they're switching classes, you know, occasionally they can, check their phones.
48:21
Mike Masnick: It's not like no phones allowed on campus.
48:23
Mike Masnick: And that has led to useful things like, when they had the, bunch of high schools had anti-ice protests, earlier this year, and kids were filming it and sharing it, and then the high school news organization was able to use those videos and things like that.
48:37
Mike Masnick: And I think those are valuable examples.
48:39
Mike Masnick: But the important point is learning how to use the devices and technology appropriately, because I also have this.
48:45
Mike Masnick: Fear, on the flip side of like, if we go to this world where we just have a complete ban, no Chromebooks, no YouTube, no, phones, no technology used in school, that then at some point, kids are going to graduate and they're gonna go out in the real world and they're going to use these things.
49:03
Mike Masnick: We all like.
49:04
Mike Masnick: I stare at a laptop all day for my job.
49:06
Mike Masnick: That is part of my job.
49:08
Mike Masnick: I would like to believe that I can use it appropriately and, thoughtfully as part of, my productive life and, and everything.
49:16
Mike Masnick: But if we're, having kids not learn how to use it appropriately and being told that it's bad and evil, and then sent off in the real world where they're going to have to use a computer for most of the day, I wonder if they're, ill prepared for that if they're not taught like.
49:31
Mike Masnick: here's how to use it appropriately.
49:32
Mike Masnick: Here's how to use it in moderation.
49:34
Mike Masnick: So I would like to see more of that as being built into the curriculum.
49:39
Mike Masnick: and I know some people get upset, like, oh, don't bring AI into schools.
49:42
Mike Masnick: Don't bring the technology into schools.
49:43
Mike Masnick: But I think, recognizing these are things that people are going to use in the real world.
49:48
Mike Masnick: it actually would be more appropriate to teach them how to, how to then use it appropriately.
49:52
Mike Masnick: And that should be a part of the schooling experience.
49:55
Jess Miers: to the point where, right, like, let's take all the devices outta the schools.
49:57
Jess Miers: And also kids have been kicked off of the internet, so they're gonna graduate and now they have no idea how the internet works or any other devices.
50:03
Jess Miers: No, I wholeheartedly agree.
50:04
Jess Miers: It actually got me thinking before jumping on here, I don't know if your school had this, but I, like, I remember I had a computer lab when I was growing
50:11
Mike Masnick: Yes,
50:11
Jess Miers: had
50:12
Mike Masnick: did too.
50:13
Jess Miers: We had like computer time, and that's where we learned typing and we learned like, how to consume information appropriately and use computers to write book reports and whatnot.
50:20
Jess Miers: And so I, I was kind thinking like, not to go all the way back in the past, but like that balance can be there.
50:25
Jess Miers: I'm, I'm with you on, it's when it, they run away with it.
50:28
Jess Miers: Um, I think that's when the harms start.
50:31
Mike Masnick: And I think, I think that gets to the, the sort of nuance of the situation.
50:34
Mike Masnick: I will note, by the way, I am so old.
50:36
Mike Masnick: We did have a computer lab in my high school and that is where I learned how to use computers.
50:40
Mike Masnick: but we didn't learn to type in the computer lab.
50:43
Mike Masnick: We learned to type in the typing room, which had typewriters.
50:46
Mike Masnick: That's how old I am.
50:48
Jess Miers: Did not, I did not have that.
50:50
Jess Miers: No, we did all of it in one place.
50:51
Jess Miers: Um, but
50:52
Mike Masnick: had two separate, we had
50:53
Jess Miers: it was
50:54
Mike Masnick: rooms.
50:55
Jess Miers: Yeah.
50:55
Jess Miers: And you still learned.
50:56
Mike Masnick: Yeah.
50:57
Mike Masnick: but learning how to use these things appropriately, I think is the really important point.
51:01
Mike Masnick: And that is a more nuanced take than the one that we're having.
51:03
Mike Masnick: And I think sort of the through line of this entire episode is, that is important to have that nuance and, but very difficult at this time when people are sort of quick to rush to judgment and sort of blame the technology for things that may be.
51:16
Mike Masnick: There's a, a deeper discussion to be had about.
51:18
Mike Masnick: But, Jess, this was a really, really wonderful discussion.
51:21
Mike Masnick: I'm really glad that you were able to, to join and, co-host and, be Ben for the week.
51:26
Jess Miers: Yeah, I'm honored.
51:27
Jess Miers: Thank you so much for having me.
51:28
Jess Miers: It's a joy to be here.
51:29
Mike Masnick: well, thanks again and thanks to everyone for listening.
51:34
Mike Masnick: and again, I will remind everyone check out the Patreon.
51:38
Mike Masnick: hopefully you can, subscribe to the Patreon.
51:41
Mike Masnick: We have another month where we'll be doing regular episodes with me and guest hosts until Ben comes back from paternity leave.
51:48
Mike Masnick: and then we will switch over to the new format.
51:51
Mike Masnick: And by then, you should already be signed up for the Patreon.
51:54
Mike Masnick: Check it out, but thanks for listening either way, and we'll be back next week.
52:00
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