Escape From Burning Man + Musk vs. the A.D.L. + Listener Questions

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

I have this issue. I made the mistake of buying a smart toothbrush. Have you ever done this?

No.

You never, like, bought a toothbrush that has an app associated with it?

No, I like my toothbrushes dumb.

(LAUGHING) OK, well, I think I do, too, after this experience. Because I buy the toothbrush. I install the app. And within a month or so, I’ve realized that the core function of the app is just to tell you to go buy more toothbrush heads.

[KEVIN LAUGHS]

Right? This is the business model.

What is the app nominally for? Is it, like, to time your toothbrushes?

It’s like, you know, you’ve been averaging a minute 48 seconds. You really got to get up to 2 minutes. Right? So that’s the sort of what they’re selling you. But in reality, it’s been, like — it’s been three days since you last changed your toothbrush head. I think it’s time to restart.

So obviously, I ignore this, right? It’s like, come on. I’ll replace the brush head when I’m good and ready. Well, then I’m, like, in my office, and I get a buzz on my watch.

And the app has somehow managed to contact my watch to say, hey, the toothbrush isn’t connected to the Wi-Fi anymore. You need to fix this problem. I thought, what sort of hell world do I live in, that I’m letting my toothbrush talk to my watch?

[KEVIN LAUGHS]

We have to go back!

Yeah, this is what the Jetsons’ worst nightmare was.

This really was! This was the Halloween episode of “The Jetsons“!

[KEVIN LAUGHS]

(LAUGHING) And we have to shut it down!

You know what the best way for a toothbrush to connect to the internet is?

What’s that?

Bluetooth.

OK. Well, we should probably start the show.

I’m Kevin Roose. I’m a tech columnist at “The New York Times.”

I’m Casey Newton from “Platformer.” And you’re listening to “Hard Fork.” This week, escape from Burning Man — we talked to one tech exec who fought his way out of the mud. Then, Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, joins us to respond to Elon Musk’s threats to sue his organization. And finally, your toughest questions about AI and tech. You know anything about those two things, Kevin?

Not a thing.

Oh. Shoot.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Well, Kevin, we have a special message for all the people who sent us messages saying, please do an emergency podcast about what happened at Burning Man last week. And that message is, we hear you, and we see you, and this segment is for you.

[LAUGHS]: Yes, we have to talk about Burning Man, because this is actually a very important event in the tech industry. I think people sometimes don’t believe that, but it is true. As I said a few weeks ago, I went once 10 years ago.

You famously took a shower with a Google executive.

(LAUGHING) Yes. And I thought that was maybe the worst thing that could possibly happen at Burning Man. But as it turns out, I was just not using my imagination, because this year’s Burning Man was an absolute nightmare.

A bit more of a Drowning Man than a Burning Man, I have to say.

[LAUGHS]:: So as I’m sure folks have heard, the weeklong festival in the Nevada desert known as Burning Man was interrupted this year by a rainstorm. On Friday, it started pouring, and by Saturday, the desert had become so thick with mud, that it was apparently hard to walk or operate a vehicle.

Attendees were told to shelter in place. They were not allowed to enter or exit the festival, and they were told to conserve food and water.

So this became a sensation on social media. I think there was a lot of “shay-denfreude” from people who think that —

Schadenfreude.

Listen, I never actually took German, OK? [KEVIN LAUGHS]

I don’t know what prep school you went to, but on the mean streets of La Habra, California, they offered Spanish and French.

OK, tell me more about this “shay-denfreude” they felt.

Listen, I think a lot of people think, look, look at all these tech bros in the desert. It’s a very silly thing, that the fact that they’re all literally stuck in the mud is something to laugh about. And you know, I’ll admit, I may have chuckled a bit.

But I am not here to make fun of the people who went to Burning Man. I actually want to just hear about the experience of being there.

Yeah, so as someone who’s been to Burning Man, I was fascinated by just the logistics of it all, because it is already a mess to get in and out of Burning Man. The lines are very long. It’s —

Yeah, why is that? It’s in the middle of the desert. Like, what are — why —

Because there’s one gate. You have to go through the gate. There are only two ways — you can arrive in your car or your RV or whatever. Or they actually have a little airport that they set up just for the week.

That’s probably what I would do.

And so all the rich — the tech billionaires, they fly in through the airport.

Right. Smart.

But the airport was closed.

Ugh.

The road was closed —

Got it.

— due to the rains. So it’s like you actually, like, can’t get it anywhere. Your car will get stuck if you try to drive in. And there were some videos of people having to be pushed out of a mud pit, because their RV got stuck or whatever.

Right.

I had one friend who was there, who’s a reporter, and had actually spent time in the Middle East in Iraq, reporting, and said that this was more harrowing than that.

(LAUGHING) Oh, wow!

[LAUGHS]: That actually trying to escape from Burning Man was a more traumatizing experience than being —

Can we him on the show, too? I would love to talk to him.

I’ll tell you, one thing I will say about this story is, like, do you ever get invited to a party and you don’t want to go to that party, and the next day, like, you text your friend, and you’re like, how is that party, and they’re like, oh, my god, it was horrible, and you’re just like, yeah! Like, it’s so exciting to find out that a party that you didn’t want to go to is bad. I am having a bit of that with this year’s Burning Man, where it’s like, I knew I didn’t want to go, but then you do see the video footage of people caked in mud and tromping through this, like, quicksand, and you think, I made the right choice for myself.

Yeah. And so not only was this a logistical challenge for getting in and out, but a lot of the festival also sort of relies on things being able to get in, like tanks to clean the porta potties. And so you had this kind of escalating set of problems that people were posting about, where all the porta potties were caked in mud, and they hadn’t been cleaned in days, and it was getting unhygienic. And it just felt like this is maybe an experiment that has gone wrong.

You know two words that I heard in the context of this year’s Burning Man that I hadn’t heard since a high school history class?

What’s that?

Trench foot.

Yeah, trench foot, the medical condition that was very hot in World War I.

(LAUGHING) What? And if you don’t know what trench foot is — and I’m not googling this right now — it’s caused by prolonged exposure to cold temperature that is usually above freezing and damp, and sometimes unsanitary conditions, and it can ultimately cause skin and tissue breakdown. And that’s just — essentially, it is a risk of walking around in the mud for a long time.

It is.

Yeah.

On one level, this is a story about a festival gone wrong.

Sure.

Right? And you can imagine something like this happening at Coachella or Electric Zoo or any of the other places where people go to take drugs and dance and have a good time.

Yeah.

And we don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum here on “Hard Fork.”

Never.

We are tolerant of all parties and all partiers.

We celebrate joy.

Exactly. But I think there’s something here that is interesting, which is that Burning Man has had a big influence on the modern-day tech industry, to an extent that I don’t think people who don’t live in the Bay Area or go to Burning Man can fully appreciate.

Absolutely. And by the way, there is an idea in Burning Man that I think is relevant to some things we’ve been talking about here recently, which is this kind of tech utopianism, right? Last week, we were talking about the billionaires who want to build a tech utopia in Solano County.

This week, we’re talking about another tech utopia that, maybe, went a little bit awry. But there is something that runs very deep here in the minds of people who work in tech, which is, if you could just kind of rip it up and start again, you could make something better.

So our guest today is Adrian Aoun. He is a long-time Burning Man attendee. He’s a former Google employee who used to run something called Sidewalk Labs, which was, kind of to your point, this sort of, like, tech-utopian project. They were trying to make a connected neighborhood in Toronto.

But now, he is the CEO and founder of the health tech startup, Forward, and we’re going to talk to him today, not about his startup or about his time at Google, but about his time at Burning Man and how he got out. Adrian Aoun, welcome to “Hard Fork.”

Thanks so much for having me. Excited to be on.

So you are, in addition to a Burning Man escapee this year, you’ve been actually going to Burning Man for a long time. I think you said this was your seventh time at Burning Man? So —

Yeah.

Just to start, can you just explain how you got interested in going to Burning Man and why you keep going back?

Yeah. I mean, I feel like it’s a little hard to be a tech executive in San Francisco and not end up at Burning Man. It’s kind of like you do your Sand Hill Road pitches, and then I think they just, like, ship us in bulk.

But look, I went, because another startup founder who’s a very close friend of mine at one point was like, you got to do this. And it was actually — I was working at Google at the time. I was working for the founder, Larry Page.

And he was my boss, and he kept being like, Adrian, you really got to go. And I’m like, when your boss at Google is telling you to go to Burning Man, like, maybe it’s not — this isn’t Coachella anymore, right?

Yeah, this is going on your performance review.

Yeah, honestly. It really felt like it was. I’m not even joking. And so I was like, OK, I got to go check this thing out.

And by the way, this is how a previous generation was forced to start golfing. Burning Man is just kind of the next evolution of that.

You can make fun of the Burners all you want. At least we’re not wearing, like, plaid pants on the playa. You know what I’m saying?

Amen, Amen. Well said.

So OK, so I go to Burning Man. And I guess the thing that was, like, insightful or kind of, I don’t know, like, life-changing about it is, here’s probably the best analogy I can use. And you’re going to forgive me. This is kind of a weird one. If I was, like, walking down the street right now in San Francisco, and I, like, looked perfectly normal but I had no pants on, you’d be like, what the fuck is going — like, that guy is weird. Like, there is something going on with this guy. He’s a crazy dude.

But that’s because we’ve taken a normal world, and we’ve changed just one variable. On the other hand, when you’re at Burning Man, you’re not changing one variable. You’re changing, like, all the variables, right? It’s like, I don’t have a normal name. I’ve got some madeup name. I don’t talk about work. I don’t have a phone. I don’t have a watch.

There’s no concept of an economy. I can’t buy anything. There’s no brands or anything. Like, everything has changed. And when everything is changed, all of a sudden, you’re like, wait, I have no more frame of reference anymore. Like, I don’t know what to expect.

And so the reason this was really cool was like, there’s a lot of things that you take for granted in society that you think, of course those are normal, of course they make sense, where, all of a sudden, you’re like, maybe they don’t make sense. Maybe we should reimagine them.

And what I realized afterwards in conversations with Larry at Google was, the reason Larry wanted me to go is, he was really interested in, can we create our own cities? Can we create this new universe that just has different set of rules, a different social contract?

And I actually became incredibly interested in it after going to Burning Man. So I ended up starting one of the Alphabet companies called Sidewalk Labs that was literally like, can we just rewrite the rules the way we would want to write them today?

So you have this sort of reality-bending experience at Burning Man that keeps you going back. When you went this year what were you hoping for, and did you read the weather forecast ahead of time?

OK, so no, and yes, and maybe. OK, so here’s the deal. You can’t really have massive expectations going into Burning Man. It’s like, look, you’re in the Wild West, right? You have no clue what the rules are. You can’t get anything on demand. There is no Amazon one-day delivery kind of nonsense.

So it turns out, like, you’re going to get whatever you get, and you better — you better damn well like it. And so to answer your other question, like, look, I barely looked at the weather. We flew into Burning Man. And I’ve become a pilot recently, so I’m, like, paying attention a little to the weather.

But frankly, it was clear skies when we were going in. So I wasn’t really paying attention to much of that. What was interesting is, when we got there, a couple of days in, the rain started to hit.

And because I’m, kind of, a nerd in Silicon Valley, becoming a pilot, like, all of a sudden, I’m like, oh, I can go pull, like, the weather reports. You should look at the weather reports that pilots pull. They’re, like, 150 pages. And everybody’s like, oh, it’s some light drizzle. It’s going to be done later today. And I’m looking, and I’m like, nope, not a chance. Like, there’s literally a whole bunch of weather moving in. This is going to be a few days.

And for me, I was like, I was planning on flying out. I’m like, well, we’re definitely not flying out, because the Black Rock Airport is going to be closed. But then, I started getting a little stressed, because I was like, wait a minute, I don’t actually want, like — today’s the day I was supposed to leave. I don’t want to be here another, like, three days.

I love the playa, but when you’re done with the playa, you want to get the hell out of dodge. And so that’s when we started being like, well, we need some alternative plan. And you go through your mental checklist, like, well, we could drive out. We actually didn’t have a car, but there were some other cars. And then, you just look around, and you’re like — I want you to picture the playa as, like, a scene out of Hogwarts or something. It’s like, it is just covered in mud. It’s covered in water.

Wait, when was Hogwarts covered in mud?

Yeah, I’m getting more of a Mad Max vibe.

Yeah, it feels very Mad Max, kind of —

No, come on. In the one where they were, like, doing the maze in the competitions, that one. OK, maybe it wasn’t Hogwarts, but it was Harry Potter.

All right.

I’m not even a good nerd. I’m just half a nerd. I can’t even get my quotes right. OK.

I mean, look, here’s what I’ll say. Someone on that playa probably was playing quidditch. Like, that is something that I assume.

So actually, my favorite thing that I saw — literally, my favorite thing is like — my favorite was these two people that were just, like, literally, buck naked, and they were just, like, rolling around in the mud. And I’m like, you guys win Burning Man.

Like, all I could picture was like — you know when you watch, like, pigs in the pig pen, like, moving? I’m like, they’re just having fun. They’re enjoying this. I have no clue how they were going to clean themselves after, because there were barely bathrooms you can use. So I was like, good luck, guys, but you do you.

So wait, Adrian, so when the rain starts coming down, is there shelter for you? Like, what do you do when just all the rain starts coming down?

Well, so remember, most people are in a tent, an RV, or a shift pod. A shift pod is basically like a fancy tent. So all of us just, kind of, retreat in there at first, because we’re like, whatever, it’s just going to be a couple hours.

Then, all the messages start coming. So we’re part of a camp, a bigger camp. And all the camps start being like, no, it’s shelter in place. No more cars allowed to drive around the playa. You, basically, can’t use your bike.

Because the thing about this mud — it’s not like mud that — I don’t know — in your garden at your house. This is mud that’s more — I want you to picture clay. Like, it gets on you, and then it hardens.

So like, I was wearing these boots. I literally couldn’t keep wearing my boots. Each boot weighed, like, 20 pounds. Imagine if, like — you know, in the mafias, like, we want you to drown in the water, and they put cement bricks —

Yeah, concrete shoes.

— on your feet? Yeah, I had concrete shoes, for sure, exactly. And so all of a sudden, you’re like, well, fuck. I’m in my — in my case, like, I’m in a shift pod. And then, you’re like, well, that’s fine for a couple hours, then you’re like, uh, I wonder if our camp is serving dinner tonight.

No, they are not serving dinner tonight. So you’re like, OK, no problem. Like, we’ve got food. We’ll make our own food. We’re good. We’re good. It’s kind of slightly escalating, slightly escalating.

And then, you’re like, oh, god, I got to use the bathroom. Like, you really don’t want to go and try and trudge to them. So at some point, you go to a pee bucket, right?

And so there’s now, like, buckets over — like, in the RV, there’s a bucket. Shift pod — there’s a bucket. Everybody’s just, like, peeing in these buckets. It’s pretty gross.

And then, at some point, you’re like, wait, I don’t need to just pee. And that’s where you’re like, all bets are off. You know? And some people are doing it in their RVs. I’m like, no, I am braving. I’m going to this outdoor bathroom, whether you like it or not.

But you know, Adrian, I do want to ask you about this, because I think a lot of times, when you see a kind of natural disaster like this, people assume that everyone turns on each other, and it becomes “Lord of the Flies.” In fact, in practice, everyone just actually starts helping each other, I think, most of the time. And it seems like that’s what happened to Burning Man.

OK, so first off, can we not call this a natural disaster? I feel like — like, Haiti right now is looking at us, being like, shut up, you douche bags. Like, it was —

Fair enough, fair enough.

It was some rain. Calm down. OK?

OK, now, second off, yeah, like, actually, people were super helpful. Like, I’ll tell you a couple examples. So obviously, my shoes weren’t, like — did nothing at this point. So I’m like, well, how do I get around?

And this person comes around, and like, the playa has figured it out. Everyone’s figured it out. What you do is, you put Ziplocs over your feet to protect your feet from the water and the rain and whatever. And then, you put socks over the Ziploc. So it’s like, let’s be real. I would have never discovered. But the socks give you traction, and also, socks are pretty good at not having the clay, like, attached to it. Like, the fibers help somehow. I don’t know.

So OK, so that was one. Another was this dude who was just like, I — literally, he was just covered in mud, head to toe. And he would just come around, probably every hour or two, and just, like, knock on your shift pod or your RV.

And I’d be like, yeah, what’s up? And he’s like, just doing rounds. Seeing what people need. Do you need food? Do you need anything? And I’m like, who does that?

And so, like, it was kind of cool, just to watch the amount that people showed up. And I thought it was awesome.

Did you think about asking that guy for a latte, just to see if he could produce one somehow?

I did — I did ask him for Rice Krispie Treats, and no joke, he delivered. So I’m just telling you —

That’s amazing!

Wow.

That’s amazing.

Wow. So you are at Burning Man on the playa when the rain starts. People are, sort of, reacting to it. Some people are saying, like, hey, let’s go play in the mud. Some people are starting to get freaked out. I know people who were very worried that they wouldn’t be able to get back in time for work on Tuesday, or they had kids to pick up or something like that.

So there were people who were nervous. And at some point, you decided that you needed to get out. So walk us through your escape from Burning Man.

And try to tell it in a really dramatic way that might lead to our podcast getting optioned for a movie.

(LAUGHING) Yeah, yeah, yeah, right?

Yeah, this is the sequel to “Dunkirk.”

But OK, so look, first off, I was not like, oh my god, I need to get out of here. This is the apocalypse. I was more like, I’m bored. And I was like, I don’t know what to do.

Let’s just see if we can hike out of here, kind of thing. So what we did is, we threw on our backpacks. This is me and my girlfriend.

We, like, left the rest of our shit to our friends who had an RV and were like, you’ll deal with this. You’re good people. And then, we’re like, OK, let’s see if we can, kind of, make it out.

So remember, they had shut down all of Burning Man. But like, Burning Man is this big, huge space. It’s, like, actually hard to fully shut it down and secure it. So we just started walking with our Ziplocs and socks.

We walked what I think was like, I don’t know, 3 or 4 miles. It took, like — it took a couple hours. I mean, at some points, you have no grip. You’re just slipping and sliding. We —

Can I just ask? What notes is your girlfriend giving you at this point? Is she like, Adrian, this is the worst date you’ve ever taken me on? Was this her —

Oh, no, she’s like —

OK.

She’s like, let’s go. She’s all about it. She’s — come on, it’s an adventure. So whatever. So we’re, kind of, trudging out. As we are, we see the main stretch where cars drive out.

And a couple cars, like, tried to drive out, and it was awesome. They’re just getting ditched. They’re getting stuck. And they’re like —

Yeah, I saw a TikTok of, like, cars buried, like, 3 feet in mud.

Well, you got to remember, even the people who had their nice four-wheel drive, like, huge-ass pickups, like, most of these people are like nerds. They don’t actually know how to drive a pickup. So they’re, like, gassing it to the — wheels are spinning. I’m like, that’s not what you should be doing right now, you know?

That’s what I would do, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Right? Because none of us actually know what we’re doing. We’re better behind keyboards, not behind wrenches, you know?

And so anyway, so after miles and miles, we make it to the road or whatever. And we’re like, OK, we’re just going to hitchhike — until you realize, like, who the fuck’s going to pick you up when you are covered in mud? And so now, you have what is incredibly, like, a very adverse selection issue.

Like, the person who wants to pick you up, you don’t want to get in their car. So this dude comes by with a huge pickup, and he’s like, hop in. So we get in.

He starts driving us to the closest town, Gerlach, and I’m a little like, OK, like, who are you? What do you do? That sort of thing.

And it turns out he’s a guy who, like, works for Burning Man during the normal week. He’s, like, one of the contractors, I don’t know, doing stuff. And he was like, it was my day off. I live in Gerlach.

I don’t really have much to do. I figured I’d come help out. And I’m like, oh, my god, you’re like the nicest human ever. Like, this is amazing.

Yeah, so he takes us. He, like — he wouldn’t even leave before we, like, filled up. The bed of the car had, I don’t know, seven mud-covered people. So he drives us to Gerlach. And then, we’re like, OK, awesome. We’re in a town. So we walk up. We see a bunch of our friends. Friends from LA and New York were there, and we ran into them.

And one of them — she’s really nice. She walks up. She’s like, oh, you guys need a ride. That woman in there, in that bar — go in there, and the woman in black and white, she’s willing to give you a ride. So I’m like, OK, great. We walk up to her, and we’re like, can we get a ride? And she’s — I swear on my life, this woman was more high than you could ever — like, she was like, OK, but I got to clear out the bags of weed out of my van, which takes her 20 minutes. I don’t know why.

And I mean, it’s getting to a point where I’m, at this point, like, pretty willing to go with almost anybody. And I was even like, this doesn’t seem like a good idea. I don’t think you want her driving us. And then —

She’s actually the CTO of a $4 billion tech company.

Yeah, right? And so this is where, now, the price gouging comes in. Because now, there’s some commercializing folks. One guy walks up to us. He’s like, I have that SUV right there.

It’s like a nice Escalade. He’s like, do you guys need a ride? And we’re like, yeah, we need a ride. And he’s like, $500 per person. And we only go if we fill the whole car.

And I’m just looking, and I’m like, behind door number one is the person who’s high as a kite and might kill you.

The weed man.

And behind door number two is, like, the capitalist asshole. I’m like, jeez, like, how do I make this decision? We chose the capitalist asshole.

I just wanted to live at that point.

And Adrian, you’re an entrepreneur. Like, part of you must have respected the hustle of this man.

Yeah, this man has actually been admitted to Y Combinator’s next batch.

He just raised a seed round in that car, probably.

I mean, he, like, obviously, discovered Uber surge pricing. But no, I went up to him, and I was like, hey, this is a pretty good business for you today. And he looks at me with disdain, and he’s like, no, my business was delivering water on the playa, and I was making $10,000 a day.

I’m making less doing this. And he was, like, mad at us. And I was like, now, you see the dark capitalistic side behind all of this, you know. But anyway, so we get to Reno after a couple hours.

And at this point, we’ve ditched our socks, because they were caked in mud. So I’m, like, shorts, T-shirt, basically, like, all brown, and I walk into the casino. And all I’m thinking is, you know those signs that are like no shoes, no shirt, no service?

I’m like, please don’t have one of those. Then again, it’s Reno. It’s not exactly like the highest-class place you’ve ever been.

Yeah, Ziploc bags actually count as shoes in Reno.

(LAUGHING) Yeah, yeah, right? So I shit you not. I go into the bathroom in the Reno casino, and I’m like, literally, putting my feet up onto the sink and trying to just get my feet clean. Then, I was lucky enough that I had this change of clothes with me.

I change. And now, we’re, like, in the lobby. My girlfriend and I were clean. And this is where this gets really great, because I’m like, OK, I’m kind of hungry. And I see this, like, steak restaurant, this fancy steak place.

And I’m like, let’s do it. They look us up and down. They’re just like, what are you doing? And I’m like, table for two, please. And they’re like, right this way, sir.

So we have our great steak dinners. And then, we’re like, OK, well, now, we got to get back to San Francisco. But n at this point, like, it’s easy, right?

Some of our friends were renting cars. Some of our friends were fancy and had their jets. Some of our friends were just, like, flying United. At this point, it was kind of, everything from there was nice and simple.

There was a lot of, just, people making fun of the rich, privileged techies and scene kids at Burning Man who got stuck in the mud. I don’t really have a question about that, but I would like you to just respond to this allegation that this is just a bunch of privileged people who aren’t good at checking weather reports, sort of, getting their comeuppance.

Or is there something in this idea — this sort of utopian spirit that you feel like is brought back to Silicon Valley, that sort of filters into, I don’t know, products and services and ideas?

I mean, all of the above, right? Yes, it’s ridiculous. It’s a bunch of people with too much money going to the desert, getting naked, and getting high. Like, yes, of course, that’s ridiculous.

But like, whatever, life — you’re supposed to have fun in life, and this is a way of having fun. If the most hate you can give is like, look at those assholes having fun, well, like, look, you’re probably an unhappy person. Go see your therapist, you know?

On the other hand, like, everybody needs their environment to which they can become creative. For you, it could be just meditating in the corner. It could be hanging with certain friends. It could be doing drugs. It could be being on the playa, whatever it is.

But what it allows you to do is it allows you to kind of do the traditional thinking outside the box in a way that you otherwise wouldn’t do. And what comes of that really does come into society. You see it in people’s artwork. Every part of what we do in our lives came from somebody having inspiration, somebody having creativity.

And once you have that realization that somebody else just like you and me created it, ergo it is not written in stone, I think that opens up an enormous amount of possibilities.

All right, Adrian. Thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate it, and glad you made it back safe.

We’re glad you’re safe.

Thanks for having me on. This was fun.

When we come back, it’s Elon Musk versus the Anti-Defamation League.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Well, Kevin, I think it’s time once again to talk about Elon Musk.

Yes.

So he had a pretty intense weekend.

Yeah, I would not describe it as a Labor Day weekend where he was kicking back with his buds, drinking a cup of White Claws, and taking a load off.

No, and I would say, actually, this summer, there have been a number of weekends where he has made some pretty intense or offensive posts. You remember there was that whole era where he was pretending like he was going to fight Mark Zuckerberg. This weekend, he picked another fight, and it was with the Anti-Defamation League.

Yeah, and this is actually, kind of, a meaningful fight, unlike the sort of cage match kabuki theater of it all. Because this is about money. It’s about content moderation. It’s about hate speech. And it really touches on some of the core issues with X, the company formerly known as Twitter.

Yeah. And we’ve already, on this show, spent plenty of time talking about moves that Elon has made that we think are bad. And I didn’t want to do another segment where we just did that again, but about another subject. But at the same time, as you point out, there’s a lot of really meaningful issues in this story, and we had an opportunity to talk to one of the principals involved in the whole thing.

Yeah, so we are going to talk today to Jonathan Greenblatt, who’s the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, which is a prominent Jewish civil rights group and has been one of the groups that has been putting pressure on not just Twitter, but other social media platforms to clean up hate speech on their platforms.

Last fall, when Elon Musk took over the company that was then known as Twitter, the ADL was vocal about his decision to reinstate Donald Trump, to take a light touch with people like Kanye West, who were posting anti-Semitic content —

And not just take a light touch, but actually bring him back onto the platform after he was banned, which he did with a number of other folks who had been spreading hate speech.

Right. So the ADL was not happy about this, nor were other civil rights groups. And they responded by doing what they have always done in these cases, which is to report hate speech on the platform to try to bring some quantitative data to this feeling or this worry that Twitter was becoming a more hateful place. And in December, they joined with the Center for Countering Digital Hate and other groups to provide some data about how hate speech had changed on Twitter since Elon Musk took over.

According to their findings at the time, anti-Semitic posts referring to Jews or Judaism soared more than 61 percent in the two weeks after Elon Musk acquired Twitter. Slurs against gay men and Black Americans also rose, according to them.

Yeah. In fact, I read here that the slurs against gay men rose from 2,506 times a day before Musk to 3,964 times a day. And 3,964 gay slurs a day is actually what I heard in middle school.

So anyway, it’s bad, OK?

It’s not good.

It’s not good.

And so the ADL calls this out. They are putting out this data. And they are also doing something that they’ve done in other cases, which is to ask advertisers to pause their spending on the platform in order to apply pressure to Twitter and Twitter’s executives to clean up their platform.

Yeah, they’ve sort of said to advertisers, like, you guys are worried about your brand, right? Like, you probably don’t want to run it next to an ad that has a Nazi slogan on it. And this, apparently, has been pretty effective.

We know that advertising on Twitter has dropped by around 60 percent, or at least that is what Elon Musk has said. So the platform is struggling. And I think Elon has found a scapegoat in the Anti-Defamation League.

Yeah. So let’s just recap this past weekend’s conflict and just set the scene for this conversation a little bit. So last week, Elon Musk starts engaging with these posts on X about this hashtag campaign called Ban the ADL. And this hashtag campaign was being shared by, among other people, some of the worst, most virulent anti-semites on the internet, people with known reputations and associations with hate groups.

Yeah, people whose full-time job is just, like, posting hate videos on YouTube alternatives.

Exactly.

: And so on Monday, he posted that, quote, “to clear our platform’s name on the matter of anti-Semitism, it looks like we have no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League.” Oh, the irony.

He also posted that X’s US advertising revenue is still down 60 percent, primarily due to pressure on advertisers, he said, by the ADL and other groups. And he suggested that the ADL could be responsible for destroying as much as half the value of the company that he purchased or about $22 million. So Casey, what did you make of this?

Well, I think it is rich to welcome a bunch of far-right influencers back onto the platform, watch advertisers flee, and then blame the group who pointed that out to them. Right? I think that there were any number of things that Elon Musk could have done to prevent these advertisers from fleeing. And so to try to lay it all at the feet of the organization who was just kind of pointing it out and counting up the instances of anti-Semitic speech on the platform is really, really silly.

But I think that there is something more interesting here, which is that before some of these events that you laid out, Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the ADL, met with Linda Yaccarino. Linda Yaccarino is, of course, the CEO of X. She was brought in specifically to fix the relationship between advertisers and the platform. And I guess it’s fair to say that that’s not going great. Right?

(LAUGHING) Right.

But so the reason that I wanted to have this conversation with Jonathan is, I wanted to know, what was that conversation like with Linda Yaccarino? What did she tell you? What promises did she make?

Does it seem like she have any influence over the platform? And what happened in between what seemed like a pretty productive conversation and Elon Musk losing his mind on X?

Right. And so I think it’s a really interesting moment to talk to Jonathan Greenblatt from the ADL, because this is a group that has spent years trying to clean up the worst parts of social media, the most hateful speech that happens on the internet.

And they have largely been supported in that by social media platforms. And this is really the first time that a major social media platform has said, you know what? Actually, we don’t want your help. And furthermore, we’re going to sue you, because you’re destroying our business.

Yeah. So let’s go inside this conflict and talk to Jonathan.

Jonathan, thanks for coming on “Hard Fork.”

Happy to be here.

So just to start, can you just tell us where you were and what you were doing when you learned that Elon Musk was threatening to sue the ADL? Were you at a Labor Day barbecue or something like that?

[CHUCKLES]: I mean, this whole thing really blew up over Shabbat — the Ban the ADL hashtag, the claims. And so I really got keyed into this on late Saturday night.

Did it surprise you? I mean, this has been a conflict that has been brewing for many months with Elon Musk over the issue of anti-Semitism and hate speech.

I wouldn’t — yeah, I wouldn’t characterize it like that, Kevin. I mean, I’ve been in touch with Elon about this. I’d had a good meeting with Linda last week. So no, like, this was not something I would have expected. And I certainly wouldn’t have characterized our relationship as individuals or at an institutional level as, quote, “in conflict” or anything of the sort.

But is it fair to say that after Elon took over, you grew increasingly concerned about what you were seeing on the platform?

Well, let’s step back for a moment, Casey. So number one, like, Twitter was a hellscape before. I mean, it was a very problematic platform. I had deep issues with the previous management, if you will. Look, I was optimistic after Elon took over.

I mean, he is a gifted entrepreneur on many levels, and he solved some huge problems. Having an open dialogue with him led me to believe that he was committed on these issues, too. Unfortunately, we continued to see, based on our analysis, based on our studies, a persistent problem that has actually intensified in certain ways, in recent months that was really epitomized by this Ban the ADL campaign.

You tweeted last week that you had a, quote, “very frank and productive conversation” with Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X. What can you tell us about that meeting?

Well, so Elon had given me her coordinates after she started. We both came at the meeting with, I think, a very open approach. And so we had a very productive conversation. We talked a little bit about what we think is working or not working.

And the intent was to continue to find ways to collaborate. I mean, look, ADL was part of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council when there was such a thing. We were a trusted flagger and regularly in touch with the team, when they had that service. I believe we have to work with them.

Whether you like it or don’t like it, the fact of the matter is they’re here. And as I think I’ve also talked to you about in the past, like, I think that hate speech is the price of free speech. The question becomes, what voices do you choose to validate or not? I think these are questions that all social media companies have to grapple with.

So what were you asking Linda to do, and what was your sense of her ability to deliver on that?

I don’t think I asked her to do anything specific, Casey.

Why not?

I expressed — it was the first time I’d ever met her before. It was a brief — it was only a half-an-hour meeting. We were getting to know one another.

So believe me, no one would say that I’m some shrinking violet and don’t ask for things and don’t push on the issues I care about. But the intent of that conversation was to connect for the first time and to agree to work together.

So you had this meeting with Linda Yaccarino last week, and then Elon Musk starts liking posts about #BantheADL and interacting with known members of hate groups and associates of hate groups, and then starts this threat of a lawsuit. What do you think happened in the interim between when you met with Linda Yaccarino and when Elon Musk started going after you?

The truth is, I really don’t know. But let me be clear. When I say I don’t know what happened, I don’t know what happened to prompt the things that were being directed at us. But I do know what happened, literally, which is, after the meeting, a white supremacist — I don’t want to mention people’s names and give them credit, but a particular, nasty white supremacist started this hashtag, #BantheADL, which a guy, a gentleman — I guess I will mention some names — gentleman by the name of Nick Fuentes picked up and started pushing.

He was doing that over on Telegram. But it was jumped and reinforced by a series of extreme right-wing personalities on X. And it spread like fire, and it was a trending topic, again, I think, on Saturday.

When I say it was a trending topic, to clarify, it’s not just that #BantheADL was trending. It was the tweets that people were sending out around it. I mean, literally, appalling content.

Yeah.

And so that’s what really struck me when I logged in and saw all this, was how toxic it really was.

So Jonathan, what do you make of Elon’s criticisms of the ADL? He has said that the ADL has been trying to, quote, “kill this platform by falsely accusing it and me of being anti-Semitic.” He has also said that the ADL is responsible for putting pressure on advertisers that led to a 60 percent drop in the US advertising revenue of the company.

And he has said that he thinks that the company has no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit for, possibly, as much as half of the value of the company or about $22 million. What’s your response to that?

Well, I would just break down these claims one by one. So to the question of that we have described Elon Musk or the platform as anti-Semitic, that’s false. So it is certainly true that engaging with certain personalities who espouse anti-Semitism, racism — that can amplify them, because of the breadth of Elon’s reach.

But to the claim that we called him an anti-Semite, we haven’t said that. Nor do I think that platform is, or any platform is, anti-Semitic. It’s the content that flows on it that can be very problematic. So that’s number one.

Then, the second claim was that we’re pressuring advertisers. It is certainly true that we called for a pause — ADL and many other organizations, back in November, shortly after Elon purchased the platform, because of changes that were made. But beyond that, a signing on with other groups — I mean, that’s all we’ve done.

And the last thing I would say is, this claim that we’re trying to kill Twitter or whatever you read, Kevin — I don’t the exact language there, but that’s just not true. I mean, we’ve never said anything to suggest that in the past. At the end of the day, advertisers — they’re going to do what it is that they do.

Now, for what it’s worth, the idea that the wealthiest man in the world running the most powerful media platforms on the planet is somehow subject to the whims of, relatively speaking, a small nonprofit in New York? I mean, give me a break. What I would say, though, what’s worrisome, is that this claim — he may believe this to be true.

But this plays into tropes of, guess what, anti-Semitism, that the Jews somehow are working behind the scenes to control things and manipulate things. Like, we’re not doing that. And I’d be happy to have an open conversation with Elon on a public platform and talk about it the way I’m doing with you right now. Because it’s just not true.

I’ve basically written X off, as far as content moderation is concerned. I don’t think that Elon Musk shares the same values I do with regard to keeping a platform safe. But you guys haven’t written it off. You are still fighting this fight. So why is this fight worth fighting to you?

I’m so glad you asked the question, Casey. This is, kind of, in many ways, as they say, like, the real question.

Yeah.

Here’s the story. If you think about the operating environment we’re in right now, today, America, September 2023, anti-Semitic incidents that the ADL has been tracking for decades and decades have reached an all-time high, at least since we started doing this work about 45 years ago. That means acts of harassment, vandalism, and violence.

We have seen a wave of propaganda distributions like flyers and signage and stickers. We’ve seen, just this past weekend, in Florida, neo-Nazis marching openly. We’ve had a series, like, dozens of swatting and bomb threats of synagogues and Jewish institutions.

So a lot of this doesn’t make the front page of the newspaper, if you will. A lot of this, you don’t read about in the front section of “The New York Times.” But this is happening every day.

And so there is a moment right now where Jewish people are feeling incredibly on edge and being reminded of their vulnerability as we see this sort of anti-Semitism normalized. So in that environment, when, again, one of the most active and visible social media platforms on Earth start circulating these things, I can’t afford to ignore it.

Jonathan, the last question before we let you go — what’s next for the ADL in this story? Are you worried that this may go to court, this threatened lawsuit? Do you think it will actually materialize? And do you think there’s hope of a reconciliation or a sort of de-escalation with Elon Musk and with X?

I’ll tell you what I don’t know and what I do know, Kevin. Here’s what I don’t know. Is it going to go to court or not? I don’t know. Is he or someone else going to proceed with some kind of frivolous lawsuit? I don’t know.

But here’s what I do know. Number one, we continue to remain open to working with the platform, as was true last week, as is true today. A safer, healthier, less toxic X is better for the Jewish community. It’s better for advertisers. It’s better for its users, I would say, and the world.

I think, number two, the Jewish holidays are coming up. And so our community is on edge. And so I will not hesitate and I will not be daunted by, kind of, claims or threats, and we will remain ferociously focused on protecting our community, period, end of story. Like, I am not intimidated by anybody, and certainly, not this situation.

And then, number three, like, the fact of the matter is we are better and we are stronger when we’re together. So ADL will continue to work with all the different actors in Silicon Valley where we can, other civil rights groups when we can, elected officials when we can. It’s not about politics. It’s about keeping people safe. That remains our number one priority.

All right. That’s a great note to end on. Thank you so much, Jonathan. Really great to have you on.

Thanks, John.

Thanks a lot. Appreciate the time.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

After our interview with Jonathan, we reached out to X for comment. They did not respond. But on August 30, Linda Yaccarino wrote that, quote, “A strong and productive partnership is built on good intentions and candor. Thank you, Jonathan.” That was on X about their conversation.

After the break, we answer your questions about all things tech and AI.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

All right, Casey. Last week, we asked for people’s listener questions. And boy, did we get some good ones.

We did. You know, we always love hearing what is on our listeners’ minds. Because it gives us some interesting, new territory to explore.

Whenever I hear from our listeners and their great questions, I’m, like, amazed that they listen to our dumb podcast. Do you ever get this thing where you’re like, you’re a PhD in molecular biology. Like, shouldn’t you be listening to podcasts by smart people?

Absolutely not. In fact, I would go so far as to say that “Hard Fork” is the only good podcast. It surprises me when people don’t listen to “Hard Fork.” I think — do you not care about the future? Is the future not relevant to your life?

[LAUGHS]: Yeah, you’d rather solve a cold case from 1964? Come on!

[CASEY LAUGHS]

OK. Casey, let’s answer some listener questions. We got a bunch of great listener questions, some of which were sort of in the vein of our hard questions segment of ethical and moral dilemmas about technology, and some of which were just people asking, hey, what’s up with this thing.

That’s right. And we want to, by the way, answer more of your moral dilemmas, but I think we need to be more specific about what we’re asking for. Because basically, the only moral dilemma that listeners have asked us about is some variant of, is it OK to use ChatGPT for this.

Correct.

Which is a good question.

Great question.

But we just want to hear other tech-related questions.

Yeah. So if something has happened to you in your life or with an interaction with a friend over technology, something that you’ve been really wrestling with personally —

Is Instagram ruining your college experience in some way?

[KEVIN LAUGHS]

Is it ethical to get a private helicopter to illegally ferry you out of a festival in the desert? I mean, these are the kinds of tech dilemmas that we’re interested in answering. So please, send us more of your questions. Ethical and moral dilemmas are especially appreciated.

Yeah, but in the meantime, we did get some truly interesting questions.

Totally. So this first question is from someone that I think we both can agree is a great person, and just a sort of fixture of the internet.

This is one of the only people that became famous on the internet, and it somehow made him a better person.

[LAUGHS]: Yeah, so this is from Hank Green, who is a well-known YouTuber and content creator, and sort of, I would say, an OG creator.

Yeah, and we’re both big fans of his and want to send Hank well-wishes, because he has been recovering from chemo, and it seems like things are going well for him. But Hank has had a rough year, and so we were delighted to hear that he’s even listening to our podcast.

Yeah, real pinch-me moment when I realized Hank Green is listening to “Hard Fork.” Hank, very glad to get your question, and let’s play a clip of it.

So this is a really interesting question. I actually tried an AI video-making app a few weeks ago. Some company had built this thing that, supposedly, helps you make TikToks that are all generated — the scripts are generated by AI, and all the, sort of, background graphics are chosen by AI. And it, sort of, automates the process of making TikTok videos.

And I tested this out, because I was curious. I’m not a big TikToker, but I would love to be one day, and I thought maybe I could do this with very little effort. And so I went on, and I picked a blockchain video. It was going to help me make a video about the blockchain.

(LAUGHING) Wait, why was this — have you ever seen TikTok? This was what you thought was going to go viral on TikTok?

(LAUGHING) Well, I don’t know how to dance. So this was all I had. So I tried this thing out, and it was terrible. It pulled, basically, like, a TechCrunch article about some blockchain thing that had happened. It turned it into a little script. And I was supposed to, basically, stand in front of the green screen and read this thing, and it would turn it into a video.

So pretty low-effort content.

Yes. But as Hank points out, there is a lot of low-effort content out there. Some of it is very successful, and this is not necessarily a barrier to adoption. So my prediction for YouTube, specifically, is that it will remain dominated by humans, and that we will actually not have a major problem with discovering YouTube videos. I mean, just already, as it stands, there is way more video being uploaded to YouTube than any human being could watch in his or her lifetime.

Yeah.

Most of that will never be seen by more than a handful of people, but they do have this recommendation algorithm, and the recommendation algorithm, obviously, is not perfect. But what it does do very well is, sort of, direct people to the videos that are actually worth watching in that huge set of videos.

And so I don’t think YouTube will have much of a problem being sort of overrun with AI-generated video, because frankly, most of it won’t be very good. And if it is good, then maybe it’s something that people would want to watch anyway. So I don’t know. Do you think this is going to be a big issue? Do you think we’re headed toward a discovery apocalypse?

I think I disagree with you a bit, in the sense that I do think AI-generated videos are eventually going to replace some of the kinds of content that you see on YouTube today. I’m thinking of how-to content, for example. We can already get ChatGPT to write a perfectly serviceable article about how to change a tire or how to make an omelet.

I don’t think it’s going to be that long before we can autogenerate the images that would go along with that, right? And so I can imagine a company in the future whose sole job is creating how-to content and other sort of evergreen videos and flooding YouTube with them. And over time, it will become harder for humans who might have been making that before to get it seen. At the same time, I agree with you. I think that if you’re somebody like Hank, and a lot of the value that you provide is just sort of letting people be around you and your personality, AI isn’t going to change that.

Absolutely. And I think where this may actually become a problem for YouTube is less in the discovery piece, because they already have algorithms for that, than, actually, storage. I mean, we don’t think about YouTube as being a place with limited storage, because you can, basically, upload as much video as you want.

But all that has a cost to Google. And if you actually take the amount of content that’s being uploaded, because there’s all this AI content flooding in, they might actually have to cap it at some point and say, there’s a maximum amount of video you can upload.

That is sort of crazy. You sort of wonder, how far ahead does YouTube stay of content demand? Like, is there somebody that has to go out and buy new hard drives, like, once a week? Like, how does that work?

It’s like Mr. Beast has got a new one coming. Build the server rack, Jimmy. So I do think there will be sort of a storage problem.

And I actually think that YouTube, like a lot of social media platforms, will attempt in the next few years to do some kind of human verification. There will be some sort of indicator that you can get by proving that you are a human in some way, that will set your content apart from all the AI-generated stuff.

And do you think Ben Shapiro will be able to pass that test?

[LAUGHS]: I think it will probably involve looking into an orb, frankly. And I look forward to that.

OK, Hank, great question.

Hank, thank you.

If AI destroys your business, get in touch. We’d love to have you on.

All right. Next question. So this came from a listener named Diana Dionisio. And she has what I would say is one of the creepier stories of something happening with AI on social media. So recently, Diana was on vacation in Tokyo.

She was in her hotel room, and she was watching TV. And one of the shows that came on TV was some version of, like, an antiques road show, but the Japanese version. And she works in TV, so she took a picture of the TV in her hotel room, and she sent it to some of her family members on Snapchat.

And shortly thereafter, she got a message. This message was from My AI, the built-in AI chat bot that comes in every user’s Snapchat. And the message said the following. “Wow, that TV in the corner with writing looks interesting. What does it say?”

Ooh.

So Diana’s Snapchat My AI had, essentially, recognized the Snap that she had sent and asked her a followup question about it. And she was very creeped out by that.

She said, I didn’t engage with this. This was unsolicited. And why is this showing up on my phone? Casey, have you heard about people having weird encounters with Snapchat’s AI chat bots?

There have been some weird encounters last month. This feature, My AI, posted two Snapchat stories. So it posted its own story to the app, and apparently, stopped responding to users’ messages for a little while. But look, here here’s what I’m going to say. And I could be wrong about this. But when I have been sending Snaps to people, sometimes it will autocomplete something you’re typing to My AI.

And the reason it’s doing that is it wants to encourage you to loop the AI in on the conversations that you’re having, so that it can help you out with things. It can say, oh, it looks like you guys are hungry. Here’s a restaurant in the neighborhood, or something like that. So if I were this person, the first thing I would go back is to look and see, did I accidentally tag the AI? Because I think that is what would explain this. Earlier this year, Snapchat rolled out a feature where if you send the AI an image, it will respond to you in a fashion not unlike what Diana is describing here. So the question is, did she somehow tag the AI on accident, I think.

Right. And I actually asked Snap about this specific incident. And they said that My AI will not send unsolicited messages about Snaps that you send to your friends, unless you tag the chat bot in the message. So it seems like your theory might be correct, Casey.

And I went back and asked Diana if it was possible that she had accidentally tagged My AI when she was sending a photo of her TV. And she said that it was.

But you know, here’s the last thing I’d say about this. The Snapchat logo is a ghost. Ghosts are famously invisible, and they haunt people. So has some of that DNA gotten into their AI? I wouldn’t be surprised.

Who can say?

Who can say?

All right. Next question. It comes from a listener named Jay Hepler, and it’s about our thoughts on home surveillance and kids. Jay started off by sort of talking about the huge number of home surveillance technologies that now exist, things like internet-connected doorbells and indoor cameras and Alexa devices and stuff like that.

And the question is, basically, is this stuff bad for kids? They write, “Is there any understanding on how home surveillance might affect a child’s upbringing, relationship with their parents, or trust issues? I’d be mortified if my mother had heard some conversations my sister and I had in common spaces of the home growing up. I don’t know if I would have felt safe knowing my every action is recorded.” Casey, what do you think of this?

Yeah, so I mean, I think I’m basically on Jay’s side here. I think that in some ways, this isn’t a particularly new issue, right? Like, the nanny cam has been around for a really long time. And certainly, I think the younger your child, the more justification you have for putting these cameras in your house.

But I’m somebody who worries about surveillance, generally, curtailing our freedoms over time. And I think that if it gets normalized as, like, every room in my house has a camera and microphone in it, that just leads us further down that path. And by the way, if you’re taking a lot of video inside your house, like, don’t be surprised if the police want to look at it at some point, in ways that might make you uncomfortable. So yeah, I’m nervous.

Yeah, I do think this is a question that I think a lot about as a parent. My kid is still young enough where he doesn’t have a real opinion about the camera that’s in his room pointed at his crib so we can keep tabs on it from the other room.

But I do think that creating a sense of trust in the home is a very important thing for parents. We know that that’s correlated with good relationships between parents and their children. I also think that young people are just not as bothered by being surveilled as older people.

Really?

Yeah, there’s some really interesting research out there, including a recent survey by the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank, which is actually not about home surveillance. It was about central bank digital currencies and people’s views on that.

But they asked people a bunch of questions about various privacy invasive things and how they felt about that, one of which was, would you favor or oppose the government installing surveillance cameras in every household to reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activities? Casey, what percentage of people younger than 30 do you think said that they would support the government installing surveillance cameras in every household?

I’m really going to hope it was percent 20 percent.

29 percent. So that was much higher than other age groups who answered that question. And I think it just makes me a little bit confused about what young people believe about surveillance technology. What Jay is asking about is not government-installed cameras in every home. That’s a much more extreme step.

It’s just saying, would you feel weird if your parents had one of these? So I just think I don’t know enough about how young people today view surveillance in their lives and whether it’s something that feels like an imposition or a lack of trust from their parents, or whether it’s actually something that makes them feel safe.

I mean, something that you also hear kids say is that they like that they have cell phones because their parents can keep track of them and they don’t have to be constantly checking in or calling them. They can just pull up the location tracker and see, oh, they’re at school, or they’re at soccer practice or what have you.

All right. Very interesting.

All right. Last question. This one comes from listener Holly Godfrey. She is a teacher-librarian, and she says that part of her role is just kind of teaching educators and students about AI.

And then, her question is, quote, “What does someone like me, an ordinary, unconnected, non-influencer, unpowerful individual do about the fact that I have strong opinions about desperately wanting tech companies to be responsible and ethical in how AI is developed and used? Is it really just about writing to my local member of Congress? Or is there anything else that might actually make a positive difference?” Casey, what do you think?

Well, I mean, the first thing I would say is that Holly probably has influence at her school and in her school district, right? You go to the school board meeting or you write a letter or you write an email. Maybe if you have some fellow teachers who share your views, you guys all get together and you lobby together.

So I would start local, because I think you’ll probably have a greater influence there. But there are also opportunities to influence things at the federal level. I was reading a week or so ago that the US Copyright Office wants to hear what people think about AI and copyright. So this is something we’ve been talking about a lot, right?

If you take 100,000 books and you put them in a blender and slurp them up into a large language model, is that a violation of copyright or not? It’s not a settled legal question. And so if Holly has an opinion about that, that is something where she could go right now and share her thoughts with the US Copyright Office.

And I think that’s a great thing to do, right? Like, that’s kind of what our democracy rests on, is average people sharing their voices, and there are some opportunities to do that right now.

Totally. And I would also say that sharing your voice can also happen with the companies that are developing this software. I mean, we’ve seen that these companies that are making large language models, they don’t totally understand the effects that their creations are going to have downstream for teachers, for doctors, for journalists.

They are learning about this stuff as they go, which is a little terrifying, but also means that users, people like Holly, have an opportunity to chime in and to say, hey, this is really screwing up things in my school in this particular way. And I’ve found that actually, when you reach out to some of these companies, whether it’s on Twitter or in our capacity as reporters, they are actually worried about how their technologies are spilling out into the world. And this kind of feedback is very valuable. I was just on a podcast with Kevin Scott, the chief technology officer of Microsoft, and —

Wait. You have another podcast?

[LAUGHS]: This was his podcast.

This is how I’m finding out?

Yeah, there are too many podcasts hosted by Kevins. So I was on Kevin Scott’s podcast. And we were talking about this debacle with Bing that happened earlier this year.

And he said that in his view, feedback is a gift, because it means that people are using the thing that you’ve built, and they care enough to try to help you make it better. And so I don’t know that that’s the view that every AI company executive has, but I know that a lot of them are actually receptive to feedback from users.

But feedback is a gift is what I say to myself whenever somebody insults my work.

[KEVIN LAUGHS]

I say, Casey, remember? Feedback is a gift. The last thing I would say to Holly is, these companies are paying very close attention to how their work is discussed. Like, we hear this all the time — that — I mean, particularly the communications departments, which is what you would expect, but executives, too.

They know they are out on a limb with this stuff, and they’re extremely curious how it’s being received in the real world. So don’t be afraid to let them know.

Yeah. And as I’ve always said, shame is the most effective regulator. So if you do feel like these tech companies are going in directions that you’re concerned about, be nice, be civil, but give them a piece of your mind. Because feedback is a gift. It’s true.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

“Hard Fork” is produced by Davis Land and Rachel Cohn. We’re edited by Jen Poyant. This episode was fact-checked by Caitlin Love. Today’s show was engineered by Chris Wood. Original music by Dan Powell, Elisheba Ittoop, and Marion Lozano.

Special thanks to Paula Szuchman, Pui-Wing Tam, Nell Gallogly, Kate LoPresti, Jeffrey Miranda, and Sparkle Pony from the playa.

[CASEY CHUCKLES]

Pulled me out of a very troublesome situation. As always, you can email us at [email protected].

And if you’re home from Burning Man, just let us know you’re safe. We just want to know that you’re OK. [MUSIC PLAYING]