Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. This is the story. Each week
Speaker 1: on Wednesdays, we bring you an in depth interview with
Speaker 1: someone who has a front row seat to the most
Speaker 1: fascinating things happening in tech today. A conversation with Evan Ratliffe,
Speaker 1: an investigative journalist and podcast host. He's reported for two
Speaker 1: years on a fringe group of young tech people who
Speaker 1: became obsessed with the dangers of AI, and he believes
Speaker 1: that the best entry point to their story is November
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, when police in Sonoma County received a nine
Speaker 1: to one one call from a tranquil wilderness camp and
Speaker 1: a retreat center tucked into the redwoods of northern California.
Speaker 2: They had a protest, so that there are only four
Speaker 2: people really involved at this point.
Speaker 1: This is Evan Ratliffe.
Speaker 2: They showed up wearing black robes, which they would describe
Speaker 2: as sith robes. They wear a guy fowx masks. They
Speaker 2: parked their cars in a way that seemed to block
Speaker 2: the entrances and exits of this center called Westminster Woods,
Speaker 2: where the reunion was supposed to be held.
Speaker 1: Evan says that day the camp was hosting two groups
Speaker 1: of visitors. One was a gathering for a nonprofit called
Speaker 1: the Center for Applied Rationality or CFAR. The members of
Speaker 1: this group described themselves as rationalists, people who believe pure,
Speaker 1: unbiased rational thinking is not only possible, but the key
Speaker 1: to preventing artificial intelligence from destroying humanity. The protesters in
Speaker 1: the woods north of San Francisco had belonged to CFAR themselves,
Speaker 1: at least up until very recently.
Speaker 2: They were becoming disaffected with that Center for Applied Rationalities
Speaker 2: people called SEAFAR. They were going to present on some
Speaker 2: of their complaints. They were then disvi to the reunion
Speaker 2: because people were becoming concerned with some of their aggressiveness,
Speaker 2: and they brought these flyers which had these incredibly obscure
Speaker 2: complaints about this group that no one could understand who
Speaker 2: wasn't sort of like, directly involved in.
Speaker 1: This invitation or not. The former rationalists wanted to make
Speaker 1: their voices heard and their presence felt. But the problem
Speaker 1: was another group of visitors at the Westminster Woods.
Speaker 2: So in addition to the reunion that was supposed to
Speaker 2: be taking place, there was a bunch of kids who
Speaker 2: were there for a ropes course. And when these people
Speaker 2: in masks and robes showed up out of nowhere and
Speaker 2: blocked the interests in exosues. They called the police. The
Speaker 2: police believed that this could be like an active shooter
Speaker 2: type of situation, a hostage situation, so they came in
Speaker 2: with the SWAT team. They came in guns drawn, and
Speaker 2: they took down these four protesters, and then they had
Speaker 2: helicopters they had I mean, it was a very very
Speaker 2: dramatic situation, and that kind of set off a long
Speaker 2: string of these events.
Speaker 1: A long string of confounding increasingly violent events that would
Speaker 1: eventually capture the world's attention, at first in the tech
Speaker 1: community and then beyond. These protesters became known to the
Speaker 1: general public as the Zizians.
Speaker 2: Violence potentially linked to members of a Bay Area born
Speaker 2: cult like group known as the Zizians. The Zizians a
Speaker 2: radical death cult known as the Zizians. Six people have
Speaker 2: been killed in some way associated with this collection of people,
Speaker 2: and that includes the shooting of a Border Patrol agent
Speaker 2: in Vermont and the stabbing of a man in Vallejo
Speaker 2: who was once their landlord, the double murder of one
Speaker 2: of their parents. So this violence has sort of surrounded them,
Speaker 2: and it's not entirely clear.
Speaker 3: What it all adds up to.
Speaker 1: Complicating the picture is the media frenzy that's been surrounding
Speaker 1: this group. The Zizians have been described as a trans
Speaker 1: vegan cult or a trans death cult in headlines all
Speaker 1: over the world. But behind these culture war buzzwords and
Speaker 1: odd details about the group and its members, there's a
Speaker 1: larger story to tell about Silicon Valley, its culture, and
Speaker 1: what happens to a community that's grappling with the future
Speaker 1: of humanity head on. It's a community Evan Ratliffe knows
Speaker 1: well the essence of which he captured in his article
Speaker 1: for Wired titled the Delirious, Violent, Impossible True Story of
Speaker 1: the Zizians. Evan has been reporting on Silicon Valley for
Speaker 1: more than two decades, and he told us that his
Speaker 1: first exposure to the germ of this story was actually
Speaker 1: back when he was a researcher for Wide Magazine.
Speaker 2: I worked on this story called Why the Future Doesn't
Speaker 2: Need Us by Bill Joy, and it was a hugely
Speaker 2: influential and popular story. It was probably the most popular
Speaker 2: story that Wired Magazine had ever done to that date
Speaker 2: for sure, and.
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe since what year is this?
Speaker 2: This was two thousand. I believe the premise of the
Speaker 2: story was that humans were developing this technology that potentially
Speaker 2: could cause our own destruction, and one of the technologies
Speaker 2: was sort of robotics and artificial intelligence. And so at
Speaker 2: that time I started researching and paying attention to people
Speaker 2: who were having discussions around this issue.
Speaker 3: Could artificial intelligence develop in such.
Speaker 2: A way that it could eliminate the need for humans,
Speaker 2: It could accidentally destroy humans, it could intentionally and malevolently
Speaker 2: destroy humans. I was very interested in this topic, and
Speaker 2: some of the figures at that time ended up starting
Speaker 2: a kind of movement to understand and solve the problem
Speaker 2: of what they call the AI singularity and AI alignment.
Speaker 2: So the idea that AI could become super intelligent, and
Speaker 2: if it's going to become super intelligent, we have to
Speaker 2: align it. We have to make sure it's aligned with
Speaker 2: our human desires, otherwise it will leave us behind, intentionally
Speaker 2: or accidentally. So that's what became rationality, which is the
Speaker 2: ideology that the Zizians emerged from.
Speaker 1: What role does Yakowski playing all of this.
Speaker 2: Eliezer Judkowski is the founder of the organizations that have
Speaker 2: sort of most committed to these ideas. Now I want
Speaker 2: to be very careful to say like he not only
Speaker 2: does he have nothing to do with the Zizians per se,
Speaker 2: Like you know, I would say he's like anti zizion
Speaker 2: As everyone in the rationality community like they're afraid. They
Speaker 2: were afraid of these people, like they're truly afraid, literally
Speaker 2: afraid for their lives. They had to have extra security
Speaker 2: at their meetups because these people were at large throughout
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three. So Eliezer Judkowski
Speaker 2: started something called the Machine Intelligence Research Institute but let's
Speaker 2: just call it Miry and Mary was essentially developed to
Speaker 2: research the question of will AI eventually destroy us? And
Speaker 2: what can we do about it? How can we align
Speaker 2: AI and this? It kind of attracted very very smart
Speaker 2: people around it. It attracted a good bit of funding,
Speaker 2: including from Peter Teel, and then also they sort of
Speaker 2: developed this ideology called rationalism, which sort of spun out
Speaker 2: of it. And Eliezioedkowski was also involved in founding this,
Speaker 2: you know, Center for Applied Rationality, where their idea was, well,
Speaker 2: not only should we think about this question AI, we
Speaker 2: should also think about everything through this rational lens, this
Speaker 2: lens where we kind of strip away both emotion and
Speaker 2: societal pressure and we just try to think about things
Speaker 2: more logically and rationally. And that became almost like a
Speaker 2: movement in and of itself that attracted.
Speaker 3: People to the Bay Area.
Speaker 2: And so the philosophy rationalism has been influential in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2: But I think when it comes to like aligning AI,
Speaker 2: I would think even the people associated with MIRI and
Speaker 2: these organizations would say like they haven't been particularly effective,
Speaker 2: if at all.
Speaker 3: In creating alignment.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are some people inside Open AI and
Speaker 2: other companies that believe in this stuff, but a lot
Speaker 2: of times they're just resigning because they can't get any
Speaker 2: traction in the organization. The organization just wants to get
Speaker 2: bigger and frankly make more money.
Speaker 1: Who exactly are the Zizians and what can you tell
Speaker 1: us about zis Lesota.
Speaker 2: So zizz Lesda is you know, nominally the leader of
Speaker 2: the group, the Zizians. If you read their own writings,
Speaker 2: you know she says, I'm not the leader of the
Speaker 2: group like I lead without authority, is what she writes.
Speaker 2: But she she is a as many of the members are.
Speaker 2: She's a technically gifted person, she's trained as a computer
Speaker 2: engineer and then got into this world of rationalism and
Speaker 2: effect of altruism, which is the sort of putting your
Speaker 2: money towards sort of utilitarian causes where you're trying to
Speaker 2: benefit the most people.
Speaker 1: This was Sam bankman Fried's purported crusade exactly.
Speaker 2: Sam bankatried both made effective altruism more famous and also
Speaker 2: you know, caused it untold damage to its reputation. But
Speaker 2: I mean there were maybe half a dozen, maximum twelve
Speaker 2: people you could say were sort of like the Zizians.
Speaker 2: Now new people emerged early this year who no one
Speaker 2: had known about, including myself, So there could be more
Speaker 2: people who are influenced by this ideology or involved in
Speaker 2: some way that no one knows about. But for the
Speaker 2: time being, we sort of have a handle on the
Speaker 2: people who were involved. As far as the ideology, I
Speaker 2: spent a long time in the ideology. First of all,
Speaker 2: I don't think it's completely coherent. The things you could
Speaker 2: say clearly about the ideology is that there's a belief
Speaker 2: in veganism the value of all life or sentient life.
Speaker 2: And you know, one of the big complaints was that
Speaker 2: people who were focused on AI alignment were not focused
Speaker 2: on aligning the AI to be friendly towards humans and animals,
Speaker 2: just humans. And there's a belief, I think in sort
Speaker 2: of like the moral absolutism around those issues. So the
Speaker 2: people involved believe that they have the moral authority to
Speaker 2: sort of pursue those issues in the world. So that's
Speaker 2: what's so baffling about this situation is they have the ideology,
Speaker 2: they've written many hundreds of thousands of words of the ideology,
Speaker 2: but if you look at the people who have died,
Speaker 2: it's very hard to connect it to the ideology. They
Speaker 2: seem like random people connected to the group. And that's
Speaker 2: why I sort of go back to this sort of
Speaker 2: moral absolutism that you know, allegedly if they were involved
Speaker 2: in these violent acts. When you adopt a stance that
Speaker 2: all of humanity is at risk and you are the
Speaker 2: person who has the moral fortitude to solve that problem,
Speaker 2: it can open you up to all sorts of acts
Speaker 2: that you're kind of like allowed by your moral code
Speaker 2: to carry out.
Speaker 1: When we come back us how Zizla Sota's disappointment in
Speaker 1: the rationalist community led to the formation of the Zizians.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to a conversation with Evan Ratliffe about the Zizians,
Speaker 1: a confounding group of young tech people who got their
Speaker 1: start in the rationalist movement. Some media outlets have gone
Speaker 1: so far as to call the Zizians a cult, which
Speaker 1: would imply a level of recruitment on the part of
Speaker 1: Zizla Sota, the nominal leader of the group. But to Evan,
Speaker 1: the recruitment process seemed more like disenchantment.
Speaker 2: I think people just kind of gravitated. There were other
Speaker 2: disaffected people, some of whom were also trans women, and
Speaker 2: I think they just kind of gravitated towards this group.
Speaker 2: They felt a little outcast, and so they kind of
Speaker 2: ended up here. Now, I think many people in rationality
Speaker 2: would say like they all had a variety of potentially
Speaker 2: mental health conditions that were contributing to this. I think
Speaker 2: people in the group would say they were neurodiverse and
Speaker 2: that was something that maybe brought them together. Part of
Speaker 2: what I would say happened with the Zizians speculating, we
Speaker 2: can't say for sure, but if as a person who's
Speaker 2: consumed a lot of their writings is that they showed
Speaker 2: up and they ended up sort of like disappointed with
Speaker 2: the social situation, and also like what these people were
Speaker 2: doing to solve the problem that they're so religious about,
Speaker 2: so they were disaffected by that. So you have all
Speaker 2: of these people saying like AI is going to change
Speaker 2: the world, but the people who are trying to restrain
Speaker 2: AI are completely failing at doing that. So it's not
Speaker 2: terribly surprising that some people would come to join that,
Speaker 2: you know, if we call it like a religious religious
Speaker 2: idea and then say like, oh, you're not.
Speaker 3: None of you were actually living it, So we're going
Speaker 3: to go live it.
Speaker 2: We're going to be the real people who can really
Speaker 2: do what you're saying you're.
Speaker 1: Going to do.
Speaker 2: So it's a swirl. It's a swirl of different potential reasons.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't like a cult where someone's like actively
Speaker 2: going out and like trying to pull people in.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say.
Speaker 1: That swirl of disaffectation. The first kind of like dramatic
Speaker 1: manifestation of that was the scene you described with the
Speaker 1: guy Fawkes mask and syth cloaks.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean that was the place where they really
Speaker 2: broke from the organization, the Center for Applied Rationality, and
Speaker 2: also sort of demonstrated that they were up to something else.
Speaker 1: And after that, after the arrests, did that make this
Speaker 1: small group closer or did it push them apart? And
Speaker 1: what were the years between the arrests in twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: at the protest and the first murders that are allegedly
Speaker 1: connected to the group, what happened between those times.
Speaker 2: I think the arrests really did bring them together slash
Speaker 2: push them further outside of society. You know, they were
Speaker 2: facing these sort of ongoing legal charges. Then they were
Speaker 2: filing a federal lawsuit for abuse and torture by the police.
Speaker 2: And they also, you know, they had our hard time
Speaker 2: finding a place to live. You know, they had been
Speaker 2: they had tried living on boats in the Bay Area
Speaker 2: for a while and then that didn't work out, and
Speaker 2: so then they were moving from sort of airbnbs one
Speaker 2: to another. But you know, if you stayed at an
Speaker 2: Airbnb and you're wearing black sith robes all day and
Speaker 2: acting very strangely, like, pretty soon you're gonna kicked out
Speaker 2: of that Airbnb. So they ended up living on this
Speaker 2: property in Vallejo where they were sort of semi squatters
Speaker 2: with these trailers, and so I think partly it was
Speaker 2: getting arrested. And then partly it was this they were
Speaker 2: just kind of falling out of society more and more
Speaker 2: because the combination of their behavior and their reputation was
Speaker 2: causing them to not be able to find like a
Speaker 2: proper place to live, and then that was making the
Speaker 2: problem worse, and it sort of compounds itself.
Speaker 1: And how did the alleged Mudis begin.
Speaker 2: Well, the first incident of real violent was when they
Speaker 2: were living on this property in Vallejo and the landlord
Speaker 2: was in the process of trying to evict them. So
Speaker 2: basically the landlord had taken them on the property. Then
Speaker 2: during COVID they had stopped paying any rent. A lot
Speaker 2: of rent back rent had accrued, and then by twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two they were continue to not pay rent, and
Speaker 2: he went to the authorities.
Speaker 3: And was going to get them evicted.
Speaker 2: And then allegedly one of their number lured him to
Speaker 2: one of their trailers saying there was a water leak,
Speaker 2: and they started stabbing him with knives. One of them
Speaker 2: stabbed him with a samurai sword, and he had a gun.
Speaker 2: He pulled out the gun, he shot and killed one
Speaker 2: of them, and he survived that stabbing.
Speaker 3: He shot another one who survived.
Speaker 2: One of them died, so two of the members, two
Speaker 2: of the people associated with it, were arrested at that
Speaker 2: time and had been in jail ever since and have
Speaker 2: never gone to trial. And then he survived, only to
Speaker 2: later be murdered by another member of the group earlier
Speaker 2: this year.
Speaker 1: And one of the other things that comes across you
Speaker 1: reporting is that people affiliated with the group started to
Speaker 1: get very scared for their own lives because of Ziz,
Speaker 1: and also that Ziz was putting pressure on them to
Speaker 1: commit murders.
Speaker 2: Yes, there was a person named Michelle Zagko who was
Speaker 2: sort of loosely involved with this collection of people.
Speaker 3: Out in the Bay area.
Speaker 2: Then she moved to Vermont with a friend possibly kind
Speaker 2: of partner of hers, and then but she was in
Speaker 2: communication with Ziz and there and blogging about it, and
Speaker 2: they're both they're all they're always writing on Tumblr and blogging,
Speaker 2: and you know, a lot of this is public because
Speaker 2: they wrote about what was happening at the time, and
Speaker 2: Michelle wrote about how Ziz was saying that she should
Speaker 2: kill the person that she was with, that she was
Speaker 2: living with to prove her loyalty or to prove what
Speaker 2: kind of person she was, and they had this like
Speaker 2: back and forth about it, and if, of course, as
Speaker 2: an outsider, if you read this, you think, well, this
Speaker 2: is insane.
Speaker 3: These people have just.
Speaker 2: Lost their minds, like this, this is not real. But
Speaker 2: that you know, not that long after that, Michelle's Ashco's parents,
Speaker 2: Richard and Rita Zajko, were brutally murdered in their own
Speaker 2: home in Pennsylvania, and shortly after the murder, three people
Speaker 2: in the group, including ziz Lasota, the nominal leader, were
Speaker 2: detained in Pennsylvania. One of them was the daughter of
Speaker 2: the couple who had been murdered. It's a strange thing
Speaker 2: to follow, I guess, I would say, because you see
Speaker 2: intimations of violence and then suddenly there is real violence,
Speaker 2: and it's like not totally clear how they're exactly connected
Speaker 2: or why one may have allegedly led to the other.
Speaker 1: And the border patrol as what was that stand up?
Speaker 1: Do we know what the allegations are as to why
Speaker 1: that shooting could.
Speaker 2: The basic facts, according to prosecutors in the court documents
Speaker 2: so far, are that there were two people whose names
Speaker 2: are Ophelia Baucolt and Teresa Youngblud, who were in Vermont.
Speaker 2: They were walking around wearing all black, often wearing tactical
Speaker 2: gear and carrying guns or at least carrying a gun.
Speaker 2: So naturally someone at a hotel where they were staying
Speaker 2: just called it in to the police. The police and
Speaker 2: Homeland security agents started sort of monitoring them, following them around,
Speaker 2: and then eventually a border patrol agent pulled them over.
Speaker 2: And when they were pulled over, they just they came
Speaker 2: out firing and this one border Portroyjan was killed. It's
Speaker 2: not actually clear who fired the shot that killed the
Speaker 2: border Platajian. One of the two, Aphelia Alcoult, was also
Speaker 2: killed in the shootout and the other one survived. Teresa Youngblutt,
Speaker 2: so she is facing trial for potentially for the shooting
Speaker 2: of the border Portrayjan who tragically died.
Speaker 1: And Ophelia in Theresa. As far as we can define
Speaker 1: them Zizzians in so far as they follow the writings
Speaker 1: of Ziz.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean as loosely conceived Zizzians. They connected with Zizz.
Speaker 2: They were known to have stayed in a property in
Speaker 2: North Carolina prior to this incident, where Ziz also seemed
Speaker 2: to be staying, so they seemed to be connected to
Speaker 2: the group, but again, these are the two that no
Speaker 2: one knew for many years, including people in the rationalist
Speaker 2: community who knew them, had no idea that they were
Speaker 2: being influenced by these ideas of Zizilsoda, much less that
Speaker 2: they were like directly connected to people in the group.
Speaker 1: Coming up, what the Cizians can tell us about the
Speaker 1: current moment in Silicon Valley and tech existentialism stay with us,
Speaker 1: I guess going back to where we began and the
Speaker 1: kind of rationalists in the Bay Area. Grace Byron wrote
Speaker 1: in the Nation that the group is quote an offshoot
Speaker 1: of the tech adult libertarian politics of Silicon Valley. Has
Speaker 1: this group and his actions paused Silicon Valley libertarians ration
Speaker 1: is to kind of inspect their own beliefs and question
Speaker 1: how this level of extremism was able to emerge from
Speaker 1: that set of ideas, or is it mol being dismissed
Speaker 1: as a group of kind of fringe figures who say
Speaker 1: she goes to their minds.
Speaker 3: I think you see a bit of both.
Speaker 2: I think there are people who just say well, and
Speaker 2: any large group of people, there are some people who
Speaker 2: have mental health issues, and these people happen to have
Speaker 2: been very extreme versions of that On the other hand,
Speaker 2: one of the things that I admire about the best
Speaker 2: of the rationalists is that they're constantly self reflecting. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's partly what they do is they can't stop writing
Speaker 2: about their own philosophy and like how it's changing and
Speaker 2: what it means and different cases where it could be applied,
Speaker 2: and has this gone wrong or has that gone wrong?
Speaker 2: So I think you can find a lot of self
Speaker 2: reflection around the Zizians and sort of like, what is
Speaker 2: it about our philosophy that attracts this sort of person
Speaker 2: I mean, they're not the first extreme group to emerge
Speaker 2: out of the rationalists either. There have been a couple
Speaker 2: of other ones, not to the extent of violence, but
Speaker 2: you know, a couple of ones that people loosely.
Speaker 3: Describe as cults.
Speaker 2: So I think there has been some reflection on that. Now,
Speaker 2: whether or not that sort of filters into any change
Speaker 2: in their outlook in the world, I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: I think it might be.
Speaker 2: It's always time for a moment reflection when a lot
Speaker 2: of people get killed by people who are in your group,
Speaker 2: But I don't know if it's going to lead to
Speaker 2: sort of fundamental changes in how they view the world.
Speaker 1: And you've wrote that the Zizians are a culture wolf,
Speaker 1: funhouse mirat for all times. I guess, A, what do
Speaker 1: you mean by that? And B how did you deal
Speaker 1: with that challenge in your porting on them?
Speaker 2: What I meant was that, I mean, being for instance,
Speaker 2: pronominantly trans women in the group. You could see honestly, like,
Speaker 2: let's be clear, like the gleefulness with which the right
Speaker 2: wing media, for instance, embraced this story. Like I don't
Speaker 2: I can't think of another way to describe it except
Speaker 2: like borderline gleefold. The excitement around being able to call
Speaker 2: something a trans called just seeks just like the thrill.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't want to project onto them, but
Speaker 2: like if you read the stories, it's always sort of
Speaker 2: trans culled Trantifa. It's almost like they willed it into existence.
Speaker 2: They wanted there to be trans violence. Now that's fine,
Speaker 2: it's part of their story. They are trans women. But
Speaker 2: I think it's a mistake to choose any one lens
Speaker 2: and try to force that onto this story. So you know,
Speaker 2: part of the challenge that we face was even how
Speaker 2: do you describe people? How do you what names do
Speaker 2: you use? Because the court documents often use their given
Speaker 2: names that they were born with in one gender, but
Speaker 2: they've lived under different names, and so, you know, we
Speaker 2: tried to take the most thoughtful approach we could and
Speaker 2: tried not to layer on those sort of culture war
Speaker 2: tropes into the story and just of tell the story
Speaker 2: as it happened, describing the people as they were at
Speaker 2: the time, and you know, did our best at that.
Speaker 2: But I think it just it got loose. It became
Speaker 2: a tabloid story. It became a social media phenomenon for
Speaker 2: a while, and so you'll find everyone's approach, whether it's
Speaker 2: Antifa or trans issues or fascism or you know, you'll
Speaker 2: find them all kind of rolled into how these people
Speaker 2: are portrayed.
Speaker 1: You mentioned effect vultruism. If we talked about the rationalists,
Speaker 1: there's been some interesting reporting recently and the information about
Speaker 1: the kind of rise of Christianity in Sinicon Valley. Do
Speaker 1: you have a kind of broader thesis about what's going
Speaker 1: on with faith and tech.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I have a completely coherent thesis.
Speaker 2: I do think that AI scrambles your brain, like I think,
Speaker 2: if you think about it long enough, it scrambles your brain.
Speaker 3: A lot of people try not to pay.
Speaker 2: Attention to it that closely for that reason, because because
Speaker 2: it's easier to sort of say, like AI is going
Speaker 2: to hit a wall or it's all going to go away,
Speaker 2: or well, well I have a digital personal assistant and
Speaker 2: like whatever, it's fine. But I think there are these
Speaker 2: sort of like fundamental questions around what it means to
Speaker 2: be human and creativity and work like they're all wrapped
Speaker 2: up in this technology, and I think it can lead
Speaker 2: people to some new places. And so I think people
Speaker 2: who are really really facing up to what AI is
Speaker 2: and what it's does, it's not surprising to me that
Speaker 2: they might end up in an existential place where they're
Speaker 2: looking for something new, and that's something new might be
Speaker 2: AI domerism, or that something might be Christianity, it could
Speaker 2: be effect of altruism. Like I feel like it's natural
Speaker 2: that these new philosophies and religious ideas would be connected
Speaker 2: to this, because I think if you spend time thinking
Speaker 2: about it, it's hard to get your head around. I mean,
Speaker 2: I would say this is less like reported than my
Speaker 2: sort of personal belief that you know, the way the
Speaker 2: valley is so driven by the startup culture, and startup
Speaker 2: culture was fundamentally driven by getting huge amounts of VC
Speaker 2: investment if you can disrupting industries and then blowing up
Speaker 2: and then getting vastly wealthy wealth as the ultimate arbiter. Again,
Speaker 2: not surprising to me that many people would find that
Speaker 2: empty when they get to it, not least because like
Speaker 2: most of them never get wealthy, like most of them
Speaker 2: never kind of like reach that point in the startup culture,
Speaker 2: like they have failed startups, And so you have a
Speaker 2: lot of people who are kind of attracted to this
Speaker 2: because the technistry sells itself as world changing, and it
Speaker 2: is world changing. But then they either are doing startups
Speaker 2: that are relatively meaningless in the world but are meant
Speaker 2: to like blow up and make money, or they're working
Speaker 2: sort of like workaday in the tech industry, which they
Speaker 2: don't find particularly meaningful because they're tweaking tiny, tiny dials
Speaker 2: at a vast, vast empire like Google or Facebook, And
Speaker 2: so it seems like a natural environment for people to
Speaker 2: be looking for meaning that they're not finding in something
Speaker 2: that drew them there almost as if it was meaningful,
Speaker 2: and they're disaffected because they discover that it's not.
Speaker 1: Of course, the Zisian story is far from over earlier
Speaker 1: this month, five members of the group appainting courtrooms across
Speaker 1: the country from California to Maryland, and there are trials
Speaker 1: underways determine charges in two violent incidents, also involving cysians.
Speaker 1: Where do you see the story going next?
Speaker 2: Well, currently, there are a lot of people in custody.
Speaker 2: I mean basically everyone who is involved in the group
Speaker 2: is either in custody or dead. Now, some of those
Speaker 2: charges are not particularly serious. So, for instance, ziz Lasoda
Speaker 2: and Michelle's Agco and another person connected with the group
Speaker 2: are in cust in Maryland and they're facing gun charges
Speaker 2: from when the cops showed up and they were kind
Speaker 2: of living in these box trucks and they had guns.
Speaker 2: So they have gun charges and trespassing charges, but they're
Speaker 2: all misdemeanors. So I think the big question is going
Speaker 2: to be can the authorities pin any of the larger
Speaker 2: episodes of violence on these individuals, and if not, I
Speaker 2: can't see them staying in custody too long because again,
Speaker 2: the charge they're facing are not that serious. But I
Speaker 2: think right now it looks likely that many members of
Speaker 2: the group, of not all of them, will be in
Speaker 2: jail or prison for the foreseeable future, but there there
Speaker 2: are some trials coming up, and they could kind of
Speaker 2: go either way as to whether they could ever reconstitute
Speaker 2: as a group. That seems incredibly unlikely, but like, the
Speaker 2: philosophy's out there, so you know, it doesn't necessarily take
Speaker 2: them being anywhere for someone else to look at the
Speaker 2: philosophy and decide to act on it in some way,
Speaker 2: or if Ziz were to get out, to start communicating
Speaker 2: with and start the whole thing up again. So I
Speaker 2: think we're at a real inflection moment where the question
Speaker 2: is are these people for the large part, going to
Speaker 2: prison or is there some chance that they could get
Speaker 2: out and sort of start again.
Speaker 1: Evan Ratliff, thank you so much, my pleasure. This episode
Speaker 1: was produced by Eliza Dennis, Victoria Dominguez, and Adriana Tapia.
Speaker 1: It was executive produced by me Karen Price and Kate
Speaker 1: Osborne for Kneidiscope and Katrina Norvelle for iHeart Podcasts. Jack
Speaker 1: Instead mixed this episode and Kyle Murder Rodelphine Song join
Speaker 1: us on Friday for the Week in Tech. Kara and
Speaker 1: I will run through all the most important tech headlines,
Speaker 1: including some you may have missed, and please rate and
Speaker 1: review the show in Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and reach
Speaker 1: out to us over email at tech Stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com.