WEBVTT - Week in Tech: Why the Charlie Kirk Video is Everywhere 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:17.599 From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is tech stuff, I'm 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:18.560 as Voloscian and. 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:19.360 I'm care Price. 0:00:19.640 --> 0:00:23.680 Today we get into what the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:27.880 assassination tells us about the state of content moderation and 0:00:27.960 --> 0:00:30.880 also how teens in New York City are responding to 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:33.440 having their smartphones banned in schools. 0:00:34.080 --> 0:00:37.120 Then, on Chatting Me, a woman turns to chat GPT 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:39.720 to help her mom with a mysterious ailment. 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:45.000 Her life was very diminished because she couldn't walk upstairs, 0:00:45.000 --> 0:00:47.680 she was having really poor sleeps because the pain would 0:00:47.680 --> 0:00:49.960 wake her up in the night, and overall, she just 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:52.760 started to feel like she was really declining in her health. 0:00:52.800 --> 0:00:56.680 Overall, all of that on the Weekend Tech, It's Friday, 0:00:56.920 --> 0:01:03.000 September nineteenth. 0:01:03.080 --> 0:01:04.440 Hi Cara, Hi os. 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:08.040 So normally we start these episodes a bit more lighthearted, 0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:10.440 but of course, the major news of the last week 0:01:10.480 --> 0:01:14.040 has been anything but lighthearted with the assassination of the 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:16.479 right wing pundit and influencer Charlie Kirk. 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:19.360 Yeah, it seems kind of like the only news story 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:19.840 right now. 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:22.080 Yeah, and obviously it does have a lot of overlap 0:01:22.120 --> 0:01:26.759 with tech, especially social media. From the gaming references inscribed 0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:29.800 on the bullets to the Internet communities. The shooter was 0:01:29.880 --> 0:01:32.920 part of to the way Charlie Kirk himself sort of 0:01:32.920 --> 0:01:36.560 reshaped the way social media is used for political organizing. 0:01:36.920 --> 0:01:40.040 Yeah, and of course there's the countless memes and takes 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:42.200 following a major news event like this. 0:01:42.720 --> 0:01:44.640 Yeah. I was actually talking to a friend of mine 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:48.400 the other day about the video of the assassination, and 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:51.280 he said to me, you know, in the old days 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:54.240 on the Internet, I might have to go looking for 0:01:54.320 --> 0:01:59.080 this kind of horrific, very disturbing, almost real time content, 0:01:59.560 --> 0:02:02.880 But these days I have to basically do everything I 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:05.920 can to avoid seeing it. And that really stuck with me, 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:08.520 because in the past, you would have to go in 0:02:08.560 --> 0:02:12.240 search of this kind of confrontation with a video of 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:16.680 someone being murdered in plain sight, but now it's plastered 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:19.399 over every social media app. Over the last few months, 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:22.880 we've seen all kinds of stories reporting about how the 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:26.440 social media platforms have been pulling back on content moderation, 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:29.520 either because of the politics at the moment or simply 0:02:29.680 --> 0:02:30.680 to save costs. 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:33.239 Yeah. You know, I've also seen a bunch of stories 0:02:33.280 --> 0:02:37.800 about companies like TikTok and meta replacing human content moderators 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:40.720 with AI, which apparently has had mixed results. 0:02:41.000 --> 0:02:43.400 I'm going to put my hand up because on the 0:02:43.440 --> 0:02:46.000 face of it, I'm not that drawn to stories about 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:46.880 content moderation. 0:02:47.040 --> 0:02:48.840 You fight against them, Actually. 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:51.280 I fight against them. We get pitched it quite regularly 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:55.119 by our wonderful producers. The last time was when Facebook 0:02:55.160 --> 0:02:58.799 replaced their content moderation system largely with these things called 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:02.440 community notes, where the community itself flags if something it's 0:03:02.560 --> 0:03:07.160 misinformation or hateful, et cetera, etc. But this week is 0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:10.640 obviously something we couldn't avoid, and it feels to me 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:13.000 I almost feel a little bit embarrassed about not having 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:15.000 focus on this earlier, because it feels like one of 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:18.280 those frog in the pot moments where it's a little late. 0:03:18.160 --> 0:03:20.079 To jump out and you think we're boiling. 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:22.840 I think we're boiling, or perhaps even boiled. It was 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:24.840 a story and why that really brought it home to me. 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:28.360 With the headline Charlie Kirk was shot and killed in 0:03:28.360 --> 0:03:31.839 a post content moderation world, the wide article points out 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:34.200 that very few of the videos of the shooting that 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:37.480 are all over various social media have content warnings, and 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:40.480 actually a ton of them play automatically before viewers have 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:42.680 the chance to consent to what they're about to see. 0:03:42.880 --> 0:03:45.400 Yeah, auto play in this sense is not your friend, 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:49.920 and I think it probably accounts for the dissemination of 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:53.000 this video more so than just the average person looking 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:56.560 for it. And whenever a video like this, most recent 0:03:56.640 --> 0:03:59.840 Charlie Kirk killing video comes out, I think about the 0:04:00.240 --> 0:04:02.880 at which video is now disseminated and how ill prepared 0:04:02.920 --> 0:04:04.200 the Internet is to handle it. 0:04:04.600 --> 0:04:07.960 Yeah. Also, I mean shooting in four K from close up. 0:04:08.080 --> 0:04:10.960 I mean the horror of this video, at least in 0:04:11.000 --> 0:04:14.360 what I've read about it, is quite striking. Experts in 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:16.599 the wide piece who have been tracking the spread of 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:19.120 the videos online say that a lot of the platforms 0:04:19.160 --> 0:04:22.640 are actually failing to enforce their own content moderation rules, 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:25.239 but also that it's kind of a tricky situation because 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:29.120 the video falls in between quote graphic content, which is allowed, 0:04:29.200 --> 0:04:32.640 and quote glorified violence, which usually isn't right. 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:34.480 And then there's the fact that this is like a 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:37.919 major news event, which I'm sure makes it even more complicated. 0:04:38.240 --> 0:04:43.560 Definitely, it's also the culmination of some fairly major political 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:47.520 and philosophical changes to the way social media platforms are run. 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:50.680 Of course, we all remember when Elon Musk brought Twitter 0:04:50.680 --> 0:04:53.760 back in twenty twenty two. He loosened content restrictions pretty 0:04:53.839 --> 0:04:56.720 much immediately, and Bettie said this was in response to 0:04:56.720 --> 0:05:00.320 what he claimed was suppression of conservative leaning post hosts. 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:04.120 Then YouTube and Meta both followed suit. In twenty twenty three, 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:07.919 YouTube said that curbing misinformation could lead to quote the 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:12.360 unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the 0:05:12.480 --> 0:05:15.640 risk of violence or other real world harm. In twenty 0:05:15.680 --> 0:05:19.719 twenty five, Meta cited quote recent elections as a reason 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:23.600 to quote remove restrictions on topics like immigration and gender 0:05:23.920 --> 0:05:25.880 that are out of touch with mainstream discourse. 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:29.400 Yeah, and now the whole Internet is basically four chan basically. 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:32.760 I mean. The interesting thing, though, as Wide points out, 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:36.280 is that the more established platforms do still have real 0:05:36.360 --> 0:05:40.560 rules around content moderation, and in many cases the circulation 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:44.800 and distribution of the assassination footage violates those rules. But 0:05:44.880 --> 0:05:48.280 nonetheless the videos are getting millions and millions of views 0:05:48.360 --> 0:05:50.440 and are still up and circulating widely. 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:53.000 So what is your takeaway from all of this? 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:58.400 I mean, it's this kind of confection of corrosive and 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:05.560 divisive rhetoric online translating into offline, translating back into online. 0:06:06.040 --> 0:06:10.200 This kind of vicious circle or a buros of radicalization. 0:06:10.600 --> 0:06:14.560 And there's an expert quoted who'd observe people on x 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:18.640 commenting on the video of the Charlie Kirk assassination saying 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:22.040 that it heradicalized them. Now, it didn't say in which direction. 0:06:22.160 --> 0:06:24.440 We may be able to infer that it radicalize them 0:06:24.760 --> 0:06:27.320 against the left, but either way, I mean, this is 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:30.800 just another moment that I'm very concerned about, and I 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:34.920 think everyone is will further harden the lines and further 0:06:35.320 --> 0:06:39.400 feed this beast of online radicalization and real world violence. 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:43.200 You know, this story really encapsulates practically all of the 0:06:43.240 --> 0:06:46.680 harms that people fear that social media might unleash onto 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:48.919 the world. The story that I want to report on 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:52.719 today has to do with the effects of technology actually 0:06:52.800 --> 0:06:56.360 on our younger citizens and is a little more lighthearted. 0:06:56.520 --> 0:06:59.200 Have you heard about the cell phone band in New York? 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:01.200 A little bit, but tell me more so. 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:05.120 New York City public schools recently became the largest district 0:07:05.400 --> 0:07:08.080 in the United States to ban students from using cell 0:07:08.120 --> 0:07:10.320 phones during a school day. So this is a state 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:13.040 wide law, and it's something that's happening more and more 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:17.680 across the country. California and Louisiana also have restrictions, and 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:20.440 this week marks the second week since the band went 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:21.760 into effect in New York. 0:07:22.200 --> 0:07:24.600 I kind of can't believe this is happening. It feels 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:28.080 like the pipe dream of so many digital and social 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:31.720 media theorists being an actually in real life, how's it going? 0:07:31.880 --> 0:07:33.160 You know? When I saw it, I was like, is 0:07:33.200 --> 0:07:35.679 this for real? You know, like it feels that sort 0:07:35.680 --> 0:07:39.400 of unbelievable. I actually did some reporting on this. We 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:42.320 have a friend whose child, Ruby is a middle schooler 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:45.560 in Brooklyn, New York, and they were kind enough to 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:47.920 send us some voice memos about their experience with the 0:07:47.920 --> 0:07:50.120 phone band. So here are some of the things they 0:07:50.120 --> 0:07:51.840 say are tough about the phone ban. 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:55.280 The one good thing about on phones at school is 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:58.280 that we can't take videos of other people. I mean, 0:07:58.320 --> 0:08:02.040 sometimes we want to like record something within our phone 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:05.200 group that we think is funny, like recording one of 0:08:05.280 --> 0:08:09.600 us eating a ginormous hamburger or something funny like that. 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:13.320 Sometimes it's hard when it's like a fight or something, 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:14.880 it's really not good to have. 0:08:14.840 --> 0:08:15.440 A phone out. 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:18.680 I mean, not having a digital record of all of 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:22.280 the shenanigans at school is something I think many kids 0:08:22.320 --> 0:08:25.000 will be grateful for in future and parents are probably 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:28.760 grateful for today. But how does this actually work practicing? 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:31.320 How do you stop kids from using their phones at school? 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:35.000 Different schools are actually taking different approaches to the phone band. 0:08:35.240 --> 0:08:38.760 Most of them either confiscate students' phones at the beginning 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:40.800 of the day and put them in lockers or these 0:08:40.840 --> 0:08:44.920 magnetic pouches that have locks in them. But Ruby also 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:48.040 said that some kids and their parents just like literally 0:08:48.080 --> 0:08:49.959 don't care about the rules at all. 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:54.200 A lot of kids just don't give him their phones 0:08:54.240 --> 0:08:56.760 and they lie that they don't have a device, and 0:08:56.840 --> 0:09:00.160 their parents sign it because their parents don't really care, 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:02.360 and then they just have their phones out in launch. 0:09:02.720 --> 0:09:05.040 This probably would have been me to be honest. 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:06.760 Would your parents have signed the fake waiver that you 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:07.960 actually don't have a phone? 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:11.839 No, they were kind of rule followers, unfortunately, But I 0:09:11.840 --> 0:09:13.920 would have figured out a way to hack. That would 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:15.360 have been part of the fun of going to school. 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:17.800 There was this article that really caught my eye from 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:22.120 Gotham Mist, which has this amazing headline from burner phones 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:25.360 to decks of cards and YC. Teens are adjusting to 0:09:25.400 --> 0:09:28.760 the smartphone ban, and the reporters of this article talk 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:31.360 to a bunch of teenagers about how they're adapting to 0:09:31.400 --> 0:09:33.920 the ban, and a lot of these teenagers are embracing 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:37.680 their low tech school day. Now they're playing with Polaroid cameras, 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:40.920 which have made a huge comeback. And it's just interesting 0:09:41.000 --> 0:09:44.000 to me that teens have been forced into the dark 0:09:44.080 --> 0:09:46.400 and have found new light with things that we were 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:48.680 just doing twenty years ago. 0:09:48.960 --> 0:09:51.360 Yeah, I mean the twenty year ago equivalent of this. 0:09:51.440 --> 0:09:53.800 When I was a kid, my greatest pleasure was watching 0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:56.320 TV and playing with my PlayStation one. I lived in 0:09:56.320 --> 0:09:59.240 the countryside in England and we would have these blackouts 0:09:59.280 --> 0:10:01.400 or power out from time to time, I didn't know 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:04.200 once every six months, and my mom would bring out 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:06.280 the candles and then we'd play a board game or 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:09.040 play Uno or something which had this kind of sweet 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:11.760 nostalgic quality to it. At the same time, I was 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:13.920 very happy that we were plugged in most of the time. 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:15.079 I didn't have to do it more than a couple 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:15.760 of times a year. 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:17.920 And I think what got you into Oxford was how 0:10:17.920 --> 0:10:20.679 good you were at Uno? Had you been playing PlayStation 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:24.120 one that whole time? God knows, But in all seriousness, 0:10:24.160 --> 0:10:27.920 there does seem to be a sort of nostalgia among 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:31.200 gen z for the esthetics of really even the two thousands, 0:10:31.240 --> 0:10:33.680 not even so much the nineties, like the two thousands, 0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:35.760 which is so funny to me about having nostalgia for 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:38.280 a time where I was just a teenager. One student 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:40.560 quoted in the article said she's looking into whether the 0:10:40.600 --> 0:10:43.200 school would allow her to bring an MP three. 0:10:43.080 --> 0:10:46.559 Player otherwise known as an iPod iPod, And. 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:48.839 A teacher talked about how some of his students brought 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:52.240 in a transistor radio but they didn't know they needed 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:54.400 to extend the antenna, which he had to help him with. 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:56.760 I love that that is a true that is a 0:10:56.760 --> 0:10:59.080 true teachable moment because this is like almost like a 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:03.000 scene from a from like a feel good atis TV 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:06.439 show where the teacher help helps this year, no sun 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:11.800 you have to extend their antennae. Exactly beyond fueling the 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:15.800 demand for nostalgia tech, is the phone band really changing 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:17.440 much about the experience of being at school? 0:11:17.640 --> 0:11:20.880 So that same teacher who extended the antenna said that actually, 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:24.360 the lunch room is noticeably louder in a good way. 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:27.719 He said that previously the lunch room was muted, and 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:31.280 that this band has really lifted a pall. The teacher said, 0:11:31.280 --> 0:11:33.560 this is a huge difference from last year, when kids 0:11:33.559 --> 0:11:36.240 would spend twenty minutes in the bathroom checking their phone 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:38.880 and walk through the halls in silence with their heads down. 0:11:39.120 --> 0:11:40.960 I know this is true because it sounds like a 0:11:40.960 --> 0:11:42.319 description of me in my own house. 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:46.880 Unfortunately me too. Ruby mentioned the idea of getting your 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:48.760 parents to write letters saying you don't have a phone 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:50.840 in the first place. It's one kind of work around, 0:11:51.040 --> 0:11:52.960 but how compliant to the kids being what are the 0:11:53.000 --> 0:11:54.440 ways around this they're looking for. 0:11:54.480 --> 0:11:56.240 They're coming up with all kinds of ways. So the 0:11:56.280 --> 0:11:58.640 pouches that I told you about that are supposed to 0:11:58.679 --> 0:12:01.199 make phones inaccessible during the day, there's all of these 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:05.199 tiktoks now showing students breaking into them, and Ruby actually 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:08.280 says that trying to get them open has become a 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:12.800 common downtime activity for students. Kids also use their school 0:12:12.840 --> 0:12:16.200 issued laptops to send each other emails or to chat 0:12:16.240 --> 0:12:19.400 each other using Google docs like imagine being so desperate 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:23.160 that you're dming in Google docs. And of course, you know, 0:12:23.280 --> 0:12:25.680 kids still have access to their phones all the time 0:12:25.679 --> 0:12:27.840 that they're not in school, which is most of the day. 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:30.800 A couple of teachers in the article talked about chaotic 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:33.280 scenes at the end of the day when kids finally 0:12:33.320 --> 0:12:36.480 get their phones back, which made me laugh. But overall, 0:12:36.840 --> 0:12:39.679 the band seems to be going kind of well, and 0:12:39.760 --> 0:12:42.240 it may be something that becomes a standard for students 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:45.000 around the globe. You know, over half US states have 0:12:45.040 --> 0:12:47.480 at least a partial band in place, and there are 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:49.840 a ton of other countries that have student cell phone 0:12:49.880 --> 0:12:54.239 bands with varying degrees of strictness. Denmark, of course, Australia. 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:56.120 France has had one for a while but made it 0:12:56.160 --> 0:12:59.400 even more strict earlier this year, and China has had 0:12:59.440 --> 0:13:01.160 one since twenty twenty one. 0:13:01.480 --> 0:13:04.600 It's sort of hard to imagine why it took so long. 0:13:05.920 --> 0:13:07.720 Are there any people who are objecting to this? Apart 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:09.920 from obviously the students who want to be on their phones. 0:13:09.720 --> 0:13:13.200 All day, there are objectors. Not everybody is happy. The 0:13:13.240 --> 0:13:16.520 president of the National Parents Union actually wrote an op 0:13:16.679 --> 0:13:19.640 ed in USA today saying what we really need are 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:23.199 smarter rules around phone usage, and that treating all phone 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:26.000 uses a distraction can cause kids to miss out on 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:28.240 the ways phones can be helpful to students. 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:31.560 With all due respect to the president of the National Parents' Union, 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:34.440 you feel as a certain self selecting quality to that job. 0:13:36.720 --> 0:13:40.760 Is your job to play devil's advocate on every single issue. 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:43.760 That's right. She argues phones can keep kids safe during 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:46.800 emergencies and that we should be preparing them for adulthood 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:49.080 in the modern world by teaching them to have healthy 0:13:49.120 --> 0:13:52.040 relationships with their phones. And also, some parents don't like 0:13:52.080 --> 0:13:53.960 that they suddenly can't get a hold of their kids 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:54.880 during the school day. 0:13:55.280 --> 0:13:55.520 Yeah. 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:58.320 I mean also, as a parent of kids in school, 0:13:58.679 --> 0:14:03.559 the reality of emergency situations, violence, etc. Is also true. 0:14:03.600 --> 0:14:05.840 So I do understand why parents want to be in 0:14:05.840 --> 0:14:08.319 contact with their kids. But as always in life, you're 0:14:08.320 --> 0:14:10.439 weighing harms, right, and the harm of having your kid 0:14:10.480 --> 0:14:12.840 on their phone all the time at school seems to 0:14:12.840 --> 0:14:14.680 me is somebod who's not a parent to be quite 0:14:14.720 --> 0:14:16.920 significant and a good thing to mitigate. 0:14:17.280 --> 0:14:20.080 Yeah, you know, I think on the whole people really 0:14:20.200 --> 0:14:22.800 like the effects these bands are having, and not just 0:14:22.840 --> 0:14:25.360 in New York. I actually read this blog post that 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:28.720 aggregated a bunch of social media reactions from teachers in 0:14:28.800 --> 0:14:32.080 states with student phone bands across the country. One teacher 0:14:32.120 --> 0:14:34.440 was saying, has the solution really been this easy the 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:37.520 whole time? Teachers across the country are saying that libraries 0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:40.600 are busier, behavior issues are down, and that you know 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:43.640 this is anecdotal, but still. One teacher even wrote that 0:14:43.880 --> 0:14:46.080 kids are passing notes to each other in class instead 0:14:46.080 --> 0:14:48.600 of texting and called it quote beautiful. 0:14:49.840 --> 0:14:52.440 When I was in school, passing notes was quote against 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:55.400 the rules. But I guess punishment. I guess it's not 0:14:55.440 --> 0:15:02.360 just kids who are nostalgic. Teachers going to be nostalgic too. 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:07.680 After the break, Elon Musk is briefly supplanted as the 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:10.840 richest man in the world. A podcast company puts out 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:13.480 three thousand episodes a week with the help of AI, 0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:17.080 and British members of parliament get accused of using Chat 0:15:17.240 --> 0:15:32.280 to write their speeches. Stay with us, We're back and 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:34.360 we've got a few more headlines to you this week, and. 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:36.920 Then a story about how chat GPT helped a woman 0:15:37.080 --> 0:15:40.000 diagnose her mother's mysterious knee problem. 0:15:40.280 --> 0:15:44.480 But first, Kara, have you had a man named Larry Ellison. 0:15:44.280 --> 0:15:46.960 Owner of the island of Lenai I have. 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:49.880 That's his Awaiian reoubt. What else do you know about him? 0:15:50.120 --> 0:15:52.960 You know, he really burst into consciousness this year. He's 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:56.320 obviously the CEO of Oracle. He's been spending a bunch 0:15:56.360 --> 0:15:58.760 of time at the White House. We talked about him 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:02.000 announcing the five hundred billion dollars Stargate Data Center project 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:04.680 with Donald Trump just a few days after the inauguration. 0:16:05.200 --> 0:16:08.800 He also helped finance his son David's acquisition of Paramount, 0:16:09.120 --> 0:16:12.920 and apparently they're also looking at buying Warner Brothers Discovery. 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:15.200 I think the company is going to be called Para 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:17.520 Brothers Discover Warner. 0:16:17.920 --> 0:16:21.440 Twenty twenty five really has been the year of Larry Ellison, 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:24.800 which is impressive given he's eighty one years old. I 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:27.560 read a piece in Bloomberg about him that charts some 0:16:27.640 --> 0:16:31.720 of his enthusiasms. There is the private island, which you mentioned. 0:16:32.120 --> 0:16:34.560 He also flies a jet, of course. He once shot 0:16:34.640 --> 0:16:37.680 at his elbow in a high speed bicycle crash and 0:16:37.680 --> 0:16:41.000 punctured his lung body surfing. He also had a cameo 0:16:41.200 --> 0:16:44.600 in the Marvel movie Iron Man two and for one 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:49.640 brief glimmering moment. Last week, he became the world's richest man, 0:16:49.800 --> 0:16:54.080 overtaking Elon. Ellison's personal wealth peaked at three hundred and 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:57.360 ninety three billion dollars, just ahead of Elon at three 0:16:57.440 --> 0:16:59.200 hundred and eighty four billion dollars. 0:16:59.800 --> 0:17:02.040 How how did he overtake Elon? 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:05.719 Well, it all happened because last Tuesday, Oracle announced their 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:09.680 quarterly results and they surprised the market with extraordinary growth 0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:14.480 in spend on cloud computing services driven by AI demand 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:17.760 at other tech companies. Essentially, so they announced not one, 0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:21.840 not two, not three, but four multi billion dollar AI 0:17:21.960 --> 0:17:25.880 contracts for their cloud services with three different clients. One 0:17:25.880 --> 0:17:28.480 of those deals was with open Ai and was worth 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:32.920 three hundred billion dollars. So Oracle shares shot up by 0:17:32.920 --> 0:17:37.800 thirty six percent, and Larry Ellison is Oracle's largest shareholder, 0:17:38.119 --> 0:17:41.199 earning forty percent of the company. So the events of 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:44.840 last week shot his personal net worth up by one 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:46.080 hundred billion dollars. 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:49.240 I said that he fell back behind Elon, though he. 0:17:49.240 --> 0:17:52.159 Did fall back behind Elon, but I think they're they're close, 0:17:52.320 --> 0:17:56.320 although Elon's crown apparently is safe for now. Our friend 0:17:56.359 --> 0:17:58.959 Nick Thompson who's the CEO of The Atlantic, had an 0:17:59.000 --> 0:18:02.119 interesting take on the wider implications of this story. He 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:04.800 talked about how the fact that Oracle has not built 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:09.200 its own large language model makes it an attractive, non 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:13.320 competitive collaborator for a lot of other AI companies, and 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:16.200 so in a strange sense, Oracle's a kind of legacy 0:18:16.240 --> 0:18:19.200 player has been rewarded for the fact that it wasn't 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:22.080 at the cutting edge of the air revolution and therefore 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:25.760 is seen as a non threatening partner by other tech companies. 0:18:26.119 --> 0:18:29.439 There's actually more good news for Oracle investors. As of 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:32.400 the time of this recording, the US and China are 0:18:32.400 --> 0:18:35.320 expected to announce a deal for TikTok's operations in the 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:38.560 US to be taken over by Oracle, silver Lake and 0:18:38.600 --> 0:18:42.080 in recent Horowitz, with US investors holding about an eighty 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:46.120 percent stake and Chinese investors owning the rest. But there's 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:50.439 actually another AI boom a bruin, and this one is 0:18:50.480 --> 0:18:55.480 in the form of podcasts. I read this really crazy 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:58.720 article in the Hollywood Reporter recently about a new podcast 0:18:58.720 --> 0:19:02.160 company called in Inception Point Ai, which is a name 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:04.840 that was only possibly created by AI. 0:19:05.119 --> 0:19:07.040 Well, yeah, but I don't think the prompt was very 0:19:07.040 --> 0:19:09.560 good because it's not much of a name for podcast company. 0:19:09.600 --> 0:19:10.960 It's an inception. 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:12.880 Point as really it's really not, but I guess. 0:19:12.720 --> 0:19:13.920 A good name for an AI company. 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:15.480 It is a good name for an AI company, which 0:19:15.520 --> 0:19:19.119 this is. So. This podcast network has over five thousand 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:23.080 shows and they put out over three thousand episodes per 0:19:23.119 --> 0:19:26.520 week in the last two years. They claim to have 0:19:26.600 --> 0:19:29.960 ten million downloads. Inception Point is saying that their secret 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:32.639 is that they can make a podcast episode in about 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:36.360 an hour for one dollar or less, and they use 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:40.119 AI for everything, choosing episode topics based on Google and 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:43.879 social media trends and then releasing five different versions with 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:47.120 different SEO friendly titles to see which ones perform best. 0:19:47.640 --> 0:19:50.600 The ones that do well get scaled up, and the 0:19:50.640 --> 0:19:54.000 production process is largely automated, using one hundred and eighty 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:57.000 four custom AI agents to make episodes that are then 0:19:57.119 --> 0:20:01.160 basically just given quick QC quality ch and some sound 0:20:01.200 --> 0:20:02.560 design from a human producer. 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:05.760 I don't doubt that you can make an AI podcast 0:20:05.800 --> 0:20:09.200 episode for a dollar. I do wonder if a dollar 0:20:09.240 --> 0:20:11.640 will be enough to pay somebody to spend an hour 0:20:12.119 --> 0:20:14.600 listening to it, or perhaps the audience for these AI 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:16.400 podcasts is other AIS. 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:19.399 It just might be you know, I don't think people 0:20:19.520 --> 0:20:22.199 in the actual podcast industry are very thrilled, but the 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:25.679 inception points CEO Janine Wright, who actually used to be 0:20:26.119 --> 0:20:29.879 the CEO of the podcast company Wondery, insists that this 0:20:29.960 --> 0:20:32.639 is the future and this is my favorite part. She 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:35.960 says in the article, quote we believe that in the 0:20:36.040 --> 0:20:39.440 near future, half of the people on the planet will 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:42.560 be AI, and we are the company that's bringing those 0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:43.720 people to life. 0:20:43.880 --> 0:20:47.040 What a truly weird quote. When you're starting a new 0:20:47.080 --> 0:20:49.520 business or fundraising, you always need some kind of bold 0:20:49.640 --> 0:20:53.560 or provocative mission statement. But we believe that in future 0:20:53.640 --> 0:20:55.760