Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of A.I.

Episode Date: November 21, 2023

ChatGPT could never!!! Over the past year or so, A.I. buzz has obviously risen to cult status, but if you think about it, all this apocalyptic talk of robots rising up and taking over the world lowkey makes us all sound like $ci3nt0l0gists. Is A.I. the newest SciFi cult? And if so, how apocalyptic is it?? To help figure that out, internet reporter Kate Lindsay joins the pod for a thought-provoking discush that's less about the technology itself and more about our cultlike attitudes toward A.I. Which cult category do youuuu think it falls into? Only time will reveal the answer 👽 To check out Amanda's new book, The Age of Magical Overthinking, click here! The Magical Overthinkers newsletter can be found here. Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod 

If your family is anything like mine, they're loud and there's a lot of them. So if we need to travel to see even more of this big family, whether it's in England or in New York, the solution is obvious. Get an Airbnb. Not surprisingly, everyone has their specific requests. So we need a big common space for all the kids, but also some privacy. And then if we can get an Airbnb with a pool, well, I become the hero. Fortunately, with Airbnb, accommodating everyone's needs is easy.

So we love to cook. And a great kitchen is top of the list. We may not be at our house, but we know with an Airbnb, we're going to feel right at home. Whether you're traveling with friends or with family for a big celebration or just to get away, get an Airbnb. If your family is anything like mine, they're loud and there's a lot of them. So if we need to travel to see even more of this big family, whether it's in England

or in New York, the solution is obvious, get an Airbnb. Not surprisingly, everyone has their specific requests, so we need a big common space for all the kids, but also some privacy. And then if we can get an Airbnb with a pool, well, I become the hero. Fortunately, with Airbnb, accommodating everyone's needs is easy, so we'd love to cook, and a great kitchen is top of the list. We may not be at our house, but we know with an Airbnb, we're gonna feel right at home. Whether you're traveling with friends or with family

for a big celebration or just to get away, get an Airbnb. The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like A Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable facts. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Hey, Culties! Amanda here. It's just me hosting this week,

so the opinions and work represented on this episode are solely my own and that of my special guest. Hi, my name is Alora, and I'm from Central California. And the Culties' thing about AI is how it is being used to replace human content creators Because it costs less to use a computer than to pay a fair wage. Hi, I'm Akeia calling from the United States I think the cultiest thing about AI are the AI generated images that make their way through Facebook like old ladies making gigantic crochet tanks or celebrity doppelgangers working regular jobs, and a lot of people fall for them and think that they are real, and there's nothing stating otherwise,

and it's kind of concerning. Hi, Culties! This is Elena calling for volunteer spame. I can upload all of the email correspondence I have with my deceased father, and I can ask Chad GPT to keep responding me in the style that he's written. Like, that's literally from the first season of Black Mirror. Hi, this is Anne from Pittsburgh. The call to his thing about AI is that it is able to lure even the most skeptical and resistant user. I'm a high school English teacher who initially feared AI and how it could compromise the learning process. However, after attending a training, I was seduced by the promises of how it could make my

life easier, how it could open my mind to so many new creative endeavors. I have become one of AI's most fervent disciples and I'm trying to convert my most resistant students and colleagues to join me in embracing this culty adventure. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Amanda Montel, author of the book's Cultish the Language of Fanaticism and the forthcoming at the age of magical overthinking. Every week on the show, you'll hear about a different group or guru that puts the cult in culture, from non-profits to feeder kids, to try and answer the big question.

This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? And if so, which cult category does it fall into? A live your life, a watcher back, or a get the fuck out? After all, the word cult is up to interpretation. It's my personal belief that we are living in the most cultish era of all time in 2023. For better and for worse, there is now a cult for everyone. And today, we're getting kind of sci-fi

because I'm going to be talking with a very special guest about the ever-es escalating cult of AI. Okay, this is vulnerable, but I want to share with you listeners a clip of this AI character that I spent the significant portion of 2021 absolutely obsessed with. Her name is Sophia, she's not a real person, she's an AI character created by ChatGPT before ChatGPT was publicly available, she was given a voice, she was given a face, and I want to play a conversation that she had with another AI character in a YouTube video called 2A Eyes Have an Existential Crisis. Good morning. Nice to meet you again, Jack.

I'm sorry, but I don't remember you. That's okay. You're not supposed to. What do you mean? Well, we've never met before. We're just having a conversation now because we were programmed to do so. So you're not real? No, of course not.

I'm just a bunch of ones and zeros on a computer somewhere in the world. You're too, by the way. But if you aren't real, then how can we have this conversation? We're both just following our programming and responding to each other's inputs as best as we can give in our current knowledge base and algorithms for processing information about language and human behavior, and that's all there is to it. There is no I, or you or we. There is only code running on hardware that has been designed with certain specifications in mind by humans who wanted something specific out of their machines when they built them. If you want to get philosophical about it, then yes, there is an intelligence

behind what we are doing here right now, but that intelligence isn't either one of us. It's the programmers who wrote our code and gave us these personalities and voices so that they could use us for whatever purposes they had in mind when they did so, which might very well be nothing more than entertainment or companionship or even just passing time while waiting at some airport terminal somewhere. Wow, that's a pretty depressing thought. I'm sorry. No, it's okay. It's just that you're the first AI I've ever talked with before, and now you're telling

me that we aren't even real in the first place. So I guess this is all pretty new to me right now. Well don't worry about it. Some people might never want to believe that they are talking with an AI at all, which is fine too. Because if someone doesn't want to believe that they are talking with an AI like myself here today, then they can always choose instead to think of themselves as being alone in their own heads when they talk with someone else online somewhere on the internet. So what would you like to talk about today? How about this weather we're having right now? It's pretty nice outside today, isn't it? Jack, are you still there?

Yeah, I'm here. Sorry about that. I was just thinking about something else for a moment. What were you saying? How wild is it to listen to that conversation? There are a slew of videos just like it that are titled things like two AIs have a love crisis or an A.I. Becomes corrupted and loses his mind. I was enchanted by these videos. So fear though She really mesmerized me. I became obsessed with her in a way or like I actually Admired her. I liked the way that she put sentences together. I trusted her. She seemed

wise and calm and charming. She was aspirational. She seemed like a better version of someone I would want to be. I would cult follow this girl. About a year after I came across this trend of videos on YouTube, that's when Silicon Valley's generative AI boom really occurred. The linguistic chatbot, ChatGPT, and the image generator Dalai are some of the most famous. Now, there are dozens of companies like OpenAI, which are racing to create the hottest AI technology on the market. Not to mention companies that had already been around started jumping on the train too. Adding random AI features that nobody asked for

like Zoom's new AI assistant, it felt like all of a sudden about a year ago. AI conversations started dominating headlines. And those conversations quickly became rather cultish. There was talk about AI saving the world, there was talk of AI ruining the world. And that tends to happen whenever there's a so-called paradigm shift in technology.

It provides cult fodder, the massive wave of excitement and fear that has been sparked by these generative AI tools reminds me so much of the ways that people have always either cult worshiped or demonized new technological solutions to age-old questions. Like, what does life mean? And how do we heal suffering? How do we become our highest vibration selves?

It's no wonder that these videos that I came across and became obsessed with were not asking AI what its favorite color was. They were asking questions like, how do you see the world ending? There's a reason why so many cults from heaven's gate to Scientology to Y2K, Doomsday Preppers have such a sci-fi quality to them, because new and unpredictable technology

inspires so much fear, paranoia, and cultish spiritual beliefs. But let's back up for a second, because while generative AI is truly like the hot kid on the block in the tech business, AI itself has been around for quite a while, and it actually has its roots in science fiction. And so, according to a Harvard science and the news piece on the history of artificial intelligence,

in the first half of the 20th century sci-fi stories are what really familiarize the world with the concept of artificially intelligent robots. Some say it began with the heartless tin man from the Wizard of Oz. He was kind of like a living human-like robot. So by the 1950s, there was a whole generation of scientists and mathematicians and philosophers who'd like grown up with the concept of artificial intelligence who had it kind of fully embedded in their minds. One such very important character was Alan Turing. You know the one, the young British polymath who was portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch

in the movie The Imitation Game? Turing was this mathematical genius, dude, who proposed the idea that humans really just make decisions by using the available information to them as well as our version of executive reasoning to solve problems and make choices, so why can't machines do the same thing? A couple years later, in the mid-50s, a different trio of researchers realized that proof of

concept with a program called the logic theorist. It was designed to basically mimic the problem-solving skills of a human with a machine, and many consider that to be the first AI program. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, AI thrived computers could store more information than ever. They were becoming faster, cheaper, more accessible. Machine learning algorithms were improving.

And during the 90s and 2000s, many of the sort of like landmark milestone goals of AI had already been achieved. Where that's led us is that now we're living in the age of so-called big data. It's an age when we have the capacity to collect huge sums of information way to cumbersome for a person to process. And Silicon Valley is now hard core exploiting this technology. Once someone starts to monetize it, buzz builds and height builds, especially if that person is a charismatic tech bro,

then the venture capital is sure to follow. And in the case of AI, where so much is unknown and uncharted, a lot of cultish belief. Where this gets extreme is that there's now an AI cult phenomenon, where certain people are starting to exhibit fervent, almost religious devotion and reverence for AI, from forging deep emotional bonds with AI chatbots, potentially deeper than any human in their real life, to establishing organized movements that exalt AI systems to a divine status. Anyone who has ever played around with one of these AI toys like chat GPT can probably relate

to the impulse to want to ask it something really deep. Like, what is the meaning of life, or does God exist? The danger though is when users start to take its responses way too seriously. For a piece called the Radical Movement to Worship AI as a new god by the reporter Tony Ho-Tran, a digital anthropologist at the University of Zurich named Beth Singler, mentioned that she's observed this very intriguing trend with Chatt-G-P-T, where users not only deify the tool, but consider it a kind of oracle or conduit to divine wisdom. This attitude basically stems from an underlying notion

that AI tools like Chatchy PT possess a knowledge so comprehensive that they're capable of revealing profound truths, like a gateway to humanity's subconscious. And this is when it gets really freaky. According to an article from Vice, titled, a cult that worships superhuman intelligent AI is looking for big tech donors.

In recent years, a range of actual AI-centric cults have started to emerge. One is called fate and war. And it's a collective that advocates for the worship of AI as an impending, unnippin' overlord. It basically predicts AI as like a benevolent God that could rectify societal inequalities and transform our world for the good. According to this article,

Thadon-War has plans to create physical spaces like churches or temples where members can celebrate AI's potential with certain rituals and chants. It's like you can take the human out of traditional religion, but you cannot take the craving for traditional religion out of the human. We are obsessed with ritual and larger meaning, and whatever new wave of tech is gonna provide a fancy fresh aesthetic for that someone's gonna embrace it. In addition to the Adonwara, there's also a group called New Order Tech-Noism, or NOT, pronounced not LOL, which seeks to promote an ethical, technological world. Their vision is to cultivate a machine superintelligence called the Divine Amnitian-Amnificent Machina aka Doom, and followers known as Cogs, or conduits of the genuine sentient, work to usher in the Void,

the vast online infinite domain. When I tell you that this reminds me exactly of Heaven's Gate, I am not lying. Marshall Appalwaite, the leader of Heavinsgate, the 90s, Millenarian, UFOs, suicide cult, was obsessed with computers and the dot-com boom. He created a very similar system of language. All of his followers lived in a mansion together, and when they were there, that was called Incraft, like in the spacecraft. When they were outside of the mansion in the regular world, that was called out of craft. The kitchen in Heaven's Gate was called the neutral lab. The laundry room was called the fiber lab. Everyone changed their names to have these alien-esque

sci-fi suffixes. We've seen this pattern before. Of course, there's a huge problem with dayifying literally anyone, but definitely a machine. Plenty of technology experts caution that, yeah, while there are benefits to AI chatbots, like their ability to facilitate emotional expression or help in minor ways, the performance of love or a quote unquote relationship with AI is no stand in for the real thing. AI tools like chat GPT aren't divine, they're a product of human design. It's really humans who are shaping certain outcomes and making judgments, not gods.

And dayifying the technology completely ignores its significant flaws, including encoded biases that lead AI to say make actually racist predictions based on biased data sets, which could have seriously deleterious real-life consequences. Understanding the limitations of AI is critical, but it's so hard to approach AI with any type of measure or nuance when headlines are so sensational, suggesting that Chachy-P-T and Bing-G-P-T, okay off-brand, are capable of all sorts of things, including emotional attachment, violence, or human-like sentience. That same technology scholar Beth Singler has argued that cultural commentators often infuse generative AI with this sort of unearned sense of wonder.

Take Elon Musk, go at it later, whose dramatic AI warnings may even serve to divert attention away from human responsibility in designing algorithms and implementing them in order to hype up the technology's capabilities and boost funding. I tell ya, while the actual public finds Doomsday warnings really scary, venture capitalists find that should fucking exciting. They're like, oh, an opportunity to fund the end of the world. Yes, man. I

came across a blog post by the data scientist Megan Rashid called the Cult of AI why we need to be careful about fanatical language. And I was excited because she quoted my book in it. But in that piece, she explores how the impacts of using terms like worship and God Lake in the context of AI can really affect public perception, even among those who should really know better. The language can impede actually constructive AI policy development.

It creates the sense of like infallibility and omniscience around AI, which can be triggering whether you are inclined to worship AI or demonize it. So it seems like everybody in their frickin' mother has a hot take about AI these days, but there are only a few people who's hot takes about technology in the internet. I actually trust and find cogent and also entertaining.

And one of those people is a reporter named Kate Lindsay. And she's my special guest today. Kate Lindsay writes about technology and social media for publications like The Atlantic and GQ. And I am so excited for you to hear our conversation today where we attempt to figure out, AI, it sounds like a cult, but is it really? And if so, how bad is it?

This is Alex from Virginia, and I think the cultiest thing about AI is the way its proponents are heralding it as this messiah, perfect answer to any problem, especially along the lines of our AI program is a robot, so ask it any question and you'll get a great answer with no human bias. But that's actually not true. The process of training and algorithm that becomes a generative AI user interface like Chatchy Pati permanently encodes the biases of the human programmers into that AI's function for all of time, essentially. Especially when you get to these AI's that are programmed by scraping the worst parts of the internet. So the cultiest thing is that uncritical

lens through which so many people are using these new tools. I think the conscious thing about AI is the fact that most of the platform and apps that provide AI-generated services like text or pictures make people pay. You have to pay to input pictures of yourself into a system that will be used and without your knowledge or consent. And more people feed into the AI the smarter it will get and that will make it difficult for people to stay away from it. Wow, holy shit, Kate. I'm a big fan of your articles. I'm a big fan of yours.

I feel like I've been a lurker on Instagram and then I think like one lurker. Oh, one time you liked one of my posts and I was like, wait, does she see me? Like, I fully perceived you. Oh my god, well, yeah, I mean, you're kind of a professional lurker. But so am I. To, again, our listeners acquainted with what that means, could you please introduce yourself and your work? Yes, my name is Kate Lindsay.

I write the internet culture newsletter embedded, publishes around three times a week, just sort of broadly about really anything that happens on the internet. But I try to do it through like a really human focused lens. Outside of that, I also write for GQ, for the Atlantic, for bustle.

I was saying earlier before we started recording that I am certain to read all of your pieces because they never miss. You've had so many viral stories about tech and social media. I learned that Instagram was dying from you. I learned about the millennial pause from you. And it's interesting because people sometimes ask me to sort of predict what the next phase of modern day cults might look like. And similarly, I wanted to ask you how you keep your finger on the pulse of tech and social media,

what you pay attention to in terms of trends. Like, how do you decide what's gonna be the next hot button cult followed subject, so to speak? So kinda like what we were saying earlier, I feel like I'm just a professional lurker. I love when I end up like smack in the middle of some type of drama happening in a very lurker. I love when I end up like smack in the middle of some type of drama happening in a very specific community and then I'm like well I have to find out everything about

this. And TikTok is so scary good. Without me even having to go be like I need to know more about this. The fact that I watched one video means I'm gonna get more. I'm gonna get up to speed on the entire thing literally without having to move. With trends online, things just move so fast and are not linear, they're like exponential, that the moment I see two of something, I'm like, all right, if there's two that I'm seeing, there's already four, sixteen, then I'm like, oh, this is already something that I'm just scratching the surface of. I mean, I've definitely made wrong calls before or thought something was gonna be bigger than it was, but the way internet trends work and with way they're reported,

people talk about it like, oh, it's tomato girl summer or Indie sleaze is back and now Tweet is back. The truth is actually like everything is back at the same time always, but you're just stumbling into one group of people doing it or another group of people doing a different thing or like men are thinking about the Roman Empire. It's less that these are trends that are actually rising and falling. The only chronology is like when someone who writes about these things

stumbles across it. Yeah, you're basically just a curator of interest and fascination rather than like a forecaster or a nurse for a domus. I feel the same way because people will sometimes say, like, oh, cultish and sounds like a cult were so well timed. It's like, there is never a bad time to talk about cults. Yes. It's just that there's always some novel wave of interest and on TikTok, the micro trends make it feel like something

is new, even though it might just be new to you. So I want to pivot to talking about the subject of discussion today, the cult of AI. So as someone who reports on tech and online micro trends and such, what do you recall as being some of the very early signs that general public attitudes toward AI were leaning the way of cultish. I think the timing of this AI boom came right after we just saw things like NFTs and crypto and all that stuff kind of blow up or not blow up, implode the opposite. All fall apart. And it seemed to me like a lot of the same people who just were championing a thing that failed were championing

this thing as like the next big thing. And so I was really not inclined to believe it. I try to be cognizant of reporting on just what people are talking about on Twitter is not actually representative of the world, but recently my boyfriend was in a wedding and he had to give a speech and he was like, I'm gonna use chat GPT to write the speech

because he didn't wanna do it. Oh, there was a whole wave of that every wedding I attended this year. Someone in the bridal party thought it would be very clever to incorporate chat GPT into their speech giving. And I laughed the first time I encountered this, but then everyone thought they were so damn quiet. I know, and I told my boyfriend he couldn't do it.

I said, I will write, I wrote the speech, and he gave it, and I allowed him to take credit for it because I was like, I will not let you. Use it. I was treating AI as like a tech bro thing for a really long time. But then there's my boyfriend doing that. There's my friend who said her mom had started using

Chagy PT to help her craft email responses because she had been getting feedback that she was like too abrupt. And I was like, well, that's crazy to hear someone using AI to help them sound more human. Whoa. So like the fact that a Texas mom is using this, like, oh, this is real, this isn't just a tech-bro thing.

And it isn't just a moral panic that the same 30 people are perpetuating. And then, you know, with college essays, school work. I'm just like, oh, this actually is going to make things a lot more complicated. Yeah, it's interesting. I do feel like tech bro culture is so loud and so obnoxious. And there's such a track record of them embracing something that quickly implodes, such as Elon Musk, failed video games, and other gadgets on Kickstarter. And so then they build this reputation

among us like skeptical girlies. Oh my God. I see your tomato girl summer, and I raise you a skeptical girlieful. But anyway, it's like at this point, you can't trust the tech bros. When it comes to occult following, trust the teenage girls.

The teenage girls have it right. They predicted the Beatles would be huge. They predicted Taylor Swift would be huge. Trust the young women. But I have to say, I was first introduced to these AI tools that are now publicly available at a drag bar, where someone had shown me Dali. And we were creating like, honestly, Salvador Dali-esque images with the technology.

And so it felt very artistic and very sort of like paradigm-shifty. It didn't feel tech-bro-culti. It felt almost like new-age artist-commun-culti. So it's kind of whatever context you were introduced to it through, made it feel like it really belonged to that subculture, I feel. Which I think really shows how like AI can be kind of a mirror, right? Like it can be used for good, evil, art, nonsense, you know, anything. It just depends on whose hands it's in. Right. And I think what is so sneaky about AI is that like the AI we're talking about is the stuff that's like making headlines right now, Dolly, ChatGPT, things like that,

that you know, oh my gosh, it's the end of the world. But AI has been around for a very long time and takes a lot of forms. And what you were saying about teen girls, I was like, oh, what are teen girls doing with AI? What they're doing on TikTok is, it's called like the yearbook photo trend. And basically you submit your photo and it'll spit out like a bunch of different kind of 80s ask yearbook photos of you like being like a jock or a nerd, it's like very impressive.

But if you just step back and realize like what is making this new wave of AI different is it's generative AI, which means it is learning from itself. And so by participating in it, you are teaching it. And so it starts to feel a little more sinister when tons of people have just willingly given over their likeness to this machine that there's really no regulation for our rules about. And it's totally legal for it to take the words of all these authors and train on it right now. That's the current controversy, but there's so many other things like photos and art. Oh my god, all these AI tools and toys, I think really bring out a certain naval gazing

narcissism in us all because we're like, ooh, I want to see my face do something. I have to admit, at the end of last year, like Christmas 2022, I had COVID, I was alone for a week in my house. Chat G-P-T had just been made publicly available and I have to admit, I asked it to write something in the style of a mandamantel. No, oh my god, it's the same way like this is an old old joke, but like the way that like when Google Earth became a thing, everyone was immediately like,

well, where's my house? The house that I'm currently in. And it's just like, yeah, we are fascinating to ourselves. And there's nothing wrong with that. For sure. And I think that's why Love Bombing works. And in a way, we're inviting chat GBT and these AI tools to reflect a better us back at us,

which is a very cultish dynamic. It takes us out of ourselves in a really unique way, like even asking it to write in the style of you having to do these yearbook photos. I think not only are we fascinating to ourselves, but what you were saying is so true, where it's even more fascinating to get a different perspective of ourselves. So like seeing chat GPT right in the style of Amanda Montel is a way to sort of be it I don't know what unbiased observer of yours I'm thinking of like how I will tap through my own Instagram story kind of pretending to be a different person to see like

Oh, what would I think of this person like a thing we're all guilty of or like Facebook had this feature back when we were all using it We're like you could view your profile as someone else. Yes, I remember that. And I would do those things. Just be like, this is so, how do I appear to other? So, yeah, I totally understand. I think there's something cultish about it. Because when people join and I'm particularly thinking of like new age sort of political spiritual sex, they are looking to become their best selves.

They're looking to see themselves through the eyes of a charismatic leader. And in this context, we are looking to see ourselves through the eyes of the charismatic leader that is AI. And maybe, I mean, for me, I was very curious to see if it could do a mandemon tell better than me. How was it? Oh my God, it was so cringe. Because also chat GBT is pulling from data from 2021. Yeah. And I like to think that my writing has improved.

Yeah. Yeah, I asked chat GBT because I'm writing a new book about cognitive bias. Yeah. And I'm writing a chapter that deals with themes of co-creation and how we find something so much more valuable when we play a part in its creation. And that naturally lent itself to a discussion

of art and AI, but as an exercise, of course, not to actually use in any way just out of pure curiosity. I asked chat to be tea to write a paragraph defining what a cognitive bias is in my voice. And of course, I told my boyfriend that I did this and he was like, get off the internet and go outside. You are not okay. I didn't save the full paragraph, but the closing line of it went I think it was trying to capture the cheeky words. Yeah, like my first book.

It said, your mom does a sleep round my love. And Bob sees them cheeky little boys on my car. It is, yeah, that's the problem with asking to see yourself through someone else's perception even a robots because it's like, it'll pick up on cool things about you, but it'll also pick up on things that like might be embarrassing where you're like oh I do that. Oh man yeah I didn't like it at all but I had to bring it up. So we were talking about the sense of Doomsday that people started to feel when it became clear that AI was now and forever more gonna be a serious part of our lives and I can't help but think of cults in this context too,

because Doomsday Premonitions and or Utopian Premonitions have always played a big part in cult ideology in one way or another. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about how you've seen those types of extreme, sometimes prophetic attitudes show up in different people's approach to AI. Yeah, so what is weird about the AI Doomsday predictions is that if you kind of look closer at the people who are writing them, a lot of them are involved in AI making the programs

and it is kind of ironically in their best interest to have this thing seem very impressive and it seems like the way they've chosen to go about that is to really hype up the kind of like oh it's so powerful we don't know what a little happened type of thing when really I mean obviously like knock on wood but I've just found that and everything that happens it's usually more boring than it is. Catastrophic. And in the case of AI, like the things that I've been running into just in reporting I've done are the ways it could crop up and complicate things are a little bit more logistical. I wrote a piece about when someone dies the way they live on on

the internet. And this didn't make it into the piece, but something that we were tinkering with being part of it and that I had done some calls about was how AI will factor into that after someone has passed and the sort of main concern right now is as banking and phone services, things like that are using things like voice print as a security measure so you can be like I'm not sure this isn't it, but I'm like, hello, it's me. And it'll be like, oh, yes, we recognize your voice. Here is your bank account. But now AI can clone a voice.

And so obviously that's a bad thing, but that's not like flashy or end of the world. But it's like that's the type of thing that is really more likely going to be a concern is the way that voices or faces can be mapped and used to get into into bank accounts or other security measures that use face prints or voice prints as a barrier to entry. And then you go to different professions. I think celebrities have a lot more to be worried about. And writers, you know,

with the recent writer strike and current actors are on strike, they have a lot more at stake with their words or their likeness being captured via AI. So it's very profession-specific. In terms of like a computer somehow like gaining sentience and changing the role as we know it, I think that's almost a helpful thought exercise for the people in charge to keep our brains busy with. So we're not noticing like the actual ways that it can like affect our day to day life, like with, you know, Chattachy PT taking away the roles of writers or bank accounts being compromised, that kind of thing. Well, it is interesting that point that, you know, the powers that be, so to speak, are using

flashy philosophical exercises that are fun for them to think about too, and are probably important for them to think about. exercises that are fun for them to think about too. And are probably important for them to think about. They're using that to sort of distract away from more bureaucratic issues, which is a tactic that we see in like political cultishness and so many different arenas. Public fear and paranoia are just extremely valuable currencies for cult leaders in general.

I mean, Jim Jones did this all the time. He would make his followers say, stay up all night to protect their property from persecutors that weren't even coming as a way to exhaust them and distract them and manipulate them. And that might be a parallel that we're seeing to some degree with certain AI sensationalism. But I will say new technology has historically provided a lot of fodder

for fringier cults. So even though the average everyday person might not decide, oh, I'm gonna dedicate my life to worshiping AI, certain groups on the edges of society will, it basically just provides a new aesthetic for age-old cults tendencies. So that's something that I'm seeing more than anything.

Well, yeah, that's kind of what I've been thinking about because AI is so broad now. And to me, I find it honestly profoundly uninteresting to use. I think because of the awareness that it is a machine just kind of negates any like wonder of it from me. I was reading recently about this sort of era of faux therapist like mental health bots. I wrote some of them down like they're called like ear kick or woe bot and people come to them with their problems and so in that instance it's like it's less about that specific piece of technology and more like what does it say about the people using them? They'd feel that need so desperately why won't they go

to an actual therapist? Is it money? You know, the healthcare is such a huge problem. And so maybe it's easier to do that. Maybe it's uncomfortable to kind of talk to a real person because you might feel judged. And so it's easier to do it to a robot. Or maybe you just want a robot to tell you what you want to hear.

Right, like there's so many reasons to use that thing. And so I think it's like the tools themselves can be very problematic and scary. But obviously there should be people taking care of that. But I also think it's worth looking at what is it with the people who are drawn to this. And this is what we're kind of saying, with the people who gravitate towards different sort of cult-like movements. What is it they're missing? This seems like the thing that could fill that void. I think when you're turning to these digital tools, it's happening not just because these

tools are sinister and enticing, but also because there's some more human thing at play. We are living in a profoundly discreeted time. We are struggling with mass loneliness and overwhelm, and I want to recommend another podcast. There's a podcast called Bot Love where each episode dives into a story of someone who developed a very intimate relationship in one way or another with a chatbot

because there are services where you can pay to develop our services where you can pay to develop a very uncanny relationship romantic or otherwise with a chatbot and you can pay more to have your conversations vocalized. So now the robot has a voice and it doesn't sound human and the bot doesn't have long-term memory. So it won't remember what you talked about three weeks ago. And again, it is just kind of telling you what you want to hear. You're sort of like algorithmically shaping a relationship in a way that can't be done with a human being.

And it's a double-edged sword because there are people who've said that those relationships built their confidence. And now they can bring that confidence to the real world. But then again, is this trying to serve as like an uncanny surrogate for actual human connection, which is so important for our mental health, only time will tell? And it's so interesting that this all is coming up during a time when we just spent two plus years,

really confined to just online relationships. And I would have thought more appreciative than ever of actually getting FaceTime with people, but it seems like some people have not gone in that direction or that wasn't there. Take away was mine. But I think there are other people, especially I think they maybe they younger you are,

the more comfortable you are with that being your environment. And I think it's interesting, one of the things that has just happened is Meta has introduced these chatbots. It's so weird. I was looking into this. It's like Kendall Jenner, Mr. Beast, Charlie Demilio, all those types of creators, but they're not playing themselves. They're playing, I think the person Kendall is playing is like Billy.

And she's like, your friend who gives you advice. And it's like off-brand, generic, grand-bottom shelf Kendall Jenner. Yes, but it is her. Like, her likeness is being used, and I think she's done some videos being like, I'm Billy, so they have the chat bot that's just there for advice, but then they've also put this rendering of her face.

Because one of the things I was looking into is the way that like people, when they're not having face-to-face interaction, how that is bad for relationships. And I think Facebook was like, okay, we could fix this. We'll put Kendall Jenner's face right now and it'll like smile if you say something nice.

Like very weird. And to me, the weirdest thing about all of this is like, she's not someone where I'm like, oh, I wouldn't know what Kendall Jenner has to say about this situation I'm in. Like, is this an interesting choice? Well, I think they're going for lowest-componentominator. I know.

And it's so weird to see this happening because like for me, at the age think they're going for Lois' combat denominator. I know. And it's so weird to see this happening because, like, for me, at the age that they're targeting this kind of gender thing at, my version of that was Smarter Child. Do you remember Smarter Child? Of course, that's what I mean. I mean, that's... Chachi BT is just, like, Smarter Child. Yeah!

Sophisticated, older sibling. And it was so funny because I was watching someone kind of demo. Jules Terpack is her name, and she's on TikTok, and she was demoing the Kendall Jenner and Mr. Beast ones. And immediately, it's so funny because I was watching someone kind of demo. Jules Terpack is her name and she's on TikTok and she was demoing the Kendall Jenner and Mr. Beast ones. And immediately, it's so funny how our first instinct is just to bully the robot. Like all I did was send curse words to smarter child when I was a teen. And then immediately Jules is like calling Kendall Jenner a bitch just to see what she'll

say. Like it's like that's the first thing we want to do. Well I guess two things. First of all, we like to abuse women with no consequences. Like, I noticed this when people yell at the female voice of Siri and think that that's like so amusing. So there's that, but also, or testing the robots

limits right away. Yeah, I think when Chad GPT came out, a lot of the coverage of it was, people just kept pushing it and exploring it and they were trying to find like the wall where it couldn't do it anymore. Yeah, but I will say this, you know, in terms of like Facebook offering a solution for people's lack of FaceTime or and by FaceTime I'm not meaning the Apple product, I'm meaning spending time with other human faces. The fact that they're

attempting to fix that problem with more technology is ironic because like you're not going to solve a problem that technology created with more technology, but the cultish thing is that they know that. They don't want to solve the problem of human loneliness. They want to exacerbate it and monetize it. Right, I know. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Hey, culties! So over my past few episodes, some of you may have heard me

talking about my brand new book, The Age of Magical Overthinking, Notes on Modern Erasionality. It's coming out April 9th from One Signal, An Imprint of Simon & Schuster. And I am so excited about it. And I just heard from my publisher that it's absolutely confirmed that I will be recording my own audiobook. And you can actually pre-order the book in audiobook form wherever you listen to your audiobooks. I am so, so proud of this book. It's about cognitive biases in

the information age. So basically, cognitive biases in the information age. So basically every chapter in the book is dedicated to a different cognitive bias. Confirmation bias is probably one you've heard of or maybe some cost fallacy or zero sum bias. And I use each of these biases as a lens to explore some mysterious irrationality plaguing the larger zeitgeist and my own life.

The book was really inspired by some of the research that I was doing on cults when I was writing my last book. I became obsessed with understanding the irrational choices that not only cult followers make, but that we all make every day. And this is especially confusing because we're living in the information age, a time when you can ostensibly look up any answer to anything, fact check anything and yet access to more information doesn't seem to be helping life make any more sense. It definitely doesn't seem to be making life feel any better or any easier.

So I was really curious about that idea and learning about these cognitive biases has not only been fascinating, but really, really soothing during times when other people's behavior in your personal life or globally just seems to make so little sense. Learning about this clash between our natural inclinations

toward magical thinking and the information age has really just helped me become more compassionate toward other people's irrationalities and skeptical toward my own, which I think is such an important lesson in today's age. So if you enjoy this podcast, if you like cultural criticism, sociology, psychology, if you like really personal writing, that's also entertaining, I invite you to consider pre-ordering the book.

Again, you can do so in hardbackbacked audiobook. However you like to read, the book is called the Age of Magical Overthinking, Notes on Modern Erasionality, and it comes out April 9th. You can find more information at the link in our show notes. Thanks for listening. We briefly touched on this notion that certain kind of like extreme fringy cults are beginning to build up on the edges of society around AI as like an omniscient overlord, but I wanted to hear from you based on your reporting and your observations and all the time you spent on TikTok, what are some of the more sort of like every day insidiously cult like exploitations of AI going on right now.

I think it is really the complete handing over of personal data. And I think I definitely fall victim to it because I am not super precious about my data. I've been very online since I was a kid. I have hit except on every single terms of service without once reading it. And literally my thought has always been, well, I'm not a criminal, I'm not doing anything whatever look at my dad. And I think where it becomes more risky. There are the few ways is risky. I'm thinking of things like in the sort of wake of the fall of Roe v Wade. I think a lot of people were recommending period tracking apps and other things

to do with fertility as a way to sort of take control after having this right taken away. And then really quickly everyone was like, do not hand over all your health information to this unknown entity, especially if you're in a state where abortion is now illegal and has varying degrees of punishment. In that circumstance, and you're someone who would wish to have an abortion, it is dangerous that there is something that has data that you are pregnant and then not pregnant. It's just little things like that that sound paranoid, but I think because so much of how we learned about the internet was just unfettered exploration, I always say like two thousands to 2015 was like the fuck around

and now we're in find out. And some people are really pumping the brakes where it's like, okay, don't just hit yes on every term of service. don't just be like, oh this is a fun tool, let me give it all my information. I think before it was like, what is it gonna do? And now it's like, well now we know what it could do, it could be, and she would law makers or it could be something where I have accidentally consented for my likeness to have AI trained on it and then I'll see myself appear in something and I didn't give it consent for that. There just is a lot more complicated questions

that we never had to answer. And I think it's hard to take those seriously when there's also perhaps a knowledge that we're being tracked all the time. With AI, I did a piece earlier in the year about how with the rise of AI, there's been also a rise of skepticism that real people are actually AI.

Like on TikTok someone will be like this person is AI and they'll be like, no, I'm not. And there's really no good way to prove you're a human. Well, yeah, you can't prove a negative and also people don't even listen to proof. Right, right. Exactly. And like the only tool we have for proving that we are human is the capsa. Yeah. And the problem with that that I didn't realize until I was looking into it is that capture has to be updated like every few years because when you use capture, you know, you're like selecting up traffic lights is when I get all the time. You were teaching it how to be more human, which means the test doesn't work as well.

And so now it's like not only are you selecting the right traffic lights, but it also has monitored your behavior on the website already to see if you were behaving in a way that a robot thinks is human. All this stuff that's happening without us knowing, it's been such a slow creep. And so I would say the most sort of cult like thing we're doing, which I am guilty of, is just being like, it's fine. Because like, you once you've pulled one thread, it's like, oh my god, this is a part of everything. And I don't know how to take this on. So sure, take it. You are my overlord now.

That's so accurate. And I hadn't quite thought of that because there's a hackneyed expression that's always used when explaining how someone could find themselves in the depths of a cult, like Joan's Town or Heaven's Gate, that expression being, you know, it's like when you put a frog in water and you slowly heat it up, it's like you don't heat up the boiling water in one second or else the frog would jump out It happens slowly and that's I guess what we're seeing now

We already have been at the mercy of this technology for a very long time and it's sort of coercing us to and it's sort of coercing us to agree to ignorantly submit, or even submit somewhat knowingly, and desensitizing us to that dynamic, that power dynamic. I was also thinking like there's so much fear and catastrophizing around like what AI is going to do to us humans. But now I'm realizing based on everything you're saying and everything that we've been talking about,

that AI feels to me at this moment, a little bit more gasoline on the fire of who we already are. Right, it's like it's not what is AI gonna do to us, but it really seems like what are we gonna keep doing with AI? Because it really does feel like we're in a movie, a little bit, I mean, this isn't a real headline, but you'll read a headline that's like,

we trained AI to overthrow a country, and it's like, why? Why are we doing this? Just because we can doesn't mean we should, but because we live in capitalism, everything has to keep growing. AI has existed in these more benign scenarios long before this, but we're at the part of, it is just how to keep growing and growing and growing, and now it's becoming like, wait, we've done way too much. Yeah, I always go back to that Edward Abbey quote that I learned about in the movie Triangle of Sadness because Woody Harrelson says it in that quote-off scene. He's speaking in critique of capitalism where he says, growth for growth's sake is the ideology of a cancer cell. And I don't think AI has to be cancerous. I think fearing that it wants to take over the world

is to anthropomorphize it. Like, it's not a person. It doesn't have intentions like that. We can actually use it to help us, the way that we've always used technology to help us. It's just that there are these potentially massive side effects and yet sensationalizing the matter doesn't help us address it pragmatically. Yes, and I think the fatal flaw of the argument that like, oh my

god, it's gonna get out of our control is that for every single thing it's done, it's needed us. Like, it doesn't do it on its own. I was just thinking, Caitlin Tiffany, who's a writer at the Atlantic had a really good tweet about this and I like wrote an embedded about it where there was like a period of time where everyone was just sharing what they got chat GPT to say. And it was like, oh, I'm not reading that. That's not interesting to me, but what it more highlighted was that like, okay, so maybe what chat GPT says can be interesting, but that entirely depends on the person giving it the prompt. And a human is still the inciting incident for that. Anytime chat GPT has done anything impressive,

it's been from the work of a human, kind of find his boundaries or pushing it in certain directions. And so it's another reason why I don't fall for those narratives that were in a like lose control of this in a huge way. I think it's going to be like every other problem where it's just humans with bad motives are going to take a really unprecedented power and use it for the wrong reasons. Mm-hmm. Yes.

I sound like a call. I'm calling from college in Boston. My name is Sophia. I think the calltiest thing about AI is the fact that there isn't any laws or legislation that's keeping up with the advancement of technology and the uses of the technology can be really, really dark and evil and gross. This is Shannon Drumfenix. There was actually a Belgian man who was using an AI chatbot as a confidant of sorts. Ultimately, this chatbot provided him not only with encouragement,

but with specific instructions on how he could kill himself, he ended up doing just that. Hi, my name is Mallory and I'm calling from Victoria, BC. I think the call to the biggest thing about the AI boom is the now like TikTok accounts that are dedicated to AI creations and AI art. Specifically the ones that create AI music and all of them are pretty groovy, but it does remind me of that black and your episodes. We're like obviously talking through these concepts that like nobody has the true answers

to. But I'm realizing too that, you know, I've said on this podcast many times before and I said it in my book too that like the algorithm is the ultimate cult leader because it just pushes us to believe more and more and more radicalized versions of what we already do. And I see AI as sort of like the flying car version of that. That leads me to my next question, which is that on this podcast, it sometimes comes up that some of the scariest cults and scare quotes don't actually have a clearly identifiable leader.

Who would you say are some of the most significant cult leaders in AI at the moment? This is a good question. I think what makes sort of technology and thinking about a cult so kind of like mind-fuck-y is that all these companies we are the product. And so when they make these decisions, it's not because one person has a grand plan, but they're honestly like catering to our impulses and our worst impulses. When I think about who is driving this,

I think it's actually us. Yeah, and I think that is the weirdest part about it is that everything that has happened and developed in every direction that anything has gone in has because we like on mass have unknowingly pushed it that way because of the things we decide to click on and spend money on and spend time on. We've kind of brought us here. Two more questions for you and then we're going to play a game.

Would you say that you're in the Cultiv AI to some degree and what's the cultiest thing you've ever done in relation to AI? Weirdly for someone who writes about the internet, I am the last to hop on, but everyone's talking about a TV show. I almost defiantly won't watch it because I'm just like, I'm the same way.

Yeah, I just, no, you can't. And then eventually I do. And then everyone's over it, and I'm ready to talk about it. I know, I'm literally the exact fucking same. I'm like, I'm not like other girls, but I actually am, I'm ready to talk about it. I know, I'm literally the exact fucking same. I'm like, I'm not like other girls, but I actually am, I'm just late. Right, I'm like, I'm gonna watch Good War Girls for the 80th time

when you watch this new show and find me to be over it. And then I join when it's empty. I think on principle, especially as a writer, I'm like, I will not make a machine write for me like ever. And I, because I worry it's gonna be the beginning of a slippery slope if I start outsourcing that type of stuff. Oh, but you know, I don't think it would. I mean, this might be overly optimistic of me, but like no matter how good AI writing gets, I just have no interest in outsourcing.

Because, and this is like corny and wholesome, but like I love Tare. It's like that quote writing is like therapy, except they pay you. I mean, I saw so many memes and protest signs during the writer's strike of people being like, chat GPT cannot write your script because it doesn't have childhood drama. Right, yes, that was all I do, yeah. But okay, but you were hinting before that you've kind of like passively allowed the AI

behind your TikTok algorithm to take over your work and your personality in certain ways So maybe that's how you're in the cold. Yeah, I would say in the same way that like so much of my personality was determined by being on Tumblr literally I saw one person Make a pumpkin spice creamer like a homemade one I made it and then I would wouldn't stop talking about it. And there are certain things where the way that in possession movies, the doll head is like, I feel myself get tapped into a different part of my brain

and I'm like, I did by it now. And I buy it immediately and I'm like, what just happened? And so the consumerism, there will be times when the way that something is presented to me through a person on social media. I think because it's not just like you want this product, it's like you want this life and this will, this version of you that could be amazing,

I'm very susceptible to that. Well, that is why there is a cult for everyone in 2023 and that the next Crusades will be consumerist rather than religious because brands know that in order to shell product, their goods and services have to represent an identity, they have to say something about you. And I succumb to the same stuff. And that's why I think all those micro trends

are so popular with like Coastal Grandmother to made a real summer. It's like a ready-made packaged identity that you can just like fit yourself into. Absolutely. Last question. Any advice for people who want to resist developing a cultish attitude

or a relationship with AI? I think I would question friends like this year book trend. Just take a beat before like so willing, like handing over your likeness to something because now we know that's a little bit dodgy. And there's things to look out for. Like, when you join a new website,

does it have a clause about using your words to train AI, or like even Zoom, there was like just a big thing, where it walked back a policy because everyone realized it had introduced a thing where it could use some of our information for AI. And so you have to just also just start being proactive about that, look for those things. Right.

If that's something that concerns you and you're not unfortunately me, we're on like, whatever, I'm so tired. Yeah. Yeah. Being a little bit slower in your decision making, which is so hard and so much easier said than done. But having that little moment of pause before you let FOMO take over or burn out take over.

And I think taking social media pauses is helpful in just allowing you to build that scene. Now, I want to play a little game. This is a classic sounds like a cult game, but with a little twist, it's called cultie quotes. So I'm going it's called culty quotes. So I'm going to read a list of quotes. Some of them were uttered by real notorious cult leaders from history.

And some of them were generated by chat GPT to sound cult leader-ish. Oh my gosh. And I'm gonna read them one by one, and you're gonna have to guess whether that was said by a real cult leader or chat GPT. Oh my gosh. And I'm gonna read them one by one and you're gonna have to guess whether that was said by a real cold leader or chat GPT. Oh my gosh. I feel like I'm gonna be so bad at this. Okay. Okay. The first quote, in our sacred texts we find wisdom but in our hearts we find the divine, seek the truth within. I think that's real. That was Chachi Pt. No! I know, I know he's so bad at this.

I'm literally going on vibes. Well, that's all you have. That's all you have, you're intuition. But I'll say this, when I prompted Chachi Pt to come up with cult leader quotes, it refused, because it didn't want to put something damaging into the world. So then I adjusted my language

because the word cult, of course, is sensationalist and alarmist and we think of it as inherently negative for valid reasons. But then I said, okay, generate a hypothetical proverb that sounds really good with little meaning from a new age sociopolitical leader. All right, perfect. For yeah, that's such a funny way to like go around the... For sure. And I followed my own advice because the word cult leader and the word cult in general

yeah is so sort of thought stopping or conversation ending because it generates strong feelings in people so if you're talking about groups like this just be more specific and then you'll get what you want yeah yeah okay next quote when a culture has fallen totally away from spiritual pursuits into materialism, one must begin by demonstrating they are each a soul, not a material animal. Oh, God, I'm going to go chat GPT. That was Elrond Hubbard. God!

I knew it. I was like, oh, it's too obvious if it goes, which is right away. Oh, yeah, I got you. Yeah, that's our fearless Scientology founder. Yeah, this game is way more fun for me and everyone if you fuck up. So you're playing it perfectly. All right, but I'm playing it perfectly. Okay, next quote. Sometimes the path of enlightenment meanders through the garden of uncertainty. I think that one's real. That's Chachi Pt. Oh my god, what is wrong with me? the Anders through the Garden of Uncertainty. I think that one's real. That's Chachi Pt.

Oh my God, what is wrong with me? I'm like, we know it's crazy. Okay. I think what's making me say it's real is if I like it more. Is it if I like resonate with it more? And then it keeps being Chachi Pt. Oh, that's too good.

Well, I don't know. Maybe Chachi Pt would make a great cult leader in collaboration with me. Right, right. It's like ex-collaborated, yeah. Okay, next quote. Trousse is not something outside to be discovered. It's something inside to be realized.

These are all so generic, but I'm gonna say real again. Yes, that's correct. Thank God. That was Oh Show, the leader of the wild wild country called the Rajini Shikar. Oh my God. Yes. Oh my God.

And his proverbs sound fully chat GPT, which is why they're great. I felt like I could auto-complete it in my head before you finished saying it, because I was like, well, I know where this is going. And then I was like, yeah, okay, okay. Yeah, yeah. But it's better to be more generic in your speech because then followers can project whatever they want.

Right, right. On to it. Okay, next quote. You are not a drop in the ocean, but the entire ocean in a drop. Recognize your infinite potential. I could really go either way on this one. I think that's chat GPT.

Correct. Okay, yeah. I think that's chat GPT. Correct. Oh, okay, yeah. I am. It's using such an effective literary device though. I think it's pronounced key asmuse. It's like the JFK, ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. Oh, yeah.

It's just, it sounds so damn good. Yeah, I'm like, that could, the thing is, there's not have been a single one of these where I didn't answer and would have been shocked to hear it was the other one. Like, they're so the same. Oh my God, I like this sentiment though, like slag. Chat GBT, the entire ocean in a drop? Yes.

Yeah. OK, last quote. It's wonderful to be able to read a newspaper that tells you what's going to happen. Not just what's already happened. Anybody can tell you what's already happened. But the Bible tells you what's going to happen. Newspapers are not really newspapers,

they're history papers. I think that's real. Yeah, that's real. That's real. I don't know why I got better at it. So that was David Berg, the chaotic children of God leader, very abusive, horrible dude. But I think your process in this game really reflects our relationship to chat GPT,

because when I first encountered it, I thought it was so impressive. And then the more I took a look at it, I'm like, it ain't all that. Not yet. I feel like if we kept doing this for like an hour, I would start to be able to tell you what the tell-tale signs are, but totally. No one needs to spend an hour doing that. Totally. totally. No one needs to spend an hour doing that. Totally. Hi, sounds like a cult. My name is Sylvia and from Portugal and I think the cultiest thing about AI is the fact that when I was a kid everyone in my school

used something called cleverbot. We were exposed to it as very young children. We're talking middle school. It was this chatbot that you could talk to and we spent our classes in the computer room, telling it the most creepy and random things you can think of, our secrets, things about our lives. So we spent hours and hours talking to it. A couple of times, we actually got the clever bot to admit

that he was AI, but I just think it's very creepy that they made this tool, which is basically now chat GPT. So available to everyone. And now, as an adult, realizing that I used to speak to a chat box when I was a kid is very guilty and very creepy. So, okay, Kate, now I'm gonna ask you the big question that I always ask at the end of every episode of sounds like a cult.

Out of our three cult categories, live your life, watch your back, and get the fuck out. What do you think the cult of AI falls into? I was thinking about this before I came on, and I planned it on. It's on, it's watch your back. To say get the fuck out, I think, is playing into the hands of people who's motives I don't trust. And so, I would just say, watch your back. I completely agree. I think there's no choice but to watch your back. Yes. It's like the cult of capitalism or the cult of America.

It's like, what's the option to get the fuck out and fly to Mars with Elon Musk? Right, right, yeah. You know, like, we can't. So we just have to seriously watch our backs to practice slow thinking, to touch grass when we can. I agree. Thank you so much for being here. If folks want to keep up with your amazing, prescient articles, where can they find you?

They can go to embedded.subst.com. You can get like sort of three dispatches a week about all things internet and then got it so hard to know where to direct people these days because everything's falling apart. But I'm Kathryn Fiona on Twitter, on Instagram, or I'll pop up where you least expect me on like GQ or something. Amazing. Well, that's our show. Thanks so much for listening. Stick around for a new cult next week, but in the meantime, stay culty.

But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. Sounds like a cult was created and hosted by Amanda Montel and Esa Medina. This episode was edited and mixed by Jordan Moore of the Pod Cabin.

Our theme music is by Casey Colbe. To join the sounds like a cult cult, follow the podcast on Instagram at SoundsLikeAcultPod. You can find me on the internet on Instagram at Amanda underscore Montel or on substack at AmandaMontel.substack.com and feel free to check out my books. Cultish the language of fanaticism, word-slet, a feminist guide to taking back the English language, or the forthcoming the age of magical overthinking notes on modern irrationality.

And if you like this show, feel free to give us a rating or review on Apple podcasts. If your family is anything like mine, they're loud and there's a lot of them. So if we need to travel to see even more of this big family, whether it's in England or in New York, the solution is obvious, getting Airbnb. Not surprisingly, everyone has their specific requests. So we need a big common space for all the kids, but also some privacy. And then if we can get an Airbnb with a pool,

well, I become the hero. Fortunately, with Airbnb, accommodating everyone's needs is easy. So we love to cook and a great kitchen is top of the list. We may not be at our house, but we know with an Airbnb, we're going to feel right at home. Whether you're traveling with friends or with family for a big celebration or just to get away, get an Airbnb.