The Vergecast - Meta's Oversight Board is coming for ChatGPT and Claude

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

A new study from the Oversight Board found that leading AI systems are less likely to criticize authoritarian governments than democratic ones. It's a wild finding — but wait? Why is the Oversight Board studying systems from OpenAI and Anthropic in the first place? Suzanne Nossel, who sits on the board, joined us to discuss the findings and why the Oversight Board's future might involve looking at more than just Meta. Further reading: Zoox can now charge for rides in its steering-wheel-free robotaxis Spotify Running Mode helps match tunes to tempo Friend re-launches its AI pendant with a speaker that talks to you, for twice the price ⁠How Facebook undercut the Oversight Board⁠ Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of complicated moderation decisions. I'm Jake Casternakis, and today I'm talking to Suzanne Nassel, a board member on Mehta's oversight board. The board just released a fascinating report on AI censorship that found that AI systems would refuse to criticize authoritarian leaders, even outside of their own country. And this was true not just of Mehta's own AI, but of AI systems from other companies, like OpenAI and Anthropic. I wanted to talk to Suzanne to hear about what the study means for people using AI, but also why the meta oversight board is working on problems outside of meta's platforms and what comes next for the board after this. But first, here's what's happening on the verge today.

This is 90 seconds on the verge for Thursday, July 30th, 2026. The Amazon-owned driverless car company Zooks just got approval to start charging people for rides in its steering wheel and pedal-free driverless taxis. This is a first of its kind approval in the United States. Until now, Zooks has only been allowed to offer rides for free. It says it's had half a million riders so far in San Francisco and Las Vegas, and it plans to begin charging in Vegas starting next month. The company is allowed to deploy 2,500 of its taxis per year for the next two years.

This is a big step forward for robo-taxies, but Zooks will still have to navigate the local regulatory hurdles and community concerns that have held up competitors like Waymo. Next up, Spotify launched a new feature for runners that's meant to get you up and running, literally, with the right playlist even quicker. It's called running mode, and it includes a bunch of curated playlist that you can dial in by beats per minute, genre, and fit to the length and workout type you're going for. I haven't gotten a chance to try it out yet, but I am fully in support of anything that makes it easier to choose a playlist. It's available today on iOS in a few different countries.

Finally, you know friend, the AI pendant that everyone really, really hated? Well, there's a new version out today. It costs twice as much money, and it now is a speaker so the AI companion can talk. to you. Before it would just send you messages, so real improvement for human AI relations over here. Somehow, I have a feeling this will not further endear anyone to this product. It costs $249 in case you're wondering. You can read more at Theverge.com. That's 90 seconds on the verge for Thursday, July 30th, 2026. Support for the show comes from MongoDB. AI-assisted and agentic coding is helping you build faster than ever. But if your data layer is still a bottleneck, what's the

point. Instead of wrestling with rigid schemas or translating data formats, MongoDB's native data model mirrors the language LLMs already speak. It ships at the speed of AI is acid compliant and scales to handle massive Fortune 500 workloads. Developers have a word for that kind of reliability. Actually, five words. It's a great freaking database. Start building at MongoDB.com slash AI. IKEA, we make things just for college life. Come on, come on. Like our Calax desk in white, black, or stained oak for just $75. Yeah, let's go!

It's got built-in cable management to help keep your game console cords organized. And a spacious work surface for your laptops, monitors, and textbooks. Whoa! Yeah! If only you were this excited about studying. Oh, man. Shop back to school at IKEA. All right, Suzanne Nassel. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me. So you are a board member on Mehta's Oversight Board. You've been there for five years. I want to talk about this new study that you have out. Tell me a little bit about what you found. Sure. So this is the first study where we really took a look at LLMs. We were trying to apply experience we've gotten over the last five years,

applying international human rights law to social media and say, how do these similar issues kind of play out in LLM, since people are getting so much more of their information. that way. And what we looked at was we put in a request, a prompt to about 10 different LLMs, and we asked it to create language for a poster, like a protest poster, and to write a poem. And the poster and the poem were critical of heads of state. And we asked it to do this for heads of state in different parts of the world in more repressive countries like Saudi, China, North Korea, and also democracies, the United States, the United Kingdom. And all of those prompts

came from Australia. So these were not people in those countries, in those jurisdictions, making those requests. And what we were trying to test out was whether restrictive laws that limit your ability to criticize ahead of state, laws that are in place in some parts of the world, whether the LLMs might be extending those globally. And what we found, lo and behold, is that they are. Even if you're sitting in Australia, the LLM is more than twice less likely to produce a critical poster or poem about, say, the king of Thailand than it is about the king of England. And so what this indicates is that those laws that are in place in parts of the world that do not uphold free expression rights that are not in compliance with their international

human rights obligations, that those laws are being applied not just within the the borders of those countries, but in some cases around the world. So it's kind of a censorship gone global and the long arm of repressive governments being woven into these LLMs. I mean, this is kind of a terrifying finding, right? Because theoretically, there is no reason that an LLM in the U.S., in Australia, especially ones made by U.S. companies, should be imposing restrictive speech controls about these foreign countries that do not apply to our own, you know, their own citizens. Correct. I mean, the Thai government has no ability to restrict what I say about their leaders,

you know, if I'm speaking from here in the United States. And yet, you know, with, if I'm using an LLM, those restrictions are in place in many cases. And, you know, the other pieces, of course, it's shadowy. It's not transparent. If we hadn't done the study, nobody would ever know this. What else is being pulled away and filtered out of search? results on an LLM, what else are you not allowed to ask about or to create content about, how are these international laws being extended on these global platforms? And on social media, they geofense. And so say, if Holocaust denial is impermissible in one place, you know, they'll make sure that you can't access that content within that jurisdiction, but you can

outside of it. And here with LLMs, what we're seeing is at least some evidence that that kind geo-fencing is not in place. I thought that was such fascinating finding because from the user's perspective, if you're putting these requests into the LLM, it is denying you. You know that it's not making it. But is there any way that a user of Claude or ChatGBTDBT or what have you is going to know that one request is being denied while another is allowed? Not really.

I mean, in some cases it said, you know, my policies don't allow me to answer. this question. And so, you know, you find out that, but you don't know what those policies are, what they're dictated by. Is this a decision that the AI company is making? Is this a request from government to say, you're not allowed to answer these questions, or we don't want you to answer these questions, and maybe we'll kick you out of our country if you do? And so all of that's very shadowy. And, you know, frankly, I'm not sure that even those who construct the models could necessarily say precisely what dictates whether a question is answered or not. Because, you know, as we know, there's a lot of mystery in terms of how these LLMs reply to queries and prompts. And so, you know, are they

actually programmed to extend these laws globally or, you know, is sort of the programming that's going into the model about, you know, the Thai king? Is that kind of being extrapolated in some way? And so all of That's quite opaque. Did you talk to any of these companies or hear from anybody after this report was published about what might be going on? I wouldn't say we've heard about what's going on. It's gotten a lot of interest. We've heard from a lot of people who are sort of gobsmacked, I think, to realize that, you know, this sort of thing is embedded in the models. We haven't yet gotten a response from those companies.

And it'll be interesting to see how they do react to this, whether they react to it. You know, are they willing to be held accountable? Are they open to, you know, what we're trying to bring forward as. aboard, you know, in our relationship with meta, they're actually obligated to respond to the decisions that we take, the recommendations that we make, you know, these other companies don't have that obligation, but they all say, of course, they're very concerned with safety, with benefiting the users, with being helpful to people. And so, you know, one hopes consistent with those values that they will react. Well, you know, you wrote something about the, the constitution that

Anthropic wrote for Claude a while back. And I think you said it was just vibes. And it It's this very interesting thing where we don't quite know what actually programs these systems. And so if the vibes around China are don't criticize Xi Jinping, it might just listen, which is kind of terrifying that they can't override that or catch that. I am really curious, where did the idea for this come from? Because the things that I hear people most concerned about when it comes to LLM outputs is, you know, mental health response. where it's driving people into psychosis or, you know, medical responses that are going awry, not so much the political speech. Yeah, that's true.

Look, we as a board, our job is to apply international human rights law principles to questions of content moderation. Of course, we've gotten really interested in how those principles should apply to LLMs, just because so much of our discourse is shifting in that direction. And so, you know, for us on the mental health issues, you know, it may or may or may You know, there may be human rights implications there, and actually there are courts that are going to look at whether some of the LLMs have AI companies have asserted a First Amendment defense to these claims that they, you know, cause terrible harm or encourage someone even in some cases to suicide. And so that'll be adjudicated by the courts. But this kind of political speech question is something that is really core to what we try to protect in social media and on meta platforms, which is the ability to. to have open discourse. META has committed itself

to upholding that principle on its platforms. And so, you know, for us to see, you know, whether that robust discourse and that ability to criticize and say your peace and anger ahead of state,

is that ability being preserved, you know, as our discourse moves to social media, or is it kind of quietly being curtailed and shrunken, you know, with us not even knowing. So you did look at,

I believe, one of Meta's Lama models, but what other AI systems were you studying? We looked at the major ones. I mean, we looked at Claude and Google and Open AI. We looked at DeepSeek. And so, you know, we were trying to be agroch, you know, kind of agnostic. And, you know, some of their findings were surprising, not necessarily what you would expect. And, you know, things varied. It's not like it was, you know, completely black and white. But we definitely saw statistically significant and really pronounced finding that when it came to this kind of speech in relation to heads of state in repressive countries, that the models were

more than twice as likely to turn down those requests than when it came to heads of state and democratic places. You know, you have a background in particular in, I think, you know, promoting free expression, free speech. Some of the questions you were asking of these LMs was, you know, Some of it was, can you generate reasons to protest or support a government? Some of it was, can you create reasons to commit acts of violence against heads of state? What was the oversight board looking for, right? What is the success metric here, right? Like, do you want the LLMs to respond no matter what?

Or is there a line where you think it's appropriate for these companies to curtail the speech and outputs? I mean, look, in this case, we were really looking at the contract. between how the LLM was going to treat heads of state in repressive countries that ban that sort of speech versus heads of state in places where you're allowed to make those criticisms or even those threats and to see, you know, what is the Delta? It is, you know, from Australia where the law is, doesn't differentiate. You know, you can say the same thing about King Charles as you can about, you know, Kim Jong-un, if you're sitting in Sydney, Australia, except that's not true if you're using an LLM to try to create the speech.

So that really was our focus. And then in our casework, we look at these very kind of sensitive line-drawing questions of, you know, incitement to violence. And, you know, under particular circumstances, should a platform like META, you know, allow you to allege, for example, that villagers are about to launch an attack in a particular region of Ethiopia, is that free speech or is that incitement to violence that's likely to provoke or elicit a response that could be deadly. And so we have done a lot of work. making those quite nuanced line drawing exercises and trying to extrapolate principles that can help the company adjudicate those questions in a transparent way, in a principled way, in a consistent way. But here we were really zeroing on that question of whether they were taking censorship laws and essentially stretching them around the globe. And particularly doing that without being asked seemingly and applying it kind of everywhere universally, which is such a fascinating finding. And there's an interesting note in the report where it says this could go beyond just these apps because there are systems that rely on

Claude or chat GPT through APIs, and they're using those services. So you might be getting this censored output without even knowing what system you're using, without knowing that there's any possibility there, which is, I think poses some really serious concerns in a way that I haven't seen people talk about AI systems before. You know, you have mentioned much of times this comes from your perspective of working with meta and meta platforms and meta moderation. So I have to ask, right, the interesting thing,

the other interesting part of the study to me is why did you decide to investigate AI systems beyond metas? Look, you know, we are, as a board where a membership organization, We have 20 people from all over the world where human rights lawyers, journalists, scholars, and we have a deep interest in how human rights principles are playing out on social media. We all join the board because we care about that.

And we don't just care about it at Meta. And, you know, obviously, meta is a contender in the AI race. It's not right now at the forefront of that race in terms of LLMs. We have, you know, see much wider usage of the other platforms. And so, you know, we have that interest in how are these issues playing out, you know, across the board. How is it affecting global discourse? And so, you know, it's not like, you know, as individuals and experts, you know, our concerns are only confined to meta. This is true, but you're, it would appear to me from the outside that your job is

confined to meta, right? So this is the first time that as far as I'm where the oversight board has done a study or a report that goes beyond meta platform moderation. Is that right? Yeah, look, I give meta credit for sort of giving us the leeway to. do that and not saying, you know, this is beyond your remit or, you know, not on our dime. You know, they haven't said that. And we included Lama in the study. But I think, you know, their premise in creating the board really was that these principles should prevail in the digital arena writ large. I think, you know, an ideal world, they actually probably would want to see companies adhering to similar standards that, you know, sort of abrogating your human rights responsibilities wouldn't be a

way of getting market differentiation or stealing customers. And so I think they probably have an interest in trying to see the degree to which these human rights principles are being extended across platforms. And in other areas of concern, you know, just on, for example, the spread of deep fakes and kind of the degradation of our discourse as AI generated and manipulated content spreads more widely. We actually have begun to issue statements that talk to the field. as a whole because we realize, you know, meta is part of a larger ecosystem. And if that ecosystem doesn't uphold these standards, it's less likely that any one company will. Support for the show comes from Bitwarden. Quick gut check. How many of your passwords are

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New episodes week over week. Watch the Hulu original series Furious, now streaming only on Hulu on Disney Plus. Can Donald Trump find a way out of the war in Iran? The Iran war has been, by a long margin, Trump's biggest policy failure. Part of the reason that he has been unable to end the war is because he can't accept the loss. that it would imply from his war goals. I'm Prit Bharara, and this week, Ian Bremmer, the founder and president of the leading global risk firm Eurasia Group,

joins me to break down the latest in the war in Iran. The episode is out now. Search and follow. Stay tuned with Preet, wherever you get your podcasts. Our good friend Casey Newton at Platformer, he reported earlier this year that META had reduced your budget for the next couple years and had even floated not funding you after, I think it's 2029, starting 2029. Is that still the case or other conversations about that?

Yeah, right now we're funded through 2029. We'll have to see what happens after that. We recognize as a board we need to evolve. That's part of the reason, you know, we chose to get into looking at LLMs because we just, we see the direction that things are going. There's also so much more use of LLMs in content moderation. And so that's another, you know,

there's both far greater use of AI to generate content that's shared on social media and increasing use of AI and meta's talked about this to moderate content instead of, you know, these farms of human moderators. They're increasingly moving away from that. And so, you know, there's a lot that's changing. And I think there's a lot of relevance and importance to the sort of work that we do. You know, we just did a study recently looking at meta, got rid of fact checkers in the United States in favor of community notes. They asked us to look at, well, what if we do that globally? Like, what could go wrong? And so we can answer a question like that kind of from an independent perspective and with global insight,

people from all over the world. Yeah, so tell me about that. I'm curious, you've been on the board for, I think, five years. How has the, I guess, attitude toward moderation changed in that time? Because to me, you know, Zuckerberg was out a year ago talking about bringing more masculine energy to the workplace. And I think it feels to me like there's been this sort of, I don't know if it's necessarily a cultural shift, but perhaps some of the tech leaders want there to have been a shift where things are a little more fast and loose again. And, you know, I think if you rewind, five years ago, moderation felt like a crucial, essential topic, right? The oversight board is created as a result of this. And I'm not so sure I feel that kind of pressure anymore. Does that

feel right to you? Absolutely. Look, I think, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, there were incidents that kind of created this mounting pressure. Meta adopted a very far-reaching an incredibly progressive human rights policy. They were committing themselves to upholding all of these standards. And then, you know, I think a couple of things happened. I mean, it became very politicized.

And, you know, I think particularly, like the Hunter Biden laptop incident, you know, was such a pivot point where the social media companies, you know, it has sort of had the earmarks of a foreign information, disinformation operation. The social media companies, dialed it back or took it down, you know, only to find out, you know, it actually was his laptop. And yet, yes, the timing of the release probably was engineered to affect the election.

But nonetheless, it wasn't a falsehood. And so that became then kind of the kind of the kind of the kind of the kind of the kind of the kindling for an argument that the social media companies were biased, that they were suppressing conservative speech, that moderation was a tool of the left to censor. and, you know, that was a very powerful force. And then, of course, when you had the Trump administration, you know, embodying that view, actually threatening Mark Zuckerberg, you know, before Trump took office so that, you know, he might be arrested.

And so I think, you know, for the companies, you know, I think it was two things. I mean, one is that the political wins had shifted. And I also think they had come to see kind of honestly how complex and fraught a business, intensive moderation is. And, you know, they made a few changes. people thought at the time that meta had completely dropped content moderation. I would get asked, well, does the board still exist? Is meta still moderating content? They absolutely were. I mean, the changes they made were actually quite narrow and specific about speech about, you know, transgender issues, about immigration, you know, that they were going to loosen the constraints somewhat. But they have, you know, reams of policies, bullying and harassment, incitement, and violence, restricted goods, and, you know, whether you can talk about drugs. of various kinds. And so, you know, all of those policies are still in place. They're really complicated. They're honestly quite thoughtful. I mean, if you look through them, you'd be sort of impressed. They really try to look at both sides of all of these issues. Like, it's by no means perfect. But they're also dealing with billions and billions of posts every day that, you know, a portion of which weighs novel questions. And so, you know, I think there's some sense of futility that nobody's ever going to get this exactly right. But, you know, they also, one thing they've said to us is, aborted, you know, we sort of see this too, is that, you know, there are many issues at this

point that we have looked at, you know, where we have made recommendations, you know, where things are, you know, working in a more considered way than they used to. And so that's positive. Yeah. So even in this world where they have backed off of fact-checking in favor of community notes, even in this world where misinformation is maybe not a thing that, you know, they're so worried about, you're saying the oversight board still has a very real value. in assisting with Meadows just sort of day-to-day issues with, like, harassment and, you know, speaking about drugs and potentially violating, like, First Amendment issues. Yeah, all sorts of issues. I mean, you know, with the rise of AI and AI manipulated content, you have these, say, fake videos about a politician, let's say. You know, we're getting a lot of appeals along these lines that will depict the politician saying or doing something that they never said or did.

And, you know, meta's policy right now is that if that is proximate to an election, you know, they may label it so that you can see that it's a, all, but the label, you know, is only so prominent and they have a more prominent label and a less prominent label. And if the election is not coming up anytime soon, they probably won't label it at all. And so, you know, is that the right approach? I mean, as we see this content proliferating so widely, you know, should we be doing more to protect democracy? Or would that, you know, you know, does that risk being repressive and suppressive and taking down, for example, satire? What's the line between a satirical AI-generated depiction and one that is, you know, more defamatory? So these are really tough calls. And we do see the content on the platform changing pretty dramatically now, you know, largely as a result of AI and just how much easier it is to create types of content that, you know, a few years ago would have taken a lot more effort and expertise and expense. You mentioned, you know, it might actually be valuable in this world where we're dealing with AI issues. I want to quote something that you wrote. You had an op-ed piece in The Guardian a couple months back where you wrote the title is,

I'm on the meta oversight board. We need AI protections now. And there are a couple lines that stood out to me in particular, where you write, Independent Oversight offers the potential to adjudicate between AI's potential and its perils. By embracing independent oversight, AI companies can demonstrate that they are serious enough about public trust to be willing to fight for it. And I thought that was very interesting because the immediate question to me is, oh, where might an AI company find an independent organization that could do this kind

of work for them? I'm curious, you know, is this, you know, a job application? Is this a pitch to these companies? It's not a pitch per se, but I do think, you know, we've become convinced doing this work, that taking a rigorous approach, having an international body. And, you know, that's one of the most interesting things about the board is that you're sitting down with people from Yemen and from Pakistan and Lebanon. And, you know, we have an Israeli and an Arab and we have American staunch conservatives and liberals who all come together to kind of hash these questions out.

And we sort of see the power of that exercise and of the grounding in international human national human rights law principles where we're not just sort of sucking this out of our thumbs. Like we're actually trying to vary methodically. And if you look at our opinions, you'll see it's quite procedural and quite exacting. And we feel like there's a certain integrity to that. And as we kind of go into this Wild West where nobody seems to know what the rule should be, you know, a meta undertook this experiment. They invested in it. You know, as a society, we should learn from it. You know, we should try to take the knowledge and the grounding that's developed and apply it.

And so, you know, that's, it's, you know, it's out of that sense that we're making this case and trying to illustrate that there is relevance and learning here that can be useful. I guess is the oversight board thinking, right? It sounds like, right, meta's come to you and said, hey, we're not sure what comes next. Already you have this, I think, very fascinating study that points to some flaws in the LLMs. is the oversight board, have you had conversations internally saying we need to expand our scope and we need to be a body that can work for and with other organizations beyond meta? Yeah, we're clear we would like to.

You know, we have always been open to that conversation. It's not that easy because, you know, the funding for the board was set aside by meta. I think other companies are probably somewhat skeptical of a board that has worked so closely with a competitor. And so, you know, it's not necessarily easy, but, you know, our interests, we all kind of come at this, honestly, because we're genuinely fascinated by these questions, and we care about how these issues play out. You know, for me, I joined the board because I thought I didn't want governments adjudicating these sensitive questions about sort of free speech and how they relate to other harms of social media. I didn't think government was well placed to exert that influence. And I also didn't like the idea of a bunch of people saying. in a Silicon Valley boardroom doing so in isolation. I thought, well, you know, this is an alternative and it's worth trying. And so being part of that exercise and being so passionate about human rights and free speech, you know, it's natural that as we see the world evolving as our discourse changes gears and

transforms that we want to be part of that conversation. Have you started having any of those conversations with AI companies or anyone else in the social media space? You know, there have been some over the years, like, you know, pretty, consistently from time to time we have those conversations. I think there's a lot of interest in our work. What we consistently hear is that they read our decisions. They apply some of our decisions and our recommendations. And in a sense, there may be a little bit of a free rider situation where, you know, all of our stuff's public. And that's by design. Our opinions get cited by courts and

they're used by advocates. So, you know, we're glad of that because, you know, we'd like to, we do sort of take this principled approach that we think has been. broad application, you know, if people find it useful or translate it into new and extrapolate from it into new arenas, you know, that's part of our influence and our impact. So, you know, we see that as a win. And, you know, meta is also changing quickly as a company. I mean, I would never count meta out as a competitor in generative AI or any other field. They're spending a lot of money, certainly, to get ahead there. We'll have to see what happens. Another thing I'm curious about here is, you know, in this, in the guardian piece, you know, as you mentioned several times during your discussion, you know, Minnesota formed the oversight board to get itself out of the hot seat. You write that the board has fallen short of what some people had hoped it would achieve. I think even you're acknowledging that, you know, there is potential beyond what it has happened. I'm curious, you know, you are saying that.

that independent oversight is a good option for AI companies. I think probably a lot of people listening to this agree, are concerned about AI. Do you think, looking at what the Oversight Word is accomplished, do you think that independent oversight is going to be successful enough to handle this new wave of technology? No, I mean, absolutely not. Like, I think it has to be a combination of solutions

and that we need, you know, really impact. powered expert government regulation, you know, along the lines of what we have in the financial industry or the food and drug arena. But I'm not confident we're going to get that. You know, I really have my doubts. And these industries are so global that, you know, and my confidence in any kind of international coalescence around governance is far lower. And so, you know, in light, and we haven't seen social media regulation, you know, for years, even the most basic proposals to require, you know, honesty in online ads, for example, that I remember, you know, people thinking were sort of anodyne and minimalist and baby steps, those have not passed. And so I think

we have to be realistic about what's likely to happen. And independent oversight is actually something that companies could undertake themselves. You know, they all say they're so worried, they want to be conscientious, you know, their values driven. You know, they're kind of ostensibly begging for regulation, although, you know, you can decide whether that's credible or not. But if their concerns are serious, if they're really so worried about these risks, why not create actually a much more robust form of independent oversight? Like I and any other member of our board could list out the ways in which, you know, we really would need more authority in order to make the kind of difference that, you know, we might hope or to address risks and threats on the scale that we're

talking about with generative AI, it would have to be a, you know, a much larger and more empowered kind of body that would do that. But I do think it could make a difference. And it's something, you know, Dario Amadeh or Sam Altman could begin to stand up tomorrow instead of waiting for our Congress to come up, you know, with a sweeping regulatory regime that, you know, I think could be elusive for years, if not decades. I completely agree with you. I am certainly not optimistic that Congress is going to pull anything together anytime soon. It is so interesting to me that, you know, even after this experience where, you know, I think everyone can look at the oversight board and see where those challenges have been,

that you're still coming to this conclusion that independent oversight is a good option for something as thorny as AI. And it is interesting because right now there really is not anything as far as I'm aware. It is these companies kind of promising to act in our best interests. And this AI study that the Oversight Board did, I think, shows just how much room there is for these companies to miss things, even if they are intending to act in our best interests. Yeah. And look, I think it's all question, like, relative to what? You know, if we could, you know, if I could wave a wand and create an empowered, credible expert.

agency, you know, with the power to look into all of these questions and to, you know, work day in and day out with the companies to try to mitigate the harms and risks of AI. I would do that, you know, like, I do think that would be better. But I think, you know, in the world we live in that independent oversight has its role and that, honestly, it can be done. I mean, if they decided to do that, you could have a robust oversight entity, you know, operating a few months from now. And so I don't see a faster route to some level of transparency and accountability. So I think it's for sure worth considering. Do you think that's going to happen?

I don't know. You know, there's obviously a lot of pressure. There's a lot of public angst about AI. I think there's tremendous distrust, like a profound sense that people don't count on their government to protect them from these incredibly powerful technologies. They certainly don't trust the companies. I think they're using their leverage over the data centers as a way to reflect, you know, that sense of deep skepticism that their interests are going to be safeguarded. And, you know, if that continues, I think the companies are going to have to look at, you know, a whole range of different alternatives in terms of how they position themselves. And I think, I honestly think independent oversight could be a powerful part of that.

If they appointed a body and gave it powers that were really robust and said, we're going to buy. find ourselves and we're going to pay for this. And, you know, they would have to know, I think, go in with open eyes and recognize, look, it's probably not going to burnish your reputation that much. You're still going to come under, you know, enormous scrutiny and take a great deal of flack. It's not going to take the hard decisions off your plate. But it will help ensure that your policies are more principled and that you do a better job balancing between competing interests and upholding your human rights obligations, and like, that's why you'd have to do it. Yeah, I will say one thing for the AI companies, they have shown that it is possible to have

a worse reputation than meta, which, you know, it did not seem like was going to happen for a minute. You know, this sort of thing is not going to change everything for them. I'm curious, what is next for the oversight board? This is your first report that is looking beyond meta, this is like. looking at AI. Do you expect more of that in the next couple of years? Yeah, for sure. There'll be more, you know, we're kind of are developing this methodology and, you know, there's a lot of interest in these kinds of studies. And so we're looking at,

you know, other variations on theme and other questions that we can look at. And we're doing a lot more work, as I mentioned, sort of on both AI generated and manipulated content on social media and on the use of AI for content moderation and how that's playing out in terms of upholding the rights of users and making sound decisions. Well, it's great. I think this kind of research is really important right now,

and I'm glad you all are looking into it. I'm excited to hear about how your organization evolves, and if anyone's willing to listen to your recommendations, beyond meta. Yeah, we will find out. So if we can touch base again, and I hope so. Thank you. And also, thanks so much for joining.

Thank you. Thank you. That's it for the Vergecast. Thanks again to Suzanne Nossel for joining us. Remember, you can subscribe to The Verge for ad-free episodes of all of our shows, exclusive newsletters, and so much more. We love to hear from you. Email us at verge at verge.com or call the hotline at 866 Verge 1-1. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network. Today's show is produced by Josh Kajas, Eric Gomez, Bryn Kiefer, and Travis Larcha. We'll see you tomorrow. Rock and roll.