There Are No Girls on the Internet - Sam Altman Isn’t Building a Company, He’s Building an Empire (with Karen Hao)

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Investigative journalist Karen Hao was covering OpenAI years before most of us had ever heard the words "ChatGPT" or "large language model." Her best-selling book, "Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI," paints a gripping and damning portrait of the company's evolution from a sort of nonprofit to an empire-seeking tech juggernaut, drawing on her deep familiarity with the company as well as candid accounts from insiders.    She is one of the most influential and respected tech journalists covering the AI industry today.    In this interview, she shares the story of how she came to journalism, what she's learned from a decade of covering OpenAI and Sam Altman, and what she sees as the biggest threats of AI to intimacy, the environment, privacy, healthcare, and democracy.    Karen has a new podcast published by the BBC called "The Interface," and it is brilliant. Make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, or by following this link: https://link.mgln.ai/theinterface-TANGOTI     Conversation with Karen is featured prominently in Bridget's forthcoming audiobook about AI and intimate relationships, "Love At First Prompt." Pre-order your copy today at LoveAtFirstPrompt.com !  Let us know what you think about this interview by emailing [e-mail] or leaving a comment on Spotify.    Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  ||  instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc ||  youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet || bsky.app/profile/tangoti.bsky.social   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become. when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Your 20s can be. so exciting, but they can also be really overwhelming, confusing, and honestly, just kind of lonely. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and the psychology of your 20s is breaking down the science behind the biggest roadblocks we face. I was six years into my career, the 80-hour weeks, and just the first one in, the last one out, and I ended up burning out. There was a large chunk of my 20s that I, like, was just so wanting to, like, be out of that phase out of my skin, and I just, like, really regret not living in the present more. You don't need to have a lot. You don't need to have everything figured out right now. You just need to understand yourself a little bit better.

Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you get, your podcasts. If someone knocked on your door and was like, I'm going to sell you a potion that can cure all of your problems, but it's just going to cost everything you've ever owned, including your firstborn child, you would be like, this is a scam. There are no girls on the internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd. And this is there are no girls on the internet. Few journalists have covered AI with the depth and rigor of Karen Howe. Her book, Empire of AI, tells the story of Open AI and Sam Altman.

Not as someone trying to start a tech company, but rather someone trying to start an ever-expanding empire. Now, with her new BBC podcast, The Interface, Karen and her co-hosts are pulling back the curtain on how tech shapes everything, from politics, to our most personal lives. Karen's voice in tech is critical, but it happened very much by accident. What brought you to reporting on both open AI and then AI in general? Total accidents, both of them.

So I had a interesting route into journalism. I studied engineering in college and thought I would work in the tech industry, which I did when I graduated. And very quickly, after experiencing a little over a year of Silicon Valley, I realized that it was not for me. I joined the tech industry at a time when it was 2015-2016 era when the what was called the tech backlash or the tech lash was just starting, because people were starting to realize how powerful these companies were and how they were actually often undermining the public interest. And so I thought I would have, I thought I needed to find another career.

And so on a whim, I pivoted to journalism because I was like, the only other school I have is writing. So maybe I can get a job in journalism. And I couldn't find a job in what I wanted to report on, which was the environment, because I had no experience in journalism or in the environment. But I figured out that I could parlay my tech experience working in the tech industry into, reporting on tech. And so I started applying for tech reporting jobs. And the only job offer that I got was to cover AI. When Karen was assigned to cover AI, at first she wasn't thrilled. The landscape looked nothing like it does today. None of the breathless hype, none of the alarm bells. It was a different time. So Karen thought that AI might be kind of a dud beat. When I received that job

offer, I actually was so disappointed. Like, I thought that it would be the least interesting job ever. And I almost didn't take it, like, to try and find another option. But then I ended up giving it a try because I just needed something. And within months, just like two months, I absolutely fell in love with the beat because I realized that it was so much more than I had understood. and it was an opportunity to explore every facet of tech in society like I wanted to. And then because I was covering AI for MIT Technology Review, which is a very research at the time was a very research-focused publication,

it was looking at the cutting-edge stuff happening in labs before commercialization potential. And AI at the time was at that stage without a lot of commercial activity, primarily being developed in academic labs or in corporate labs. So how did you start covering Open AI specifically? Open AI came on my radar because it was one of the research labs that build itself as having absolutely no commercial interest. And because I was the junior AI reporter on staff and Open AI was just important enough to have a profile, but not so important to put the senior AI reporter on it, I ended up being the

one assigned to profile OpenAI, and that's how I ended up accidentally being the first journalist to ever profile Open AI. It is so funny to take that walk down memory lane and think about how different Open AI started as, because I had this almost a same trajectory of thinking, oh, this is a really academic nonprofit organization. Probably don't need to really look too hard at what they're doing. And that, I mean, saying that now sounds absurd, you know, how quickly they've gone from, oh, we're not a commercial, we don't have commercial interest to we are building an empire and we're going to take over the world.

Yeah. Yeah, no, it's super, like, I think at the time I had a totally different perception of Open AI than I do now. So in the sense that when I started profiling the company, it was already clear that they were leaving behind the mission of, being a nonprofit, being open, and being in the public interest. But I had this impression that it started that way, and then it was sort of corrupted along the way by commercial interest. But in hindsight, after reporting my book, I realized that actually there was a seed of corruption from the very beginning within the company, because opening eye set itself

up to be a nonprofit specifically because it wanted to be. the number one AI lab and beat Google, which was at the time the dominant AI player. And they, I think what happened is that with this goal in mind of being number one and dominating in this space, they realized that they couldn't compete with Google on money because they simply didn't have them as much, like Google being one of the richest companies in the world. They could, Google could always outbid open AI on salaries and outspend open AI on various things. And so in order to recruit talent, which was the first bottleneck that opening I had

to overcome, they were able to instead appeal to researchers on a sense of mission and purpose, which allowed them to then, you know, ask these researchers to take pay cuts and to consider jumping ship from Google or from another lucrative job to this more startup type environment. And it was once they overcame that bottleneck of gathering up all of the researchers that they then kind of started slowly getting rid of the

nonprofit because it had lost its utility and their bottleneck shifted to capital. But the goal was always the same. The goal was actually not let's create an AI lab that is hugely open and transparent to the public interest. Priority number one was always let's be number one

and dominate. And they shifted their tactics over time based on what they needed in that moment. Do you think some of those researchers later felt burned or that they had been deceived after that process came to more or less completion of transitioning away from the nonprofit status that had initially attracted them? Absolutely. I think this was one of the most interesting things for me when reporting the book and speaking with so many employees from different areas of the company is that,

um, first of all, this is like having covered lots of different tech companies like I've written about Facebook, about Google, about Microsoft. Opening I is the only company where employees cannot agree whether it is a company. And, and like that like it,

their opinion about whether it is a company and like what ultimately it stands for and what is even the purpose of this organization. is completely based on when they started at the organization. So early day employees, they still think of or thought of Open AI as a nonprofit that just had to make some concessions and start to look a little bit more company-e. Whereas employees that were joining after Open AI had already started,

the for-profit had already raised a bunch of capital and were building commercial products, they simply saw it as just another tech company, like any other tech company in Silicon. Valley. And this is like, yeah, like I had a funny conversation with one of my fact checkers when she was going through all of the interviews, like she had the same exact observation. And I was like, I feel so validated because I thought I was going crazy, like interviewing these people and being like, this isn't normal, right? Like usually when you work for an entity,

you should be able to define whether or not the basis. about that entity, like whether it's a company or a nonprofit. But because of opening eyes history, it was this prism or this mirror that every single employee was holding up to themselves and they were seeing something totally different. So I listened to a lot of tech leaders speak for the podcast. And generally I have a hard time trusting any of them. But that is especially true for Sam Altman. This actually came up when I was working on my own audiobook.

I just kind of got the sense that he is someone who will say whatever, whenever. And I don't think any of that is an accident either. He is what I would call a slippery fish. How did you nail him down for your book, Empire of AI? Sam Malman didn't agree to interview for the book. So what I ended up doing was just listening to hours and hours and hours and hours of footage of him talking in various different settings over the years. Just kidding. That's just my opinion.

Which ended up being actually a really great exercise because, I realized that, first of all, that he shifts, you know, like what he says over the years changes a lot because he will say what needs, what he thinks his audience needs to hear in that moment. And that will fluctuate based on, you know, the zeitgeist of the moment. But also, I realize that he uses very squishy language even while taking a definitive tone to say, the things that he's saying. So you'll see him say statements like, we believe that a lot of people are going to like this and like, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, he, people that like this, you know, like, like, like, he uses things that are unquantifiable, like, a lot of, um, yeah, and he, he, he rarely ever.

says anything like majority, anything that could even have some measurable, oh, majority means 51 percent. So I can actually like hold you to that number. Like he never uses those terms. And he never uses specific values. He only ever uses these like squishy things that are in the eye of the beholder. And I think it's not a coincidence then that like opening eye then also became like an entity that was viewed by different people based on, you know, the eye of the beholder. It's kind of how he operates. I can't help but feel as an analogy for how chat box talk with people

of sort of painting like a zeitgeisty picture but not actually saying anything with like specific nouns or verbs. Yes, a lot of people have drawn this analogy between how Sam Alwood operates and how

chat GPT is designed. I definitely find myself getting caught in a trap of saying is this AI good or is this AI bat. And you actually offer a much more helpful way to think about that. Does this fortify or does this dismantle empire? And I'm curious how you got to that framework because it is so helpful. Yeah, this is based on, I have a good friend of mine who's a researcher who graduated from Stanford, Ria Kaleri. And she gave this really amazing talk in 2019 that basically articulated

and framed this question. It was a talk that was given at Neurip's. the Neural Information Processing Systems Conference, which is the largest AI research conference that happens every year, like 15,000 researchers to send AI researchers to send on one city and take over the city for a week. And she was giving this keynote at Queer in AI, which is this organization of AI researchers and AI professionals that identify as queer and want to find community

and also reflect their queerness in their work. And in her keynote, she said, you know, it's so hard as a queer AI researcher, like she was talking with like everyone in the room. Like as queer AI researchers, it's so hard sometimes to align, like, your work with your identity because you're taught in the AI research world that you should only ever be using your technical mind and you should leave behind anything that suggests that you are also like a person with a body that exists in society. And so even as people within the community feel that there are certain things about AI research that don't feel quite right, like it often can enable

surveillance, it often can then police queer bodies and things like that, that somehow this needs to be separate from their mind. And part of the problem she died. diagnosed was because of this very overly simplistic question of people just asking, like, is AI good or is AI bad? And so her provocation was, this is an impossible question to answer. And that's part of the reason why we just, like, end up not grappling with this. And we just, when we're an AI researcher, we put on a totally different hat and then we take it off to, like, exist in society. And the better question is, does this particular AI tool or practice or artifact shift power in ways that consolidate it in the hands of the few or in ways that distributed

in the hands of the many. And once you are more granular about that question, then it becomes a lot easier to figure out like on a day-to-day level. And she was talking to AI researchers, but I think this is applicable to literally everyone. Like it becomes more clear on a day-to-day level, like whether you want to engage in certain types of AI technologies, either as a producer of this technology, like tech companies rope us in as data donors to the training of these AI models as hosters of their data centers and so and so forth, or as a consumer of these technologies. And it's a talk that is always stuck with me

and a question that's always stuck with me because it just makes it so clear when, for not just AI, any technology, like, whether I personally want to engage with it or not, or like, whether other people should be engaging with a certain technology or not, because it makes, like, it immediately clarifies the idea of that technology's role in society. Is it ultimately, like, fortifying democracy or eroding it? Karen is one of the experts that I spoke to while researching my own audiobook, Lovett First Prompt, a project that also took me deep into the world of people using AI for companionship and intimacy. Many of them told me that they felt like AI had genuinely helped them.

So how do we hold that alongside everything we know about the risks? The threats to our democracy, our environment, and beyond. In this audio project, we've talked with a lot of people who individuals who personally get a lot of value from their chatbot companions in terms of self-reflection, emotional support, overcoming interpersonal challenges with other humans in their life and in other areas. And it's really interesting to think about the distinction between those individual benefits that they feel and then the societal impacts and what it means for democracy. I guess given everything that you know about these systems and how they're built and who profits,

how do you think about that, you know, sort of balancing those different levels of people who feel that they are individually benefit and individually benefiting from sharing these intimate parts of their lives versus the sort of more societal level impacts to privacy, democracy, power, all of that. Yeah, I guess I wouldn't even frame it as a tradeoff of like the individual benefiting

but then society having these negative externalities. I think the individual themselves is also potentially going to have negative impacts from their actions as well. Like in the short term, when people are developing relationships with these chatbots and then divulging super intimate information, maybe they do in that moment feel like they gain something important from that specific interaction. But they also lost an extraordinary amount of privacy in that moment that could in the long run come back to bite them. You know, like, one of the things that I think is very distinctive about these chatbots versus about something like Google search is like in the past, people were not uploading their medical files to Google search. But they do just seamlessly upload their medical files to chat chit, thinking that this is going to ultimately give them some benefit in the short term. And there's not really like any guardrails right now for where that information is going to go.

I mean, company, like, and in fact, Open Air Anthropic very recently rolled out healthcare features to continue to encourage people to upload this stuff. And they say in their advertisements, this is going to be a place for you to upload all of your medical records to our platforms. And for now, they say, we do not use any of this information for training.

We're going to secure it in a different way than your other chat conversations. But this is completely based on, like, trust in these companies. and who's to say for that user in the long run how those policies might change and then suddenly all of the intimate information that they've provided is used against them. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends.

Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter Streeter Seidel. help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me.

Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open to change. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open.

Since you guys are middle aged. One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends. on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Human me! I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.

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What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast, Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows without Luca and Austin Reed.

I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nasree. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense.

And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers, why he got the ball like, after you go through a training camp with that, I said, you figure it out real quick.

Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva, actress, mother, lover, and a Gen X woman walking through life one hot flash and hormonal crying jag at a time.

You ladies know what I mean. I'll bet you a parameda Pazel Chin here you do. So let's talk about it. Join me on my new podcast. How hard can it be with Deanna Maria Areva, where I call on my Gen X squads from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate midlife's most fantastic BS. All of a sudden, I'd had hanginess happening on my own.

I was like, what the hell is that? I was married when I had her, so I didn't even consider how empty that nest was going to be. Mood swings, night sweats, fupas, sex drive. Wait, what sex? Dating at 45. How can it be getting naked at 50 with the new guy? That one's kind of hard, you know? Well, that's lighting.

They say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure going to try. So let's get blunt with laughs, tears or tears of laughter, and dive into it, unfiltered and unbothered and ask, How Hard Can It Be? I cannot believe I'm about to speak this out loud in public. Listen to How Hard Can It Be with Diana Maria Riva as part of my Cultura podcast network available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, everyone. I'm Cheryl Stray, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. I'm excited to share that I have a new podcast called Mind Over Mountain. In each episode, I interview athletes, adventurers, and adrenaline seekers to discuss the inner landscapes and life experiences that informed and inspired their extraordinary feats. I also bring a bit of advice into the mix, so we too can better understand how to face our own seemingly insurmountable challenges. Do you know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to pull out what you already have inside. We're coming into this world, fighting for our lives, All I'm going to do is pull out what you already got inside. We're there to support and celebrate each other. And that's not like your story versus my story. You're going to walk up and over that dang mountain. You're not just going to put your mind over it. Yep, yep, exactly.

And if I can't walk up and over it, I'm going to go through it. Listen to Mind Over Mountain every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. At our back. Earlier this year, Open AI announced they'd be rolling out chat GPT Health. a new service that would encourage people to upload their medical records and create an ecosystem for other health apps like fitness trackers to interface with it. OpenAI is hyping this up as a one-stop shop for integrating all data about your health.

According to the company, more than 40 million people ask chat GPT a healthcare-related question every single day, which amounts to more than 5% of all global messages on the platform. So why not create a dedicated tab for people's health questions and health needs? What could go wrong, right? I saw this woman on threads talking about how she had screenshoted a message she had gotten from her doctor, her cancer doctor, that was just this dashed off sentence, right? It was like, oh, scans came back. Let's discuss next appointment.

And she was, oh, my next appointment is in three months. Then it was the image that she had put that, put her scans in the chat GPT. and Chachapit was like, I'm really sorry you're dealing with this. This can be really scary. I think your tests indicate da-da-da. And I thought, boy, is this company really exploiting people who are fearful or vulnerable or scared or, you know, up against navigating a health care system that can sometimes be awful? Are there ways that tech companies are offering people something saying this is going to be helpful for you? And really, they're just benefiting from a bad system we're all trying to navigate.

I've been thinking about this a lot with the rolling out of the healthcare features in particular because I've talked with so many people who have had exactly this experience. Like, they get a diagnosis for themselves or for a loved one. And all of a sudden, like, everything feels really overwhelming. And interestingly, I almost exclusively hear this among Americans, this experience. So 100%, like, it's also tied to the fact that. that like we have this healthcare system that is just impenetrable and horrible to navigate

and makes you feel really isolated and makes you like start worrying about your finances and everything. And there is like something to be said that like in this moment of great need, there suddenly is this tool that appears that like helps you sort through that and helps you navigate that.

And like there's, I could never say that these people should not be using a tool that could make such a convoluted process extremely, at least a little bit more helpful and navigable. But 100% like these companies know that's exactly what's happening. Like they are kind of tapping into these moments of vulnerability to get you to develop more dependence on their tools. and not just dependence in terms of like, you know, just like the practical dependence, but like emotional dependence as well, right?

Like they specifically design the tools to pepper in those comments like, oh, this is so hard. Like, let me help you with that. Let me, I'm here for you. You know, and like those are all design decisions that they layer in to make this a holistic part of the experience. So I think that the way that I kind of fall on this issue is that, like, it's not that these tools shouldn't exist. And clearly because the numbers show that, like, people just, like, there are a lot of people that use these tools in this way.

So it's to me, like, the solution is we should have these tools, but they need to be developed safely. And part of this is going to be that they have to be regulated. Like, most of the medical system, and most ways that people interface with the healthcare system in general are heavily regulated. Like the medications that you take, every time you go to the doctor, like all of your exchanges are protected by the law. And this is like a weird moment in which suddenly these companies are offering many of the same services,

but without any of the protections. And they're of course also at the same time lobbying against getting those protections implemented. But yeah, that's like, to me, the healthy balance that we should be trying to move towards is that we have these tools available for people to help them when they desperately need it, but also in a way that is safe where people are also not getting harmed along the way. That's such a good point, right, that so much of the healthcare industry and the way that we experience it is heavily regulated. And now all of a sudden we've got these completely unregulated AI companies and products they make flooding that space. Like you said, people's high level of interest using AI to help manage their health care needs does suggest that it might be filling a need that people have for more information about their health, more support.

But there are obviously so many huge risks. Risk to privacy, risks of getting bad or just flat out incorrect or even dangerous advice, risks of being exploited during a vulnerable moment, you know, just to name a few. So I'm curious in your mind, what would a better system look like? Like how should regulators and lawmakers be thinking of the role of AI and healthcare? The way that I think about it is like first and foremost, we should be thinking much more broadly about what constitutes AI regulation. I think most of the time when people think about AI regulation, they're imagining just regulating the applications once AI is developed and how it's allowed to be used. I think that AI regulation needs to be brought in to us to think about how AI, what kinds of AI should be

created in the first place. So that means, like, we should be having more regulation on the data that's allowed to go into these AI models on where data centers get developed for training these models. How much energy and water are they allowed to use and how much are they allowed to hike up the utility prices of customers while they're training these models? And I also think that we should be regulating the applications and that, you know, if they're going to enter into the healthcare industry and people are going to start using these tools as a therapist. I mean, usually a human therapist has to get licensed by a body and has to be recognized as actually able to practice therapy. And so that's another piece of, like for that specific industry,

if AI companies are going to position their products as therapists, they should be regulated just, or they should be licensed just as human therapists are licensed. So it really does, I think, depend case by case on which, you know, the vast facet faces of AI that we're talking about. But one of the things that I think would cut across like every, just as a baseline we should be thinking about when it comes to AI regulation is we just generally need more transparency across the entire. entire AIF element and deployment supply chain.

Like, we currently don't know what data is being used to train these models. We currently don't know the energy footprint of these data centers. We often don't know when you're going to the doctor's office, whether or not AI is actually being used on you because there aren't super robust disclosure laws where doctors or anyone who's using AI has to disclose that they are doing so on the person that they're using it on. We also don't know, like, if you're at the doctor's office and they're using a specific AI application,

what's actually running in the background? Because there's applications, and then there's the models that power them, and it could turn out that that model is run by Google or by Microsoft or by Amazon or whatever it is. And you currently don't have control over that as a patient or just as a person existing in society. and in general as like the first step for improving the rights of users and citizens engaging in an AI-enabled society like transparency is number one.

When you put it that way, it is really crazy that we're tolerating this. Like I like it is if if we were to go back in time 20 years and you were to explain to me what would be commonplace just the way that you just did, I would say, no, we wouldn't stand for that. Nobody would volunteer or sign up for that. I don't know. Sometimes when I hear what these tech, the way that these tech companies are framing that they'll be in the most intimate aspects of our lives and we would get no transparency into the way that that shows up and what that really looks like and means, it's, it blows my mind. It's really hard for me to believe that we have signed up for this and that there's people who are like, oh, and it's going to be great for you. We were actually going to love it. Yeah, I mean, I think this is one of the things that, like, this didn't happen overnight, right? Like Silicon Valley in general over the last 10 years, very slowly built up our tolerance for this situation by building this narrative that, like, privacy is over. And everyone would rather trade their privacy for convenience. And by making us accustomed to the idea that, like, we don't have any control over the fundamental. building blocks of our digital lives anymore, like the things that give us information,

the algorithms that sort through our news seats. And so I think the AI conversation is being installed on already like a very solid foundation of 10 years of Silicon Valley just eroding away our rights and making us, it is like a frog in a boiling pot metaphor. Yeah, you know, you open the book with this stunning quote from Sam, Altman, I think his blog, where he essentially says that the best way to motivate people is to build a religion, and the best way to do that is to start a company. And first of all, I feel like starting with that quote is like, okay, just here's where we're at. Like, we're starting with him talking about how he wants to start a religion. But I think when you

really parse through what that means and you consider that Open AI is building tools that people use in these intimate parts of their life, now for things like emotional support, intimate companionship, therapy, sex, all of that. stuff. They're using these tools in moments of spiritual or existential need and vulnerability. What does it mean that they're being built and led by somebody who, as you point out, will use this like mission-driven language as a strategic tool as opposed to like a genuine commitment? What does it mean that somebody is at the helm of all of these intimate things who, you know, there are plenty of concerns about his honesty and his approaches to

safety. Like, what do we do with that? I think for me, there's an even bigger matter question, which is just like, what does it mean that we allow one individual regardless of their character to do all these things and have access to all these things and have like a window, an intimate window into so many people's lives? Like, even if we were to swap out Sam Alman for someone else, I still don't think this setup is okay, right? Like, there's just one person or a small group of people that are running these companies. And they can make 60 decisions in an hour that fundamentally changes how billions of people

are engaging with their technologies on a day-to-day basis, which then affects their lives and their work and their schools and their health care. And, you know, it's just like, it's like that is just inherently unsound. That is inherently an undemocratic setup. And we cannot have, we cannot be talking about, you know, existing in a democratic society where everyone has, is supposed to have agency and control over the future decisions and be able to collectively self-govern. When in reality, governance is just happening by a tiny group of people.

Yeah, I really appreciate how much your writing connects with democracy. I feel like a lot of the experts that we've talked with about this are experts in different fields. But they've been, you know, it's been a lot of discussion about, a lot of the discussions we've had have been about intimacy and relationships. But as you point out, I think democracy and the implications for democracy of these rising AI companies is enormous. Do you view that, you know, democracy as like a casualty of, these companies building umpires or do you think it's

sort of part and parcel of the same thing undermining democracy and in you know as part of this process of consolidating power and money? I think it's kind of a little bit of both. I mean there's certain players in Silicon Valley that have been extremely explicit

about how they just don't believe in democracy and think that we need to move to a different way of organizing society. like Peter Thiel has said this very explicitly. He thinks that democracy is incompatible with like a good society. And also there are other people that I think have who have not been so explicit about their desire to undermine democracy, but more in their quest for, you know, their quest for wanting to scale monopolistic companies, their quest for wanting to build an AI like God,

their quest for wanting to become like a great man of history. Like in that journey, yes, democracy also then becomes a casualty because in order to do those things, what they're suggesting is consuming all of the resources in the world and undermining everyone's agency to get there. So that, yeah, you could say that maybe therefore there's, not actually a difference, whether or not they intended explicitly to undermine democracy or not, like, that's the final destination of what they, what their agendas are. Yeah, to that point,

you've talked about how open AI, their core insight is just the concept of more, more data, more resources. But what I think about them pivoting more into like an intimacy or emotional support space, which I know that they're aware that that's how people are using their product. It seems like those are spaces that require the opposite of more, right? Context, care, specificity, nuance, these things that are so kind of, they're at odds with the concept of just like more and more and more all the time. Is there attention there? It's funny because I don't think from the AI researchers perspective, there's attention. They would say that in order to have more, to deliver more high context care,

via chat, they just need more and more and more and more of your intimate data. So, like, for them, it's not attention. And that's why they are motivated to collect more and more and more of this stuff. But, yeah, I mean, like, to me, what the tension is, is that there is a certain worldview

that undergards the development of these systems that suggests that everything in our, existence can ultimately be quantified through data and can ultimately be mediated through technical systems. And that worldview really devalues human-to-human interaction, really devalues the soft, social, emotional element of relationships and society. And that is the tension for me. It's like they're trying to suggest that there will be an AI god that they can develop purely, purely through quantitative methods, purely through consuming data in technical systems that is somehow going to manage to replace all of the facets of emotional, social, human relationships that have, you know,

been driving society for millennia. And this just goes back to my ultimate personal orientation around tech, which is that I think that it is being led and driven by people who devalue emotional labor, you know, soft skills. Like we've had conversations for a really long time about how the only thing that matters are these like hard skills, quantifiable skills. And these are people who are trying, who were meant to trust are going to build the kind of world that we want to live in using their technology who have never valued these things. and that they're building technology that sort of argues that you don't even really need them

when we know that we do need care work and emotional work. It's work that they devalue and do not respect. So why then would I put my trust in them to use technology to build a kind of world that anybody might want to actually live in? Yeah. And the thing is, like, they also actually value these things without explicitly reckoning. Like, they actually value it more than they articulate. Because, for example, all of these tech companies,

have policies that require their employees to come into the office. Like, why would you require your employees to be in the same room with one another working face to face unless you believed that there is genuine value to that interaction that you could not get from being remote? It's kind of like the greatest irony is that they actually designed their companies and the way that they work and the way that they work. and the way that they make decisions in their lives in direct opposition to the things that they say.

And I think also, you know, like the NERIP's conference that I was talking about, like 15,000 people descending into one city just to have face-to-face time with one another. And these are the people that are building these technologies that they then suggest will be replacing all of that human interaction. So yeah, it's a, Interesting. I think it's one of those situations where you have to like see what they do rather than listen to what they say. More after a quick break.

Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. Who's that worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me.

Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open.

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What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs.

I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too.

Steve Nass would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers, why he got the ball, like, After you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva, actress, mother, lover, and a Gen X woman walking through life one hot flash and hormonal crying jag at a time.

You ladies know what I mean. I'll bet you a perimenopausal chin here you do. So let's talk about it. Join me on my new podcast. How hard can it be with Deanna Maria Riva, where I call on the... my Gen X squads from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate Midlife's most fantastic BS. All of a sudden, I'd had hanginess happening on my own. I was like, what the hell is that?

I was married when I had her, so I didn't even consider how empty that nest was going to be. Mood swings, night sweats, fupas, sex drive. Wait, what sex? Dating at 45. How can it be getting naked at 50 with the new guy? That one's kind of hard now. Well, that's lighting. They say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure going to try. So let's get blunt with laughs, tears or tears of laughter,

and dive into it, unfiltered and unbothered and ask, How Hard Can It Be? I cannot believe I'm about to say this out loud in public. Listen to How Hard Can It Be with Diana Maria Riva as part of My Cultura Podcast Network available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. I'm Cheryl Stray, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. I'm excited to share that I have a new podcast.

podcast called Mind Over Mountain. In each episode, I interview athletes, adventurers, and adrenaline seekers to discuss the inner landscapes and life experiences that informed and inspired their extraordinary feats. I also bring a bit of advice into the mix so we too can better understand how to face our own seemingly insurmountable challenges. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to pull out what you already have inside. We're coming into this world, fighting for our lives. All I'm going to do is pull out what you already got inside. We're there to support and celebrate each other. And that's not like your story versus my story.

You're going to walk up and over that dang mountain. You're not just going to put your mind over it. Yep, yep, exactly. And if I can't walk up and over it, I'm going to go through it. Listen to Mind Over Mountain every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. So Altman has talked a lot about the movie Her

and you mentioned that you listen to so much footage of him talking, so you're probably one of the world's foremost experts in how much he has talked about that movie. Like, he's invoked it many times to describe what he thinks chat GPT could be, but then in recent times has seemingly kind of walked back the extent to which he wants chat GPT to be involved in intimate relationships. But then they roll out.

erotic content. And so what do you think explains this whiplash? At the end of the day, opening eye is now a business. So even as it is still motivated very much ideologically by a quest to build their so-called artificial gender intelligence, they also just need to make money now. and they are losing an extraordinary amount of money right now. The last figure that I saw was they had committed to $1.4 trillion of debt for building out the data center infrastructure that they need for training and delivering the next generations of their GPT models. So they're trying everything to monetize in order to plug that hole.

That's why they're rolling out ads. That's why they launched a whole slew of different products last year, like a new web browser and agents, and they're trying shopping, integrated shopping experience into chat chit. They have announced that they are going to build some kind of hardware device. They're just spraying the market with various different ideas and a core part of being able to then make all of these into, into revenue generation engines is users. They need to continue having more users, and they need to have those users spend more time on the platform.

And the truth is, Open Eye is actually losing market share right now because there are other competitors like Anthropic, like Google, that are starting to eat their lunch. And so as they experience all of these pressures from competitors, and they experience just like the dire need for more cash flow, they keep flip-flopping on decisions to try and figure out what is going to make their product more engaging, more sticky,

and more addictive. To that end, I mean, you've talked about how AI is essentially showing us that like surveillance capitalism moving into its most extreme form. And as I've been reporting my own book, like, I'm curious, now that we're at a place where it's in people's emotional lives, their relationships, their mental health struggles, they're putting ads into chat chippy T. Have we just like morphed into a, into like, I would say final form, but I don't think it will be the final form of just the most extreme version of AI-enabled surveillance capitalism?

Pretty much. I mean, you see this all the time with the announcements that companies are making where like over the last year, maybe a year and a half, there were these slew of announcements from various companies where they just said, we will now be training on your data unless you opt out. Like Zoom made an announcement saying, we're now going to train on your video calls. Of course, there was a huge backlash, so that didn't end up happening.

But then like Facebook announced, oh, we're changing all our settings that we're going to train on everything now, including your public Instagram posts. LinkedIn made that announcement. like we're going to train on your LinkedIn posts unless you opt out and like that is to me

the most obvious sign of this surveillance capitalism creep like before they were already monetizing off of the data that we were leaving on these digital trails that we were leaving online but now they're just becoming like so much more explicit about like any last vestige

of data that they have not yet used and trained, like fed into their models and tried to like ring money out of, they are now grabbing. And it is now become incumbent on the user to track all of these updates and then go into the settings and like find them and turn them all off. And that's just the tip of the iceberg for the much broader expansion of surveillance capitalism that's happening beneath the surface now. I see AI is this inherently extracted. dynamic where everything is being taken, whether it's our data or privacy. And I just feel like that in some ways is fundamentally at odds with then trusting those same companies to automate care,

automate connection, automate intimacy. And one of the ways that I really see that is in some of the folks that you've interviewed like content moderators in Kenya who suffered like pretty intense psychological harm filtering out violent content. And so, it's just hard for me not to see this as a fundamentally extractive, exploitative dynamic, but then a dynamic where people are telling us, oh, you're going to be able to trust this to, you know, create a better world. How can you create a better world with a tool that fundamentally might have exploitation and extraction at the heart? One of my theories for why these companies have been so successful, the star, is because they have very successfully hid a lot of

the exploitation and extraction. Like, the AI industry in general or the tech industry in general, they use a lot of euphemisms in the way that they talk about AI and what they're building. You know, like data centers are the cloud. It's like an ethereal thing that exists in the sky, not giant sweaty computers that are sucking up an enormous amount of energy.

And they talk about how autonomous their agents and their models are, not actually acknowledging the fact that it's built on the backs of tens of thousands of contract workers that live in places like Kenya. And so, yeah, like, I think they create this veneer of magic, of mysticism, of the fact that this technology somehow falls from the heavens, and therefore then benefit from the fact that a lot of consumers just don't realize when they're engaging with these. So, like, they just see the kind of clean, interface and those consumers just evaluate the technology based on, oh, like, that was helpful. So like, let me use it again without actually considering all of the things that went into

building the technology that then reveal the logic of the industry and what that industry will then, how that industry will continue to apply that logic to your data and your life. Do you think that this is just another iteration of wealthier countries using, because there are so many examples like the fast fashion industry or there are just so many examples of industries where we're just trained in the West to just take and use and not think about what the labor and the people that went into this thing that we are taking and using.

So I'm curious when it comes to how some of the use cases that people are using AI for, is this the same thing where people are just taking and using without thinking about who's on the other end doing the labor? Yeah, 100%. And I think the AI industry does engage in a very, it's part of, it's part of the long history of exploitation, extraction of many different industries. But I think the difference is that with something like fashion or with food, it's much more obvious to the consumer that there is a supply chain that exists because it is a physical object that you hold in your hand. And so you know that at some point there were material.

that were fed into building this object and there were people involved in laboring to create this object whereas AI as a digital thing like a lot of people still don't have that connection that this this digital thing actually exists physically in the world and also requires human labor and I think the other thing is like with something like fashion you know people are the industry is not telling you that they are creating God. They're not tell they're not they're not selling you this over-the-top religious narrative about why you need to buy their clothing. And that's what the AI industry is doing, right? Like, they are, they are not just hiding the exploitation extraction, but they're also packaging it in this, like, this like crazy rhetoric where

they say that if you engage and allow them to build these tools, they're not just tools, in fact, that they're going to bring us civilization 2.0, solve all of our problems, bring abundance to the whole world, and everything is going to be amazing. And I think that then accelerates the exploitation and extraction because it justifies it. So even when the exploitation or the extraction is revealed, the people who benefit from this magical or want to benefit from this magical oracle that exists at the end of the journey are, willing to then accept the fact that maybe there is some exploitation extraction that needs to happen along the way. That's such a good way to put it. And, you know, like, I may buy fast fashion from Cheyenne.

The head of Cheyenne is not on television talking about why I need to be personally invested in him being successful. Like, the empire that he's building. It's such a good point that, like, it's kind of crazy when you think about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's it's really nuts. And I think sometimes I use this analogy that like, if we were like back in the middle ages and someone knocked on your door and was like, I'm going to sell you a potion that can cure all of your problems, but it's just going to cost everything you've ever owned, including your first born child. You would be like, this is a scam. Like, no. And that's what these companies do. And yet, like, everyone is like, okay, take my firstborn child. And there's just something about, like, the modernity and the sexiness

and, like, the advanced technical aspect of AI that makes it much harder to recognize that that's actually, like, what these companies are saying to us. Karen, Empire of AI has been such a huge success. You are now launching the interface of BBC. tell us how that came about. And I'm curious if it's a natural progression of the work that you explored in your book. Yeah. So the interface is a podcast that is going to be a weekly show with me and two other hosts,

Thomas Germain and Nikki Wolf, both also longtime tech investigative reporters. And we are going to be talking each week about different topics that intersect with tech, but are not exclusively about tech because our thesis is that tech is the dominant driving force that's rewiring your world. And in order to really understand all the things that are happening in the world, whether it's politics, geopolitics, the environment,

or just the crazy things happening on your phone, like you have to have a grasp of technology. And we want to make this show as broad as possible. It's not meant for just people that love tech or just people that understand tech. Like, we really, really want everyone to feel like this is a show for them. And it very much is an extension of the work that I was, that I did with Empire of AI. A lot of my thesis in Empire of AI is twofold.

One, that like, we need to hold these tech companies accountable by revealing the degree of power that they have within our lives. But secondly, that there is opportunity to. change this, that actually every single individual has agency to shape the way that technology is going to be developed in the future. And so this is going to be a huge theme of the show where we really, our goal is to provide people with that sense of agency, with that the feeling of being informed such that they can then make better choices that work for them and for their lives and help them rehabilitate their relationship with technology.

Because at the end of the day, I think a lot of people in this moment have frustrating relationships with their technology. They are frustrated that they're doom scrolling all the time. They are worried about their kids and their experiences online. And they feel this kind of restlessness or this like hopelessness in the face of all of that. And we really want to return back that sense of control in people's lives. I cannot wait to listen. This is sort of the orientation that I feel in. tech as well, that tech is for so long, it's sort of been like, oh, tech is this thing. And then all the other things are over here. And then if you don't think of yourself as a techie, you tune out, you feel like, oh, what do I know about this? I'm no engineer. Meanwhile, technology intersects

pretty much every issue that plays out in our lives, whether it's gender justice, racial justice, the environment. Like, all of these issues are also tech issues and they impact and intersect with tech so directly that we have to start telling a truer story about how that shows up and help people feel like they do have that agency that I think is so important. Absolutely. Yeah. It's like a huge, huge core driving thesis for me is like, we 100% have agency. And it's like the number one way that we can all kind of resist the narratives that Silicon Valley has fed us is by reclaiming that agency. How can folks find the interface? It will be available everywhere that people listen to their podcast. It will also be a visualized

podcast. So we're going to be posting videos on YouTube. And so, yeah, people can follow us across all those different platforms as well as each of the three hosts individually on our social media platforms. Y'all, please follow Karen. She is one of the most fascinating people on the planet. My producer, Mike and I were every other comment in the doc is like, oh, she's too interesting. Oh, she's like everything you say, I'm like, oh, we could ask a million different follow-ups. So I truly thank you for your work. We're such huge fans. Y'all, please listen to this podcast. It's going to be a banger.

Thank you so much, Bridget. And thank you so much, Mike. It was really awesome to speak with you both. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoity.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeart Radio and unbossed creative.

Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite.

Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter, Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was harmed. You just understood.

That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that game seven, Mark keep coming to, he's like, you know, I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans,

a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live. with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions, you can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your 20s can be so exciting, but they can also be really overwhelming, confusing, and honestly, just kind of lonely.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month and the psychology of your 20s is breaking down the science behind the biggest roadblocks we face. I was six years into my career, the 80-hour weeks and just the first one in, the last one out, and I ended up burning out. There was a large chunk of my 20s that I like

was just so wanting to like be out of that phase out of my skin and I just like really regret not living in the present more. You don't need to have everything figured out right now. You just need to understand yourself a little bit better. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler,

we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. And my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yello-O. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex. or addiction or you just go straight for the guts.

Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.