There Are No Girls on the Internet - Tech Won’t Save Us in the future with Paris Marx

Episode Date: May 31, 2023

Paris Marx, host of the hit podcast Tech Won’t Save Us says criticism about technology and the people and culture who build it, is imperative to securing a better tech future.     Listen to Tech Won’t Save Us: https://techwontsave.us/   SUPPORT THE SHOW BY SUBSCRIBING TO OUR PATREON! PATREON.COM/TANGOTISee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Think trying to design or trying to dream up what society is going to look like for everybody else. 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. Back in 2010, Technology felt exciting. It was when we first got the old-school,

non-Facebook-affiliated Instagram app. Remember the Sienna filter? Oh, I loved it. We were talking about commercial space travel. The very first iPad debuted. The vibe seemed to be that Silicon Valley geniuses were bestowing gifts to us in the form of new technology, and our job was to be in awe of these gifts and to say thank you.

So there was a lot of optimism around technology, and it was easy to think about it as being an unquestionable force for good. And maybe that's why, when you look back at that time, there weren't a lot of critical questions about technology and the people who make it, and whether or not that technology was actually contributing to a better future, one that we'd actually want. That's a dynamic that Paris Marks says has led to tech leaders getting really used to being able to do whatever they want.

And Paris is trying to course correct. I'm Paris Marks. I host the Tech Won't Save Us podcast. Tech won't save us starts from the premise that we all need to be questioning technology and Silicon Valley tech billionaires about what kind of futures they're actually contributing to. And when it comes to conversations around things like AI and its potential to change the world, Perra says we're at risk of kind of mirroring the same dynamic that happened in the 2010s, letting the people who build the technology set the terms. Into the early 2010s and stuff like that, like it was,

very positive around tech and what tech was doing and like all these startups that were forming and how these big companies were like growing. And this was going to be the way that, you know, we were going to have prosperity again because this tech industry was going to like drive a ton of job creation and blah, blah, blah. And so there was a real desire not to kind of look at the potential consequences to not look at the downsides of this industry and these business models. And now I feel like part of kind of, you know, we have. seen a more critical view in the past number of years, especially since 2018. And I feel like part of that is not just kind of like, you know, waking up to what is actually happening, but also

reckoning with the consequences of not, you know, looking at the potential downsides of these companies through those years, through the early 2010, you know, period. And now we're kind of trying to catch up and trying to be like, whoa, what have we unleashed under the world? And now there's a real kind of desire to, you know, not just criticize the Elon Musk's and Jeff Bezos's of the world, but to say, like, we really bought into a lot of this stuff that Silicon Valley was selling us around how all we need is kind of new, innovative technologies created by Google and Facebook and whatever, and that's going to make the world a better place. And we can see that that didn't work out. And so now we need to actually think a lot more critically about what these tech companies are

telling us, but also how we address these really serious problems that do exist in society and aren't going to be solved from a shiny new technology. What do you think some of those consequences of not asking those questions during that time in technology, what do you think some of those consequences have been? Oh, there are a ton, right? Like, the easy ones to point to that, like, the mainstream would know about is, like, you know, the social media platforms and, like, all they've done. And, like, we love to kind of hate Facebook.

And I'm totally on board for hating Facebook, right? Like, don't get me wrong. But I think that it's much bigger than that, right? like sure we have the Cambridge Analytica like leaks and the scandal around that and like, you know, I think that that was kind of misconstrued a bit as saying like, it was because Facebook like manipulated the populations of the UK and the US and all this stuff that we had this really terrible turn in our politics. And I don't think that that's actually accurate. I think it's a misreading of what actually happened. And like I think that there are

just things happening in our politics for reasons that are not technological, you know, that are kind of affecting what people are doing, which is really unfortunate. But I think that much more fundamentally, and I think the piece that we tend to ignore a lot more is what this actually meant for workers as well, right? Like obviously we had this massive boom in tech workers and people working in the tech industry that were making good salaries and like doing these startups and all this kind of stuff. And the media was like very interested in that story, right, in how there were these workers who were making all this money. They had great benefits when they went to their jobs, like free lunch and gyms and I don't know, all the other stuff that tech workers get.

But then, like, the tech industry was also very, like, very clearly involved in affecting and attacking, like, the rights of workers in many different industries, not just in the United States or in other Western countries, but like around the world as well, right? And I feel like we have not really kind of grappled with that as much through the gig economy. of course the ubers of the world and things like that, you know, explicitly attacking the regulations on the taxi industry and ensuring that this profession gets turned into this kind of unregulated contractor model where these people are like completely subjected to the rules of like Uber and the rules of these gig companies. But then also like much more than that, you know, you think about Amazon rolling out algorithmic management across its warehouses and turning warehouse work from like a unionized industry where people could make good money to like basically your

equivalent of a minimum wage job or just a little bit above minimum wage, right? That's kind of like the standard if you're in a community, right? It's the new kind of Walmart is working at the Amazon warehouse. And this really changes like, you know, then you also have the like one of the things that I think is pernicious here actually is that like through the mid 2010s we had this narrative that automation and AI we're going to wipe out all these jobs. Right. And we're kind of seeing repeat of that right now with the whole generative AI boom. But like that moment, we have all this these narratives around it. We're like, oh my God, the robots are going to take our jobs. But actually what happens is the tech companies like deploy all these technologies to like

decimate the labor rights of people across the economy. And we just kind of ignore that picture of it. But I think that's more consequential. And I think we should be paying more attention to it. You have a great piece about this called tech giants are building a dystopia of desperate workers and social isolation, where you write, tech companies like Amazon and Uber are creating a society divided between the served and their servants, where the friction of in-person interaction is eliminated. That friction is the stuff of social connection. A world without it is nightmarish. And I've talked about this a lot on the podcast. It's not something that I feel great about talking about, which is that during the pandemic, which was so hard for all of us, I definitely got,

I mean, I've used the word addiction. I got addicted to buying quick crap on Amazon that I didn't need to give myself a quick serotonin boost because I was miserable just like everybody else. I got addicted to not cooking and ordering Uber Eats. And when I had to take a step back and look at what I was contributing to personally, me, Bridget, it was really hard. It was hard to see not only that I had been so easily conditioned into not. thinking about the person who was bringing me my Uber eats, the person who was leaving whatever I did, whatever dumb thing I just bought on Amazon during a pandemic to my apartment, but also conditioning me to think when I want food, I certainly don't have to, you know, cook it myself,

but I don't even have to go to the, I don't even have to call my local pizza place down the street and have a conversation with the person who owns it. That's, I don't have to do that. And I wonder, how did technology trick us into thinking that all of these things that are part of the fabric of life in a society you don't need. And in fact, your life would be better without it. Like, I enjoy cooking dinner. Why is it that I now am like, oh, like, Uber Eats is better when this is something that used to be something that, like, brought me a little bit of joy and calm in my life, you know? Absolutely. And, you know, I think that there are so many people who are, like, in that position. And, you know, like, I think that on one hand, there is kind of like the individual

responsibility piece of it of, like, should we be using this and should we be kind of contributing to this. But then on the other hand, you also have to think about how, like, these are ultimately, like, much larger kind of structural problems. And whether we, you know, participate in them or not, it's not really going to necessarily change, like, the bigger picture. Like, if one of us opt out. And, you know, personally, I do still opt out. Like, I don't use Uber. I don't use any of the food delivery services, anything like that. Very rarely use Amazon unless I have to. But, you know, I know that ultimately that's not going to take down Jeff Bezos and Amazon, right? I wish.

Yeah, right? But I think to your bigger point, like, you know, what you say is very true, right? The tech companies have essentially tried to convince us, and in many cases have successfully done so to convince us that, like, things that are like regular average aspects of life are actually inconvenient and we need to like get rid of them, right? And the goal of that, from their perspective, is that if they, can kind of insert themselves between like more of our interactions, more of what kind of like the transactions that we make in our lives. And that is better for them and their business models.

If we if Amazon or Uber can like stick itself in the middle of more of the transactions that we do, if they ensure that like instead of going to the shop, instead of talking to someone, that we use one of their apps, then that is great for their kind of business model because they get to have like a piece of that transaction. Right. And so this is like the whole incentive of behind it. And I remember, like, all the way back in, I think it was 2014, maybe it was 2015. Lauren Smiley, you know, who writes for Wired now, but she wrote this piece called the shut-in economy, where she was like outside of Oakland for a while, and then she moved back in. And all of a sudden, it was like people were, or maybe she moved into San Francisco.

It was like, you know, it was in the Bay Area somewhere. And she saw that, like, there were all these people now that all of a sudden were like, you know, home a lot or at work a lot. And they were getting a lot of things delivered and like contracting a lot of services because the gig economy is just kind of booming in that in that period right um and she was like what is going on here like this is really weird this is not really good you can see the distinction between the served and the and the servants basically very clearly in this model and sure it allows a few more people to become the served but that means you need a whole bigger kind of population of servants to to serve them effectively and what we saw during the pandemic was really like an expansion of this model where many more

people became the people who were kind of like relying on gig services and and e-commerce websites and all this stuff to get everything delivered to them so they could stay home and kind of isolate. But then you also needed this whole population that for a while we were calling essential workers to like deliver all this stuff and do all this work for the people who were staying home and working from home and all this stuff. And like we've just kind of like moved on from that moment and not really thought about the kind of larger implications of that. And I I do think that there were consequences and there were some shifts that happened during the pandemic with those whole labor models. But I think that part of what we see right now with like the big whole generative AI push is again like this kind of return of this narrative that, oh my God, like the AIs are going to take away all the jobs when actually like what we're much more likely to see is like the continuation of tech companies like kind of using technology against workers to further kind of, you know, create more precarious employment and things like that.

And I think that is like what a lot of the media narratives don't suggest, but I think that's much more likely to be what comes out of it. And if we're not paying attention to it now, then it's going to be much more difficult to stop that happening because we're too focused on like, you know, AGI and digital minds and all this like sci-fi bullshit. Oh my God. Like something, I actually, I actually heard this on your podcast. I forget who the guest was. But I do think that there's this Overton window thing happening where the, like there was a time where if I told, you that in between you and your mental health care professional would be like a skeezy tech company. You would be like, what the fuck? Of course not. And now that is commonplace with services

like better help. Right. And so I think that you're so right that tech leaders want to be the wedge between us and, you know, the business of being a human. And we're going to become more and more okay with the different things that they're okay. Like, I don't want Jeff Bezos in the of my health care, right? I use one medical, and that is exactly what the fuck is happening right now, right? Like, I'm not really comfortable with, like, these very intimate things about my body and my health. They're being a Jeff Bezos interference. And I think that sort of without us really paying attention and really thinking about it, more and more intimate spaces, it has become commonplace to think that a tech leader would be in the middle of your ability to,

like, talk to your health care professional or whatever. Does that make sense? Yeah, like, and I think that you really clearly see that during the pandemic, right? Because, you know, lockdown orders happen, you know, there's an expectation that we lock down, or at least that, like, we physical distance from one another. We don't see as many people. So we're spending more time at home. We're using our devices more. We're watching more things on streaming services. As you say, we're using more of these services to get food and get other things delivered to us. And what we see, like, over the course of, like, the first year or two of the pandemic is that like the profits and the revenues of all these companies absolutely soar right and so it shows you that the more that we kind of use their services the more that we look at our screens the better that is for them

and they're incentivized to ensure that we spend more time as possible like engaging with their services kind of in front of our screens all these sorts of things and i would say like that's exactly what the metaverse push was right like how can we get you in front of a screen much more like the smart glasses all that stuff the idea is just like you need to look at screens more and it's like i i don't don't actually want to do that. But I think on your point about health care is interesting as well, because I've been thinking about it a lot lately because I'm in Canada, right? And so our health care system is a little bit different. And I have like even bigger concerns where like, you know, at least in the States, like the health care system is already private. And so like to a certain

degree you're shifting from like one private provider to another. But like I think it's really kind of worrying to see the potential like encroachment and the further encroachment of like private companies on public health care systems and especially like how technology and digital technology provides a means for that to happen because the argument is like, oh, this is like new technology. It can't be done by the public sector. So you need to contract it from the private sector and bring it into your public health care system. And then like, you know, we could say that that's not going to make any difference.

But really, like it's kind of what I call like a sly privatization that's happening there. And it does start to change the logics of like what is actually happening in the system. And it's not just a Canadian problem. Like, you know, we see these things happening in the UK where there's a big push to privatize and other countries where I've talked to people. So, yeah, you know, a bit of a different perspective there. But those are things that I worry about, too, even just beyond, like, the general encroachment into health care that these companies are doing. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite.

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Life throws hurdles big and small. The question is, how do you conquer them? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we sit down with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness. athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions to talk about the challenges that shaped them and the mindset that keeps them going from the WNBA standout Kate Martin and rising hockey star Layla Edwards. If a boy can do it, I don't see why a girl can't. Like, I've never understood that. Like, it didn't make sense in my brain.

It's hard to be in spaces that no one looks like you, but don't ever feel like you don't feel like. Don't let that be the reason you don't do it. An Olympic champs Gabby Thomas and Katie Ledecki. The ability to show a gold medal to someone and have their face light up and That means the world to me. And that's what motivates me to win more gold medals. At our level, at this scale, like being able to fail in front of the entire world.

Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Because resilience isn't just about winning. It's about showing up, even when it's hard. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kear Games.

And in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking, Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing. And we're still chasing it. And we don't know when we've done enough. Because people scoreboard watch.

Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross, because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth, or are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person.

Join me, Kear Gaines, as we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, learn the hard way. Open your free, our heart radio app. Search Learn the Hard Way and listen now. And we're back. What do you picture when you think of having a full and fulfilled life?

It probably looks something like engaging with your friends and family and having fulfilling life experiences. But if you ask some of the most influential tech leaders, the people trying to shape what our futures will look like, their vision of a full and fulfilled life might look very different from whatever it is you're picturing. It might look like more time spent on screens and more technology encroaching on more and more aspects of our lives,

from the food we eat to how we get our medical care. All those times you went late at night and ate the thing you shouldn't have eaten, that was a secret moment you had with your refrigerator. That's popular podcaster, engineer, and AI researcher Lex Friedman, who has described wanting the ability to share late-night meaningful moments with his smart refrigerator. But what if I want a future where I'm sharing meaningful, moments with my partner or my best friend, not a robot screen in my refrigerator.

What if the future that they want and the future that I want for myself are two very different things? I don't necessarily think that it's good to be encouraged to spend more of my time in front of a screen, looking at a screen, like, I want to be in the meat space. I want to be having actual connections with humans, IRL. Obviously, it's like a place of privilege. Like, not everybody can do that easily. I'm like, very much. very lucky that that is my experience in the world. But sometimes when I, and I would probably have said that most people who have the ability to, like, get out into the world, they want that. They see that as a good thing as a part of life. Then I hear people like Lex Friedman or

sometimes Elon Musk talk. And I don't think we're all on the same page. I think that some of these people who are hugely influential in technology, for them, how can I put this, for them spending more and more time, the idea of spending more and more time in front of screens with technology, sort of immersing yourself around technology as a human, is good. And thus, they are leading us into this future where that is more and more commonplace. And because of the way, I think partly because of the way that, like, tech press sometimes covers these people, we don't stop and think, like, well, is this the person that we want designing the future? This person who has, like, describing a very weird relationship with their robot vacuum or whatever, that there's

not a relationship that I want to have, but this is the person who is put in charge of designing the future of how I will relate with technology. Do you know what I mean? Absolutely. Absolutely. And like I think I think there's so many things like to explore there basically. But I think like on a larger level, I think I would say that like I wonder to what degree like the views and perspectives of these people at the top of the tech industry are actually kind of like, you know, reflective of wider desires among like the average public and I would say it's actually quite limited like I think that people are definitely like excited by the idea of humans doing more in space and and people generally like the idea of like electric cars and sure there's some conservatives

who don't like that but like you know in general like I think these broad ideas are things that people find appealing but I think that if you dig into like the more kind of niche the more kind of specific um viewpoints of these influential tech leaders I think that you're you'll quickly find that if people knew more about them, they would think that it was really weird and like really separate from what most people think, like, a good life actually looks like. And I think like, you know, maybe this is a bit stereotypical, but I think a bit of that is related to how a lot of these people in the tech industry who are successful in this particular industry do seem to be like socially stunted in many ways. If you look at the Zuckerbergs, the Elon Musk's like, you know, Lex Friedman, of course, you mentioned like a lot of lot of these people do seem to have difficulty with like social relationships. And I'm not going to like diagnose them on this podcast. But I think that also shapes the way that they think society should

be set up and like what the future should look like. And so we have these people who are like very kind of socially isolated and have difficulty relating to other people, then kind of trying to design or trying to dream up like what society is going to look like for everybody else. and that naturally shapes how they think that that society should look and how we should all interact with one another in the future, when most of us don't have that issue and would like to spend more time kind of getting to know other people. And, of course, we know right now that, you know, there's plenty of talk about it. There's kind of like a loneliness crisis in, you know, I would say like the Western world, probably, broadly. And like I think that that is linked one to our greater reliance on technology, but I would like go back much further and say that it's also a result of the way that we've designed our communities to be like, you know, very suburban in many cases. So you're really distanced from a lot of the people that you might care about and it becomes more difficult to actually reach them because of transportation and all these sorts of things. So like I think that's rooted in like, you know, much more kind of like physical geographical problems. And then the tech industry because of this is how it works, it responds.

that by saying not maybe we should rethink the way that our communities are set up so that we can encourage like, you know, people to live closer together for us to like fund public social spaces where people can come together and, you know, they don't need to, you know, pay to go somewhere to do something. But also beyond that, they would say, like instead of proposing those things that that might actually address the issue, they would say, you know what, we need to actually make people more social or make people interact with one another more is actually a new technology that will enable them to do that, whether it's like Facebook and how that is kind of imagined to connect the world or like the Metaverse, because now we don't need to go spend time with people

in person. We can just put on a VR headset and we can put on these other technologies on our hands and on our bodies that allows us to feel a physical presence in a virtual environment. And like, great for all the tech companies because they're constantly tracking us, they're getting all the data on us, they're showing us ads all the time, or in this virtual world that they completely control. But I think it's like a terrible idea of what a future. would look like if we actually like moved in that direction instead of just saying, hey, maybe we should make it easier for you to like see the people that you care about and get away from the technology that these companies want you to be looking at all the time. And I think there is a

fundamental fuckery happening with us as regular people and the people who make technology and make money from us regular people. I think there is a fundamental fucked up relationship that we really need to question. And I think part of it is. that tech leaders have been able to convince us the regular people, quote unquote, that we're not smart enough to understand it. These people are geniuses. They went to Harvard, honey, like they know how to code. You'll never even be able to figure it out. So this technology that is already impacting so much of your life, shaping your day to day that is like amassed with your daily experiences, you don't even need to ask questions about it, right? Like you don't even get to

who are you to question these tech leaders who are so smart? you don't even understand. What do you think needs to be done to really, I believe we need to shift that relationship, like, massively. Do you think that's possible? Because none of this technology would exist without us. Yet, you wouldn't know that from the way that I feel like tech leaders continue to expand upon this, like, fucked up relationship between, quote, regular people.

No, absolutely. It's like they are kind of like, you know, they are kind of gifted with the superior intelligence and they're looking down at us and saying we're gifting you. with this knowledge, you know, just use it properly, right? And I think that you also see that reflected in like the discourse around how government understands technology and whether government can regulate technology and every single time that there's like a new technology or we're discussing tech policy or something like that. One of the narratives that we constantly hear is, you know, the political leaders don't get it. They're too old. Like whatever it is. So they can't respond

to this. They can't do anything about it. And inherently like within that narrative, is, you know, we just need to trust, like, the tech leaders to regulate themselves, to, like, be ethical. If we just put a bit more pressure on them, then they'll be better, right? You know, don't be evil, the old Google slogan, when we know that they're very evil, actually. They may have killing technology. Yeah. Don't talk about that, you know. We don't talk about the death tech. Yeah, yeah. They're just making nice search engines that talk to us now. Like, it's very nice. It's very beautiful. I think ultimately, like, shifting

our perspective on these things is essential, right? And I think that we're in this moment where, you know, as I was saying earlier, like during the early part of the 2010s, the mid-2010s, like, you know, we were kind of generally, you know, we as a general we, kind of like infatuated with the tech industry, right? They could do no wrong. All the reporting was like these great companies who are doing so many great things for us. Then near the end of the 2010s and kind of through the early 2020s, we have this shift where all of a sudden, you know, we're recognizing that maybe we shouldn't have been so positive, so kind of uncritical of what they were doing. And there's a broader kind of recognition that these companies do need more kind of critical,

you know, critical analysis, critical insight. We need to actually be looking at what they're doing, right? And I think that that's important because I think that on one hand, like it does kind of bring the public along and it does kind of tell the public like, you know, maybe all that we were saying before wasn't all that it was crack up to be. and actually these tech companies deserve more scrutiny. But I think it also kind of, what you see in that moment as well is that the people in charge of the tech industry were used to being treated like these kind of godlike figures, like these kind of figures who were, you know,

giving us all this intelligence, who we kind of worshipped, you know, like you think of like how Steve Jobs used to be seen. And he was handing us down our iPods and our things like that, right? Like he was worshipped, right? It was basically like a religion. And I find it interesting if you look at the auditorium that Apple has created on their Apple campus now, like to me, if you look at it, like it has the vibes of a church kind of and like pews and all this. This is how I feel when I look at it, right? But anyway, this is not the point.

But if you look at what happened as the press became more critical and as the public became more critical and as the government became more critical of the tech industry, all of a sudden you have these tech leaders who are used to being worshipped start to shift how they are responding, right? And all of a sudden they are feeling like victimized, you know, they are kind of all-powerful, they're billionaires, they're some of the richest people in the world, but they're treating themselves like victims because all of a sudden we're not worshipping everything that they do and just thinking that, you know, everything that they do is positive. Back in 2020, Silicon Valley billionaire and venture capitalist Mark Andreessen

published an essay called It's Time to Build. Encouraging Silicon Valley tech leaders to be more involved in building and shaping America. We've already seen more and more tech leaders getting involved in politics and government. But when these people, who have the power to exert such control over our futures, embrace ideologies that are harmful, like long-termism to pro-natalism, an ideology embraced by Elon Musk that posits that all the really wealthy tech people should be having lots and lots of kids to pass down their superior genes and repopulate the earth with their superbabies.

it's kind of hard to imagine that it'll be a future that's better for all of us. We've seen that kind of slowly become clearer in recent years where you have people like Mark Andresen kind of pushing back on this, you know, releasing in 2020, it's time to build essay where he's really saying like Silicon Valley needs to be more forceful, needs to be involved in like much more of society, kind of, you know, ensuring that they are shaping society in the way that they think it should operate. But then you also see, like, you know, people like David Sacks getting more involved in politics, you know, donating more. Obviously, you have Peter Thiel, but he's been at it much longer than that. He has a kind of a larger project. And obviously more recently, you see Elon Musk becoming much more open about his politics. But this is indicative of a broader shift that we're seeing in the valley away from kind of, you know, these people being seen as like liberal Democrats or whatever toward the recognition that, you know, these are powerful capitalists at the head of an industry. And now, instead of being worshipped, they're being challenged and their position is being challenged. And they want to ensure that everyone understands that they actually deserve the position that they're in. They didn't just get it because they happened to be in the right place at the right time when this massive industry was taking off. And there was a dot-com boom. And their startup was one of the ones that rode the wave.

And that kind of gave them, allowed them to like luck in and use their already privileged positions to then kind of take off to this new level. right and so i think that is why we see especially in the past few years them embracing these particular ideologies that are all around kind of ensuring that the public believes that they deserve the position that they're in that they deserve the wealth that they're in and you know when i say that i mean things like effective altruism which i say is basically the notion that like um you know there's nothing wrong with philanthropy with there's nothing wrong with philanthropy there's nothing wrong with rich people um and how we actually solve our problems is not by challenging rich people you know that's people in taxing them more, but ensuring they spend their billions of dollars more effectively

to address problems. Or like long-termism that says, you know, actually, yeah, sure, we face these problems right now in society, but, you know, we need to be thinking on a much longer time horizon and you, regular people, you know, the me's and news and the listeners of this podcast in the world, we are too kind of involved and to thinking, are thinking too much about the day to day and how we're going to pay our bills and on all these sorts of things. So we can't think on these time horizons. So we need these wealthy people like the Elon Musk's of the world and the Jeff Bezos is of the world to do that work for us. So they need to be up there and thinking about space colonization and all this bullshit, right?

And then, of course, the other piece of this I would say is like the pronatalism that we're seeing as well, which is like, you know, really kind of bringing the eugenics thinking back into this, eugenics thinking that has always been around in tech circles and in Silicon Valley. you know, Stanford University was kind of a hotbed of eugenics thinking and kind of, you know, reviving this, putting a fresh gloss on it so that there is kind of a new revival and a new justification for thinking about, you know, genetics, for thinking about genes, for thinking about kind of, you know, Elon Musk really thinks that because he is incredibly wealthy, that means as well that he's incredibly smart, right? And that the smarts that he has need to be passed on to future generations to his kids because then, you know, if not the world kind of

risks having all these low IQ people going around. Like it's just wild thinking, but it shows you how, you know, in many different ways they are invested in ensuring that they keep their power, that they maintain their position and that we, regular people are not challenging them and kind of the wealth and the power that they've accumulated over the past few decades. It's terrifying. It also kind of... of, I mean, that's completely anti-science, right? Like, it just doesn't work that way. Oh, totally.

If you are wealthy and, like, you think of yourself as, like, a smart person, you're not necessarily, it's completely anti-science, that you're going to pass that down genetically to your kids, so you better have a million kids. It's what's funny to me that these, it's such a fallacy because it's both like, I am so brilliant and, you know, so good at business, blah, blah, blah. So I'm going to utilize this completely nonsensical, anti-science way of spreading that. It's like, well, whoa, whoa, they both can't be true.

Either you're really smart or you're, like, falling for something that's completely flies in the face of how genetics work at a very basic level. Oh, no, absolutely. And, like, you very clearly see it reflected in, like, everything that they're talking about, right? And I do think it's funny because, like, on the one hand, they present themselves as these like brilliant engineers who like understand everything and like you know the whole thing about these Silicon Valley founders is that like you know going back to like the PayPal Mafia days and stuff like that is like they really believed that they had this kind of inherent knowledge this

knowledge that allowed them not just to understand technology but to move into any industry that they thought was ripe for kind of technological disruption and disrupt it basically right you know Elon Musk can go into banking and cars and space and Twitter and whatever. And because he is just the smartest person in the world, he will know exactly what needs to happen for all of these sectors to be transformed and made better by the tech industry. And I think what we've actually seen, like if we actually look at the impact of the tech industry, is that in some cases, yes, they have made things more efficient if they have kind of organized things properly. Like if you look at as much as I hate Amazon, like its supply chain and logistics system does seem to be.

be like, you know, quite an impressive feat that it has put together, right? There's a whole load of exploitation that it's built on and like all that kind of stuff. Like, let's not forget that. But, you know, it has kind of effectively put this system together that like, I would love to see transferred over to the post office or something like that. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you're like grinding the bones of workers. Exactly. Exactly. But then on the other hand, is like you'll have a company like Uber, which promotes itself as like this efficient transportation company because it's using all this technology to like design the the routes and the patterns and whatever of how all these vehicles go. But, you know, if you look at, listen to people who actually understand transportation like Hubert Horan, a transportation consultant who's been kind of writing critically about Uber for years, you understand that actually their model is like less efficient than the model that existed before because they have lost like all of these, you know, ways of organizing the business that are actually more efficient in that they don't have a fleet.

cars. Everyone has to own their own car and do their own maintenance and buy their own insurance. And that's much less efficient than what existed before. And because you have this kind of global company that has these massive expensive headquarters and these well paid executives and these high paid tech workers and all this kind of stuff, like working on all these things, actually the cost of running that business is higher than like a regular taxi company that just like had a small office in a city and like a few dispatchers and stuff like that. And like, you know, they kind of managed it and worked it out. So, so, you know, and I think that there are actually many other examples like that

where like we think that because of the narrative around the tech industry that, oh, my God, they've revolutionized all these things. They've made everything better. But actually they've just put like the gloss of digital tech over something that already existed and tell us that it's better. And we kind of believe it because this is the narrative that we have about technology. But that isn't necessarily the case. Yeah.

And I'm so glad that folks like you exist who are out. they're really trying to shift, shift that narrative and, like, pump the brakes and say, wait a minute, like, is this actually better? Is this actually more efficient? Or are we just so used to these confident men, you know, telling us that it's better at us to sort of believing it? Like, I think a big part of it is also just good old-fashioned hubris, that if I'm really good at building rockets, of course I would be good at figuring out, you know, content moderation, which is this incredibly complex thing that, like, people debate all the time about how to do it right. I'm built a rocket, right?

Like, I'm a pretty good podcaster. That doesn't mean that I would be a good president or that I could solve, you know, like homelessness or something. Like, it's incredibly, it's hubris, but it's also, it's so, like, narrow-minded that you think that because you maybe are smart in one sphere, that that is always going to translate over because of something particular in a name. to who you are. It's so, it's, I just really hate it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I think it tells you a ton about like who these people are and how they think about themselves, that they do think that just because they're successful in one arena, that they can naturally kind of move that success into many others just because they are like, you know, they've been graced with this like inherent intelligence

and, you know, the tech industry for whatever reason is like, can just do everything and whatever. And, you know, they also kind of like apply this kind of software mindset to everything to the physical world, even when it doesn't work out. And so, you know, I think that one of the things that's been refreshing over the past few years is to see kind of a greater awareness around, you know, these people and their flaws and how they're not kind of like messias and great people who are like making the world better, but actually like, you know, exploiters who, you know, are making massive profits off of a ton of workers. workers who they're trying to hide behind, you know, the kind of veil of technology. But actually, you know, they are creating these systems that are built on exploitation. And like generative AI, of course, is another version of this, you know, even though it's presented as just being like, oh, technology, your computer is like doing all this magical stuff. There's always kind of workers below it that like we like to ignore. And so I think one of the things that's been positive is seeing people wake up a bit more. certainly not everyone has. Certainly like, you know, I would like more people to have done so,

but I still think it's positive to see us moving in this direction, to see that like, as soon as new technologies are announced and kind of unveiled and rolled out now, that, you know, very quickly there's a discussion around, you know, does this make sense? Should we be regulating it? Like, what are we doing about this? Like, we see with chat GPT or we saw about the metaverse, like people just quickly ridiculing it as soon as Mark Zuckerberg rolled it out. And like, I think that's a really positive, like, change because I wonder if we would have saw that like a decade or so ago. And also, like, you know, how crypto was, sure, you had a lot of people who were like really invested in it and really believe that crypto is the future and whatever. But you also had this really strong community who was saying, like, hold up.

This does not make any sense. This is just spammy, exploitative Ponzi schemes. And we can't allow this to go anywhere. And I think that we've seen, like, you know, the kind of the steam kind of has come out. of that bubble, right? Like it has collapsed. Sure, they're not all gone. But I think that these things are like positive and they give me some hope that like we're at least sort of going in the right direction. And we, we just need to keep kind of, you know, keeping up the good fight to ensure that as, you know, the tech industry keeps kind of pushing these new waves of hype that, you know, there are critics who are

around who are looking at what's happening and saying like, hold up just a minute. What these people say are saying like makes absolutely no sense. And we need to be looking not at like, the PR and the marketing lines that these companies and, you know, the executives like Sam Altman want us to be thinking about and looking at and talking about, but to actually look at the real impacts to like be informed by history and how these things have worked out in the past because the tech industry loves to ignore history. And to actually try to like get some lessons about what might happen so that we can respond like proactively instead of being a few years down the line and realizing like, man, we've let this go a bit too far.

It might be impossible to roll it back at this point, right? So, yeah, I take some hope from those things. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel 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. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined.

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If a boy can do it, I don't see why a girl can't. Like, I've never understood that. Like, it didn't make sense in my brain. It's hard to be in spaces that no one looks like you, but don't ever feel like you don't belong. Don't let that be the reason you don't do it. An Olympic champs, Gabby Thomas, and Katie Ladecki. The ability to show a gold medal to someone

and have their face light up and smile, that means the world to me. And that's what motivates me to win more gold medals. At our level, at this scale, like being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Because resilience isn't just about winning.

It's about showing up, even when it's hard. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Jacob Kingston grew up in an isolated polygamous sect. We were God's chosen kingdom on earth. He felt destined for greatness. So when a swaggering Armenian businessman catapults Jacob into an extraordinary world, he doesn't look back.

Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets, meeting the president of Turkey. I'm Michelle McPhee, and this is one of the most shocking criminal conspiracies I've ever come across. When Jacob met Levant, this went to a billion dollar fraud. But with two kings from entirely different worlds, just how long can their empire survive? The largest tax investigation in American history. You need to tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me? Jacob told Levan, you're ruining my life.

Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. When Zuckerberg started hyping up the Metaverse, everybody pretty much just made fun of him until he dropped it. And before the crypto crash, it was crypto critics who wouldn't stop calling it out as a scam. And now, we need to be ready to call out AI hype, especially when it's hype that just ends up hurting workers. I am almost embarrassed to admit this, but I am very confused about, I get asked about this a lot. And I'm always like, oh, I don't know, the role that generative AI will play in our future. And I think part of it is, I think that I shouldn't feel too bad because I think this is by design.

there is so much just PR speak that I feel like I don't have a good sense of what is actually going on. And I listened to the episode that you did with Julia Black. And she made such a good point that when she asked Sam Altman like straight up, okay, so for a, like imagine who you think of as like a typical American, how will this change, how will AI change her life in 10 years? And that he not only didn't have an answer, that it was like he had not thought about the question. And I was like, oh, God, that's not good. And so I think that we hear so much PR speak.

We hear so much like AI is going to change everything. It's going to take all of our jobs. And then people saying, like, no, that's what people who make money off of AI want you to be thinking about and want you to be repeating and want you to be like making a thing, like making fetch happen. What are your thoughts? When it comes to generative AI and how it is going to actually impact the lives of someone like the, you know, mother of three who, you know, you know, makes a middle income. What do you think? How is it going to impact our lives? Yeah. So I would say I'm definitely skeptical of... Oh, surprise, surprise. Parents are skeptical. Yeah, of like a lot of the narratives that we're hearing, right? Because, yeah, and again, like,

that's just informed by seeing how things have worked out in the past, right? By seeing that this is an industry that really depends on constantly kicking up new hype cycle. in order to keep investment flowing, in order to keep people making money, in order to keep interest on kind of their industry and their products. And what you very clearly saw was that, you know, after the crypto collapse and after, you know, the kind of ridiculing of the metaverse and after the raising of interest rates in particular, the tech industry really needed something, right? It really needed, you know, a next big thing to kind of show to everybody, to make

make sure we were all talking about, to make sure it stayed relevant, and again, to keep money flowing, right, to keep money moving through the system. And so generative AI has emerged as that thing. And so I look back at the mid-2010s, as we were talking about, when there were all of these narratives around how robots and AI were going to take all of our jobs, right? And millions of people were going to be out of work, like there were studies saying, like 40, 50 percent of people were going to lose their jobs in the coming years, all this kind of stuff. there were going to be no more truckers because self-driving cars were going to replace them all. There were going to be no more taxi drivers or Uber drivers because self-driving cars were going to be everywhere in the next few years, right?

Still waiting for those self-driving cars. I know there are a few on streets in San Francisco and stuff, but like they're really not a mass transportation system. And what we saw during the pandemic was actually we needed some more truck drivers because the whole kind of supply chain was a mess. and part of the problem there is because truck drivers have had their working conditions and their wages so pushed down over recent decades that people don't want to join the profession. And so it's not because robots are getting rid of them. It's because the working conditions suck and we actually need more of them. But anyway, that's kind of getting away from the point. So I saw all of that.

And I saw all of the narratives around that moment and how there was a lot of excitement and a lot of belief that robots. were going to replace baristas and they were going to replace elder care workers and all this was just a few years away and never happened, right? What we actually had was technology being deployed in, you know, the ways that we've been talking about where it ensured that workers were reclassified from employee to contractor, where it ensured that their pay was lessened, where it ensured that they were more precarious, where it ensured that there was algorithmic management and more surveillance of them. These were the actual kind of legacies of that period. not destroying jobs and all that kind of stuff and not making things a whole lot more productive.

We didn't actually see a whole lot of investment in automation through that decade. The scholar, economic historian Aaron Beninov, kind of found that when he went and actually looked through the data for that period, what we actually saw was, you know, just all of these kind of surveillance tech and all this kind of stuff used against workers. And so when I see what's going on right now, I see the hype cycle I was talking about. I see kind of the return of some of these narratives from the mid-2010s, you know, OpenAI, released the papers talking about all the jobs that were at risk because of chat GPT and all this kind of stuff. But that's not to say that there aren't real threats that are being posed by this

technology, where, again, it can further disempower labor, it can further ensure that they're more precarious, it can further push down wages. We're seeing like, you know, the front end of that, the most obvious piece of that is like the writers and the screen actors who are undergoing contract negotiations right now. The writers are even on strike. And one of the things that they're concerned about is how AI can be used in their industries to kind of reshape their performances, to change the words, to kind of generate scripts or generate writing that they would have to rewrite. And it would mean that there would be less work to do for them. And it would also mean that the quality would decline. Like, I think that those are more of the risks of generative AI if we're looking at the

potential impacts. And I would say that right now, these technologies are also being sold to us in such a way where, like, they're going to become ubiquitous in our lives. We're going to be using generative AI and chatbots all the time. They're going to be, like, rolled out into everything. This is just the new way of the world. I think a lot of people are being too quick to, like, accept that as inevitable when I don't think it is. Like, think about the voice assistants that were rolled out in the past six or eight years. How many people actually use those regularly anymore? I certainly don't.

And I read a story recently that suggests actually a lot of people don't. This is not just anecdotal evidence. So, you know, I think that there's a lot of things that the tech industry rolls out that we think are like the next big paradigm that we think are going to revolutionize everything. And it doesn't actually play out as planned. And I think the final point I would make on this is that when we look at generative AI, what we actually see is that it increases like the cost structure. It increases the cost of doing these things.

So if you're switching over a search engine from the way it works right now to like generative AI and chatbots, the cost per search goes up, you know, quite significantly actually, because it uses more computer power, because it's trained on these massive models, because it relies on all this centralized kind of computation, right? in these massive data centers that these companies own. And I think that that's another piece of this that maybe there's not enough talk about because certainly you have the Sam Altman's of the world going out and saying this is going to empower every individual and we're going to have chatbots that are like personalized for you

and all this kind of stuff. But actually what this technology does is, you know, we've been talking about like antitrust and breaking up companies and the issues with like monopolization in the tech industry for a few years now. What this actually does is like kind of cement that power because you can't really have generative AI without scraping all of this data from the web, without having the centralized kind of computing infrastructure that only a small number of companies globally can actually control. And so if we do move in this direction, we're kind of building in the power of these

large companies in a way that we were trying to challenge a few years ago. And that suggests to me that they're also kind of responding to that fact. You know, there was a story just a few months ago about how the tech companies had very quite successfully kind of challenged and and kind of blunted the push for antitrust. And now that the Republicans have taken over, you know, one of the houses in the states that, sorry, I can't remember which the senator of the house or whatever. Anyway, they took over one of those. And so now, like, it's pretty much going to be impossible to get any, like, real antitrust legislation through for the next number of years, I would say. So the tech industry is very concerned about these things as well, very kind of alert.

to this. So yeah, those are all of my thoughts on generative AI. That's really helpful. And I think it does like, you know, I'm on TikTok a lot. And I do think that it's, it really is reflective of like, it's a little bit of a hustle. And the people who are selling you the hustle have, there's money to be made. Right. And so I see people who are like, oh, AI is going to change everything. You're going to need to know how to integrate AI into your work. So better sign up for my course. I'll tell you. Like, it's like, it's, it's, yeah, it just, it just feels like a little bit of a, a little bit of a hustle. And that's the way it's always been, right?

Like, every single time there's a new shift like that. Like, I remember, um, when it was popular to like, like, when Kindle and like self-publishing and all that stuff was taking off on Amazon, there were a ton of courses. There were a ton of people trying to sell you, like, you know, the way that you were going to be a successful self-published author and all this stuff. And like, you know, there's, there's all these. courses around SEO and search engine optimization to ensure that your website is going to get to the top of the search results. And like, this is something that happens every single time. And I think it's very indicative of this happening again that like some of the, like, you know, beyond the kind of PR lines from Sam Altman's and like the real AI boosters that you see, the people

saying that like, you know, it's a massive threat to humanity using these kind of long-termist arguments against it saying that, you know, they're on the cusp of digital minds. All this stuff is complete bullshit, by the way. You know, but the other, like, big narrative that you see on Twitter and TikTok and, like, all these other social media platforms is, like, the hustle bros and the hustle people, like, going really hard, like, the LinkedIn folks as well. Like, this is all the stuff you need to know about AI. This is how it's going to improve your workflow, help you write emails, like all this,

blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it's a load of bullshit. Those guys have taken over Twitter. Like I almost, it's just so fucking boring. And like, I almost miss like, I don't know. It's just such empty, boring garbage that I can't, you can't even like dunk on it. You can't even like, all it is it just like clogs up your feed. Where your feed is already like worse than it was five years ago anyway, you know, it's just, it's so boring.

Totally. The whole website is like going downhill. And it sucks because like, you know, there was such a community there. it was fun to be on Twitter, but like I certainly use it less than I used to. I'm not like off it altogether, but especially when you see it like slowly moving in this kind of direction that Elon Musk is taking it where like I think he's explicitly making decisions to kind of reshape it as more of like a right wing platform, right? Like parlor failed, gab failed, true social as a joke. Like, you know, they they still want to control like, you know, the kind of way that we communicate

with one another. They still want to control the media that's long been like part of the rights, you know, kind of desire what they want to do. You know, they have Fox News, but they also kind of strongly influence like the liberal media, quote unquote, as well to kind of pull the narratives in that direction. So obviously they want to do that on social media as well and have been effectively doing so for many years. We can go back to the reporting on Facebook and like how Zuckerberg was like worried about kind of pissing off the conservatives or making it look like he was taking actions that would go against them, even as their pages were, like, getting the most kind of views and growth and all that stuff. And so now you see, like, Tucker Carlson starting a Twitter

show. Like, how does that make any sense? We see DeSantis, like, as we're talking, DeSantis is going to, like, announce his presidential bid this evening. You know, and obviously all these kind of right-wing folks just get so much additional traction, or they don't seem to think so, I guess. But, you know, they get promoted a lot on Twitter now because of how Musk has changed things. around and let all the Nazis back on and all that stuff. Like, yeah, it's just a, it's a real hell site. Like, we used to joke it was a hell site, but like, now it's really a hell site. Yeah, I mean, something I've noticed is that people are starting to come around on the fact that Musk has been parroting pretty extremist far right talking points. And it's not a new thing.

It's been doing it for kind of a while. Why do you think that is something, like, even people that I respect in tech press didn't really engage with that honestly. I feel or like weren't able to get. There was always this vibe of like maybe it's just like an edgy thing that he's doing or it's a, like I once read someone saying like oh, he's trying to save the environment by making, buying electric cars

that he makes look more appealing to people on the right to help solve climate injustice. Like what a take. Why do you think it was so hard for people to just like take him at his word and like listen to the things that he says and believe them when he says them. Yeah, like what you're describing is like how far of a stretch some people go to to like justify exactly what he's doing and what he's saying, right? I think that the key thing here is that

for such a long time, Elon Musk was like, you know, he was kind of the tech god. He was the guy who was kind of, he was the figure who was kind of held up from the tech industry, especially after the death of jobs, that was like doing all of this wonderful stuff for us. He was investing in the rockets and was going to take us the Mars. And he was building the electric car and was going to save us from climate change and like all this kind of stuff. Right. And the media did hold him up as this figure who could really do no wrong and who we really had to like worship as not just like this incredible tech entrepreneur, but as the builder of the future. Right. Like he had a vision that nobody else had that you couldn't get from the political system or anything like that.

Like he was the future and he was someone that we had to trust. And I think that that has, like even though that has started to shift in recent years, I think that first of all, it took a while for the media to really wake up, I think. Like even as you did have them publishing more kind of critical stories on Elon Musk, they would still publish the puff pieces as well, right? You know, even what was it last year, he was still named Times person of the year or whatever. like even as he was increasingly being engulfed in controversy there were a ton of stories about the racism and sexism in his factories you know there was the story i believe about him um like sexually assaulting the flight attendant i believe that was just before that happened like there was all this stuff that was kind of coming out about elan musk and he still got this this title right um and so i think that like unfortunately like i think that there's a lot of people who really believe in the cult of musk and who are not just kind of like personally invested, but also, let's be real, they bought a Tesla, or they bought Tesla stock

and they're, like, financially invested in Elon Musk. Because one of the things that is, like, somewhat unique about Tesla is there's a lot of, quote, unquote, retail investors, people that are not institutional investors who own Tesla stock, which is a bit less common, right? It's because Elon Musk has all these fans and they bought in and they kind of believe what he's doing and where he's going and they want to follow him. Of course, some people have woken up. But then the other piece of this is there were a lot of, you know, kind of people who reported on Elon Musk, who got to know Elon Musk because they're accessed journalists, and I won't name names, but maybe you can think about who I'm talking about, for a number of years who really helped him to kind of build

up the reputation that he had and wanted to ensure that they maintain that connection to him. And I think also kind of saw him in the way that they presented Elon Musk to the public and didn't want to recognize that not only was it not only is he kind of a bad person who is you know ensuring that transphobic talking points who is ensuring that kind of white nationalist talking points like all of this kind of really terrible political stuff is being furthered and that he's like actively sharing it and promoting it and believing it um but also that they're how they presented him for so long was also wrong and was not an accurate reflection of who he was and what he was doing and his impact on the world

because they created this narrative around him. They created this character of Elon Musk. And he was, you know, this was a valuable property that the media had created and kind of sold to the world. It was great for him. It allowed him to get investment. It was also great for them because any time they publish anything on Elon Musk gets a ton of views, right? People love them, people hate him, whatever. People want to read about him. And so that was great. for the media as well. And that's part of the reason that they that they kind of created this narrative around them, that they created the character of Elon Musk. But if you go back to the very early days when he is starting zip to when he's starting X.com, you can see the stories about how he is a

terrible manager who is an asshole to the people who work for him. Right? This is not unknown. This is very clear at that time. And that continues as he starts other businesses as well. And like we see the stories time and again through his history of like who he actually is. But I think that some of these people who worked in the media, who kind of were incentivized to promote him in this way, ensured that that aspect of his personality and who he was was always downplayed, was always kind of hidden from the public, was not part of the persona that was sold to us. And so now there's kind of a reckoning, not just with who he is, because some of these people will say, oh, he's just changed in the past like six months. No, he's always been this person.

And now he's just being more open about it. And so there's a reckoning not just with that. And but also like with what we've been told about him for a long time. And some people really don't want to engage with that and don't want to believe that he was always who he is now and is just being more open about it and want to pretend that this is kind of a break from what they knew before. Or again, is some kind of like, you know, three dimensional chess sort of a thing that's going on where he's actually trying to get conservatives on board with climate policy. Like it's just total bullshit, right? But yeah, so that's kind of how I think about that. So I always end all of my interviews with asking, when it comes to the future, are you hopeful? Like, what, is there anything that brings you hope?

I would say yes. And I think it's difficult to be hopeful sometimes, like, seeing the state of the world, seeing the climate getting worse, seeing like the continued influence of the tech industry and like the worst people in that industry. But I feel like if I didn't have hope, like, I would just be like totally depressed and stuff. So even despite the fact that things look bad, I feel like I have to be hopeful. And that's not to say that there aren't things that do give me hope. As I was saying, like, I feel hopeful seeing kind of people push back against the tech industry and seeing like the broader realization that we have around these people in the industry, around like what they are doing and the recognition that like, you know, they're not who they have been sold to us to be.

But then like on top of that, it's also quite inspiring to see. especially in the past number of years, a lot more organizing, not just in the tech industry, but like in the society more broadly, people kind of pushing back against, you know, actions of the tech industry, people unionizing. Like all these kinds of things I think are really hopeful because they suggest that, you know, maybe we're moving in a direction where people are getting really pissed off with the way that things are and are trying to, you know, change those things, are trying to ensure that we don't keep moving in that direction. And of course, I guess the flip side of that is that we also see that organizing happening on the other side

among the fascists and the white nationalists who are trying to make the world worse. But I think that it's almost like inevitable that in the stage of capitalism that we're in, we're just going to see this kind of polarization. And the goal is to ensure that we have as much energy and power as we can build like, you know, on the left and among people who actually care about like regular people and not just like, you know, all this kind of fascist, racist, racist garbage that we're increasingly seeing to kind of build a better world. So I feel like, I feel like that's a bit mixed, but I would say on the whole, I am hopeful that, you know, even though things are going bad in some areas, I think that there's reason to believe that people are willing to fight for something

better. And, and, you know, hopefully that continues. Well, your work is a beacon of light in a, in what sometimes feels like an ocean of garbage. Where can folks listen to your podcast and all the cool, like, stuff that you're doing? Yeah, thanks so much for inviting me. It was really great to chat. I would say, you know, I, the podcast is Tech Won't Save Us. It's like on all the podcast platforms, wherever you listen, it should be there. I also have a newsletter called Disconnect, which is over on substack, you know, people have mixed opinions on that platform. I certainly do as well. But if you want to read it, it's over there. You know, you can follow me on Twitter or Macedon or Blue Sky. You know, I post a bit on those platforms still. Yeah, I would say those are the key things.

This has been amazing. Is there anything that I did not ask that you want to make sure it gets included? I don't think so. This has been great. 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 IHeartRadio and unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari 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, write and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart

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