Trump Fights ‘Woke’ A.I. + We Hear Out Our Critics
On Wednesday, President Trump signed three A.I.-related executive orders, and the White House released “America’s A.I. Action Plan.” We break down what’s in them, how the federal government intends to target “political bias” in chatbot output, and whether anyone will stand up against it. Then, do we hype up A.I. too much? Are we downplaying potential harms? We reached out to several prominent researchers and writers and asked for their critiques about how we cover A.I.
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Guests:
Brian Merchant, author of the book and newsletter “Blood in the Machine”
Alison Gopnik, professor at the University of California, Berkeley
Ross Douthat, New York Times opinion columnist and host of the podcast “Interesting Times”
Claire Leibowicz, head of A.I. and media integrity at the Partnership on AI
Max Read, author of the newsletter “Read Max”
Additional Reading:
Trump Plans to Give A.I. Developers a Free Hand
The Chatbot Culture Wars Are Here
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What AI anime memes tell us about the future of art and humanity
Today, we’re diving head first into the AI art debate, which to be honest, is an absolute mess. If you’ve been on the internet this past week, you’ve seen the Studio Ghibli memes. These images are everywhere — and they’ve widened an already pretty stark rift between AI boosters and critics.
Brian Merchant, author of the newsletter and book Blood in the Machine, wrote one of the best analyses of the Ghibli trend last week. So I invited him onto the show not only to discuss this particular situation, but also to help me dissect the ongoing AI art debate more broadly.
Links:
OpenAI's Studio Ghibli meme factory is an insult to art itself | Brian Merchant
Seattle engineer’s Ghibli-style image goes viral | Seattle Times
OpenAI just raised another $40 billion round from SoftBank | Verge
ChatGPT “added one million users in the last hour.” | Verge
ChatGPT’s Ghibli filter is political now, but it always was | Verge
OpenAI, Google ask the government to let them train on content they don’t own | Verge
Studio Ghibli in the age of A.I. reproduction | Max Read
OpenAI has a Studio Ghibli problem | Vergecast
AI slop is a brute force attack on the algorithms that control reality | 404 Media
The New Aesthetics of Fascism | New Socialist
Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright.
The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
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Reporter Roundtable: Discussing Media Narratives and Tech Industry Attacks On The Press
When the Big Technology Podcast debuted last month, The Verge’s Casey Newton joined to talk about why people can’t stand the tech press. Our wide-ranging discussion explored how tech reporters should be more upfront about their values, how algorithms and social media reframe their work, and why some go astray in the quest for retweets. But there was more to discuss.
This week, three talented reporters—Bloomberg’s Eric Newcomer, the Financial Times’ Hannah Murphy, and OneZero’s Brian Merchant—join the show to pick up where Newton left off.
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Bonus: Brian Merchant, author of The One Device
We’re doing two episodes of The Vergecast this week — the usual one on Friday, and this very special edition with Brian Merchant, author of The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone.
We ran a big excerpt of the book this week, and we got deep on talking about the book, where it came from, and Merchant’s feeling that we should know more about the technology products in our lives — and know more about the hundreds of people who make them, from the unsung engineers at tech companies to the extremely unsung miners who dig the raw materials out of the ground.
And, of course, we talk about the quotes from Tony Fadell and Bill Bilbrey in the excerpt we just published, in which Fadell tells a story about Phil Schiller arguing the iPhone should have a hardware keyboard. Schiller has said the story isn’t true, and Fadell has tried to walk it back as well.
“So I wasn't in the room at Apple 10, 15 years ago when this would have happened,” says Merchant, who has the exchange on tape. “But this is a quote verbatim as Tony Fadell who was in the room told it to me. He told me this quote in such detail and he gave such a vivid account and I had no reason to believe it was untrue.”
Merchant says the controversy has “blown him away.”
“It certainly wasn't intended to make Phil Schiller look dumb. It was an opposing viewpoint... I think that it's totally fine to be a dissenting voice and want to contextualize this emergent technology and even be opposed to it. Why would you not have someone in the room who is forcing people to think critically about this potentiality?”
There’s a lot more on the podcast, including a deep dive into the early research projects at Apple exploring touch interfaces.
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