404 Media’s Joseph Cox joins Oz to discuss his extensive reporting on the technology ICE is using in the agency’s mass deportation efforts. Joseph sheds light on how widespread ICE’s reach is, from facial recognition to location tracking to information databases. And the shift in how major tech companies are interacting with this current Trump administration. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
How did around 100,000 ChatGPT conversations end up indexed on Google? Users who sent conversations with a now-defunct “share” feature in ChatGPT made their conversations public — often without realizing they were exposing them to the open web. 404 Media’s Joseph Cox joins Oz and Karah to unpack how it happened, what kinds of chats were revealed, and why everyone should care about this privacy lapse. They discuss why OpenAI may have underestimated the privacy risks, how archived conversations could still be misused, and why both everyday users and major corporations need to rethink what they feed into AI tools. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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. For a limited time, you can get a special-edition “Hard Fork” hat when you purchase an annual New York Times Audio subscription for the first time. Get your hat at nytimes.com/hardforkhat 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 We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In this episode, Joseph Cox (https://x.com/josephfcox) tells us the story of anom. A secure phone made by criminals, for criminals. This story comes from part of Joseph’s book “Dark Wire” which you should definitely read. Get yours here https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/joseph-cox/dark-wire/9781541702691.
Today, I’m talking with Joseph Cox, one of the best cybersecurity reporters around and a co-founder of the new media site 404 Media. Joseph has a new book coming out in June called Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever, and I can’t recommend it enough. It’s basically a caper, but with the FBI running a phone network. For real. Joseph walks us through the fascinating world of underground criminal phone networks, and how secure messaging, a tech product beloved by drug traffickers, evolved from the days of BlackBerry Messenger to Signal. Along the way, the FBI got involved with its very own startup, ANOM, as part of one of the most effective trojan horse operations in the history of cybersecurity. Joseph’s book is a great read, but it also touches on a lot of things we talk about a lot here on Decoder. So this conversation was a fun one. Links: Dark Wire by Joseph Cox | Hachette Book Group How Vice became ‘a fucking clown show’ | The Verge Cyber Official Speaks Out, Reveals Mobile Network Attacks in US | 404 Media Revealed: The Country that Secretly Wiretapped the World for the FBI | 404 Media How Secure Phones for Criminals Are Sold on Instagram | Motherboard A Peek Inside the Phone Company Secretly Used in an FBI Honeypot | Motherboard The FBI secretly launched an encrypted messaging system for criminals | The Verge Canadian police have had master key to BlackBerry's encryption since 2010 | The Verge Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Kara and Scott are back with a Quarterly Review, to see how our predictions from the past quarter have held up. We'll also get some predictions for the next quarter from Friends of Pivot, including Preet Bharara, host of Stay Tuned with Preet, Jeremy Stoppelman, Co-Founder and CEO of Yelp, Edward Ongweso Jr. of Vice’s Motherboard, and Cecilia Kang of The New York Times. You can find Preet on Twitter at @PreetBharara, Jeremy at @jeremys, Edward at @bigblackjacobin, and Cecilia at @ceciliakang. Send us your Listener Mail questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or via Yappa, at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Joseph Cox (https://twitter.com/josephfcox), Senior Staff Writer at Motherboard (https://www.vice.com/en/topic/motherboard), joins us to talk about the world of encrypted phones. Books Affiliate links to books: The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1593276486/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1593276486&linkCode=as2&tag=tunn01-20&linkId=0a8ee2ca846534f77626757288d77e00 Extreme Privacy:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0898YGR58/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0898YGR58&linkCode=as2&tag=tunn01-20&linkId=575c5ed0326484f0b612f000621b407f Sponsors Support for this show comes from IT Pro TV. Get 65 hours of free training by visiting ITPro.tv/darknet. And use promo code DARKNET. Support for this show comes from Ping Identity, champions of identity for the global enterprise. Give your users a loveable login solution. Visit www.pingidentity.com/. View all active sponsors.
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
.jpg?width=400){kind=small}
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices