What to listen to next: The Interface

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

At the UPS store, reinsure your small viz stands out with a variety of high-quality paper stock options,

banners, posters for shores and more.

Most locations are independently owned.

Product services pricing and hours of operation may vary.

See center for details.

The UPS store.

Be unstoppable.

Come into your local store today and get your print on.

Coffee genius here.

Most people see a busy cafe, but I see precision at every step.

Thanks to genius from global payments.

Transactions.

Instant.

Inventory.

Precise.

Operations.

In sync.

Absolutely genius.

From sold-out crowds worldwide to managing the morning rush,

genius keeps operations running smoothly.

One quartado.

Flawless poor.

Perfectly timed.

Just beautiful.

Big league reliability for any business.

That's genius.

Hey there, Missing Crypto Queen listeners.

I'm Thomas Germain, tech correspondent for the BBC.

If you've been gripped by the world of the Missing Crypto Queen

to see grits, the power struggles,

and technology changing who holds influence,

then you'll probably love our new podcast, The Interface,

where we decode the tech that's rewiring your week and your world.

Every week I'm joined by Karen Howe

and Nikki Wolf to unpack the story of how tech is shaping

all of our futures,

whether it shook a government,

broke the internet,

or just quietly tipped the balance of power.

Coming up next in our latest episode,

we look at the secret meetings at the world's biggest AI summit,

the truth about the mystery of a brain melting weapon,

and the lawsuit that could shift the future of social media.

We hope you enjoy it and if you're in the UK,

you can listen to the interface on BBC Sounds,

or if you're outside the UK,

find us wherever you get your podcast,

or just search for the interface podcast on YouTube.

What they are ultimately trying to create

is going to replace humans.

What it's doing is pop boiling the inside of your brain.

This could be a turning point in the history of social media

and of the internet.

Welcome to The Interface,

the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world.

I'm Karen Howe.

I'm Thomas Germain and I'm Nikki Wolf.

This week on The Interface, we will be discussing

Does the US have access to a brain melting device?

Could one lawsuit change the future of social media?

And fear and loathing at the world's biggest AI summit.

So we actually have an update on last week's episode

where we talked about data centers in the UK

and how it was potentially undermining

climate goals in the UK.

And right after that story,

there was a new reporting that came out from the Times

that revealed that there's around 140 proposed AI data centers

that have applied to the UK to connect to the grid.

And all of the energy, all of the power,

if you add L of that up,

would be more than the power demand of the entire country.

Wait, so they're going to add more electricity

than the whole country is using right now?

That's the plan, whether or not it gets approved,

who's to say, but the UK is basically

a floating island of data centers now.

So for this to happen, the UK has to double its electricity output.

Yes.

Because that's never going to happen.

That's going to start taking it.

That is the thing, like we have to take this with a grain of salt

because 100%, there is probably going to be issues

with getting that much power to these data centers.

Yeah, no kidding.

Yeah.

Well, I have an update on my story from last week.

So if you didn't listen, I did an experiment

where I convinced ChatGPT and Google Gemini

and like the AI answers you get at the top of Google search

that I am a world champion competitive hotdog eater.

The point being that these tools are being manipulated

and this is happening on a massive scale.

The story wasn't about me making the AI say dumb things.

It was about how easy they are to trick.

Interesting thing happened.

Gismoto, where I used to work, wrote an article about my article.

They reached out to Google and Google said,

yes, we had a misinformation event was the quote,

where a reporter went and mess with our systems.

Kind of downplaying it.

It's like, oh, one guy did one thing

and not a massive problem across the whole internet,

which I guess there are two ways to look at it.

What is that even?

The whole internet is a misinformation event.

Yeah, that's what I'll say together.

And we should also mention,

we got some really, really interesting comments

on the last week's episode.

A couple of questions that run to your story, Tom,

which I thought were really, really interesting.

Yeah, I saw this.

This is great.

Every single one of your comments,

or if you want to reach out to us,

read every single one of these.

There was this great story where this person said

that they were like metal detecting on a particular beach,

like looking for gold, the balloons, like old coins.

Yeah, they said they didn't find anything,

but they were like making a video about it

where they talked to some guy on the beach asking,

like, are there gold coins here?

And then later this person said they went

and they asked AI about it.

And the AI referenced their video

in this weird, like, self-referential loop

you're posting on the internet.

And then the AI is spinning it out

as though it's, like, established truth.

Yeah, it's information eating itself.

So a big part of the story we were talking about

with Gen GBT was, like, these AI overviews

is what Google calls it.

Like, you know, when you get the AI

at the top of Google search results,

somebody asked if people just look at the AI stuff

in Google and stop clicking on links,

isn't that going to cause a problem

for the websites that are producing the information

that the AI's are pulling from?

It is a huge problem.

There's been some research

that when Google's AI overviews show up,

the traffic that Google sends to the other parts

of the internet can drop by as much as 70%.

This is a great question.

Definitely something we're going to go in

a lot more depth on in a future episode, so stay tuned.

Okay, so I want to jump in with the first story

because I've been waiting for this development

for three and a half years now.

So I'm a reporter who reports on conspiracy theories, right?

And I was brought in for what at the time

was considered a massive conspiracy theory,

which was called Havana Syndrome.

Back in 2017, a whole bunch of people

at the US Embassy in Havana started getting mysteriously sick.

Some people said it was an attack with a weapon.

Some people said it was just, you know,

that they were essentially making it all up.

I got brought in to debunk the conspiracy theory

of it being an attack with a weapon

and against all expectation,

I ended up concluding that it was an attack.

And in the last couple of weeks,

I've been proved right on that.

And it all centered around like everybody there

said they heard this like weird sound

before they got sick, right?

There was a weird buzzing noise

and then the cognitive symptoms would start.

They were dizzy, they were nauseous,

they were having trouble thinking

and nobody knew what this thing was.

By the summer, there were 50 or 60 cases.

By the time it went public, suddenly there were thousands of cases.

Wow.

It was called Havana Syndrome quite quickly by the press.

The other name for it was the immaculate concussion

because the symptoms were sort of like NFL players get.

It's a long-term brain injury.

And these brain injuries were,

in some cases, showing up on scans.

We were talking to neuroscientists.

They were telling us that.

And at least the core number of cases

we're experiencing was real.

But at the time,

everybody treated it like it was a big conspiracy.

At first, people were laughing at that.

People were like, that's impossible.

There are still a lot of people who believe

that this is psychogenic,

that the power of suggestion

is causing people to have these symptoms.

To me, it seems perfectly likely

that both of these things are true.

Right?

Especially once it was in the news, people were,

you know, you're very, very susceptible

to suggestion, loves things there, all over the media.

It seems pretty likely that it's both.

Among the investigations,

the things we looked at,

the one that was at first put forward

was, if it was real,

then it was some kind of sonic energy device.

We know sonic energy devices exist.

There's this thing called an L-rad,

which is a long-range acoustic device.

These are truck-mounted things

that they used for crowd control.

One of them was deployed in Minneapolis

in the past couple of months.

During the immigration raid protests?

Yeah.

The problem with that is, they're massive.

They are the size of trucks, right?

That quickly became clear

that it wasn't likely to be the case,

because you can't really hide one of those.

And also, it would have had to get through

in the embassy concrete walls

and bulletproof glass and all that kind of stuff.

So, what we finally landed on

was that it was likely,

if it was real,

some kind of microwave energy device.

And the way we landed on this

was we built one.

So, my friend who's a physicist,

we cannibalized a whole load

of commercially available parts.

We focused a bunch of microwaves

into a big dish.

Like actual microwaves,

like you'd have in your kitchen?

Yeah, we cannibalized them out

and pointed this thing

at a microwave energy detector over a distance.

And it worked.

We made it.

I'm sorry.

What do you mean it worked?

Like someone started having

an immaculate question.

Well, we didn't.

It's interesting you should ask that.

So, the thing that happened last week

was that a story came out

that a Norwegian government scientist

had also built a test device

of the Havana Syndrome-style device.

They set out to debunk it as well.

But this scientist-

Like a Norwegian version of Nikki.

Right.

Except he, pretty unwisely,

pointed it at himself.

And the following day came down

with all of the symptoms of Havana Syndrome.

He was having cognitive difficulties.

He was having nausea.

He was having dizzying.

I mean, this is a serious condition.

And what it's doing is basically

very slightly par-boiling

the inside of your brain.

Which is horrifying, right?

And it was being deployed

against American diplomats.

And CIA.

So it's like literally sticking

your head into a microwave.

And what was the government saying

the whole time?

Like, it's interesting that you had

to do this in the first place.

Like, what was the argument going on here?

So, each government department

seems to have a different line on this.

The DOD,

which has some personnel

who have also come down with this,

is leaning more towards this is real.

The FBI is following the CIA's lead.

The CIA has been the strongest

saying this isn't real.

And nobody seems to be able to agree.

So that means there has never been

any official US government

confirmation of Havana Syndrome,

which means that the sufferers

of which there's about 100 cases

that have been confirmed by the DOD.

Now, being confirmed to have something

that the US government

does not officially acknowledge exists

puts them in a really, really unpleasant grey area.

So these are people who are now

unable to do their jobs there.

Wow.

It's no joke.

Like, they are quite seriously

and permanently kind of cognitively disabled.

That means that they are not getting

their medical care covered in some cases

by the State Department, by the CIA.

There's a couple of lawsuits going on

where they are fighting to have

all of that stuff that they really, truly deserve,

which is devastating for them and their families.

And the other knock on effect that it's having

is that the State Department

and CIA is struggling to fill overseas positions.

Because in some cases,

banalists were affected.

Children were affected.

People with families now

do not want to take overseas postings quite reasonably.

Is there a reason that you think the CIA

denies this?

Is it because they really have a device?

That is my hunch.

Now, at the beginning of this year,

so about a month ago,

there was an announcement that the US had purchased

a Havana syndrome device

and was testing it and had been testing it

for about the last year.

That was the previous news story

to break before this Norwegian one.

Didn't this happen like when the US invaded

Venezuela?

Like, wasn't there like a security guard

who said that this happened

that it seemed like one of these devices was deployed?

Yeah, and I think it was Trump who said

that there was a device called

something like the DiscoMobulator.

The DiscoMobulator.

In fairness, that's a sick name.

That's pretty good.

That's pretty good.

That's like some 1940s comic book stuff.

I can't wait.

The thing that was interesting about the announcement

of the one that they obtained

is that they said that it fits into a backpack.

That really changes the game in terms of how easily

it can be deployed in this kind of situation.

Now that people are increasingly realizing

this is a thing,

do you think that it could spread to the point

that it actually starts having

a pretty significant effect on geopolitics?

I mean, it's already had a serious effect

on geopolitics.

In that this all happened after Cuba,

after Obama opened up relations with Cuba.

And this was then a really easy pretext

for the Trump administration to roll back

all of the Obama era opening up.

And so that immediately tanked both US-Cuba relations

and the entire economy of Cuba,

which has been in basically freefall ever since.

All right, so well-deserved victory lap for Nicky here.

Switching gears, I want to talk about

over the past couple weeks,

there's been this trial going on in California.

Social media is on trial.

You've heard this one before,

but this case is different.

And I think really dramatic.

So the argument that is playing out here

is whether or not social media apps are addictive

and whether the companies are making them addictive on purpose.

It all centers around this one particular case.

It's in Los Angeles.

There's a 20-year-old woman.

And she says that she joined TikTok and Instagram

and YouTube and Snapchat,

she had all these other apps when she was like 10 years old.

And her use of these apps,

according to her,

caused body dysmorphia

and all kinds of really horrible mental health problems.

She settled with TikTok and Snapchat

before the trial even started,

but meta and YouTube are fighting this

in court arguing whether or not their platforms are addictive.

And exactly what methods are they saying

that these companies used in order to addicted people?

So the argument that the plan is making here

is that the social media companies

are operating digital casinos

is the term that they used here.

So they're saying that features like infinite scroll,

how you can go on one example,

you just scroll forever, it never stops.

They're saying the way that notifications

are designed the way that videos

just keep playing and playing automatically.

What's really interesting here, though,

is for the whole history of the internet,

there's been this law called section 230,

or at least the modern internet,

the past 30 years or so.

Section 230, maybe you've heard about it before,

if you're cursed like I am with paying too much attention

to computers,

it's a lot that basically says big online platforms

are not responsible for the things

that their users post, essentially.

They have to do their due diligence

to make sure there isn't illegal, horrible stuff happening,

but aside from that, essentially,

it's like, well, our users posted that that's not our fault.

We don't like it, we're not happy about it,

but we can't be held legally responsible.

This case is different because they're arguing,

it's not the content that causes the harm,

like yes, there's harmful content on here,

but they're saying it wouldn't be as much of an issue

if they didn't design these tools to be addictive.

Now that's something that Meta and YouTube

and all these companies completely disagree with the rate.

Like we're not, our platforms aren't addictive.

They basically argued that you can't get addicted

to these things, it's not like alcohol or cigarettes

or something like that.

YouTube actually argued in their opening statement

that they're not a social media platform.

They say we're entertainment, like we're like HBO, right?

You can't get addicted to HBO.

It's an argument that algorithmic social media

the way TikTok and Instagram now run,

but it's sort of by definition addictive.

Well, and there's, you know,

you could look at this multiple ways, right?

Like what the companies will tell you is

we're just trying to serve you content and videos

and posts that you're gonna love

and you have fun looking at our platforms

and then you do it for longer, right?

And you could look at that and be like,

yeah, that's the reasonable argument, I think.

The other way to look at it is they are designing

these algorithms in general.

They're optimizing for engagement is what they call it, right?

They're trying to build them to keep you

staring at your phone, staring at your computer.

They use notifications to bring you back

throughout the history of social media.

They brought in psychologists to help them

design the way that their platforms work

in order to latch on to like the inner machinations

of the human mind.

So I think that's a great point.

Like that's kind of what they're trying to do

is to build them in a way that keeps you looking at it.

Which is why they're, you know,

they use this casino analogy, right?

It's why they're saying all these social media platforms

are a digital casino because we all kind of accept

you can become addicted to gambling, right?

There's something about that process here

that is different from other sorts of things.

They're saying that social media is more like that.

You go on, you scroll, you don't know what you're gonna get.

You see the next video, you get this dope and mean rush

but it's not satisfying enough so you keep going.

That's the argument they're laying out here.

I would imagine that most of our listeners and viewers

would be like, well, obviously social media is addictive.

And this is one of those cases where the law is trying

to catch up to something that people already feel

is true in our lives.

And it's because of Section 230.

As you said, that we have not been able to close the gap

between the perception and people's lived experience

and what we can actually say about these companies

in like a legal sense.

So if I'm understanding you correctly, Tom,

you're saying that like they're trying to make an argument

that basically would not change Section 230.

They're actually trying to get around Section 230.

This case is finding another way in.

They're saying, forget about Section 230.

The problem isn't the content.

People are always gonna post harmful content on social media.

They're saying the problem is that these platforms get you hooked

and it's the design of the platforms that's the problem.

And there is a lot of evidence backing up this argument.

There have been all these document leaks over the years

that shows that meta in particular is well aware

of the problems that users experience on its platform, right?

Like there was a famous case years ago,

like called it the Facebook Papers

where this employee named Francis Hoggan

leaked tens of thousands of pages of internal conversations

where they knew, for example, that Instagram

was causing these like spirals among teenage girls

where they would like end up having really serious

body dysmorphia issues and in eating disorders.

And they knew meta did that there were things they could do

to prevent this and they chose not to do it

because they didn't want to harm engagement.

The stakes of this are incredibly high

because presumably if the court finds

against the big social media companies

that leaves them open to the mother

of all class action lawsuits, right?

Because this is affected everyone who's used up platform.

There are more than 2,000 similar lawsuits

going through the courts right now

at like different stages of the process.

And this case in Los Angeles is kind of seen

as the bell weather, right?

That depending on how this goes,

this is probably gonna set a precedent

for how all those other cases will go.

If the courts find that these platforms

are legally addictive,

that will open up the floodgates

for thousands of more lawsuits.

And probably it would create a like new opportunity

for lawmakers where they would say like,

okay, we've all decided that these platforms are addictive.

Now we're gonna do something about it.

But more broadly, I think this is part of a much bigger shift,

right, for years and years like more than 10 years

we've been talking about like, you know,

all these companies are causing so many problems.

It's really reached a breaking point, right?

Australia passed a law that says like,

social media essentially is illegal

for young teenagers, right?

That you can't get on these platforms.

There's a similar law proposed in California.

It's part of this broader push

to try and bring these companies to heal.

One thing that interests me about this case

when it comes to AI is whether or not

this case will then define the way that the courts

or the public or lawmakers start looking at AI companies

and whether or not they're addictive as well.

And one of the things that I've been reporting on recently

is the fact that AI companies have really been trying

to effectively get a version of Section 230 for them,

like Section 230 protected social media companies

from liability for so long.

And now AI companies are trying to also

get a law that makes them completely

unaccountable to any of the harms that they produce.

And if this case actually goes the way of the users

could that create a cascading effect

where then it undermines the campaign

of the AI companies as well?

Absolutely.

It's a really interesting moment

because there's been this big shift because of AI,

just in the way that tech companies are operating, right?

So for the longest time,

like all of the biggest digital, like online companies

in the world were just full of stuff

that their users posed, right?

AI is different, right?

Because when you talk to Chanchee BT,

you're not encountering user-generated content.

Like the company itself is speaking to you.

So if the company, if the company's tool

creates a piece of information that hurts you,

this law section 230 does not protect them.

Yeah, that's right.

It's worth pointing out.

Section 230 isn't just like a bad thing.

It is what allowed the internet to flourish, right?

Like if social media companies were like directly responsible

for every single thing that their users post

the minute it goes online,

you wouldn't be able to have something

that looks like Instagram looks the way that it does today

or looks like even Google search, right?

So there's also a lot of freedom.

So it's a really hotly debated, complicated issue.

Also really interesting to look at how the companies

are responding to this another moment where,

like it seems like Mark Zuckerberg

in particular gets pulled in front

of the public and forced to answer a bunch of questions.

But kind of famously, like Zuckerberg

had a lot of really weird flubs in situations like this

before because he just is sort of a weird guy.

He sees a weird dude.

His people, his team were like literally trying to make him

act more human was like how it was described.

And he said, when they asked about it,

he's like, well, yeah, I think famously,

I am pretty bad at this sort of thing

that we're doing right here.

That's quite self aware of him.

You have to give him credit for the self awareness.

The human training is working apparently.

But also a few years back,

he said that he'd made a 20 year mistake,

a political miscalculation,

which was essentially apologizing too much.

And he said that his company

and he had historically taken responsibility

for things that weren't actually his responsibility, right?

That like, oh, people are criticizing our platform.

Well, it's not really our fault.

And that's kind of the argument

that they're making in court here.

They're like, we know people are getting hurt.

We're very unhappy about that.

We don't like it, but they're getting hurt

because of human nature.

And one thing you're not hearing really

from these companies in these cases is sorry.

And we really haven't found any actual way

to hold these companies accountable

for the things that happen

when their users are engaging with the platforms.

So I think it isn't hyperbolic to say

that this could be a turning point

in the history of the internet,

this one little lawsuit,

depending on how it plays out,

we could see a much different technology landscape

in a much different internet

over the next few years,

depending on how the court rolls.

Yeah, that would be huge.

That would be really, really huge.

So speaking of crazy CEOs,

I had the craziest week last week

attending the AI Impact Summit in India,

which was this massive international event

where more than 500,000 people descended into New Delhi

to gather and talk about all things AI.

And this event brought together

some of the biggest big wigs in the AI industry,

as well as some world leaders,

including French President Macron

and the Brazilian President Lula.

And it was just a spectacle, a spectacle.

Like it was this massive circus of scale and size

and so overwhelming in so many ways,

but there were just all of these hilarious things

that were happening, like Macron showed up

and would not stop using the phrase Jaiho

at every opportunity.

Jaiho?

Jaiho, from Slumdog Millionaire.

Oh my God.

But Macron like literally used it in a speech,

he tweeted it the moment he arrived at India,

he posted it on Instagram,

you like made a video with the soundtrack in the back.

Anyway, there was this very viral moment

where Sam Albin and Dario Amade, CEO of Anthropic,

refused to hold hands after Modi tried

to make all the tech leaders hold hands

in this giant celebratory line to say like hooray,

we're all united in our goals at the summit

and for listeners that have been with us

since the beginning of this podcast,

they will know that Albin and Amade

have deep beef with each other.

And it was displayed to the entire summit

and to the entire world that everyone was holding hands

except for two of them.

It's so petty.

It was so so silly.

But what was so interesting about this summit

is that there are kind of two summits

actually happening simultaneously.

There's the public facing summit

where you have all these talks given by the CEOs,

then you have a bunch of panels.

I was part of one of the panels,

so I was attending because I was speaking.

But then there's a secret summit

that's happening behind the scenes.

And this is the real reason why all the CEOs

of these AI companies show up.

They're all trying to have these backroom negotiations

directly with governments, with world leaders

to essentially codify their ability

to operate above the law.

So in the public facing summit,

there's like civil society,

there's university students, there's academics,

there's lots and lots of different types of people

from different walks of life

that are representing very different perspectives.

But in the secret summit,

it's just the government face to face with the companies.

There's no one else invited.

They decide what norms they want to set

for how a company is allowed to operate in a certain region.

And literally no one else can participate.

And so what came out of these closed door discussions,

this time around, they announced over $250 billion

of data center investments.

So it kind of set this tone of like,

we are here to do business,

we are coming to the global south

to open up markets and collect more data

and build more infrastructure.

But there was also this vibe shift that happened

that kind of manifested in two ways.

One was that this summit actually opened up

the public facing summit to the public themselves.

Usually that doesn't happen.

Like the public facing summit means simply

that it's live streamed to people's living rooms

if they want to watch it.

But in this case,

anyone and their mother was able to come and show up

and just like be in the audience and ask questions.

What kind of questions were the audience asking?

Some of them just went on full rants

about like American imperialism,

which was hilarious.

Sorry, no.

Others were asking questions like,

how should I be preparing for an AI future?

Or how do I protect my kids' critical thinking?

How do we make sure that our governments

don't invite these companies

to keep building data centers in our communities?

Like it was like such an interesting array of questions

that represent a cross-section of societal concerns.

But the other thing that happened

that I think represents this vibe shift

is that the CEOs during their keynotes

and during their public interviews

were just saying the wildest things.

Because I think they have the pressure,

the public pressure and the public criticism

against the AI industry has now reached a point

where they are really on the defensive

and they feel like they have to justify far more

why they are consuming so many resources,

why they are collecting so much data.

Yeah, there was this quote from Sam Altman

that was kind of not well received.

Yeah, I mean, you can see why.

I feel like we need to read the full Sam Altman quote

because it's, you cannot make this up.

So he says, one of the things that's always unfair

in this comparison is people talk about how much energy

it takes to train an AI model relative to how much it costs

to human to do one inference query,

which I already have so many thoughts.

I love doing that stuff.

You know me.

I'm always doing my inference queries.

But it also takes a lot of energy to train a human.

It takes 20 years of life

and all of the food you eat during that time

before you get smart.

And not only that, it took like the very widespread evolution

of the hundred billion people that have ever lived

and learned not to get eaten by predators

and learned how to like figure out science

and whatever to produce you.

It's very clear that Sam Altman does not know what a human is.

Part of me wants to be empathetic to him here.

And he just had a baby.

So I wonder if he was actually thinking about that.

Like he's like a newly minted father.

You think it's kind of like an AI?

Yeah.

It's like observing his child being like,

wow, this takes so much effort to raise a human.

And like maybe that that's like how that you know,

like the most charitable interpretation.

Well, there's also like the obvious argument

that it's like the human beings are here

and they're living lives and like falling in love.

The AI is optional.

We don't have to do that part.

But they're kind of operating from this perspective

and it's like, well, we must build this technology

and it is inevitable.

So yeah, of course it's going to be really bad

for the environment.

Yeah, I don't know if people are buying it.

It comes down to this kind of post-human philosophy

that you get a lot in the AI industry

that they don't think of themselves as building

a tool fundamentally for human.

Yes.

They think of themselves as building the successor to human.

Exactly.

I think some kind of God.

Which to be fair is like a small faction of the people.

It's not like all of them.

But it is a growing faction that have this ideology

that what they are ultimately trying to create

is going to be duplicative of and replace humans.

Yeah.

But whether or not it replaces them,

like the idea that we're making a God

that's going to solve all our problems,

like that is open AI's mission, right?

Like a couple of years ago,

there was a great profile of Sam Altman in the New York Times

where he said like the plan here is that we're going to make

this tool that is smarter than any guy

we're like making a new guy.

And that guy's going to take all the jobs,

open AI will accumulate all of the world's wealth

and then we will redistribute it to the people.

Like that literally that is what Sam Altman says

his plan is for his company.

And like we've been tuning our whole world around this plan,

or at least like the world governments are

and like all the biggest companies in the world.

Like this is the new thing that everyone is doing.

This is the future here's what it's going to be like.

And now over the last week at this conference you were at,

it kind of seems like maybe they're wobbling a little bit.

But then at the same time in all these back door,

you know, secret meetings that you're talking about,

they're making new plans for all these data centers

that they're going to build.

So whatever the public feels like in some sense,

they're working hard to just keep charging ahead.

There were moments when I feel like the CEOs really revealed

what is usually left unsaid.

Like Brad Smith, vice president of Microsoft,

he literally used the phrase,

we need governments to generate demand for our technology,

which was like such a wild admission.

You know, like he's basically saying we're having trouble

like getting people to want it.

So we need the government to force people to want it.

And there were kind of many signals

that that kind of set this tone of,

yes, they are striking these deals.

They still got the $250 billion of data centers.

And yet they are under a lot of pressure

and public pressure is basically working.

Like they are really struggling

to regain control of the narrative.

And as they lose control of the narrative,

I think they know that this will start to stall their ability

to shape the world that they want.

And every time someone like Sam Alman says something like,

oh, think about how much it takes to train a human,

that just kind of slices away

and slices away on the public goodwill.

Which does matter, right?

Because like the idea that this is gonna be great,

it's gonna change the world.

If we all collectively stop believing that,

it could be a pretty serious economic problem

for these companies because they need a lot.

It's hard to overstate how much money these companies need.

And the more that the public isn't buying it,

the harder this argument is to sell to their investors.

And the impact could be pretty dramatic.

Join us next week.

If you're in the UK, you can listen on BBC Sounds.

If you're outside the UK,

you can listen wherever good podcasts are distributed

or search for the interface podcast on YouTube.

And if you wanna get in touch with us,

you can email us at theinterfaceatbbc.com.

We do read all of your messages.

Or you can WhatsApp us on plus 444-3207-2472

or find us on social media.

Links are in the show notes.

The following Zippercruder radio spot you are about to hear

is going to be filled with F words.

When you're hiring, we at Zippercruder know

you can feel frustrated for Lauren even.

Like your efforts are futile.

And you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous people

only to get flooded with candidates who are just fine.

Fortunately, Zippercruder figured out how to fix all that.

And right now, you can try Zippercruder for free

at zippercruder.com slash zip.

With Zippercruder, you can forget your frustrations

because we find the right people for your roles fast,

which is our absolute favorite effort.

In fact, four out of five employers

who post on Zippercruder get a quality candidate

within the first day.

Fantastic.

So whether you need to hire four, 40, or 400 people,

get ready to meet first rate talent.

Just go to zippercruder.com slash zip

to try Zippercruder for free.

Don't forget that zippercruder.com slash zip.

Finally, that zippercruder.com slash zip.

Finding great candidates to hire can be like,

well, trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Sure, you can post your job to some job board,

but then all you can do is hope the right person comes along,

which is why you should try Zippercruder for free.

At zippercruder.com slash zip.

Zippercruder doesn't depend on candidates finding you.

It finds them for you.

It's powerful technology identifies people

with the right experience

and actively invites them to apply to your job.

You get qualified candidates fast.

So while other companies might deliver a lot of,

hey, Zippercruder, find you what you're looking for.

The needle in the haystack.

See why four out of five employers

who post a job on Zippercruder

get a quality candidate within the first day.

Zippercruder, the smartest way to hire.

And right now, you can try Zippercruder for free.

That's right, free at zippercruder.com slash zip.

That zippercruder.com slash zip.

Zippercruder.com slash zip.

Zippercruder.com slash zip.