TikTok's Uncertain Future, Twitter's 2024 Election Play, AI Regulation's Feasibility — With Ryan Mac and Bobby Allyn

Ryan Mac is a tech reporter at The New York Times, Bobby Allyn is a technology correspondent at NPR. The two join Big Technology Podcast for a wide-ranging discussion touching on: 1) TikTik's ban in Montana and its potential spillover effects. 2) The rise of Instagram Reels. 3) Twitter's Role in the 2024 U. S. presidential election. 4) Elon Musk as Republican kingmaker. 5) Elizabeth Holmes reports to prison. 6) AI regulation's long road ahead. -- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:03Speaker 01

  LinkedIn presents.

• 1:17Speaker 00

  Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool headed nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. And today we have a grab bag of stories with two great tech reporters who are hanging out with me here in NPR West in Culver City in Los Angeles. We're doing this, well, live together, but recorded for you. Ryan Mack is here. He's a technology reporter at the New York Times. Welcome, Ryan. Hey, thanks for having me. Thanks for being here. And Bobby Allen is here, a technology correspondent at NPR. Bobby, thank you for being here. Thank you for hosting us. This is pretty exciting. Yeah, it is exciting. Happy to have you, Alex. Great to be here. So, well, this is cool. I just said, great to be here on my own show. It's always been a dream of mine. All right, we're going to cover four big stories, grab bag of topics. We're going to cover the state of TikTok. We're going to cover TikTok's, sorry, Twitter's place in the 2024 election.

• 2:02Speaker 00

  Elizabeth Holmes heading to prison. And if we can get to it, and I think we will, AI regulation and what's going to happen there. There's been so much smoke on that last topic in particular, but very little fire. Start with the state of TikTok. So Bobby, you had a story that TikTok is in, well, TikTok is in the middle of trying to fight a ban in Montana. You know, it's filing this lawsuit to try to protect itself against this ban using the First Amendment in the US and talking about how US has a principle for free expression and by banning TikTok in Montana, it's violating that constitutional right. Now, that's a definite rule, right? But is there any irony here in the fact that a company

• 2:47Speaker 00

  that's owned by a Chinese firm in a country where there is no free expression is now using the United States' own constitutional right to try to preserve itself from like a national security threat type of move and using the rules here to potentially try to extend its lifespan?

• 3:06Speaker 02

  I don't know if I'm here to measure irony. I mean, but I could-

• 3:09Speaker 00

  But do it, though.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Welcome to the grab bag. First question. I mean, look, I think this is political theater. I think the lawmakers in Montana know that this is going to face really long odds in federal courts. I mean, I've talked to a bunch of constitutional lawyers and none of them said this has a snowball's chance in hell of being upheld. But it comes as a lot of states and the Biden administration are trying to figure out what to do about TikTok. I mean, you know, it's funny because remember back in the Trump administration, everyone thought that Trump's crackdown on the app was kind of a Trump sort of thing, like another sort of wild, crazy interest that he had and that it was sort of, there wasn't, you know, bipartisan support to put

• 3:55Speaker 02

  the app out of business, come to the Biden White House. And it's like, wait, if there's one thing that Biden and Trump actually agree on, it's that the national security concerns about ByteDance and in Ascendant China are actually the same as in the Trump White House. So, I mean, I'm curious to hear what Ryan has to say here, but I think how this case plays out in Montana could potentially affect state legislatures around the country and affect ultimately what the White House decides to do on TikTok. Because right now, it's-

• 4:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it's not political theater then, right? I mean, if this is them trying to push this forward and it can impact and get the ball rolling elsewhere, it's something more than political theater. Wouldn't you agree?

• 4:28Speaker 02

  I mean- I think I think Montana is doing this to get Montana in a headline to make it look like they're being tough on China. So from that sort of perspective, I do think there's a little bit of theater here. But yeah, it plays into the larger narrative of TikTok being this national security concern, even though there's not really any concrete evidence of that being that case. It's as one federal judge put it during the Trump years, you know, the threat about TikTok is sort of phrased in the theoretical that we could really get into it. But if you if you if you really scrutinize the evidence against TikTok in terms of the national security concerns, there's no solid evidence that the Chinese Communist Party has ever or will ever use TikTok as an espionage tool. Certainly, it's it's within their abilities and in the authoritarian regime, but it's not like they have done

• 5:12Speaker 02

  it thus far. China has so much data on Americans already. Like, I really don't think TikTok that they would be able to glean anything they don't already know about Americans from 150 million users in the US. It's a lot of people, but TikTok already has tons of information on us. I don't know. What do you think, Ryan?

• 5:29Speaker 03

  It sounds like something that TikTok PR might say. It's a what is that privacy center they have down the road that they built?

• 5:36Speaker 00

  Do you guys end up going to that?

• 5:37Speaker 02

  Bobby, I was there.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  Privacy war room?

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was there.

• 5:40Speaker 00

  It's like they put they picked the Facebook election war room invite and they're like, why don't we just do that and see if it works to the same effect? So I think there was some skepticism around it.

• 5:49Speaker 03

  Something funny about that one?

• 5:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, let's hear it.

• 5:51Speaker 03

  So I got I asked to go and they wouldn't let me go. So another our TikTok reporter was invited and she couldn't make it. And she tried to pass the invite on to me and they said, no, you can't attend our supposedly transparent privacy center unveiling, which I don't think showed very much, right, Bobby?

• 6:09Speaker 00

  Well, they're they're wise to your tricks, Ryan. But it actually so so Bobby's saying here, like, there hasn't been a foul, and you're trying to say there hasn't been a foul that we know of, and you're trying to say

• 6:18Speaker 03

  No, I would agree with that. No, yeah, I would say

• 6:20Speaker 00

  You just said it sounds like something TikTok PR would say.

• 6:23Speaker 03

  You know, I think

• 6:24Speaker 02

  And I'm a little offended. You're saying I'm carrying water for ByteDance, Ryan. We're gonna have to take this outside.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  Should we take a break?

• 6:29Speaker 00

  It's gonna be the first fistfight on Big Technology Podcast. Honestly, this would be a really good one. I would videotape it.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's too early in the morning. No, I would, you know, I would, that is exactly right. I mean, it's, it's more that, you know, these hypotheticals keep popping up, you know, and these opportunities to show that ByteDance, you know, is separate from China, you know, like, they keep failing at, or sorry, separate from TikTok. They keep failing at that, like, very basic step. And, you know, we have a story this week that shows the connections between the two companies and, you know, their inability to keep US data out of, you know, Chinese servers. And that stuff keeps popping up. It's just like their lack of transparency here is, and this lack of credibility when it comes to these statements are what's hurting them.

• 7:21Speaker 03

  You know, and I think both things can exist.

• 7:23Speaker 00

  Talk about your Lark story.

• 7:24Speaker 03

  Sure. So this week we wrote a story, my colleagues Upman and I, published a story on this internal tool called Lark. And Lark is, if you think about it, kind of like Slack, like we use Slack every day. And it's used by every one of ByteDance's employees. ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. So if you're a TikTok employee, you're also using Lark. And it's like, you know, workplace collaboration tool they use in their day to day. So, you know, there's these large groups on Lark that people are in. Some of them deal with, you know, sensitive stuff, banning and unbanning accounts, child exploitative material. And user information is then shared in these channels.

• 8:09Speaker 03

  Let's say, for example, you, Alex, get banned from TikTok and you want to, you know, get your account back. You would maybe share your driver's license. Now that driver's license is then shared in Lark and it's now there and stored. And so that stuff has been stored in Lark, which is saved, you know, that data is saved on Chinese servers and it's been there for years and it's accessible to thousands of people in these groups. You know, and so that stuff is out in the open and it's coming at this time where TikTok is saying, you know, we're protecting US user data. It's separate from our Chinese operations, but we have examples that that's actually not the case.

• 8:45Speaker 00

  All right, and you've been, I'll just ask this one, Ryan, but you've been reporting on social media for a long time.

• 8:50Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  A lot about the lax data protections that Facebook has. This sounds to me more like... Kind of typical social media being company being casual with data versus like something from Xi Jinping to get my license, my driver's license.

• 9:05Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 9:05Speaker 00

  So how do you think, or do you think we should really think about this differently?

• 9:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I talked to many privacy and security experts and they say like, you know, these probably these employees are trying to do the right thing. They're trying to, you know, unban this account quicker. They're trying to get this child exploitative material off, you know, TikTok and they're working to do that in the fastest way possible. And so they're using what's ever available to them to get that in front of other colleagues to flag it, you know? But it really, you know, and this does, this happens at other companies and these other companies, you know, they have to think about how this data is stored after the fact, after these tasks get executed. But these other companies don't have a Chinese parent company and that is the kind of issue at hand here.

• 9:51Speaker 03

  And this company TikTok is now making these promises that it can separate, you know, US user data from, you know, the rest of it and sort it on US servers. And, you know, and as reporters, we hold up these company's statements to them and say like, you know, you say you're doing this, but actually this is happening. And I think that is the fundamental point of what we're trying to make.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  I do think there's two strains of concern that end up getting conflated. I mean, Ryan's really good story and other reporting has shown that there's US data that is accessible from Chinese based employees at ByteDance. That's one concern, but a separate thing of what I was talking about earlier is whether the CCP can then get the information, right? And obviously there are national intelligence laws in China that basically say if the government comes to you as a private business, you have no choice but to surrender all of the information you have on companies. You can't really fight it. There's not like an independent judiciary like there is in the US. So for sure, TikTok says, you know, there's sequestration that our data is being sort of in the US isolated from ByteDance employees. And that has been proven again and again,

• 10:55Speaker 02

  including through Ryan's recent story, to be BS, right? That's one issue, but the separate issue and the thing that is really animating Washington right now is whether the CCP can get US user data. And on that question, there just has, at least there's nothing publicly available to show that that's the case.

• 11:10Speaker 03

  And I would agree with that 100%. So no more fight anymore.

• 11:14Speaker 00

  That's good. We're making world peace to tech reporters at a time.

• 11:17Speaker 03

  You know, I think, you know, there has been other reporters that have shown, you know, the lax data practices of TikTok, you know, Emily Baker White.

• 11:26Speaker 00

  But you know, I'm hearing so much about data and I also wonder just about the cultural control that this platform has, like watching Elon take over Twitter and then seeing the for you tab become entirely like AI threads leads me to believe that whatever company does control like the animating algorithm behind this can really put their their foot on the levers or their finger on the hand on the levers.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  Some body part on the levers that control what we see. And to me, that's, that seems like the real issue is can they have cultural control and push trends? No. I don't think there's any evidence that China has been doing that, but it does seem to me like that to me is like the key liability.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  And there's, there's one thing that I think is sort of a misperception among lawmakers who are railing against TikTok and they think if one day, you know, poof, sort of TikTok disappears, that some other social media company can just gobble up the users and recreate that culture and bring on the network effects that TikTok really has. And that's just not the case, right? I don't think any one social media app will ever be able to match what TikTok has built because the community is so unique and there's so much about how the platform operates that is kind of sui generis. I mean, yes, there's, you know, YouTube Shorts, there's, you know, Instagram, uh, what are they called now?

• 12:41Speaker 00

  Reels.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  Reels, of course. I can't remember the name.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  Bobby, you so underestimate reels, you don't even know what the name is.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  I know. I forgot what real. I mean, reels are just like, I call it like, it's like a salvation army of TikToks. It's like all of these like second and third hand TikTok.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  Very accurate.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  But, but, but look, I just don't, I don't. I, I, I don't, I don't think that there's any app that can just, if TikTok disappears, I think a lot of creators are going to be at a loss. I don't think there's any natural sort of raft for them to jump to if this ship is sinking.

• 13:06Speaker 00

  I strongly disagree with you on that. I do think that reels definitely can replace what we have with TikTok if we don't have TikTok. I mean, Ryan.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  I've seen your TikToks go out.

• 13:16Speaker 00

  I mean, my TikToks aren't going to push the needle either way. In fact, my.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  Are you making TikToks?

• 13:20Speaker 00

  Well, I had a TikTok agency that I used for the podcast to try to, you know, ride the distribution chain. Let's just say the ROI wasn't there and we mutually parted ways.

• 13:29Speaker 03

  I've seen some bad like podcasts or TikToks.

• 13:32Speaker 00

  Well, you haven't seen mine, so mine are definitely even below.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  Talk too much smack on.

• 13:36Speaker 00

  Go ahead. That's what this is for.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Talk smack.

• 13:38Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  What's the Twitter account TikTok investor, invest, um, investor on TikTok? They flag like the worst and most cringe worthy investor.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  VC TikToks.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're bad.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  Anyway, Ryan, you're gonna push back on something.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  Well, I do. Yeah, I mean, maybe just to set Ryan up here, like the last Facebook earnings calls uh, had reels growing substantially, not only in terms of usage, but in terms of their ability to make money off of these things.

• 14:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was gonna go push back on something on TikTok, but we can talk about reels.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, go ahead.

• 14:10Speaker 03

  I was gonna say that there is evidence of them, you know, manipulating the content on their platform with, you know, I think the Guardian, Forbes has talked about, you know, these banned lists of account, or like not accounts, but um, you know, words that can't be surfaced or searched for, you know, there's examples of, you know, Taiwan protests or Xinjiang, you know, there's or Hong Kong protests.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  The question is where are those orders coming from? Someone in ByteDance or the CCP and Doian, it's the TikTok equivalent in China. I mean, that has been used and it's been proven to be used as a propaganda tool. So, yeah.

• 14:44Speaker 00

  What do you guys think is going to be the outcome here?

• 14:47Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 14:48Speaker 00

  Cause I think, let me throw something out there and let you guys sort of give your opinion on it. It seems like these rules, like we had Montana, for instance, that stuff is not going to actually work. It's going to be ruled, you know, shot down in court. But it does seem like the committee on foreign investment in the United States, also known as CFIUS, which is, which is a great villainous name. For an important agency, it seems like they are going to be the ones that end up doing something. And all this stuff that we're seeing, the stuff that we're seeing in Montana, the dialogue all goes to influence what their move is. Cause ultimately they have the power.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  I don't know. ByteDance is want to give up TikTok. It's its first global hit. It's a huge success. It's a, it's one of the most valuable startups. I mean, ByteDance is one of the most valuable startups in the world. And this is their global sensation. So I remember during the, the Trump era, there was a huge pushback in China to the idea of a group of American investors or a US tech company acquiring TikTok. And of course, there's the antitrust concerns right now. I don't think Lena Khan would be overly excited about a big tech company acquiring TikTok.

• 15:53Speaker 03

  Remember when Walmart was gonna buy TikTok?

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. That was kind of hilarious.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  Well, it does. It does drive a lot of retail trends.

• 16:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:01Speaker 00

  But yeah, so Ryan, actually, I do want to go back to the, okay, so we'll, we'll, we'll just leave it as still kind of.

• 16:06Speaker 03

  I think Lemonade's gonna take off their new app. Huge opportunity.

• 16:10Speaker 00

  So, but Ryan, the Reels thing, like, do you think Reels is like a real factor here?

• 16:14Speaker 03

  I mean, I've started to use Instagram more than Twitter as, you know, my Twitter habit's been cleaned off and I've been suspended, but.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Ryan's cat video game is strong on Instagram, I can attest.

• 16:25Speaker 03

  Don't send people there, please do not. Um, I hate, and I also hate extrapolating on my own experience, but like, you know, Reels is dominating the app, you know, they're clearly pushing people that way. And it's no longer, you know, the redone, like the second and third hand TikToks, like Bobby was saying earlier, I, I, I've noticed more and more original content on there.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  They're striking creator deals, like they, they are put, they are pumping a lot into it, but it seems just like three paces behind TikTok.

• 16:49Speaker 03

  There is a lot of stuff that's, you know, you see it on every platform. It's like those like puppy video, like the same puppy videos, the same viral content, you know, it's re, regurgitated through each platform. But, you know, I'm seeing less of the like, it has like the TikTok.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  Like watermark or whatever.

• 17:05Speaker 03

  Watermark and the username in the corner.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  You know, it's interesting though, like my friends who are just on Instagram, they'll often send me a really funny TikTok video on Instagram as an Instagram reel, like three days after I saw on TikTok.

• 17:15Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, for sure.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  That happens all the time.

• 17:17Speaker 00

  I mean, I've sent you TikToks after you've seen TikTok, so I would say it's kind of tough to scoop you on TikTok stuff.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:23Speaker 00

  But let's just, um. I'm curious, every time there's a big debate like this, there are always some forces shaping it, right? Like the fact that we're having so much discussion about the dangers of TikTok, where we haven't, we've seen a little bit of, of, um, sort of nefarious behavior from them, but not like, you know, tidal wave of it. We haven't seen China invade Taiwan yet for sure. I'm curious if, are there forces that we don't understand or aren't fully, you know, clear in the public discourse about why this is being talked about so much now? I mean, Ryan, like, we used to talk about how big tech's favorite talking point was that you better like us because you're really not gonna like China. So like conversations like the one we're having right now happen all the time in the, in the tech press and the political media.

• 18:07Speaker 00

  I'm just kind of curious if you guys have a sense as to like, who wants these conversations to happen?

• 18:14Speaker 02

  You mean the conversation about?

• 18:16Speaker 00

  About the, the sort of the risks of TikTok? Or maybe I'm being too conspiratorial minded, but I'm curious like.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  I mean, Mark Zuckerberg wants this conversation to be happening, of course. I mean, it seems so obvious that I feel like I don't even have to say it. But like all the attacks against TikTok takes the heat off of the incumbent US-based social media companies, right?

• 18:35Speaker 00

  So do you think we're falling into that trap at all?

• 18:38Speaker 02

  Um, no, I mean, after, you know, reporting on TikTok for years, I do think there are serious questions that ought to be raised and ought to be explored when it comes to data protection and, you know, national security issues revolving around TikTok. And I think, I think it's, I think those concerns are real. I don't think they're being fabricated. I do think sometimes it's, it's, it's, there's a bit of exaggeration and a bit of hyperbole and a bit of, you know, focusing on the sort of theoretical outcomes here. But I think it's a good conversation to have. I don't know. What do you think, Ryan?

• 19:08Speaker 03

  I think you just gotta, I mean, for us, I just, we gotta follow the reporting, like, you know, you see this stuff with Lark, for example, like, you know, we worked on that for a while and, you know, it's a clear example of the company not being transparent with what's happening inside their own service, you know? Um, I think there's a lot more reporting to be done on TikTok and ByteDance. And I think there is kind of an inability to do that because of the lack of, you know, reporting ability from inside China, from inside Beijing, you know, with their crackdown on foreign reporting inside the country. But, you know, we can only, you know, I feel like my opinions can only be shaped by what I see from, from what we're hearing.

• 19:47Speaker 00

  Right.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  And, you know, and, you know, that's what we've put out there is what.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  What's happening.

• 19:53Speaker 03

  What's happening.

• 19:54Speaker 00

  No doubt about it.

• 19:54Speaker 02

  I mean, I remember covering, do you remember that, what was it, the Trump campaign event where a bunch of K-popers and others artificially boosted the attendance numbers? And on TikTok.

• 20:07Speaker 00

  The signup numbers.

• 20:08Speaker 03

  Was that the Oklahoma one or the?

• 20:09Speaker 02

  It was the Oklahoma one, yeah.

• 20:10Speaker 00

  They did not show up.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  And right after that, Trump brought down the hammer on TikTok. And I, I and others, I feel like, thought this would go away after that. That, that it looked like straight Trump retaliation and that he was targeting this app because it was embarrassing for him. But look at now, 2023, we're still talking about it. So I don't think anyone could have predicted that.

• 20:29Speaker 00

  One more media question and then we can move on to Twitter stuff. Obviously, the tensions are rising between the US and China. I don't think there's any doubt about that. And this story is part of that. What responsibility you think the press has in terms of contextualizing what's happening? Because I think an inflamed press can lead to inflamed action from politician, which can lead us closer to war. Or maybe I'm giving too much of too much credit to the media.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Wow, that question really does feel a little above my pay grade. How is US coverage gonna impact geopolitics?

• 21:03Speaker 00

  Or what responsibility does the press have to like, you know, put this stuff in the proper context versus blow it up and potentially inflame things?

• 21:10Speaker 02

  Are you are you insinuating that all the coverage about TikTok is sort of is heating up tensions between the US and China artificially? Or what's the?

• 21:19Speaker 00

  No, just that it has the possibility to do so.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of ramifications that are unintended, and you can't predict from news coverage. It's not really something that I think about, but yeah. I mean, I think the responsibility of what we're doing, as you know, Alex, is just getting the facts right and reporting the story and standing it up in a way that's responsible. But I don't know whether the story winds up in the White House and people use it to talk about larger geopolitical issues. I mean, do we have a responsibility to think about that?

• 21:51Speaker 00

  I think so.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  I don't think so, but.

• 21:54Speaker 00

  No one reads my stories, anyway.

• 21:57Speaker 00

  Ryan, we all know that's not true. Okay, let's I think that that was fair responses all around. Why don't we move on to another social media and social media times politics story, which is the role that Twitter is gonna play in the 2024 election. So last week, DeSantis announced his candidacy for President of the United States in a Twitter space with Elon Musk and David Sacks. Didn't go quite so well, but it is interesting to see Twitter's evolving place in at least US politics. And of course, it factors globally as well. So it sort of went from like, this was the platform where all the political class and journalists chatter to to like in 20, that was 2008. You could say maybe this happens in eight year increments.

• 22:41Speaker 00

  You know, in 2016, it was like here is a candidate Donald Trump, who's using this to circumvent the press and really, you know, sort of launch an insurgent candidacy. And now it's a lot different, right? It's a lot less, I would say, relevant for news than it was even a year ago. But you can still see, see it at least as something that is as culturally relevant to the point where DeSantis would want to announce his candidacy there, even though it didn't go poor, didn't go well. But like, this is gonna be, we're about to enter, you know, effectively year and a half of campaigning where Twitter will play a role. And it's sort of like, interesting that Elon Musk is the wild card now. I'm kind of curious how you guys see this platform factoring and how you think it plays out.

• 23:24Speaker 03

  Well, I think, you know, this, this week's event, you know, it shows that Twitter is now shaped by kind of the, whatever Elon wants in a way, you know? He hasn't made a secret of, you know, supporting DeSantis.

• 23:36Speaker 00

  Right.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  And as if like a year ago, he's tweeting, you know, I'm gonna support DeSantis. I'm leaning towards DeSantis. Vote, vote Republican in the midterms. And, you know, this space is, you know, the ultimate manifestation of like, you know, him inputting his will and, and changing the platform to how he's like, wants it to be, you know? What, what's good for Elon is good for Twitter.

• 23:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:59Speaker 03

  And, um, you know, that is gonna reflect itself in, you know, the news that surfaced in the, the for you page, how that, how that's tweaked. You know, what spaces are gonna be highlighted and who's gonna show up in those spaces? And I think that is the kind of overarching theme here.

• 24:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, and just a clarification for listeners. We're recording this Friday before this airs, so we might use this week and next week, uh, and last week in interchangeably. But just so you know that that's where we're coming from.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think despite all of the movement to other alternative Twitter platforms like Mastodon and Blue Sky and others, political reporters and all types of reporters are still glued to Twitter. I think that's gonna be the case coming into an election cycle. I mean, I won't name names, but there are reporters who say they've totally given up Twitter and that those reporters are still liking my tweets.

• 24:49Speaker 03

  Name, name.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. So people are, people are, people are still there. I mean, look, Blue Sky is what it is, but I think, what do they have, like? Ninety thousand users or something? It's like a tiny, tiny platform.

• 24:58Speaker 03

  I think, no, no, I think like, you know, like the, the idea that Twitter would just disappear one day was kind of ridiculous and like it would shut down and no one would use it. You know, I, I think it's going to be a slow burn of this thing, you know, as things start to degrade and things start to fail. But, you know, you, you have, there was like, there was a perfect example of how, you know, both political parties will use Twitter in the election, you know? DeSantis went on this space, it failed for more than 20 minutes as they tried to like, get it working. And President Biden then tweets out, you know, a, a link to, I think a fundraising form that said like, this link works, you know? Right. And Trump also jumped right on it. Trump jumped in, but he was on True Social. Right.

• 25:41Speaker 03

  As I believe, but his stuff was still getting, you know, push over to Twitter. Even Fox said. Even Fox was like, you know. This isn't gonna fail. If you wanna, if you wanna see and hear, like hear and see the candidate, come to our, this, you know, like it shows that people are still using Twitter. Right, it means it's relevant.

• 26:00Speaker 03

  Relevant to a certain amount of people and there's, you know, there's still some critical mass there. Is it the same as, you know, the last election? Probably not, but, you know, it's gonna take time for these things to just completely go away and these things are still gonna have a role.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  Well, what's the wheels fall off the bus moment for Twitter? I mean, there's been, there's, there's more outages than ever. The DeSantis presidential announcement was a total disaster. I mean, I, I just feel like, is there gonna be a moment that finally people say, I mean, when you and other journalists were suspended from Twitter, people, a lot of journalists were like, screw this, I'm off. I mean, what's it gonna be?

• 26:35Speaker 03

  I think it's different for everyone, you know, it's, um, everyone's gonna have their point where it's no longer tenable for them, you know? Was it Elon going after, you know, his, um, former head of trust and safety and saying, you know, pretty homophobic stuff about him? I mean, that was for some people the last straw, you know? Was it the banning of journalists, you know?

• 26:59Speaker 03

  You know, it's gonna be something different for everyone. Maybe it's just the service shutting off for a period of time where people getting logged out so they can't remember the credentials.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:08Speaker 03

  I do think it's kind of amazing that they spun this space as like a we broke the internet moment, like we melted the service. I was like, that's been like the refrain over and over again. And then, you know, you guys didn't break the internet. You broke a feature on an app, you know, that's been breaking for the last however many months.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:27Speaker 00

  It does speak to the interest in this announcement on Twitter and this idea that there's ever gonna be a wheels off the bus moment for Twitter. I mean, the platform, I can tell you from the moment I started covering this platform, there have been op-eds talking about how Twitter is dead. And they always end up being tweeted by the people that wrote the op-ed. And I'm sure the people who talked about how much of a disaster the DeSantis thing was, you know, went on and tweeted about it and hoped to get traction there. So I do think it's interesting that Elon Musk has gone on to be one of, I guess, a number of Republican kingmakers in this election, or at least that's what he's positioning himself to be. What do you guys think about the role that he in particular is gonna play in this

• 28:09Speaker 00

  election? And do you think his support is gonna help or hurt candidates? Because I have to imagine that if you're DeSantis, you probably went through this type of thought process. A, okay, wow, the one of the most successful business people in the country who has like real, you know, very serious fans, very real grassroots movement supporting him, wants to feature me on his platform. It helps in the culture war narrative, and this is very exciting. And then, oh, wow, like, well, you know, it didn't work out as planned, kind of like our announcement was a bit of a flop. And that association with Elon Musk, it's like very difficult, I think, for me to contextualize how that's gonna help or hurt a candidate who wants to get close to him. Kind of curious what

• 28:54Speaker 00

  you guys think.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  I don't know. If you hitch your political future to Elon Musk, I can't imagine that you're gonna be very successful. But people said the same about Trump before.

• 29:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, these can't imagine statements are kind of.

• 29:04Speaker 02

  Right, right. But I just, I mean, I think, obviously, people like saying that. Trump is, or sorry, that Elon is very Trumpian, but I don't think his base has a coherent set of worldviews. I mean, he's such a mercurial, chaotic person who's running so many different companies and has so many different interests that, I mean, besides being sort of a chaos agent and besides being someone who really relishes owning the libs, what else does he stand for politically? He's kind of a self-

• 29:33Speaker 00

  You just basically described the type of person that Trump was.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, but he, I mean, like Trump, he's a self-preservationist. He, he, he hoards and wants to preserve his wealth. I mean, what else does he really represent, Ryan? What do you think politically?

• 29:46Speaker 03

  I was just thinking of the irony. He did this CNBC interview the other day where he's like, give me money. I don't care. Give me power. I don't care. And like, like influencing an election is the definition of like gaining power.

• 29:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, and caring.

• 29:58Speaker 03

  And caring, you know. You know, it, it, it is strange though, because it's like, you know, I don't know how much he wants to hitch his star to DeSantis, you know. In some ways, you've already, like, I've been on Twitter and seen the reaction to it, but he's alienating this like MAGA base that he's also, people love, you know, he's had this subset of Trump fans that like him, you know, for owning the libs essentially, and he's alienated those folks. You know, he retweeted Tim Scott the other day, the Tim Scott announcement, the video on Twitter. So like, you know, is he for Tim?

• 30:34Speaker 00

  And he's putting Tucker on, who might run for president himself.

• 30:36Speaker 02

  And Ben Shapiro, right?

• 30:38Speaker 00

  And he's doing a bunch of-

• 30:39Speaker 03

  Daily Wire's, you know, I think he, he knows that the election is inherently going to drive traffic to Twitter and ultimately that, I think, is his North Star. You know, if he can save Twitter as a business while doing all this other promotion of these, you know, I think he sees that as a flywheel of pushing, you know, more activity to Twitter and more relevance to Twitter.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  Here's a question I have for both you guys. Do you, if there's a DeSantis administration, do you think Elon gets a cabinet position?

• 31:06Speaker 00

  Oh, I don't think he would take one. I mean, could you imagine going from the CEO of, unless, where was he, like, unless he became-

• 31:12Speaker 03

  Don't you have to divest?

• 31:13Speaker 02

  There's that, and, and-

• 31:15Speaker 00

  Maybe he could become vice president, but like, come on, he's not gonna give up.

• 31:18Speaker 03

  No, he can't because he can't-

• 31:19Speaker 00

  I don't think there's a conflict of interest in the executive branch.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  It's the whole South Africa. He's, he's not born, can you be vice president if you're born outside the US?

• 31:28Speaker 02

  Sure, US citizen. I don't see why not, but- Don't quote me on that.

• 31:31Speaker 00

  You might end up getting

• 31:32Speaker 02

  Trust the US Constitution. I just think, I just think personality wise, he can't have a boss. So I think that would be a short lived tenure.

• 31:39Speaker 00

  Trust me, I don't think that that would be something that he'd be interested in. He's building companies, not doing politics like, and you wouldn't want him as like, you know, one of the, the high prestige ones like the Secretary of State. But I'm going to push back gently on this idea.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Elon Musk as Secretary of State.

• 31:53Speaker 00

  I mean, we've, trust me, this country has been through weirder things. So I want to push, I want to push back gently on this idea that he doesn't have a, a political philosophy. Because I think you could basically describe Elon's political philosophy and his pushback and his, his purchase of Twitter as something of like a pushback on what a lot of Republicans are like describing as this sort of totalitarian version of progressivism. And, you know, that doesn't want people to be able to have free speech or, you know, take certain positions. And like, that is actually a very big part of Republican politics, politics today. And you could say DeSantis is actually like a, you know, key part of that with like his

• 32:33Speaker 00

  pushback against Disney in Florida and his other bills that, that the state has pushed forward.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:39Speaker 00

  I'm saying that like, this is actually kind of a, a more coherent and more of a pillar of Republican politics than I think you've given them credit for.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  I'm just, I'm just happy that we have a steward of a major social media platform who's combating the woke mind virus because it's just been a while.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  You can dismiss it, but that's actually, you know, I, I guess like the thing is like that is, that's a core animating principle of one of the two major American parties right now.

• 33:05Speaker 03

  I would, no, I was, I'll leave you with this. I think, you know, Elon's core like political principle, I mean, beyond the last two years is protecting his pocketbook.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:13Speaker 03

  Protecting his companies, you know?

• 33:18Speaker 03

  It's the, the amount of contradictions in this man is, is like amazing, you know? He criticized, you know, the lockdown, the COVID lockdowns and the woke mind virus for, you know, shutting down his Tesla factories.

• 33:31Speaker 03

  In the, in the opening stages of COVID, March 2020, he filed that lawsuit in Alameda County.

• 33:36Speaker 00

  And look who's supporting the guy who was like the most strongly anti-lockdown.

• 33:40Speaker 03

  Well, I was going to say, you know, the, the, the same thing happened in China, you know, he, there was no criticism of China, the Chinese government, you know, Tesla's very like, he sees China as very important to Tesla's future. No criticism there. You know, why not like what? Same thing happened, you know, if not more in China. And you don't have him, you know, going on these Twitter tirades against, you know.

• 34:04Speaker 00

  Xi Jinping.

• 34:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 34:07Speaker 00

  Okay, so you guys have both had like, pretty tense interactions with Elon Musk. Where he hasn't shown the best side of himself, let's put it that way.

• 34:16Speaker 03

  He's shown a side of himself.

• 34:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, right. So I think that.

• 34:19Speaker 03

  I reserve judgment.

• 34:21Speaker 00

  I will judge. I mean, he like, like, I don't think emailing Bobby, you suck is like, the best. Bobby, that's what he sent you?

• 34:28Speaker 03

  I do that every day.

• 34:29Speaker 00

  I mean, yeah, exactly. I've definitely frequently will send Bobby those, now especially. And Ryan, what did he email you? Did he called you like, an asshole or something like that?

• 34:38Speaker 03

  You fucking asshole. Are we live or in person? Sorry.

• 34:41Speaker 00

  Well, we'll bleep it, but yeah, we're not live on NPR, thank goodness, so.

• 34:45Speaker 03

  FCC is not listening to your podcast.

• 34:47Speaker 00

  Well, hmm. They, they, not them, but the platforms definitely crawl for swear words and mark you down if you, if you use them. But we'll bleep it. But yeah, I'm kind of curious, like. So you guys have seen him be this, the petulant side of.

• 35:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  The person that he is. Do you ever like, kind of like, sit that side beside and kind of say, how did this guy who has like, the, doesn't have the minimal impulse control not to write these email, emails, still, how is this person the same person that can build companies like SpaceX and Tesla? How does that, you know, for the, for the scorned by Elon club, I want to turn it over to you and kind of see how that sits in your.

• 35:30Speaker 03

  Why are we not rich, Bobby? Why haven't we built these companies?

• 35:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's not what I'm saying. I'm just kind of trying to say, you must spend some time thinking about this psychology of the person and also is the fact that like, how do you contextualize a person that will act like this, but also is able to build the way he has?

• 35:48Speaker 03

  You can either think of it as a duality, or you know, like, or this, you know, this is the quality that also helps him build these companies, right? You know, he's so bombastic and, you know, in some ways pushes, like, maybe, maybe it's just like a forcing function to push people towards these goals, you know, yelling at them or telling them they're horrible, they're wrong. At the end of the day, he's like a great salesman of his vision and however he gets people there. You know, works for him and it clearly it's worked for him at multiple companies, whether that's SpaceX or Tesla.

• 36:23Speaker 03

  And so I don't know, maybe that, maybe it's a quality that is needed from a CEO. I don't know, I've never run a company.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  It's, it's hard to imagine how having no impulse control and punching down for a living can help you be a successful entrepreneur. I think it's a weird quirk about Elon that he has a lot of business success and he's also just kind of a maniac. I mean, he sends me emails at, at 2am trolling NPR and it's gotten to the point where my bosses at NPR kind of rolled their eyes when I get an Elon Musk email. We're kind of sick of it, but you know, my colleague, David Fulkin, like who covers the media, you know, he wrote a book about Fox and someone said to me, imagine if David kept getting emails from Rupert Murdoch. We would say, we gotta run this to the breasts. We gotta do a story. Sometimes we kind of forget Elon has amassed the power that he has and that he is, is

• 37:13Speaker 02

  he the most or the second most wealthy person in the world? I can never keep track.

• 37:17Speaker 03

  It fluctuates.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  But, um, but yeah, I, I think his antics are so frequent that even in, you know, journalism, sometimes we sort of dismiss him or roll our eyes at him. But I, I do think when he's, when he's bullying journalists or when he's sort of blackmailing NPR into tweeting again, I think we ought to take that seriously and report on it.

• 37:38Speaker 03

  Well, I think that's the most Trump, like he shifted the Overton window of how we think about him. And that's a Trumpian, like, you know, it's like, it's, that's very Trumpian, right? Like, oh, well, he's done this, you know, like it can't be as bad as the last thing he did, you know? And so there, there is that quality to him where you can't necessarily cover everything. And if you did, it would drive you nuts and like, I don't know if we'd be better off for it.

• 38:02Speaker 00

  Bobby, don't you think it's time for NPR to start tweeting again? I mean, he did take your label off.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a decision for the executives at NPR. I'm a rank and file reporter. I don't have any say. And honestly, I don't, I don't have a position. All I know is, like so many news organizations, we derive very little traffic from tweeting out stories. There's an argument to be made that whatever, you can help build audience on Twitter. I'm not sure if that's the place to be building the kind of audience that we want right now, to be honest. I think we, there's more to be gained by doing TikTok videos than tweeting out generic headlines about the news of the day. So I haven't seen a real change in A, traffic and B, sort of the kind of people who are reaching out to me about my story since we stopped tweeting. So I don't really care.

• 38:50Speaker 03

  Are we going to see you on TikTok? Are you going to start making TikTok good?

• 38:53Speaker 02

  I, I, I am on TikTok. I'm going to have to make my account private after this podcast because everyone's going to rush to see what my videos are.

• 38:59Speaker 03

  Flood. It's going to melt the servers.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 39:03Speaker 00

  Folks, you have not seen, you haven't lived until you've seen Bobby dance to Renegade.

• 39:07Speaker 03

  They've melted my, it's melted my eyeballs.

• 39:10Speaker 00

  We're here on Big Technology Podcast, joined by Ryan Mack and Bobby Allen. Ryan is a technology reporter at The New York Times. Bobby Allen, the technology correspondent at NPR, which may tweet once again, or may not. We're not going to find out after the break, but afterwards, we will talk a little bit about Elizabeth Holmes going to prison and regulating AI.

• 39:32Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 41:18Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 41:38Speaker 00

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Bobby Allen. He's a technology correspondent at NPR and Ryan Mack. He's a technology reporter at The New York Times, both members of the scorned by Elon club. I am, I am alas, not one of them.

• 41:53Speaker 03

  When is that meeting, by the way? Is it like next week? Every Wednesday, every other Wednesday?

• 41:57Speaker 00

  Every Wednesday. Yeah, yeah. Hi, I'm Bobby and Elon emails me mean things. That'd be fun. That'd be a lot of fun. Elizabeth Holmes is scheduled to report to prison a day before we record, a day before we publish Tuesday of this, of this week. She may be in a cell right now. And so it's, it's, I guess it's somewhat surprising that she's actually gonna go. I don't know why I'm having that reaction. Like obviously a criminal actually gonna go and is supposed to go for 11 years. What do you think about the fact that she's actually like this is really happening?

• 42:34Speaker 02

  It doesn't shock me. I mean, I before I covered tech, I covered courts and a jury convicted her, a federal judge sentenced her. This is what happens. A lot of people are sort of astonished at the the length of the sentence. I mean, 11 years is a long time.

• 42:48Speaker 00

  And 13 for Sunny Balwani, which even longer.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  I mean, by the sentencing guidelines, this is a pretty fair sentence. But one thing to really underscore here is who were the victims again in this fraud? Rupert Murdoch, Walgreens, Safeway, right? I mean, the the most sympathetic victims in the Theranos trial were the patients who got blood tests that told them things like, you know, their pregnancy had been terminated when it had not, things like the cancer had come back when it had not. The jury found that there wasn't enough evidence to actually convict her on those patient counts. So she's being put away for 11 years in federal prison, basically for stealing from Rupert Murdoch and VC funds. So, um, yeah, I just, I just think that's something that kind of gets lost in this. Yeah, right, exactly.

• 43:35Speaker 00

  Think she actually is going to serve for 11 years?

• 43:39Speaker 02

  I can't, I can't say. I mean, I don't, I mean, it's possible, it's possible. I don't want to speculate. I mean, that's her sentence and

• 43:46Speaker 00

  I'll do it. I think she's got maybe, maybe five most, just given the way that I see the American legal system. All right, I'll make a note. Five years from today, we'll come back on Big Technology Podcast.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  She has a lot of political heft behind her. I mean, Cory Booker was already like writing, you know, letters and on her behalf, you know, I feel like there is maybe a politician somewhere that's going to hit their start of this idea that, you know, we were wrong about Elizabeth Holmes. I mean, there are people already are doing that, right?

• 44:11Speaker 02

  Her newborn child was named Invicta, I think is Latin for what is it always invincible? So maybe that was a sort of way of acknowledging that she thinks she's going to come back? Who knows?

• 44:23Speaker 00

  There's the New York Times story that people talked about a little bit last month called, or actually earlier this month, Liz Holmes wants you to forget about Elizabeth. And it was kind of like a Rorschach test between people saying, wow, you're rehabilitating Holmes's image. And, well, it's a, some other people call it a masterful story that proved that she's able to manipulate depending on the situation. Kind of fell more in the former camp. Ryan, I'm going to excuse you from commenting on this because it is the work of one of your colleagues. Bobby, I'm curious what your reaction was to that story.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  I think it was a freelance journalist, Amy Chozek, right? Didn't she write the piece?

• 45:00Speaker 00

  I mean, Ryan wants to comment, I'm gonna, I'll let him do it, but.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  I just think it's pretty notable that the person who got the access and seemed to be,

• 45:09Speaker 02

  I don't want to speculate again. It seemed notable that the person who got the access and did the story did not cover the trial. It seemed, the tone and the tenor of the piece, I think, was to people like me who covered the trial pretty closely, seemed to be a little tone deaf. It seemed like the part of the intent of the piece was to sort of humanize this former star of Silicon Valley before she goes to federal prison. And it definitely gave us some texture and some color of what she's like and what she's thinking and what motivates her. But there were also some quotes in the piece that made it seem like she has no regrets, that she really thinks that, you know, had she had more time, that these promises of revolutionizing laboratory science would have, would have come to fruition.

• 45:54Speaker 00

  I don't doubt that either. I mean, this is a media-driven demonization of a great Silicon Valley.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  Are you Tim Draper or are you Alex Cantrell? Who are you?

• 46:02Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 46:03Speaker 03

  He's got Bitcoin to sell you.

• 46:05Speaker 00

  It was a fraud.

• 46:06Speaker 03

  I was gonna say, you know, every, you know, that's, to your point, though, you know, it's her saying that on record, you know, the journalist is, you know, posing that to the world and allowing her to say that. It's like, you know, people can make a value judgment after reading that, but, you know, I think it adds to the Liz Elizabeth Holmes record a little bit, so.

• 46:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, that is one of the things.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  I don't think, I don't think any journalist would get the call, hey, do you want unfettered access to Elizabeth Holmes on the record? I don't think any journalist would say no, right? I mean, maybe some would.

• 46:37Speaker 00

  I would say yes.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  I think most would say yes.

• 46:39Speaker 00

  It's about how you frame it, though.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  I think that, yeah, it's the, exactly. The debate is about how should this be framed?

• 46:43Speaker 00

  That being said, you know, I think that, I don't think anybody read that story and was like, actually like, oh, I changed my mind about Elizabeth Holmes. And I do think that, like, people give access. I guess maybe people did. But I think that access journalism, like, gets a hard time. And I think there's a place for it. Like, like Ryan said, you do want the principles and story going on the record, just so you have that there.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  She looks like a victim in the story, though. And just imagine if this is the only story someone reads about Elizabeth Holmes, how your takeaway about her and the company would be different than if you actually knew what happened.

• 47:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:15Speaker 03

  Counter and say it. If you're reading that story, I don't think that's the only story you're reading about Elizabeth Holmes. Like, you're probably gonna go. Who's Elizabeth Holmes? You mean Liz Holmes? Liz.

• 47:22Speaker 00

  Liz.

• 47:23Speaker 03

  It's an SEO thing. It's actually an SEO, yeah.

• 47:26Speaker 00

  So, 10 minutes left. Let's talk a little bit about the potential that we're gonna regulate AI. But before we do, I just want to let listeners know that we're here in NPR Studios in Culver City, and there's a talk, the talk and a cough button. And Ryan just-

• 47:42Speaker 03

  I'm about to hit the button that sends the first tweet since Dave suspended me. There's like a big old- Don't hit that button, Ryan. Don't hit it. It's like that meme of like-

• 47:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. That tweet. Bobby Allen's latest story. But Ryan did just use the cough button exquisitely, and I want to just shout him out for that. Well done, Ryan.

• 48:02Speaker 03

  Never seen a button like this.

• 48:03Speaker 00

  There is some artificial intelligence regulation floating around Europe right now, which is actually quite interesting. It has more than 1,000 amendments to it, and it's expanded kind of from like, very like, common sense legislation about like, what should be used for data training to just this sprawling European-style piece of tech regulation. And Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, is now saying that, "We're gonna take a look at what this bill says, and we're gonna try to comply, but if we can't comply, we're gonna cease operating in Europe." I just want to call out a less graceful use of the cough button

• 48:43Speaker 00

  by Bobby. But Bobby, I'm just curious. I'd love to hear your perspective on, on this piece of regulation, and whether you think it's actually going to, whether you think it's gonna be passed, whether you think it will change the way that OpenAI regulates operates in Europe, that it even have to operate in Europe. Your thoughts?

• 49:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's hard to talk about this without talking about social media. I mean, remember, Facebook was running ads for a while that were basically saying, please regulate us, right? And I think, you know, the industry will come in and beg Congress to pass laws and then nothing will happen. I'm sort of cynical in that, at least in the US, I don't think that there's going to be any AI regulation happening anytime soon. Of course, it's very different because the First Amendment, I think, was getting in the way of social media regs in a way that it may not with regulating generative AI. But Europe, as you know, with data security, with so much in tech regulation space, they've been sort of ahead of the curve.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  And if any part of the country passes, you know, AI regulations first, it's gonna be, it's gonna be the EU.

• 49:53Speaker 03

  But I think we should explain what the EU is saying, right? They're saying that any copyrighted material that's used in a generative AI context should be, you know, that should not be allowed and you have the ability to pull that out.

• 50:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, here's the language from the Financial Times. "Under the European Parliament's proposals, developers of generative AI models like ChatGPT would have to disclose content that was generated by AI and publish summaries of copyrighted data used for training purposes so that creators can be renumerated for the use of their work."

• 50:26Speaker 03

  Right. And OpenAI is saying, please don't regulate us like that. That's not what we want.

• 50:32Speaker 00

  That just goes to show you how much text has actually been used for this. And, you know, it's created the fastest growing consumer product in history, but, I mean, obviously, the algorithms are the innovation, but the data used to train it is sort of, this is all being built on the back of that stuff.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  And Sam Altman's on an international charm offensive right now. I think, you know, he, like Zuckerberg before him, is, they're trying to embrace regulations, but really, when there's serious regulations proposed, they're saying-

• 51:00Speaker 03

  I think embrace in air quotes, right?

• 51:01Speaker 02

  Exactly. Not really embrace, sort of pay lip service to the idea of the government coming in and sort of mounting some kind of guardrails. But when the rubber hits the road, they're kind of like, ah, do we really want this? Right? Yeah, so it's interesting.

• 51:15Speaker 00

  I find it kind of fascinating that folks are again saying, well, there's bipartisan agreement and the companies are agreeing that AI needs to be regulated and it's going to happen inevitably. And I'm just like, wait a second, like, we just saw years of this type of stuff. Being talked about when it comes to big tech and nothing happened. Basically, nothing. And I just, I I'm wary about going down the same rabbit hole, say, like, expecting that something's gonna happen, except maybe if it does come from Europe. That's like the one big if Europe is just like, they're very gung ho and bringing the hammer down on

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:52Speaker 00

  on tech companies.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  I've this point has been made by others. I can't remember who. It's not my original idea, but you know, Sam Altman and OpenAI had a whole hype cycle around introduction of DALL-E and then ChatGPT saying, look at these incredibly powerful generative AI tools. Amazing for him and the company. And now he has a second sort of news cycle that he is going around to legislatures and to and to Washington and all around the world, saying, we want rules, we want to rein this in, which is another super positive sort of news cycle for him. So he's really being cast as this like crusade, this like little, this little tech genius who's just like brilliant and

• 52:27Speaker 00

  Big tech genius.

• 52:28Speaker 02

  And creates, there you go, who creates powerful tools and also wants rules to regulate it. And and the truth is, is definitely not that, but that's the impression that some are left with, I think. What were you gonna say, Ryan?

• 52:38Speaker 03

  No, I was just gonna say, you know, he's he's learning from the mistakes of Mark Zuckerberg.

• 52:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:42Speaker 03

  You know, where, you know, Zuckerberg created the, you know, massive platform, then had this whole period where he, you know, got dumped on for not being able to rein it in. And now, and then went out and said, you know, said like, please regulate us. We're not gonna tell you how to regulate us, but you know, it'll look good for us if we say, please regulate us and we're gonna put ads in every major newspaper and that kind of thing. You know, Altman has kind of learned from this. And he's kind of accelerated that process and kind of skipped, in some ways skipped over that like hate period, you know, in a way. Maybe it'll come later for him or, but he certainly accelerated to the point of like, the please regulate us part. I'm not gonna obviously tell you how to regulate us, but you know, it's gonna make me look good if I say it.

• 53:26Speaker 00

  But I protest when I don't like the regulation.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  But he's the one who unleashed this beast, right? I mean, OpenAI could have made a decision not to publicly unveil DALL-E and ChatGPT. I mean, that and then Microsoft saying, you know, that Bing was gonna use ChatGPT for in some of its search results, really, I think, made the whole market sort of respond. Everyone's now trying to develop their own generative AI tools. But it's interesting to me that he both like unleashed the beast into the world and he's now saying it ought to be restrained. Like, how do you do both of, how do you hold both of those things in your past at once? I don't know.

• 53:59Speaker 00

  I don't, I guess the, my perspective is that's just not gonna happen.

• 54:03Speaker 02

  What's not gonna happen?

• 54:04Speaker 00

  That it's just, they are gonna just keep do, keep building. And we're not gonna see regulation on this stuff.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  Do you think it's hyperbole when Sam Altman says we'll have to pull out of Europe if this bill passes?

• 54:14Speaker 00

  No. I mean, I think that like, you can, you, you spoke to Gary Marcus about this, about the feasibility of it.

• 54:21Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah.

• 54:22Speaker 00

  I think that it's, it would be quite difficult to keep up with those regu, with those regulations. Cause they can basically, and I think I'm gonna characterize this correctly. They can share like the wide body of stuff that was trained on, but you can't be like, this particular answer incorporated, you know, news stories from the New York Times and from NPR and stuff like that. Like actually pointing to specific pieces of data is impossible, given the way that these systems are built. So if they're forced to do that and they can't do that, yeah, I could see them saying, all right, listen, our goal is AGI. You know, these are products that we've shipped to sort of help us get us there. We don't need to do it in Europe. Like it's not, it's not part of what we're aiming for.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  The, the legal reporter in me is really excited for, for two things. One, for OpenAI to be sued in a, in a, in a suit that actually makes it to the discovery phase. Not that I want any kind of judgment against OpenAI, but just for transparency sake. To really open up some of these black boxes around the AI and the training data. You know, it'd be really interesting to, to have lawyers sort of probing into that and to make some of that information public. And two, when there's a test case about whether section 230 ought to apply to some of the outputs from ChatGPT. I think that's completely uncharted territory and from a legal perspective, super fascinating.

• 55:29Speaker 00

  Yep. Ryan, any final thoughts?

• 55:32Speaker 03

  I'm just stewing on the fact that he said the legal reporter in me, which is a very.

• 55:36Speaker 00

  Bobby's good at courts.

• 55:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:38Speaker 00

  He really, he really, yeah.

• 55:40Speaker 03

  Haven't seen that side of him recently.

• 55:41Speaker 02

  What, do you want my Pacer login? Get that here, New York Times?

• 55:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:43Speaker 00

  This guy, he's always scooping this stuff. All right, folks. Thank you so much, Bobby Allen. Thank you, Ryan Mack, for joining. So great to spend the hour with you guys and great to see you again in person.

• 55:53Speaker 02

  This was a blast.

• 55:54Speaker 03

  See you, man.

• 55:55Speaker 00

  Super fun. Uh, you wanna shout out where people can find your work?

• 55:59Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, truth social slash Bobby Allen.

• 56:02Speaker 00

  Do you really have a true social account?

• 56:03Speaker 03

  Should I hit this button to tweet from the NPR account yet? Or are we waiting for after?

• 56:07Speaker 02

  No, not yet, not yet, not yet. Um, yeah, NPR.org.

• 56:13Speaker 00

  And your TikTok?

• 56:13Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 56:15Speaker 00

  Okay, Ryan?

• 56:16Speaker 03

  Uh, Twitter, still.

• 56:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:19Speaker 03

  Hopefully.

• 56:19Speaker 00

  What's your handle?

• 56:20Speaker 03

  Armack18. There's 17 other Armacks out there.

• 56:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:25Speaker 03

  Blue Sky, if you have an invite, very exclusive.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, get me on Blue Sky. I haven't, I haven't, um, skeet it yet, but.

• 56:31Speaker 00

  You haven't?

• 56:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:32Speaker 00

  Are you waiting for an invite or?

• 56:34Speaker 02

  I see Ryan skeeting, but I haven't skeet it personally.

• 56:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're on there.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  I'm on there. I just haven't posted anything.

• 56:39Speaker 03

  You're on the boo-ski.

• 56:40Speaker 00

  You're standing in solidarity with NPR on Twitter by not skeeting on Blue Sky.

• 56:45Speaker 03

  I don't want to see you skeeting anywhere. That's me.

• 56:48Speaker 00

  Thank you, guys, so much for joining. Thank you, NPR Culver City, for, NPR West in Culver City, for having us here. Uh, this was super awesome. Thank you, Maggie Luthar, for hanging out with us in the booth and helping produce this. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Nate Watney, for, uh, handling the audio here at Big Technology Podcast. Thank you, LinkedIn, for having me as part of your podcast network. And thanks to all of you, the listeners. Preview, we did this show, we were here, it was contemporary. Next week, my interview with Astro Teller from Google X is gonna air. I just listened to it, I think it's one of the best interviews, uh, in this show's history, so I hope you tune in for that. And I'll be back on Friday with another live podcast with Rajad Roy.

• 57:29Speaker 00

  You can catch us on LinkedIn at 11 a.m. Pacific, 2 p.m. Eastern, or here on the feed right afterwards. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 57:46Speaker 05

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