Hard Fork
Hosted by Casey Newton and Kevin Roose
Answers to your moral quandaries, ethical dilemmas and etiquette questions about technology.
11,150 words · 13 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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I have made your chicken with lemon and dates from Nothing Fancy more than any other dish in my entire life. And it turns out so well every single time. And, you know, I'm the sort of person, I cook for people maybe six or eight times a year. Okay, I watch everything you do on YouTube. I love watching people cook on YouTube. But when it comes to me doing it, it's like six or eight times a year. So when I make your chicken with lemon and dates and I hand it to people, they actually look scared because they think, you don't know how to do this. Like, I know you.
We're nervous.
Yeah.
What is this sorcery?
Yeah, what is this sorcery that you're doing? And I say, it's the chicken with lemon and dates from Nothing Fancy.
I'm so proud of you. And like, I'm so glad that of your six to eight times a year, I get to be a large person. That is highly flattering.
And Alison, I used to do a lot more cooking and cooked a lot of your recipes more than six or eight times a year. And then I had a toddler. And so now I just eat like half eaten dino nuggets. But someday.
Are they a good eater?
You know, he's a very good eater as long as the food is beige or beige adjacent. And as long as it doesn't include any vegetables. So if you have like a cookbook idea coming out with like, where it's like only beige food and no vegetables, you would be huge with him.
I actually have written about that. I made a thing called dilly bean stew with frizzled onions or whatever. And at the time, when I made it, I was like, God, this is ugly. Like, God, this is beige. Is this the most beige thing you've ever seen? Now, I'm sort of like, beige is beautiful. You know, monochrome browns are in. And I love that.
Well, I'm gonna tell my two year old that he's on the frontier of culinary excellence.
Yeah, so you're very lucky to live with such a forward thinker.
I'm Kevin Doos, a tech columnist at The New York Times.
I'm Casey Noon from Platformer.
And this is Hard Fork.
This week, food writer, YouTuber, and podcaster Alison Roman joins us to answer your hardest questions about tech. And that's it. That's the whole show. So we hope you like it.
Oh, Kevin, do we have something special for the listeners today?
We do.
You know, I abuse something called podcaster's privilege. Are you aware of podcaster's privilege?
No, what is that?
Podcaster's privilege is where you can just reach out to the coolest people in the world and say, "I have a podcast. Will you please come on it?" And we actually did that this week.
Yeah. Have you-- who have you tried this with? Like, the Pope? Dalai Lama? How's this working?
Yeah, we tried to get the Pope on here, but then he made all those slurs about gay people, and I said, "Maybe we'll try him another month." When he calmed down a little bit. But no. What we did this week, Kevin, was we reached out to Alison Roman. And something about me is that on YouTube, I will watch any human cook any dish. I don't know what it is. I love watching people make food. I make food occasionally, but not all that often relative to how much YouTube I watch. And there is nobody better at cooking on YouTube than Alison Roman. And I should say, it's not just YouTube. She's also a chef and a food writer. She is known for some of her viral recipes, like the stew and the cookies, and some bestselling
cookbooks, including my favorite, Nothing Fancy, and more recently, Sweet Enough. She kind of has a finger in just about everything.
Yeah, and I think most relevant to us is that Allison is what I would consider kind of like a very online person. She sort of came up during this sort of social media age as a person who sort of developed this kind of very relatable online persona. And she's also had a career that's been shaped in some ways by the internet. She experienced, you know, an episode of sort of criticism or backlash a few years ago online, which Led her to leave her job at the New York Times and eventually start her own newsletter. So she's kind of experienced the highs of online fame and also some of the lows. But most importantly for us today is that she loves to give advice.
That's right. She recently started an advice podcast. It's called Solicited Advice, where she answers listeners' questions, not unlike what we do on this segment, which we call Hard Questions. So we're thrilled to have her here today. Let's bring her in here.
Alison Roman, welcome to Hard Fork.
Hello, happy to be here.
How are you?
I'm well. How are you?
I'm great. I'm so thrilled that you are here today. Thank you so much for doing this.
Oh, my gosh, of course. I love podcasts. I love your podcasts.
So glad to have you here. We are both big fans. Alison, I want to start by asking you what your relationship with technology is like these days.
Oh, I mean, these days it is no different than it was 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago for me and all humanity in that it's fraught. I know less than I know. It's a source of mostly frustration and yet I am so dependent on it and value it. But I don't love it. When you think about what I do for a living, like I need like a fire and a pencil. You know what I mean? I'm like, I cook and I write, and that's all I do. If all the electricity were gone, I could still do what I do for a living and like do what makes me happy and probably like it more, honestly.
So the YouTube stuff, the newsletter, the like all of the multimedia stuff that you do, the podcast, like that's sort of just secondary for you to like the actual sort of primal act of fire.
The core value. Yeah, exactly. Like if I couldn't, I mean, yeah, I guess if I didn't have any of those things, no one would know that I was cooking or writing. So that's an issue. But in terms of like if the electricity went out for everybody, let's say that, you know what I mean? I could still do the two things that I do.
Let me ask this about technology. You know, there was a time when I was very interested in cooking things, but had not spent a lot of time like watching your YouTube videos or cooking your recipes, cooking other recipes. And I would walk into like a surlathe, and I would see technology as far as the eye could see. And I would think, if I could just have like 14 of these gadgets, like they would heal me and I would get good at cooking. My sense from reading your work is like you never had a similar moment, but I would just love to hear your thoughts about kind of the world of cooking gadgets.
Yeah, that's exactly correct. I think I had the opposite feeling and I still do today, which I'm like very proud of. I've evolved, of course, in some opinions and, you know, tracing back things that I've said 10 years ago. I'm like, okay, well, my opinions have changed. But one thing that I feel pretty steadfast in is that like, I think when it comes to cooking, you need so much less than what the world has told you that you do.
And when you look at, I think, the way that most of the food is cooked around the world and some of the best food cooked around the world, they're doing it with like one vessel and a fire. Or like, you know, there's a knife, maybe, you know? And I think that at its basic principles, like that's really all you need. And I find that that anything that you plug in, while convenient, can also cause like a detachment from you in the process. And cooking for me is very soulful, human experience. And I'm sure you could argue an alternative point of view here, but I think that technology in the cooking space removes us a lot from that and makes it more like machine and more uniform and more soulless.
Right. What about other kinds of technology? Like, I'm curious, are you a person who struggles with your like screen time and sort of has to make kind of interventions on your own behalf to try to get away from technology? Or does it come pretty naturally for you?
I will say it used to be a lot worse. I used to have like a real sickness, especially with things like Instagram and even Twitter. But then I just kind of, the pleasure button stopped working so much. And not because, you know, it wasn't like metrics are down and like all this. It was more just like, oh, like it doesn't hit the same, you know? And also, it's just not as fun. I think. You know, I sort of like came of age on Instagram, if you will, like I started posting on Instagram when like, you know, there's two followers or whatever and you, the, the way that you can be when no one's watching is very different than the way that you should be when everybody is. And so now that there's more people watching,
there is a, a something there that, that prevents me from like engaging in a way that keeps me like juiced up, I guess.
I'm curious what your relationship is with YouTube versus something like Instagram, right? Your YouTube home movie series, which I don't think I've ever missed an episode of, is super polished, it's super fun, it's funny, it's very artful, it's very considered. Whereas, you know, I think Instagram sort of tends to be more casual. How are you finding YouTube as a creative outlet?
I think now YouTube is basically like for anybody interested in creating like high-ish to high-end content, like it's a really easy, accessible platform for you to put your content on. It's sort of just like the people's television now. You can find things that are like television quality, documentary quality, movie quality on YouTube. Because people are like, well, am I going to wait around for somebody to pick this up? On like a streamer or like a network television channel? Or am I just going to put it up for people to see? And I think more people are opting for that. Also, sometimes because the money can be better, you have more control, there's more creative power. And it's, you know, less red tape, I guess. And also just for anyone who's like, you know, I'm going to do it myself. I'm going to protect my own whatever, which Casey, I know you're a fan of.
I, I knew really early on when I decided to put my content on YouTube, that I was not going to win the YouTube game. I was like, I'm starting too late. And I'm too old and too like undersupport it as like a person who understands the technology themselves. Like I'm not filming my own content and editing my own content and like uploading it. You know what I mean? Like I'm very much.
Not your full time job like that.
No.
That's one thing I thought about, you know, like as a person who makes stuff that goes on YouTube. Like I am not spending 12 hours a day thinking about YouTube.
Exactly.
Which really puts you at a disadvantage relative to the full timers.
Totally. Yeah. And, and those full timers, like those are the people with like millions of subscribers. Like that is their brand identity. That is the thing that they, you know, go for and focus on and, and the numbers show that. And I just knew that that wasn't going to be me.
I'm always really interested in how solo creators are kind of, you know, solo adjacent are building their businesses. You know, you sort of said, well, YouTube's not my full time job, but I'm curious what you think your full time job is. You know, you write cookbooks, you have a store now, you have a podcast, you have a newsletter. Like, does one of, because like for me, my newsletter feels like my real job and hard work is something I got to do for fun. And it's a great time.
Oh, thanks.
I'm glad, I'm glad you take our podcast so seriously.
Is this a joke to you?
But do you have something like that where you feel like, oh, like, like this, this is the thing. And like this is the business and everything else is just kind of a fun creative project. Or is it more like, well, they're like a bunch of like different businesses and I just kind of have to find a way to stitch them all together.
Yeah, I think it's more the latter. I think that I do find that they all contribute to one another also. Like if I had to pare it back, I'd be like, okay, I write cookbooks first and foremost, because those I only do every two to three years. Right? I'm in the process now of writing another one. So like, I'm gonna sort of downshift on everything else so I can focus on that. And that becomes the priority. Um, they just, it's like a longer lead time. It's a bigger lift. It's just sort of its own thing. But um, in the days or months when that's not the case, yeah, it's sort of, it's just about like making time for everything. Which like, I'm kind of realizing I don't know that I have.
Hmm.
And I thought that I would. I thought that everything could just kind of like.
You know, chug along. And I think that now I'm sort of breaking it down to like, okay, like seasonality and being like, okay, like this podcast doesn't have to just run indefinitely. I can do like seasons of it and I can do like specialized versions of it. And same thing with YouTube. You're like, okay, well, you can actually just not be there for a month and you can come back like if you need because I'm not playing that game. Right?
Right.
The newsletter I should be spending more time on. And and we'll come back to that, but I think, um, you know, that to me is like, no, go ahead.
If you want a tip for making your podcast more sustainable, you could just do what Casey did and get a co-host who does all the work.
Honestly, would love that. Kevin, if you are looking to diverse, if Casey's not giving you what you need, I also have an advice podcast and maybe we can learn something else.
Let's chat offline. All right. So we are going to get to our listeners' questions now because that is actually what you are here to do. But we're gonna pause and take a break and when we come back, we will have your hard questions.
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All right. Our first question comes from a listener named Jacob Rosenblum from Ferndale, Washington, who has noticed a pattern at many of the companies he's worked for. The companies don't communicate with employees about who has been fired or left. Jacob, however, figured out a way around this. What he does is he uses a query called an Active Directory PowerShell command to search his company's system. I'm sure we've all done this. He looks for information about when employees last logged into workplace tools, whether they still have access to files, to ultimately figure out who is no longer working at the company. And some of the information that he's turned up, gang, is pretty surprising. Here's Jacob.
Hi, forgers. One time I learned from using this query that a coworker who runs a meeting had been fired. I reached out to the QA lead for my company, who didn't realize they had been fired, and we quickly brought someone else in to run the meeting. Another time, I saw a coworker show up for my query, and I sent a message to a manager. I see that so-and-so has ridden off into the sunset. She replied that he had actually died the previous weekend. I try to use this information for good and share what I learn with managers who don't know how to use this tool. Is this sort of information gathering improper? Or is this totally fine, given my company's lack of communication?
Allison, how are you using Active Directory PowerShell commands?
You know, it's been so long since I've used it. I'm a little rusty. If you guys want to just refresh my memory on what that is, because it's just been a minute.
Casey, why don't you refresh your memory?
Well, look, I'll be honest. I've never used that one myself either. But look, you know, there are these systems inside these companies that if you poke around, you can get access to stuff that maybe the bosses don't know about. So do we think it's kosher to kind of, you know, plumb the depths of your company's systems to figure out who still works there?
Me?
I'll take this one, yeah.
Well, do the bosses not know because they don't care? It's like, you know what I mean? If he's, if this person is like, taking it upon himself to be like, I must find out the information, when everyone's like, nobody cares.
Yeah, I would say like, I'm curious why Jacob felt like disclosing this information, because a thing that I've noticed at some companies that I've worked at in the past is like, there are these little kind of, I don't know, cracks in the system where you can kind of get access to information that other people don't know is there, and that gives you a tremendous amount of power. I'm thinking in particular about an old company that I used to work at where one of the people in HR accidentally emailed a spreadsheet of everyone's salary to someone who wasn't supposed to see it.
Oh, no.
And that, the people who saw that spreadsheet like, had a lot of leverage, you know, as long as they didn't disclose that they had seen the spreadsheet. But they could say like, I think this person might be making more than me for the same job, and then go in and ask for a raise. So I would just say like, get this power, but like, keep it to yourself.
I think that's good advice, you know? Like, for me, the bar is like, look, did you steal someone's password in order to find out this information? If so, don't do it. But like, if you just typed on your keyboard and you found out that someone doesn't work there anymore, that's fine.
Yeah, all right.
Let's go to the next question. This one comes from a listener whose name is also Allison. This is Allison from Arizona, and she's very concerned about protecting her child's image from facial recognition technology. But recently, when she went to register her kid for daycare, she learned that she might have to choose between getting childcare and her kid's privacy. Here's Allison.
Hi Hard Fork. After months of being on a waitlist, a spot for my two-year-old opened at one of my top choices of daycare. As a precondition of registration, I was asked to sign a photo release, giving the daycare rights to use my child's image in promotional materials, including online content. I raised concerns that images uploaded to the internet could be available to train AI facial recognition technology, but the response was that I could sign the photo release or not take the daycare spot. Why is it okay for childcare providers to demand, through photo release, the ability to provide this training data to the algorithms, potentially impacting their future privacy? And is there anything that can be done? Oof.
Alison Roman, what do you think? What do you make of this?
I mean, it's sort of like two questions, right? Like, is this okay? And also, what do I do? And I don't know how hard it is to get into these schools, I'm sure, very. And, you know, you sort of have to, like, weigh the, what are they gonna do with the information? Does that con outweigh the pro of them going to the school that I really want them to go to that feels like it's gonna enrich their life and make my life better as well as a parent? I don't know. I sort of, not to sound nihilistic, but I sort of feel like with all surveillance and AI and facial recognition and cameras and all that, it's like, we've already lost. You know, like, there are cameras on every corner, people are taking pictures of us. Like, when I go to the airport, yeah, I belong to CLEAR, Delta One, TSA, I'm like, get me into the plane. You know what I mean?
At this point, I don't know that, like, not signing up for CLEAR is gonna be the thing that, like, takes it down. You know, they're gonna do it anyway. So, I don't know.
Yeah, that, I mean, that's actually a thing that people have written about, the concept of privacy nihilism, where it's like, we already lost, why does it matter? You know, I have a kid, I do post photos of my kid on a private social media account, but I don't put them publicly on the internet. And there are a couple of reasons, I've, you know, my wife and I have chosen to do that. One of them is the sort of, like, AI of it all. But there's also just stuff that has nothing to do with AI. There are lots of, like, predators on the internet, and I think that's something that a lot of parents are worried about as well. And the thing that actually tipped me over the line on this, because we were sort of grappling with what to do with this, is seeing that Mark Zuckerberg did not post photos of his kid's Faces on Instagram. He would like put little emojis over them, which a lot of celebrities also do with their kids.
And I was like, well, if Mark Zuckerberg has chosen not to put his kids' faces on the internet, like, that probably indicates that I shouldn't do it either.
If Mark Zuckerberg isn't like, "It's fine."
You know, then like, I mean, we know it's not fine, but like, even when he's like, "It's not fine."
Yeah, I mean, I guess my advice for our listener would be, like, I think it's a red flag that the daycare won't accommodate this request, right?
Yes, as a parent, that is a great rebuttal, yes.
It's a pretty reasonable thing to ask, like, a condition of sending my kid to daycare shouldn't be that their images get used on the internet. So like, I don't know, I would drill down a little bit to figure out, well, what exactly are you planning to use this for, you know? Is it like a promotional Instagram account? Could you just use photos of the other kids? Like, why do you need my kid's face specifically? But yeah, that seems to me like an indication that this is not a place that may be willing to work with you on other things.
If you can't bring peanut butter to class, you should also be able to opt out of the, like, AI facial recognition, you know?
Yeah, I agree with you on that, Kevin. If they're gonna be unreasonable about this, they're gonna be unreasonable about something else. And I do think it's worth making a stink over it, because it's not just the AI training, it's also like, you're gonna take my child's gorgeous face and use it to sell your preschool? Like, I should actually just have a say in that, right?
100%.
Or like, give me a discount on your daycare or something, so that's, you know?
Am I getting compensated for this usage?
Yes.
Yeah, what's your day rate?
That's what I would do, but...
Listen, I would do a lot for free or reduced-priced daycare.
Oh, yeah.
That stuff is expensive, you know?
Yeah, but I also do want to underline something that Allison said, which is like, a camera is gonna take a photo of your child's face somewhere, and you're not gonna be able to opt out. And I don't want to sound like a nihilist, because I do think that we should, you know, fight against surveillance everywhere, but, you know, probably something to keep in mind. All right, our next question is about what happens when people are rude to digital assistants like Siri. Let's hear the clip.
Hi, my name is Nick and I live in Oakland, California. My son loves tools, so I recently took him to a hardware store to look around where he became fixated on a magnetic grabber tool. While in the process of explaining to my son what magnets were and how they worked, I accidentally triggered Siri via my Apple Watch. It misheard what I said about magnets and thought I had instead called it a homophobic slur. Siri lightly scolded me for my behavior and sent me some links to resources from the Human Rights Campaign. This mishap made me realize how easily digital assistants misunderstand us, but it also raised a fear. Does how we treat our digital assistants get tracked and influence how they interact with us?
For example, if someone keeps telling Siri to shut up, will it learn to give shorter responses over time? As a result of this fear, I even caught myself scolding others for being rude to my digital assistants. Am I weird for thinking about this, or is this a legitimate concern?
I mean, first of all, this man's Apple Watch is not just gonna sit around and take it when slurs are being uttered in the Home Depot. Allison, how do you feel about like the way that people talk to their digital assistants? Have you ever heard somebody saying something to their digital assistant and thought, hmm, I don't like the tone?
No, but I did used to date someone who was like very codependent on their digital assistant, which is like a very generous term. It was like Siri and Alexa, and it was like every... I'm like, can't you do anything on your own? I'm like, just Google it. Like, if I'm either Siri or Alexa, I'm gonna be like, read a book. But I think that like people being rude in general is really upsetting to me, and like we shouldn't be rude even to our phones, because if you're speaking it out loud into your phone, someone around you is gonna hear you. And even just hearing someone be rude to like... It's like, have you ever been to dinner with someone and they're shitty to the server? Nothing worse.
The worst.
Like, truly nothing worse than that. Such a deal breaker for any sort of relationship, friendship, partnership, anything. I can't imagine. And if you're like that with your digital assistant, then you're probably a shitty person to a server, I imagine.
Yeah, I agree. I am polite to all of my AIs and digital assistants. I even caught myself, I got out of a Waymo self-driving car the other day.
Oh, my gosh, you're not getting in those. They're scary. Are you both in San Francisco?
Yes. Wait, did you take a ride in one while you were here the other week?
No, but I saw them and I was on mission and I looked over and there's no one in the car. And I'm thinking, well, that's not going to end well.
Yeah, I take them all the time. And I caught myself the other day as I was getting out, thanking the driver of the self-driving car. I was like, thanks.
One time I told an Uber driver I loved them. I was getting out and I was like, love you, but I was like, what? Well, I think that here's what I do think, is I think that the increase of digital assistants, be it an actual vehicle or a Siri or type thing, will make us more rude as people because we are going to have less and less empathy for the person that we're interacting with because it's not a person. So we're going to think of them as a machine, as a tool, as a whatever. And then you get in an Uber and you don't say thank you because you're so accustomed to being in a Waymo or whatever those are called. And you're not saying thank you because there's no one there. Or you're like, oh, I'm just asking Siri something, so I'm going to talk to my barista. You know, I think it's going to desensitize us a bit, which I know wasn't the question.
I also think, though, that these systems will just mimic human beings over time. And like, most empathetic people are going to have trouble being mean to something that sounds like a person, even if you sort of know in your heart that it's not.
Yeah, it's like, you remember when those videos came out of the robot dogs and people kicking the robot dogs? There were like these robot, you know, Boston.
I can't believe they caught you doing that on video, by the way, Kevin.
Well, people were kicking the robot dogs to show off how they could sort of get back on their feet. And people were really upset that there were videos of people kicking robot dogs. I think you're right, Casey. I think we're going to sort of, as these assistants get smarter and smarter, we're just going to feel stranger and stranger talking to them in such a short and unkind way.
Ask you one thing, because I've I've heard parents say that they are extra nice to the digital assistants in their house because they don't want their kids to hear them being rude.
Absolutely.
So are you doing a lot of please and thank you to sort of, you know, make an impression on your child?
I do, yeah, because he's listening now and he's watching me. And if I start like ordering around Alexa, then he's going to think it's OK to start ordering around his friends at daycare. That's my fear. And then I'll get kicked out and I'll have to go to the daycare where you have to sign up for surveillance.
Yeah, retinas get scanned at age two.
All right, let's move on to the next question. This one comes from listener Amanda Darby, who wants to know what we make of the risks of using a period tracker app. Let's play the clip.
Hi, Hard Fork. For context, I have been using a period tracking app for more than 10 years. So it knows a lot about my health, like when I did and didn't have periods, other aspects of my health, like ovulation, mood swings, any irregularities in my cycle. But I don't think it's a stretch to say that someone could look at this data, perhaps say if it were subpoenaed in a particularly red state, and make inferences about decisions I've made regarding my reproductive health or experiences I've had that relate to my reproductive life. So my question is, what should I and other people who use period trackers be aware of and be thinking about when we think about this question? Thanks.
So obviously, Casey and I
Yeah, I was gonna say, you guys want to take this one?
...period tracker apps. But I'm curious what all, what both of you make of this question.
Yeah, I mean, I do. And the way that I treat it is like a calendar. I do not, it prompts me all the time to ask how I'm feeling, my mood swings, my symptoms, my this, my that, and I never answer. And it'll ask me like pointed things, like it'll like go on a slide and be like, well, what about this? And like, have you done this today? Like, have you blah, blah, blah? And I never participate.
I had no idea that these apps were that nosey. Like, what do they want all that information for?
I mean, they say they're using it to like, give the user a better experience. So like, if you're like, oh, it's day three of my period and it's really, really heavy and I feel like shit, they'll be like, that's really common. 83% of our users feel the same way. You know, they use it as a way to say like, here's what's going on with your body, you have questions, and here's our data, right? So from everyone who's using this, You know, only 4% of women have felt this way, so you might want to go to a doctor.
Yeah, I did a little looking into this issue because I was curious about these apps. And it turns out that this has been an area where there's been a lot coming out over the past few years, especially after Roe versus Wade was overturned. A lot of people said, you know, delete your period tracker app because this is going to be able to be subpoenaed and you could get in trouble for using one of these apps. There are privacy risks associated with these apps, some more than others. My colleague, Kashmir Hill, actually wrote a great article, basically about whether this is a thing that people should be worried about. And the conclusion of the article was basically there are many other ways that governments, if they wanted to, or groups that wanted to incriminate people based on information about their periods, there are lots of other ways
they could get that information. Some of them can track location. Some of them can, you know, if you're texting a friend, you know, oh, like, I just found out I'm pregnant. Or maybe you did a Google search for, you know, for Plan B. Like, those are the kinds of things that can be used. And so the conclusion of these privacy experts was, you know, let's keep things in proportion. This is not the only way that if someone wanted to find out information about you and your pregnancy status, they could do it. But I'm curious if either of you find that persuasive.
Yeah, I mean, that is persuasive to me. The thing that comes to mind is just we need a national privacy law. We don't want to get too wonky today, but something we've talked about before is that America is basically unique amongst developed nations for not having any national privacy law. So this is a case where we could just write legislation that says, hey, if you collect this kind of very intimate personal health data, you're actually not allowed to sell it to an advertiser, like, without someone's consent, or something like that. So yet another reason I wish we had such a law.
All right. This next one comes to us from a teacher named Margot, who lives in Ohio. She comes to us with a story about how some of her colleagues became concerned over how she used AI in an assignment she gave to her students. And she wants to know, are her colleagues right? Here's Margot.
So, right before state test prep, I wanted to have the students analyze two pieces of poetry and compare and contrast the points of view is a common standard in Ohio. And this was not meant for deep analysis. This wasn't a poetry unit. It was something that I just, I needed two quick pieces to practice the skill before the state test. And so I hopped onto ChatGPT-4 at the time, and I'm always trying to bring in marginalized voices into my classroom. And so I had it generate a poem from the perspective of an indigenous person during the Trail of Tears, and then another poem from the perspective of a white
colonizer. And I shared this idea with some of my colleagues, and I was met with a little bit of concern. And one of my colleagues suggested that this wasn't a great use of AI because I was, in essence, you know, silencing the voices of already marginalized people by using a robot to create the piece of poetry. And voices that are already marginalized and silenced and ignored, you know, to go above and beyond to create something from their perspective, it just wasn't sitting right with them. And it really gave me pause.
And so I would love to hear your perspective on when, if at all, is it okay to use AI to generate literature for the students to read and analyze?
Oh, my God. I have so many thoughts about this, but let's let our guest go first.
Oh, my God, I have to go first? Okay, well, I mean, yeah, I mean, my thought is, is this doesn't sit well with me, is what I'll say. I think for so many reasons, most of all, that like, there are so much literature that does exist that is authentic to people's real experiences. And the second we decide to just cut out the human and be like, well, we're just gonna like, approximate it with this AI situation. That freaks me out so bad, I gotta say.
Yeah, I really agree with you on that one. You know, when you think about what a large language model is, the people that built them took all the literature they could find, all the marginalized voices they could find, they fed it into this model.
And the non marginalized voices.
And the non marginalized voices, and they didn't compensate any of those people. And now they're making a product that they sell for $20 a month. So it's sort of hard for me to imagine a worse like insult to injury than to say like, we're just gonna use ChatGPT to make a pump. So, look, we have talked often on the show about, we think there are lots of cool and fun ways that you can AI, and we will continue to explore those. But one place I think we can hold sacred, at least for now, is like, literature class? Like, let's just show the kids real literature and not the AI slop.
I'm gonna defend our listener here a little bit. I share the concern about the sort of replacement of, you know, art and especially, you know, art by marginalized people with AI slop. In this case, like, this is not something that she is offering as a commercial product. She is not making any money on this. This is a classroom exercise to teach students how to compare and contrast pieces of poetry. Like, it's not like somebody would be getting a royalty on this that is being deprived of it. So I think we really have to look at the economic harm here. But I do think it's important to disclose to the students that the thing they are writing is AI and not to sort of make up some author's name. And maybe that would create a fruitful discussion in the classroom about the ethics of doing this.
My take on all this stuff about AI in the classroom, which has been the subject of so much debate over the last year or two, is just that we should be having the discussion, like, teach the controversy, essentially. And I think this would be like a really good question to pose to the students.
But Kevin, do you know how many poems there are? Why do we need to use the AI for this? We are not, there's not a poem shortage in this country.
Listen, these are teachers, they're strapped for time. Like, what are they supposed to do? Go through a poetry anthology looking for the exact right piece?
It feels like microwave dinner to me. It's like, yeah, we're gonna eat and like, sure, we don't have the time. It's like, okay, well, at least we're eating dinner. It's like, well, no, like. There's a difference. And I do think that if you have the opportunity to educate your students also, here are five really great Indigenous poets that you should be aware of. If this spoke to you, if you're like interested in the story, their stories, here are some people you can look up. But why not just go with one of those poets in general? Like, just pick one. I think the second that we have to start being like, does this feel weird? Is this gross? Like, am I doing something wrong? Like, the answer is probably yes, right? And it feels a little sticky to expose young people who are like, supposed to be learning and expanding their brains. Not that they're gonna like 15 years from now be like, wow, that one poem really changed my life.
But it might for one person.
Yeah. Sure. Well, I'm outvoted here on this show, but Margot, I just want to let you know, I'm with you and just know that I've got your back. All right. All right. We will have more of your hard questions right after this break.
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This one is a bit of a wild heist story involving a tool for hackers.
Hey, Casey and Kevin. My name is Moshe, and I live between Paris and New York. I recently attended a Roland Garros tennis match with my husband and brother-in-law. Suddenly, I received multiple notifications on my iPhone 15 to authorize an external keyboard connection. I declined, but my husband received the same notification shortly after. Realizing it might be a hacking attempt, I scanned the crowd and noticed a man sitting behind us with a white device resembling an e-cigarette. I asked him about it. He acted weird, and he tried to hide it, calling it a toy. However, I recognized the orange buttons on the device as the Flipper Zero, an amateur hacking tool.
We had a brief confrontation. Several moments later, no less than a dozen security agents intervened, and they took the guy and his friend into questioning after a small chase. So, to my hard question, given the rising use of devices like the Flipper Zero, should states consider banning them or at least restrict their use in public spaces?
Sorry, what's the Flipper Zero?
So, the Flipper Zero.
I had never heard of this.
Okay, so I first learned about this at a hacking convention that I was reporting on a few years ago. It's basically a little thing. It's about the size of like a elf bar, like vape pen, you know, kind of thing.
Okay.
And what it does is it detects and allows you to clone signals from the air around you. So, like, you could turn your neighbor's TV on and off. You can also use it to open and close garage doors, basically anything that uses like a certain kind of wireless signal, the Flipper Zero can help you replicate.
So it's like really purely used for like mischievous behavior? Like, it serves no other purpose?
No, it does serve a legitimate purpose. A lot of, you know, what they call white hat hackers, like people who are sort of on the side of the good, will use them to, say, you know, test the security of various systems and make them safer.
Okay, but this is, this is not a hard question. This is the easiest question we've ever got. Like, yes, we should stop hackers from interrupting tennis games and trying to break into people's iPhones.
Yeah, that should be a, that's a no. That's a no for me.
Yeah, it's a no. It's a no. No to the Flipper Zero.
I don't know. So, the backstory here is that Canada did try to ban it. Other countries, including Brazil, have also made moves to ban it. And you cannot buy these things on Amazon because Amazon refuses to sell them. So, I think we are already-
Oh, thanks, Jeff.
He's always got our back.
But I will say, some of the risks of these things have been overblown because people in Canada and elsewhere that have tried to ban these things have said, "These can be used to steal cars." I read up a little bit about that. It doesn't appear that's true, at least for cars produced in the last 30 years. They have a different kind of system that, that makes it much harder to use them to hack. But, you know, I will say, like, I spent some time on the Flipper Zero subreddit, and people there seem to be mostly having harmless fun. But, yeah, don't be a jerk with this thing if you're gonna buy one.
Yeah, if it's mischief that you're intending to cause, it must bring delight at the same time. Like, joy-induced mischief isn't okay for me, but if you're just like doing it to be an asshole or wreak havoc, that's a no for me.
I would, I do think it'd be fun to make your neighbor think that you, they had a poltergeist because their, their TV just kept turning on.
That would not, that would not be fun. That would, you're terrorized.
Have you done that? Like, I've had that happen to me in a hotel where like, the radio Bluetooth is like picking up in another room and I, there was like, somebody who obviously worked at the hotel who was changing my music every time I would change, and they would change it to like the most ridiculous like, party music. And it was, you know, like, 10 a.m. And I did find that actually very funny.
This is one of my favorite things. I, I used to do a lot of like, connected home devices, uh, which I could like, control the lights in my house, uh, through an app or like, play music remotely, um, even if I wasn't in the house. And I, when I was like, away on business trips, I used to, uh, prank my wife by just like, turning the lights on and off or playing Cotton Eye Joe, uh, at like,
I will play songs for my husband as well, when I'm on it. I think that's sweet.
What's your go-to?
It depends. If it's like, if, if like, we got in a tiff and I'm like, okay, there's like, one song that we play that's like funny to us. And then he's like, you just start playing this song? I'm like, yeah, I did. Um, or, or whatever. Like, you know, we obviously never fight as a couple, so it happens so rarely. Um, but yeah.
All right. This next question is actually hard, and it comes from a listener named Hansel Lopez, who wants to know, what should you do when your child wants to pursue a career that you fear will be replaced by AI? Here's Hansel.
Hey guys, my name is Hansel Lopez. Now I have a 15-year-old who just finished his freshman year. We're gonna spend the summer at least starting to plan for college and what he wants to do. And he is very passionate about art, design, specifically stop-motion animation. Now, I want to spend the summer teaching him about AI because, you know, animation and design may not look like it looks like today. So I guess my hard question is, how do I encourage my son to pursue his passion, but also be mindful of the pitfalls that this new technology could mean for him, you know, five, 10 years down the line?
Great question.
Allison, if you had a 15-year-old who is heading to art school, do you have feelings about it?
I mean, yeah, I also think that we can't predict what's going to replace what. And I think that, like, especially at 15, you should really just be encouraging their interests. And if they're excited about something, if something lights them up, wow. I think also, you know, stressing the importance of having like other skillsets involved in your life that you can like use to augment that career. But like, I think that acting out of fear to like derail your kid's passion feels like maybe not the right move. I think it's a reasonable thing to be concerned about, but it also feels like we also just don't know so much. And right now at 15, if they're like, I want to be an artist, I think that's beautiful.
Totally. Kevin, what do you think? You have a kid.
Yeah, I mean, I think about this a lot, what my kid is gonna be interested in and whether it's useful to try to predict what the job market's gonna look like, you know, when he's out of college. And I just don't think it's that useful, at least right now. I mean, so many of the jobs that exist today did not exist when the three of us were in high school. Who knew that like being a YouTuber or a newsletter writer was like a viable profession? And so I think it's a little bit of a sucker's game to try to sort of train for the jobs that exist today. And instead, I think it's useful to just really, yeah, inculcate that kind of love of creativity and producing things in whatever format. I would not, you know, discourage them from pursuing a profession just because you're worried about it going away in the future.
Yeah, I mean, I think that it would be okay for this dad to at least express the concern, or even if he doesn't express a concern, say like, I do want you to kind of know what's happening in the tech world right now. And there is a possibility that maybe everything that you're learning to do right now could be done with computers. And maybe that's just something to, you know, keep in mind as you go into this, not because you're hoping to like diminish their creative spark, but so maybe you can inspire another spark, which is, okay, well, like, if a day comes where I can just flip a switch and I get something that looks identical to stop motion animation, and all of a sudden, you know, there's maybe going to be less work for me to do, is there something adjacent to it that takes advantage of this? Skills that I already have that a computer won't be able to do. And now maybe I have a leg up. So while I am mostly 100% on on y'all's sides.
Don't discourage this this kid's creative spark. I also think it's okay to like, give them a little bit of a situational awareness.
Yeah, absolutely. I think like, if you look at all of us, what we started doing versus what we do now. It's those things that we started doing that led us to where we are now. And it just looks different. And it's like, I started cooking in restaurants. But now I do all this other stuff that like, again, to your point, didn't exist back then. But if I had been discouraged from cooking or working in a magazine, because magazines are going to fold one day. It's like, well, I I got the editorial experience. It made me a better writer, you know, blah, blah, blah. You know, and I think that it's it's always worth having the baseline knowledge, especially in creative endeavors. And if that is strong and nourished, then like, you can probably figure out a way to adapt to technology in one form or another.
Yeah, totally. All right. Well, thanks to all the wonderful questions from our listeners. Allison, do you have a hard question for us?
I do have a hard question. It's I'm nervous to have it be recorded.
Oh, say it.
Be published a little bit, but maybe it's not that bad and you can tell me. Or we can figure out a way to word it.
Let's get into it. No, let's let's try it.
So I am, I I write a newsletter and it's on a platform that publishes newsletters for many people. And this newsletter platform has a direct message function, right? So like, anyone can DM anyone that's on the platform and you can accept it or not. But like, anyone sort of has access to you if you're on the platform. So one night I was on my phone and I was on the app and I got a direct message from, you know, support for the this company. And it was like, can you verify the email for blah, blah, blah, rights and services? And I was just like, yeah. And so I did. And that was it. And then my account was hacked.
And I didn't know that that could happen through like a DM service. And I lost. A lot of subscribers because so many people unsubscribe because they're like, they started getting spam this and the whole thing was sort of resolved in about nine minutes. So like, because a lot of people contacted me, they're like, hey, I think you've been hacked. And I was like, oh, fuck. And I emailed somebody and then they got back to me and it was like, okay, we figured it out. I complained about it, not as loudly as I wanted to, but I was like, this is fucked. And I didn't know that you could get hacked on like, what is effectively a service for writers. It's different than like a phishing link on your email, on your Gmail. You know, it just, it appeared differently. It came to me differently. And then I found
out that the people at the company sort of blamed me for it. They're like, well, she clicked on a bad link. Like, how is that our fault? And in my head, I'm like, well, because you're providing people and, and authors with like a safe space to have this infrastructure of like, private messaging system that's internal. This isn't an email address. It's also how this platform has communicated like, something in the past with their authors. An update or an announcement, whatever. So I was sort of incensed. And so I guess my question is, is do I have a right to be pissed? Or am I just an idiot who clicked on a bad link? Answer carefully. No, I'm just kidding.
I'll let Casey, our nation's foremost newsletter ethics guru, take this one.
I thought this would be good for you.
I, I think you, you do have a right to be pissed. I mean, I will say-
Okay, sorry. So that's a two-part question. So, and then should I, should they be responsible for all of the subscribers? That I've now, I've now made whole, but it took me three months of like work to like-
That's amazing.
Get people back in, into the fold. And they were like, extremely blasé about it.
Well, first of all, let me say that as a subscriber to your newsletter, I remember when this happened and I didn't think about unsubscribing for even one second. So all these fake fans who just, you know, dropped you at a moment's notice, shame on them. And, and I want to call them out.
Thank you.
Casey, did your newsletter get hacked? I've been getting like crazy unhinged emails from your newsletter for, for like more than a year now, I want to say.
No, that's just the regular content, Kevin. And thanks for supporting Platformer. But, you know, look, I think to be realistic, I have to say hacking does happen and it happens on every platform and that doesn't make it right or okay, but it is a risk of using the internet. At the same time, I think there's so much more that platforms could do to educate people about those risks. And there's actually proactive steps that they can take to reduce the likelihood that something like this would happen to you, Allison. So, for example, there are other services that offer messaging that will actually scan links as they will come in and they will say, this is a malicious link. You know, this is sort of coming from a known scammer. You know, we can see that it's taking you to a URL that is not what is being represented here. There's something really suspicious about that. Maybe we'll let you click it.
Maybe we'll throw up a warning and say, hey, do you really want to click this? So, you know, look, there's definitely a sense of, you know, be careful out there when you're browsing on the internet. And if you see a link and you have even for a second a thought of, I don't know about this, take a moment, calm down. If you have a way of looking at it on a desktop browser, so you're not sort of looking at a tiny phone screen, I always recommend doing that. But yeah, is there things that this platform could do to make things safer for you?
Allison, can I ask a question?
How did they hack you? I mean, do you have sort of like two-factor authentication on when you log into your account?
There was no, no, no, it's because it was through the app. So it wasn't on desktop and it wasn't through their site. So I never have to sign in or out. So it comes in like a DM or whatever and it's not, it wasn't like, you know, support Substack 420. It was like a regular email address and it had like their logo and it was just like, just re-verifying your email or whatever. And I just, it was like 9:30 at night. I really, I, maybe it was stupid. I like really wasn't thinking, but I'm pretty aware and I'm pretty like savvy even for like a Luddite on like what to click on and whatnot. That's why this one threw me.
It can truly happen to anyone. Like if nothing else, I would say like, do not feel ashamed that this happened to you. There are people whose entire careers are just devoted to catching people at 9:30 PM on an app where they weren't thinking too hard about it. Unfortunately, it seems like they're doing great financially. But you know, today we've, we've drawn attention to this problem and I would, I would also say, I'll be surprised if it ever happens again, now that we've been.
Oh, I'm sure it won't. And I'm happy to be the canary in the coalmine. You know what I mean?
Let everyone be safe because it happened to me.
Exactly, exactly. All right, well, Allison, thank you so much for joining us. This was so much fun. We had so much fun.
Oh, my gosh, you guys are a blast. Thank you for helping me feel less unintelligent about technology. I feel like just today, this hour, I feel my mind expanded. I feel educated. I feel aware. I feel ready.
Oh, my God. All right, well, if you need any more help with tech in the future, you know where to find us.
I will. Thank you so much.
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Hard Fork is produced by Rachel Cohn and Whitney Jones. We're edited by Jen Poyant. We're fact-checked by Caitlin Love. Today's show was engineered by Chris Wood. Original music by Marian Lozano, Rowan Nemus-Joe, and Dan Powell. Our audience editor is Mel Golubli. Video production by Ryan Manning, Sawyer Roque, and Dylan Bergerson. You can watch this full episode on YouTube at youtube.com/hardfork. Special thanks to Paula Schuman, Puywing Tam, Caitla Presti, and Jeffrey Miranda. You can email us at [email protected]. Let's keep those hard questions coming.
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