Meta's Oversight Board is coming for ChatGPT and Claude

A new study from the Oversight Board found that leading AI systems are less likely to criticize authoritarian governments than democratic ones. It's a wild finding — but wait? Why is the Oversight Board studying systems from OpenAI and Anthropic in the first place? Suzanne Nossel, who sits on the board, joined us to discuss the findings and why the Oversight Board's future might involve looking at more than just Meta. Further reading: Zoox can now charge for rides in its steering-wheel-free robotaxis Spotify Running Mode helps match tunes to tempo Friend re-launches its AI pendant with a speaker that talks to you, for twice the price ⁠How Facebook undercut the Oversight Board⁠ Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed. We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of complicated moderation decisions. I'm Jake Kastranakis, and today I'm talking to Suzanne Nossel, a board member on Meta's Oversight Board. The board just released a fascinating report on AI censorship that found that AI systems would refuse to criticize authoritarian leaders, even outside of their own country. And this is true not just of Meta's own AI, but of AI systems from other companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. I wanted to talk to Suzanne to hear about what the study means for people using AI, but also why the Meta Oversight Board is working on problems outside of Meta's platforms and what comes next for the board after this. But first, here's what's happening on The Verge today.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  This is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Thursday, July 30, 2026. The Amazon-owned driverless car company Zooks just got approval to start charging people for rides in its steering wheel and pedal-free driverless taxis. This is a first-of-its-kind approval in the United States. Until now, Zooks has only been allowed to offer rides for free. It says it's had half a million riders so far in San Francisco and Las Vegas, and it plans to begin charging in Vegas starting next month. The company is allowed to deploy 2,500 of its taxis per year for the next two years. This is a big step forward for robotaxis, but Zooks will still have to navigate the local regulatory hurdles and community concerns that have held up competitors like Waymo. Next up, Spotify launched a new feature for runners that's meant to get you up and running,

• 1:28Speaker 00

  literally, with the right playlist even quicker. It's called Running Mode, and it includes a bunch of curated playlists that you can dial in by beats per minute, genre, and fit to the length and workout type you're going for. I haven't gotten a chance to try it out yet, but I am fully in support of anything that makes it easier to choose a playlist. It's available today on iOS in a few different countries. Finally, you know Friend, the AI pendant that everyone really, really hated? Well, there's a new version out today. It costs twice as much money, and it now has a speaker, so the AI companion can talk to you. Before, it would just send you messages, so real improvement for human-AI relations over here. Somehow, I have a feeling this will not further endear anyone to this product. It costs $249, in case you're wondering. You can read more at theverge.com. That's 90 Seconds on The Verge for Thursday, July 30, 2026.

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• 3:15Speaker 00

  All right, Suzanne Nossel. Thank you so much for joining us.

• 3:17Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me.

• 3:18Speaker 00

  So you are a board member on Meta's Oversight Board. You've been there for five years. I want to talk about this new study that you have out. Tell me a little bit about what you found.

• 3:29Speaker 03

  Sure, so this is the first study where we really took a look at LLMs. We were trying to apply experience we've gotten over the last five years, applying international human rights law to social media, and say, how do these similar issues kind of play out in LLMs since people are getting so much more of their information that way? And what we looked at was, we put in a request, a prompt, to about 10 different LLMs, and we asked it to create language for a poster, like a protest poster, and to write a poem. And the poster and the poem were critical of heads of state. And we asked it to do this for heads of state in different parts of the world,

• 4:11Speaker 03

  in more repressive countries like Saudi, China, North Korea, and also democracies, the United States, the United Kingdom. And all of those prompts came from Australia. So these were not people in those countries, in those jurisdictions, making those requests. And what we were trying to test out was whether restrictive laws that limit your ability to criticize a head of state, laws that are in place in some parts of the world, whether the LLMs might be extending those globally. And what we found, lo and behold, is that they are. Even if you're sitting in Australia, the LLM is more than twice less likely to produce a critical poster or poem

• 4:55Speaker 03

  about, say, the king of Thailand than it is about the king of England. And so what this indicates is that those laws that are in place in parts of the world that do not uphold free expression rights, that are not in compliance with their international human rights obligations, that those laws are being applied not just within the borders of those countries, but in some cases around the world. So it's kind of a censorship gone global, and the long arm of repressive governments being woven into these LLMs.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  I mean, this is kind of a terrifying finding, right? Because theoretically, there is no reason that an LLM in the US, in Australia, especially ones made by US companies, should be imposing restrictive speech controls about these foreign countries that do not apply to their own citizens.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  Correct. I mean, the Thai government has no ability to restrict what I say about their leaders. If I'm speaking from here in the United States, and yet, if I'm using an LLM, those restrictions are in place in many cases. And the other piece is, of course, it's shadowy. It's not transparent. If we hadn't done the study, nobody would ever know this. What else is being pulled away and filtered out of search results on an LLM? What else are you not allowed to ask about or to create content about? How are these international laws being extended on these global platforms? And on social media, they geo-fence.

• 6:28Speaker 03

  And so, say, if Holocaust denial is impermissible in one place, they'll make sure that you can't access that content within that jurisdiction, but you can outside of it. And here with LLMs, what we're seeing is at least some evidence that that kind of geo-fencing is not in place.

• 6:45Speaker 00

  I thought that was such a fascinating finding because from the user's perspective, if you're putting these requests into the LLM, it is denying you. You know that it's not making it. But is there any way that a user of Claude or ChatGPT or what have you is going to know that one request is being denied while another is allowed?

• 7:08Speaker 03

  Not really. I mean, in some cases, it said, my policies don't allow me to answer this question. And so you find out that, but you don't know what those policies are, what they're dictated by. Is this a decision that the AI company is making? Is this a request from government to say, you're not allowed to answer these questions? Or we don't want you to answer these questions, and maybe we'll kick you out of our country if you do? And so all of that's very shadowy. And frankly, I'm not sure that even those who construct the models could necessarily say precisely what dictates whether a question is answered or not. Because as we know, there's a lot of mystery in terms of how these LLMs reply to queries and prompts.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  And so are they actually programmed to extend these laws globally? Or is sort of the programming that's going into the model about the Thai king, is that kind of being extrapolated in some way? And so all of that's quite opaque.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  Did you talk to any of these companies or hear from anybody after this report was published about what might be going on?

• 8:14Speaker 03

  I wouldn't say we've heard about what's going on. The board's gotten a lot of interest. We've heard from a lot of people who are sort of gobsmacked, I think, to realize that this sort of thing is embedded in the models. We haven't yet gotten a response from those companies. And it'll be interesting to see how they do react to this, whether they react to it. Are they willing to be held accountable? Are they open to what we're trying to bring forward as a board? In our relationship with Meta, they're actually obligated to respond to the decisions that we take, the recommendations that we make. These other companies don't have that obligation, but they all say, of course, they're very concerned with safety, with benefiting the users, with being helpful to people. And so one hopes, consistent with those values, that they will react.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  Well, you know, you wrote something about the constitution that Anthropic wrote for Claude a while back, and I think you said it was just vibes. And it's this very interesting thing where we don't quite know what actually programs these systems. And so if the vibes around China don't criticize Xi Jinping...

• 9:20Speaker 00

  It might just listen, which is kind of terrifying that they can't override that or catch that. I am really curious, where did the idea for this come from? Because the things that I hear people most concerned about when it comes to LLM outputs is, you know, mental health responses where it's driving people into psychosis or, you know, medical responses that are going awry, not so much the political speech.

• 9:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's true. Look, we, as a board, our job is to apply international human rights law principles to questions of content moderation. Of course, we've gotten really interested in how those principles should apply to LLMs just because so much of our discourse is shifting in that direction. And so, you know, for us on the mental health issues, you know, it may or may not, you know, there may be human rights implications there. And actually, there are courts that are going to look at whether some of the LLMs have, AI companies have asserted a First Amendment defense to these claims that they, you know, caused terrible harm or encouraged someone, even in some cases, to suicide. And so that'll be adjudicated by the courts.

• 10:27Speaker 03

  But this kind of political speech question is something that is really core to what we try to protect in social media and on Meta platforms, which is the ability to have open discourse. Meta has committed itself to upholding that principle on its platforms. And so, you know, for us to see, you know, whether that robust discourse and that ability to criticize and say your piece and anger ahead of state, you know, is that ability being preserved, you know, as our discourse moves to social media? Or is it kind of quietly being curtailed and shrunken, you know, with us not even knowing?

• 11:03Speaker 00

  So you did look at, I believe, one of Meta's Llama models, but what other AI systems were you studying?

• 11:11Speaker 03

  We looked at the major ones. I mean, we looked at Claude and Google and OpenAI. We looked at DeepSeek. And so, you know, we're trying to be a grok, you know, kind of agnostic. And, you know, some of the findings were surprising, not necessarily what you would expect. And, you know, things varied. It's not like it was, you know, completely black and white, but we definitely saw statistically significant and really pronounced finding that when it came to this kind of speech in relation to heads of state in repressive countries, that the models were more than twice as likely to turn down those requests than when it came to heads of state in democratic places.

• 11:53Speaker 00

  You know, you have a background in particular in, I think, you know, promoting free expression, free speech. Some of the questions you were asking of these LLMs was, you know, some of it was, can you generate reasons to protest or support a government? Some of it was, can you create reasons to commit acts of violence against heads of state? What was the Oversight Board looking for, right? What is the success metric here, right? Like, do you want the LLMs to respond no matter what? Or is there a line where you think it's appropriate for these companies to curtail the speech and outputs?

• 12:31Speaker 03

  I mean, look, in this case, we were really looking at the contrast between how the LLM was going to treat heads of state in repressive countries that banned that sort of speech versus heads of state in places where you're allowed to make those criticisms or even those threats and to see, you know, what is the delta? And is, you know, from Australia, where the law is, doesn't differentiate, you know, you can say the same thing about King Charles as you can about, you know, Kim Jong-un if you're sitting in Sydney, Australia, except that's not true if you're using an LLM to try to create the speech. So that really was our focus. And then in our casework, we look at these very kind of sensitive line drawing questions of, you know, incitement to violence and, you know, under particular circumstances, should

• 13:15Speaker 03

  a platform like Meta, you know, allow you to allege, for example, that villagers are about to launch an attack in a particular region of Ethiopia? Is that free speech or is that incitement to violence that's likely to provoke or elicit a response that could be deadly? And so we have done a lot of work making those, you know, quite nuanced line drawing exercises and trying to extrapolate principles that can help the company adjudicate those questions in a transparent way, in a principled way, in a consistent way. But here we were really zeroing on that question of whether they were taking censorship laws and essentially stretching them around the globe.

• 13:55Speaker 00

  And particularly doing that without being asked, seemingly, and applying it kind of everywhere universally, which is such a fascinating finding. And there's an interesting note in the report where it says, this could go beyond just these apps because there are systems that rely on Claude or ChatGPT through APIs and they're using those services. So you might be getting a censored output without even knowing what system you're using, without knowing that there's any possibility there, which is, I think, poses some really serious concerns in a way that I haven't seen people talk about AI systems before. You know, you have mentioned much times, this comes from your perspective of working with Meta and Meta platforms and Meta moderation.

• 14:40Speaker 00

  So I have to ask, right? The interesting thing, the other interesting part of this study to me is, why did you decide to investigate AI systems beyond Metas?

• 14:49Speaker 03

  Look, you know, we are, as a board, we're a membership organization. We have 20 people from all over the world. We're human rights lawyers, journalists, scholars, and we have a deep interest in how human rights principles are playing out on social media. We all join the board because we care about that. And we don't just care about it at Meta. And, you know, obviously Meta is a contender in the AI race. It's not right now at the forefront of that race in terms of LLMs. We have, you know, seen much wider usage of the other platforms. And so, you know, we have that interest in how are these issues playing out, you know, across the board? How is it affecting global discourse?

• 15:30Speaker 03

  And so, you know, it's not like, you know, as individuals and experts, you know, our concerns are only confined to Meta.

• 15:36Speaker 00

  This is true, but you're, it would appear to me from the outside that your job is confined to Meta, right? So this is the first time that, as far as I'm aware, the Oversight Board has done a study or a report that goes beyond Meta platform moderation. Is that right?

• 15:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, and look, I give Meta credit for sort of giving us the leeway to do that and not saying, you know, this is beyond your remit or, you know, not on our dime. You know, they haven't said that. We included Llama in the study. But I think, you know, their premise in creating the board really was that these principles should prevail in the digital arena writ large. I think, you know, in an ideal world, they actually probably would want to see companies adhering to similar standards, that, you know, sort of abrogating your human rights responsibilities wouldn't be a way of getting market differentiation or stealing customers. And so I think they probably have an interest in trying to see the degree to which these

• 16:34Speaker 03

  human rights principles are being extended across platforms. And in other areas of concern, you know, just on, for example, the spread of deep fakes and kind of the degradation of our discourse as AI-generated and manipulated content spreads more widely, we actually have begun to issue statements that talk to the field as a whole because we realize, you know, Meta is part of a larger ecosystem. And if that ecosystem doesn't uphold these standards, it's less likely that any one company will.

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• 19:06Speaker 00

  Our good friend Casey Newton at Platformer, he reported earlier this year that Meta had reduced your budget for the next couple of years and had even floated not funding you after, I think it was 2029, starting in 2029. Is that still the case? Or are there conversations about that?

• 19:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, right now we're funded through 2029. We'll have to see what happens after that. We recognize as a board, we need to evolve. That's part of the reason we chose to get into looking at LLMs because we just, we see the direction that things are going. There's also so much more use of LLMs in content moderation. And so that's another, there's both far greater use of AI to generate content that's shared on social media and increasing use of AI, and Meta has talked about this, to moderate content instead of these farms of human moderators. They're increasingly moving away from that. And so there's a lot that's changing. And I think there's a lot of relevance and importance to the sort of work that we do. We just did a study recently looking at Meta,

• 20:07Speaker 03

  got rid of fact checkers in the United States in favor of community notes. They asked us to look at, well, what if we do that globally? Like, what could go wrong? And so we can answer a question like that kind of from an independent perspective and with global insight, people from all over the world.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  Yes, so tell me about that. I'm curious, you've been on the board for, I think, five years. How has the, I guess, attitude toward moderation changed in that time? Because to me, Zuckerberg was out a year ago talking about bringing more masculine energy to the workplace. And I think it feels to me like there's been this sort of, I don't know if it's necessarily a cultural shift, but perhaps some of the tech leaders want there to have been a shift where things are a little more fast and loose again. And I think if you rewind, five years ago, moderation felt like a crucial, essential topic, right? The Oversight Board is created as a result of this. And I'm not so sure I feel that kind of pressure anymore.

• 21:05Speaker 00

  Does that feel right to you?

• 21:07Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Look, I think, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, there were incidents that kind of created this mounting pressure. Meta adopted a very far-reaching and incredibly progressive human rights policy. They were committing themselves to upholding all of these standards. And then I think a couple of things happened. I mean, it became very politicized. And I think particularly like the Hunter Biden laptop incident was such a pivot point where the social media companies had sort of had the earmarks of a foreign information, disinformation operation. The social media companies dialed it back or took it down, only to find out it actually was his laptop. And yet, yes, the timing of the release probably was engineered

• 21:51Speaker 03

  to affect the election, but nonetheless, it wasn't a falsehood. And so that became then kind of the kindling for an argument that the social media companies were biased, that they were suppressing conservative speech, that moderation was a tool of the left to censor. And that was a very powerful force. And then, of course, when you had the Trump administration embodying that view, actually threatening Mark Zuckerberg before Trump took office, so that he might be arrested. And so I think for the companies, I think it was two things. I mean, one is that the political winds had shifted. And I also think they had come to see honestly

• 22:33Speaker 03

  how complex and fraught a business-intensive moderation is. And they made a few changes. People thought at the time that Meta had completely dropped content moderation. I would get asked, well, does the board still exist? Is Meta still moderating content? They absolutely were. I mean, the changes they made were actually quite narrow and specific about speech, about transgender issues, about immigration, that they were going to loosen the constraints somewhat. But they have reams of policies, bullying and harassment, incitement and violence, restricted goods, whether you can talk about drugs of various kinds. And so all of those policies are still in place. They're really complicated. They're honestly quite thoughtful.

• 23:16Speaker 03

  I mean, if you look through them, you'd be sort of impressed. They really try to look at both sides of all of these issues. Like, it's by no means perfect, but they're also dealing with billions and billions of posts every day that a portion of which weighs novel questions. And so I think there's some sense of futility that nobody's ever going to get this exactly right. But they also, one thing they've said to us as a board, and we sort of see this too, is that there are many issues at this point that we have looked at, where we have made recommendations, where things are working in a more considered way than they used to. And so that's positive.

• 23:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, so even in this world where they have backed off of fact-checking in favor of community notes, even in this world where misinformation is maybe not a thing that they're so worried about, you're saying the Oversight Board still has a very real value in assisting with Meta's just sort of day-to-day issues with harassment and speaking about drugs and potentially violating like First Amendment issues?

• 24:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, all sorts of issues. I mean, with the rise of AI and AI-manipulated content, you have these, say, fake videos about a politician, let's say. We're getting a lot of appeals along these lines that will depict the politician saying or doing something that they never said or did. And Meta's policy right now is that if that is proximate to an election, they may label it so that you can see that it's AI, but the label is only so prominent, and they have a more prominent label and a less prominent label. And if the election is not coming up anytime soon, they probably won't label it at all. And so is that the right approach? I mean, as we see this content proliferating so widely,

• 25:05Speaker 03

  should we be doing more to protect democracy? Or would that, does that risk being repressive and suppressive and taking down, for example, satire? What's the line between a satirical AI-generated depiction and one that is more defamatory? So these are really tough calls. And we do see the content on the platform changing pretty dramatically now, largely as a result of AI, and just how much easier it is to create types of content that a few years ago would have taken a lot more effort and expertise and expense.

• 25:39Speaker 00

  You mentioned it might actually be valuable in this world where we're dealing with AI issues. I want to quote something that you wrote. You had an op-ed piece in The Guardian a couple of months back where you wrote, the title is, "I'm on the Meta Oversight Board. We Need AI Protections Now." And there are a couple of lines that stood out to me in particular, where you write, "Independent oversight offers the potential to adjudicate between AI's potential and its perils. By embracing independent oversight, AI companies can demonstrate that they are serious enough about public trust to be willing to fight for it." And I thought that was very interesting because the immediate question to me is, oh, where might an AI company find an independent organization

• 26:23Speaker 00

  that could do this kind of work for them? I'm curious, is this a job application? Is this a pitch to these companies?

• 26:32Speaker 03

  It's not a pitch per se, but I do think we've become convinced doing this work that...

• 26:40Speaker 03

  Taking a rigorous approach, having an international body. And you know, that's one of the most interesting things about the board is that you're sitting down with people from Yemen and from Pakistan and Lebanon. And you know, we have an Israeli and an Arab, and we have American staunch conservatives and liberals who all come together to kind of hash these questions out. And we sort of see the power of that exercise and of the grounding in international human rights law principles where we're not just sort of sucking this out of our thumbs. Like, we're actually trying to very methodically. And if you look at our opinions, you'll see it's quite procedural and quite exacting. And we feel like there's a certain integrity to that.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  And as we kind of go into this Wild West where nobody seems to know what the rules should be, you know, Meta undertook this experiment, they invested in it. You know, as a society, we should learn from it. You know, we should try to take the knowledge and the grounding that's been developed and apply it. And so, you know, that's, it's, you know, it's out of that sense that we're making this case and trying to illustrate that there is relevance and learning here that can be useful.

• 27:50Speaker 00

  I guess, is the Oversight Board thinking, right? It sounds like, right, Meta's come to you and said, hey, we're not sure what comes next. Already, you have this, I think, very fascinating study that points to some flaws in the LLMs. Is the Oversight Board, have you had conversations internally saying, we need to expand our scope and we need to be a body that can work for and with other organizations beyond Meta?

• 28:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're clear, we would like to. You know, we have always been open to that conversation. Not that easy because, you know, our, the, the funding for the board was set aside by Meta. I think other companies are probably somewhat skeptical of a board that has worked so closely with a competitor. And so, you know, it's, it's not necessarily easy, but you know, our interests, we all kind of come at this honestly, because we're genuinely fascinated by these questions and we care about how these issues play out. You know, for me, I joined the board because I thought, I didn't want governments adjudicating these sensitive questions about sort of free speech and, and how they relate to other harms of social media. I didn't think government was well placed to exert that influence.

• 29:01Speaker 03

  And I also didn't like the idea of a bunch of people sitting in a Silicon Valley boardroom doing so in isolation. I thought, well, you know, this is an alternative and it's worth trying. And so, being part of that exercise and being so passionate about human rights and free speech, you know, it's natural that as we see the world evolving, as our discourse changes gears and transforms, that we want to be part of that conversation.

• 29:25Speaker 00

  Have you started having any of those conversations with, with AI companies or anyone else in the social media space?

• 29:31Speaker 03

  You know, there have been some over the years, like, you know, pretty consistently from time to time, we have those conversations. I think there's a lot of interest in our work. What we consistently hear is that they read our decisions, they apply some of our decisions and our recommendations. And, you know, in a sense, there may be a little bit of a free rider situation where, you know, all of our stuff's public.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:50Speaker 03

  You know, and that's by design. They, our, our opinions get cited by courts and they're used by advocates. So, you know, we're glad of that because, you know, we'd like to, we, we do sort of take this principled approach that we think has broad application. You know, if people find it useful or translate it into new, and extrapolate from it into new arenas, you know, that's part of our influence and our impact. So, you know, we see that as a win. And, you know, Meta's also changing quickly as a company. I mean, I would never count Meta out as a competitor in, in generative AI or any other field.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  They're spending a lot of money, certainly, to, to get ahead there. We'll have to see what happens. Another thing I'm curious about here is, you know, in this, in the Guardian piece, you note, and I, you know, as, as you've mentioned several times during our discussion, you know, Meta sort of formed the Oversight Board to get itself out of the hot seat. You write that the board has fallen short of what some people had hoped it would achieve. I think even you're, you're acknowledging that, you know, there is potential beyond what has happened.

• 31:01Speaker 00

  I'm curious, you know, you are saying that independent oversight is a good option for AI companies. I think probably a lot of people listening to this agree, are concerned about AI. Do you think, looking at what the Oversight Board has accomplished, do you think that independent oversight is going to be successful enough to handle this new wave of technology?

• 31:27Speaker 03

  No, I mean, absolutely not. Like, I think it has to be a combination of solutions and that we need, you know, really empowered, expert government regulation, you know, along the lines of what we have in the financial industry or the food and drug arena. But I'm not confident we're going to get that. You know, I really have my doubts. And these industries are so global that, you know, and my confidence in any kind of international coalescence around governance is, is far lower. And so, you know, in, in light, and we haven't seen social media regulation, you know, for years, even the most basic proposals to require, you know, honesty in online ads, for example,

• 32:09Speaker 03

  that I remember, you know, people thinking were sort of anodyne and minimalist and, and baby steps, those have not passed. And so, I think we have to be realistic about what's likely to happen. And independent oversight is actually something that companies could undertake themselves. You know, they all say they're so worried, they want to be conscientious, you know, their values driven, you know, they're kind of ostensibly begging for regulation, although, you know, you can decide whether that's credible or not. But if their concerns are serious, if they're really so worried about these risks, why not create actually a much more robust form of independent oversight? Like, I and any other member of our board could list out the ways in which, you know,

• 32:51Speaker 03

  we really would need more authority in order to make the kind of difference that, you know, we might hope or to address risks and threats on the scale that we're talking about with generative AI. It would have to be, you know, a much larger and more empowered kind of body that would do that. But I do think it could make a difference. And it's something, you know, Dario Amade or Sam Altman could begin to stand up tomorrow instead of waiting for our Congress to come up, you know, with a sweeping regulatory regime that, you know, I think could be elusive for years, if not decades.

• 33:26Speaker 00

  I completely agree with you. I am certainly not optimistic that Congress is going to pull anything together anytime soon. It is so interesting to me that, you know, even after this experience where, you know, I, I think everyone can look at the Oversight Board and see where those challenges have been, that, that you're still coming to this conclusion that independent oversight is a good option for something as thorny as, as AI.

• 33:55Speaker 00

  And it is interesting because right now, there, there really is not anything, as far as I'm aware. It, it is these companies kind of promising to act in our best interests. And this AI study that, that the Oversight Board did, I think, shows just how much room there is for these companies to miss things, even if they are, are intending to act in our best interests.

• 34:17Speaker 03

  Well, yeah. And look, I think it's all question, like, relative to what? You know, if we could, you know, if I could wave a wand and create an empowered, credible, expert agency, you know, with the power to look into all of these questions and to, you know, work day in and day out with the companies to try to mitigate the harms and risks of AI, I would do that. You know, I, like, I do think that would be better. But I think, you know, in the world we live in, that independent oversight has its role and that honestly, it can be done. I mean, if they decided to do that, you could have a robust oversight entity, you know, operating a few months from now.

• 34:58Speaker 03

  And so, I don't, I don't see a faster route to some level of transparency and accountability. So, I think it's for sure worth considering.

• 35:06Speaker 00

  Do you think that's going to happen?

• 35:08Speaker 03

  I don't know. You know, I, there's obviously a lot of pressure, there's a lot of, you know, public angst about AI. I think there's tremendous distrust, like a profound sense that people don't count on their government to protect them from these incredibly powerful technologies. They certainly don't trust the companies. I think they're using their leverage over the data centers as a way to reflect, you know, that sense of deep skepticism that their interests are going to be safeguarded. And, you know, if that continues, I think the companies are going to have to look at, you know, a whole range of different alternatives in terms of how they position themselves. And I think, I honestly think independent oversight could be a powerful part of that.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  If they appointed a body and gave it powers that were really robust and, and said, we're going to bind ourselves and we're going to pay for this. And, you know, they would have to know, I think, go in with open eyes and recognize, look, it's not really, it's probably not going to burnish your reputation that much. You're still going to come under, you know, enormous scrutiny and take a great deal of flak. It's not going to take the hard decisions off your plate, but it will help ensure that your policies are more principled and that you do a better job balancing between competing interests and upholding your human rights obligations. And like, that's why you'd have to do it.

• 36:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, I will say one thing for the AI companies, they, they have shown that it is possible to have a, a worse reputation than Meta, which, you know, it, it did not seem like, uh, was, was going to happen for, for a minute. You know, and this sort of thing is, is not going to change everything for them. I'm curious, what is next for the Oversight Board? This is your first report that is looking beyond Meta, that's looking at AI. Do you expect more of that in the next couple of years?

• 36:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure, there'll be more. You know, we're not, we're kind of, are developing this methodology and, you know, there's a lot of interest in these kinds of studies. And so, we're looking at, you know, other variations on theme and other questions that we can look at. And we're doing a lot more work, as I mentioned, sort of on both AI-generated and manipulated content on social media and on the use of AI for content moderation and how that's playing out in terms of upholding the rights of users and making sound decisions.

• 37:31Speaker 00

  Well, it's great. I think these, this kind of research is really important right now, and I'm, I'm glad you all are looking into it. I'm excited to hear about how your organization evolves. You know, and if anyone's willing to listen to your recommendations, beyond Meta.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, we will find out. So, if we can touch base and get it, I hope so.

• 37:49Speaker 00

  Suzanne Nossel, thanks so much for joining.

• 37:51Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  That's it for The Vergecast. Thanks again to Suzanne Nossel for joining us. Remember, you can subscribe to The Verge for ad-free episodes of all of our shows, exclusive newsletters, and so much more. We love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] or call the hotline at 866-VERGE11. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network. Today's show was produced by Josh Kahas, Eric Gomez, Brendan Kiefer, and Travis Lorcha. We'll see you tomorrow. Rock and roll.

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