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The Verge

Decoder is a show from The Verge about big ideas — and other problems. Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel talks to a diverse cast of innovators and policymakers at the frontiers of business and technology to reveal how they’re navigating an ever-changing landscape, what keeps them up at night, and what it all means for our shared future.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

This is Hayden Field, senior AI reporter at The Verge — and your Thursday episode guest host. I have another couple of shows for you while Nilay is out on parental leave, and we’re going to be spending more time diving into some of the unforeseen consequences of the generative AI boom.

Today, I’m talking with Heidy Khlaaf, who is chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, about the tech industry’s shift toward AI military applications. I wanted to know what’s motivated this shift, and why Heidy thinks leading AI firms are being far too cavalier about deploying generative AI in high-risk scenarios.

Links:

 OpenAI is softening its stance on military use | The Verge

 OpenAI awarded $200 million US defense contract | The Verge

 OpenAI is partnering with defense tech company Anduril | The Verge

 Anthropic launches new Claude service for military and intelligence use | The Verge

 Anthropic, Palantir, Amazon team up on defense AI | Axios

 Google scraps promise not to develop AI weapons | The Verge

 Microsoft employees occupy headquarters in protest of Israel contracts | The Verge

 Microsoft’s employee protests have reached a boiling point | The Verge

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How AI safety took a backseat to military money

Guest host Hank Green talks with his friend Dropout CEO Sam Reich about keeping a business simple, trying to run a company the “right way,” and why the internet should be full of as many weird little projects as possible.

Read the full transcript on The Verge. 

Links: 

 How CollegeHumor reinvented itself for the new internet age | People

 CollegeHumor shaped online comedy. What went wrong? [2020] | Wired

 ‘I believe in this enough to try to do it myself’ [2020] | Digiday

 Jacob Wysocki needed a minute to process that Game Changer | Vulture

 
Game Changer smartly weaponizes its online following | Mashable

 Vimeo CEO Philip Moyer is betting on the human touch | Decoder

 Vimeo to be acquired by Bending Spoons for $1.38B | The Verge

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dropout CEO Sam Reich on business, comedy, and keeping culture weird

Verge senior AI reporter Hayden Field and New York Times reporter Kashmir Hill discuss the significant mental health impact AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, can have on users — both people in crisis, and also people who seemed stable.

This episode contains non-detailed discussions of suicide and mental illness. If you or someone you know is in crisis, considering self-harm, or needs to talk, please call the Lifeline at 988.

Links: 

 A teen was suicidal. ChatGPT was the friend he confided in. | New York Times

 Sam Altman says ChatGPT will stop talking about suicide with teens | The Verge

 Chatbots can go into a delusional spiral. Here’s how. | New York Times

 Why is ChatGPT telling people to email me? | New York Times

 They asked an AI chatbot questions. The answers sent them spiraling. | New York Times

 She is in love with ChatGPT | The New York Times

 ‘I feel like I’m going crazy’: ChatGPT fuels delusional spirals | Wall Street Journal

 Meta, OpenAI face FTC inquiry on chatbots’ impact on kids | Bloomberg

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How chatbots — and their makers — are enabling AI psychosis

This is Hank Green, the cofounder of Complexly. I’m back for my second guest hosting spot here on Decoder while Nilay is out on parental leave. Today, I’m talking with Digitas CEO Amy Lanzi, who runs a major marketing and ad agency. You might remember Amy; Nilay interviewed her for Decoder live at an event in New York City almost a year ago. But Nilay, who runs what might be the last website on Earth, has a very different perspective on the world of digital marketing than I do. So as a career YouTuber, I had a lot of questions for someone in a position like Amy’s. 

Links: 

 
Digitas unveils new generative AI platform, Digitas AI | Digitas

 
Amy Lanzi on steering Digitas through the demands of modern marketing | Sightly

 
Introducing Reddit Community Intelligence | Reddit

 
Digitas North America announces Amy Lanzi as CEO | Digitas

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How brands and creators are fighting for your attention — and your money

This is Alex Heath. For my final episode as your Thursday episode guest host, I recently sat down with Bret Taylor, the CEO of AI startup Sierra and the chairman of OpenAI, for a live event in San Francisco hosted by Alix Partners. 

Bret has worked at Google, Facebook, and Salesforce in high-level, executive roles, and he led Twitter’s board during Elon Musk’s takeover, so very few people have seen the tech industry up close like Bret has. Now, he’s all in on AI. We covered a lot of ground in this conversation, and I hope you find Bret’s perspective as fascinating as I did.

Links:

 Ex-Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor’s Sierra is the latest $10 billion AI startup | CNBC

 I talked to Sam Altman about the GPT-5 launch fiasco | Verge

 Sam Altman says ‘yes,’ AI is in a bubble | Verge

 MIT study on AI profits rattles tech investors | Axios

 GPT-5 Pro can prove new, interesting mathematics | Sebastien Bubeck

 AI chatbots are ready to talk to customers. Sort of. | WSJ

 How is AI different than other technology waves? | Acquired Podcast

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sierra CEO Bret Taylor on why the AI bubble feels like the dotcom boom

This is Hank Green, cofounder of Complexly. You might remember last year when I turned the tables on Nilay and interviewed him on his own show. That was a ton of fun, and it was so much fun that they’ve brought me back again. This time, I’m stepping in for Nilay to host the next few Decoder episodes while he’s out on parental leave. 

Today, I’m talking with a very special guest: Sal Khan, the founder and CEO of Khan Academy. Sal was actually Nilay’s second-ever guest on Decoder, back in 2020. And well, a whole lot has changed since then. So I wanted to have Sal back on to ask what it’s like running Khan Academy today, in the aftermath of the pandemic. But also how online learning is about to change, in really dramatic ways, due to artificial intelligence. 

Links: 

 Sal Khan on A.I.'s promise and its risks | NBC News (YouTube)

 The best-case scenario for AI in schools | BBC News

 Meet Khanmigo: the student tutor AI being tested in schools | 60 Minutes| 60 Minutes

 Remote learning is here to stay — can we make it better? | Decoder

 Hank Green makes Nilay Patel explain why websites have a future | Decoder

 In classrooms, teachers put AI tutoring bots to the test | NYT

 Elite colleges have found a new virtue for applicants to fake | NYT

 Everyone Is cheating their way through college | New York Magazine

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sal Khan is hopeful that AI won't destroy education

Despite being one of the most valuable companies in the world, OpenAI is still technically a nonprofit. That’s what set the stage for the dramatic board coup in 2023 that briefly ousted Sam Altman as CEO. And now, OpenAI is trying to shake this nonprofit structure so it can raise even more money and, eventually, go public. There’s a lot at stake here, and not just for OpenAI.

Links: 

 OpenAI abandons plans to become a for-profit company | Verge

 Why California’s AG must continue investigation into OpenAI | CalMatters

 An open letter to OpenAI | EyesOnOpenAI

 OpenAI eyes $50B valuation in potential employee share sale | Reuters

 OpenAI thinks its critics are funded by billionaires | San Francisco Standard

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The quest to keep OpenAI honest

Hello, and welcome to Decoder! This is Senior Producer Nick Statt. We’re on a small break for the end of summer, and, sadly, Nilay will still be out a little while longer when we come back. But we have an excellent slate of guest host episodes starting up next month, so stay tuned for those. 

In the meantime, we wanted to bring back one of our favorite Decoder interviews from earlier this year. It’s with Bookshop CEO Andy Hunter, who back in January launched a pretty bold ebook initiative to take on Amazon and Kindle. It’s been about seven months, but Bookshop has seen big results, including more than $1 million in ebook sales. So we thought it was a good time to revisit our conversation with Andy. 

Links: 

 Bookshop.org reports 65% growth, e-books add $1 Million in sales | Publishers Weekly

 Bookshop CEO Andy Hunter’s crusade to save books from Amazon | Decoder

 Bookshop.org is launching an ebook store to take on Amazon | Verge

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rewind: Bookshop CEO's crusade to save books from Amazon

Hello! Decoder senior producer Kate Cox here. I’m afraid I’m still not Nilay, but I hope you’ve been enjoying our series of guest hosts this summer while he’s out on parental leave. We have a few more really great guest episodes coming up, before Nilay returns to the host chair later this fall, so stay tuned.

The production team is taking our own break this week, so while we’re off we’re excited to share this episode of The Gray Area with you. Students all over the country — including my own kids, thank goodness — are back in school right around now, and so we thought it would be a perfect time to revisit host Sean Illing talking with journalist James Walsh about how AI tools like ChatGPT have kicked off a new cheating arms race that’s proving extremely disruptive to college education. 

There are a lot of big Decoder ideas — and problems — wrapped up in all this. Okay, The Gray Area, with Sean Illing. Enjoy. 

Links: 

 If AI can do your classwork, why go to college? | The Gray Area

 Everyone Is cheating their way through college | New York Magazine

 How to get students to stop using AI | Verge

 I used the ‘cheat on everything’ AI tool and it didn’t help me cheat on anything | Verge

 Inside the frat-bro startup that wants you to ‘cheat on everything' | SF Standard

 A new headache for honest students: proving they didn’t use AI | NYT

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Is ChatGPT killing higher education?

This is Alex Heath, your Thursday episode guest host and deputy editor at The Verge. One of the biggest topics in AI these days is agents — the idea that AI is going to move from chatbots to reliably completing tasks for us in the real world. But the problem with agents is that they really aren’t all that reliable right now. 

There’s a lot of work happening in the AI industry to try and fix that, and that brings me to my guest today: David Luan, the head of Amazon’s AGI research lab, a cofounder of Adept, and a former VP of engineering at OpenAI. David and I discussed the release of GPT-5, what Amazon wants with agents, and where he thinks the AI race is headed next.

Read the full transcript on The Verge.

Links: 

 The Platonic Representation Hypothesis | Phillip Isola

 Amazon plays catch-up with new Nova models to generate voices, video | Verge

 Amazon’s new AI agent is designed to do your shopping | Verge

 Microsoft is racing to build an AI ‘agent factory’ | Verge

 OpenAI’s new ChatGPT Agent can control an entire computer | Verge 

 24 hours with Alexa Plus: we cooked, we chatted, and it kinda lied to me | Verge

 Why AI researchers are getting paid like NBA All-Stars | Decoder

 OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off — and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google | Verge

 This is Big Tech’s playbook for swallowing the AI industry | Command Line

 Amazon hires founders away from AI startup Adept | TechCrunch

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sierra CEO Bret Taylor on why the AI bubble feels like the dotcom boom

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