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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cb>Here are the morning’s top stories on Monday, November 10, 2025…\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">California legislators considered dozens of bills related to artificial intelligence this year. Those numbers have spiked as lawmakers grapple with the technology’s increasing presence and possible negative consequences. One point of concern: \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.capradio.org/articles/2025/11/06/with-the-rise-of-ai-californias-data-centers-require-more-water-energy-but-by-how-much/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">the impact that generative AI will have on the state’s natural resource\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">s as it becomes an everyday tool for Californians. \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Environmental activists are celebrating \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12063468/environmentalists-celebrate-retirement-of-platform-esther-a-socal-oil-rig\">the retirement of a Southern California oil rig\u003c/a>, with a celebration at San Francisco’s waterfront. The California State Lands Commission officially finalized the decommission last week.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003ch2 class=\"page-title\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.capradio.org/articles/2025/11/06/with-the-rise-of-ai-californias-data-centers-require-more-water-energy-but-by-how-much/\">\u003cstrong>With The Rise Of AI, California’s Data Centers Require More Water, Energy. But By How Much?\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Earlier this year, Governor Gavin Newsom \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/09/29/governor-newsom-signs-sb-53-advancing-californias-world-leading-artificial-intelligence-industry/\">signed\u003c/a> into law\u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB53\"> Senate Bill 53\u003c/a>, which would require large model developers like Anthropic and Open AI to be transparent about safety measures they put in place to prevent catastrophic events. The legislation would also create CalCompute, a public cloud infrastructure that expands access to AI resources for researchers, startups and public institutions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was one of several bills lawmakers introduced in Sacramento to regulate the AI industry. Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan authored a bill requiring data centers to report their energy usage. It failed to pass. But she said the work for the bill began with that question, and a desire for more transparency. “As I started to ask questions about what kind of data was going into our understanding around the energy needs of the growing data center industry, it seemed like the answer was there wasn’t great data,” Bauer-Kahan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Assemblymember Diane Papan authored a similar bill looking to track water use at data centers. It required centers to provide estimates of their expected water use when applying for a business license, and an annual water use report thereafter. These centers generally require large amounts of water to cool down servers and other equipment. “I feel that the more information we have, it’ll help us integrate the growth of data centers into that broader task of climate resilient resource management, particularly as it relates to water,” Papan said. The bill passed through the legislature but was vetoed by Governor Newsom. In a statement, Newsom said he was “reluctant to impose rigid reporting requirements about operational details on this sector without understanding the full impact on businesses and the consumers of this technology.” The decision surprised Papan, who originally described the bill as one that was sure to pass given legislators’ desire to optimize California’s water planning. She said she disagrees with his thinking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Data centers are places that contain the servers needed to provide essential services online, like web searches and video streaming. Large-scale data centers have been around for decades, first coming into existence about thirty years ago. But with the more recent rise of generative AI — the kind used for chatbots like ChatGPT — the water and energy these centers demand has gone up. Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside, said discussions about the environmental impacts associated with increasing AI use aren’t completely new. Artificial intelligence has been integrated in online platforms for years now — like with YouTube, for example, where AI is used to give tailored video recommendations. But Ren said it wasn’t until after 2020, when the general public became more aware of the integration of generative AI online, that these conversations really took hold. And with the technology’s growth comes a greater demand on resources – in California and the rest of the country. Citing a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report, Ren said data centers accounted for 3% of the nation’s energy use in 2020. That’s projected to increase by up to 12% by 2028. Ren said the way in which data centers consume these resources also plays a part in their impact on state resources. A data center may consume the same amount of water in a year as an office building, for example. But if most of that consumption happens during one hot summer month instead of evenly throughout the year, he said that could create a different kind of stress on water resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 class=\"routes-Site-routes-Post-Title-__Title__title\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12063468/environmentalists-celebrate-retirement-of-platform-esther-a-socal-oil-rig\">\u003cstrong>Environmentalists Celebrate ‘Retirement’ Of Platform Esther, A SoCal Oil Rig\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Environmental activists partied outside the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a> Ferry Building on Friday to celebrate the decommission of a Southern California oil rig. The Center for Biological Diversity called the event a “retirement party” for Platform Esther, a soon-to-be decommissioned oil rig off the coast of Orange County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Activists donned party hats and performed their own rendition of Kool & the Gang’s \u003cem>Celebration\u003c/em>, renamed \u003cem>Decommission. \u003c/em>They danced with a giant inflatable whale, and tore into a blue-iced cake decorated with a paper cutout of an oil rig.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside the Ferry Building, the California State Lands Commission officially finalized the decommission at a hearing. “This is actually a historic win. This platform is being retired about fifteen years ahead of the official end of its useful life,” said Ilonka Zlatar, an organizer with Oil and Gas Action Network. “We want to thank the State Lands Commission and the agencies that are standing up and helping us to transition into the clean energy economy that we need.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Platform Esther was first built in 1965 and is located 1.5 miles off the coast of Seal Beach. It was rebuilt in the ’80s after sustaining major damage from a winter storm in 1983. Production officially ceased in August 2025.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New leases for oil drilling off the coast haven’t been approved since 1984, and past Republican presidents have worked with Democrats in protecting California’s waters from drilling. But conservation efforts have faced new threats under the current and past Trump administrations, which \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/trump-offshore-drilling-21116334.php\">recently revealed a proposal\u003c/a> to dramatically ramp up oil drilling off California’s coast to increase the country’s energy independence.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cb>Here are the morning’s top stories on Monday, November 10, 2025…\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">California legislators considered dozens of bills related to artificial intelligence this year. Those numbers have spiked as lawmakers grapple with the technology’s increasing presence and possible negative consequences. One point of concern: \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.capradio.org/articles/2025/11/06/with-the-rise-of-ai-californias-data-centers-require-more-water-energy-but-by-how-much/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">the impact that generative AI will have on the state’s natural resource\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">s as it becomes an everyday tool for Californians. \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Environmental activists are celebrating \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12063468/environmentalists-celebrate-retirement-of-platform-esther-a-socal-oil-rig\">the retirement of a Southern California oil rig\u003c/a>, with a celebration at San Francisco’s waterfront. The California State Lands Commission officially finalized the decommission last week.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003ch2 class=\"page-title\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.capradio.org/articles/2025/11/06/with-the-rise-of-ai-californias-data-centers-require-more-water-energy-but-by-how-much/\">\u003cstrong>With The Rise Of AI, California’s Data Centers Require More Water, Energy. But By How Much?\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Earlier this year, Governor Gavin Newsom \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/09/29/governor-newsom-signs-sb-53-advancing-californias-world-leading-artificial-intelligence-industry/\">signed\u003c/a> into law\u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB53\"> Senate Bill 53\u003c/a>, which would require large model developers like Anthropic and Open AI to be transparent about safety measures they put in place to prevent catastrophic events. The legislation would also create CalCompute, a public cloud infrastructure that expands access to AI resources for researchers, startups and public institutions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was one of several bills lawmakers introduced in Sacramento to regulate the AI industry. Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan authored a bill requiring data centers to report their energy usage. It failed to pass. But she said the work for the bill began with that question, and a desire for more transparency. “As I started to ask questions about what kind of data was going into our understanding around the energy needs of the growing data center industry, it seemed like the answer was there wasn’t great data,” Bauer-Kahan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Assemblymember Diane Papan authored a similar bill looking to track water use at data centers. It required centers to provide estimates of their expected water use when applying for a business license, and an annual water use report thereafter. These centers generally require large amounts of water to cool down servers and other equipment. “I feel that the more information we have, it’ll help us integrate the growth of data centers into that broader task of climate resilient resource management, particularly as it relates to water,” Papan said. The bill passed through the legislature but was vetoed by Governor Newsom. In a statement, Newsom said he was “reluctant to impose rigid reporting requirements about operational details on this sector without understanding the full impact on businesses and the consumers of this technology.” The decision surprised Papan, who originally described the bill as one that was sure to pass given legislators’ desire to optimize California’s water planning. She said she disagrees with his thinking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Data centers are places that contain the servers needed to provide essential services online, like web searches and video streaming. Large-scale data centers have been around for decades, first coming into existence about thirty years ago. But with the more recent rise of generative AI — the kind used for chatbots like ChatGPT — the water and energy these centers demand has gone up. Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside, said discussions about the environmental impacts associated with increasing AI use aren’t completely new. Artificial intelligence has been integrated in online platforms for years now — like with YouTube, for example, where AI is used to give tailored video recommendations. But Ren said it wasn’t until after 2020, when the general public became more aware of the integration of generative AI online, that these conversations really took hold. And with the technology’s growth comes a greater demand on resources – in California and the rest of the country. Citing a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report, Ren said data centers accounted for 3% of the nation’s energy use in 2020. That’s projected to increase by up to 12% by 2028. Ren said the way in which data centers consume these resources also plays a part in their impact on state resources. A data center may consume the same amount of water in a year as an office building, for example. But if most of that consumption happens during one hot summer month instead of evenly throughout the year, he said that could create a different kind of stress on water resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 class=\"routes-Site-routes-Post-Title-__Title__title\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12063468/environmentalists-celebrate-retirement-of-platform-esther-a-socal-oil-rig\">\u003cstrong>Environmentalists Celebrate ‘Retirement’ Of Platform Esther, A SoCal Oil Rig\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Environmental activists partied outside the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a> Ferry Building on Friday to celebrate the decommission of a Southern California oil rig. The Center for Biological Diversity called the event a “retirement party” for Platform Esther, a soon-to-be decommissioned oil rig off the coast of Orange County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Activists donned party hats and performed their own rendition of Kool & the Gang’s \u003cem>Celebration\u003c/em>, renamed \u003cem>Decommission. \u003c/em>They danced with a giant inflatable whale, and tore into a blue-iced cake decorated with a paper cutout of an oil rig.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside the Ferry Building, the California State Lands Commission officially finalized the decommission at a hearing. “This is actually a historic win. This platform is being retired about fifteen years ahead of the official end of its useful life,” said Ilonka Zlatar, an organizer with Oil and Gas Action Network. “We want to thank the State Lands Commission and the agencies that are standing up and helping us to transition into the clean energy economy that we need.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Platform Esther was first built in 1965 and is located 1.5 miles off the coast of Seal Beach. It was rebuilt in the ’80s after sustaining major damage from a winter storm in 1983. Production officially ceased in August 2025.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New leases for oil drilling off the coast haven’t been approved since 1984, and past Republican presidents have worked with Democrats in protecting California’s waters from drilling. But conservation efforts have faced new threats under the current and past Trump administrations, which \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/trump-offshore-drilling-21116334.php\">recently revealed a proposal\u003c/a> to dramatically ramp up oil drilling off California’s coast to increase the country’s energy independence.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "New State Law Requires Additional Safeguards When Police Use Generative AI",
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"content": "\u003cp>FRESNO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom this month signed a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12007520/how-artificial-intelligence-is-changing-the-reports-police-write\">first-of-its-kind California law\u003c/a> requiring police to disclose how they use generative artificial intelligence, a move aimed at boosting transparency and public trust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California is among the first states to address the issue. KQED \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12007520/how-artificial-intelligence-is-changing-the-reports-police-write\">first reported\u003c/a> last October on local departments adopting AI tools. The reporting was cited in the legislative analysis of the bill that ultimately became the law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Senate Bill 524, signed into law Oct. 10, requires police officers to disclose when they use AI to write police reports. The tools include Draft One, an AI assistant that transcribes and summarizes body-camera footage to produce a draft report, which officers can then revise and edit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Specifically, the law now requires a written disclosure to appear at the bottom of each page of a police report for which Draft One or other similar tools were used. The legislation also requires an “audit trail” that would preserve the original draft as well as identify the source bodycam footage or audio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Police departments in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12007520/how-artificial-intelligence-is-changing-the-reports-police-write\">East Palo Alto\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kvpr.org/government-politics/2024-11-15/ai-is-helping-fresno-police-officers-write-their-reports-could-it-outperform-them\">Fresno\u003c/a> were among the first in the state to adopt the technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Axon, the company that developed Draft One, told KVPR and KQED last year that its developers built safeguards into their software. For example, officers must fill in prompts within the generated report, then sign off on the report’s accuracy before it can be submitted. The tool also includes a disclaimer that Draft One was used, though police agencies have thus far been able to customize where in a report it’s placed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12006138\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12006138\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"The torso of a person dressed in a police uniform holds a hand over a body camera.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An East Palo Alto Police officer’s Axon body camera in East Palo Alto on Sept. 23, 2024. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Police departments have said the technology saves officers significant time, and even that some AI-generated reports are better than the ones written entirely by officers. Nevertheless, the bill arose out of concerns that bias or errors generated by AI software could make their way into final incident reports, which play a key role in charging, detaining and sentencing suspects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kate Chatfield, executive director of the California Public Defenders Association, which sponsored the bill, said she’s grateful the measure became law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Due process requires transparency,” Chatfield wrote in a public statement. “Everyone in the legal system — judges, juries, attorneys and the accused — deserve to know who wrote the police report.”[aside postID=news_12050772 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-03-KQED.jpg?ver=1727233046']“With SB 524, California is sending a clear message: Innovation in policing must be tethered to accountability,” state Sen. Jesse Arreguín, who wrote the bill, said in the statement. “No more opaque reports, no more guessing whether AI shaped the narrative.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kevin Little, a defense attorney in Fresno, said the law is a step in the right direction, but not a true remedy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My own experience with AI in an unrelated context leads me to conclude that AI platforms have a significant amount of user bias and tend to support the agendas of the user,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Larry Bowlan, a spokesperson for the Fresno Police Department, said the agency had already implemented some of the safeguards now required by the law and does not expect the new rules to be especially burdensome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our AI-powered narrative assistant … already generates a disclosure and requires our users to sign acknowledgements. Draft One also already produces the requisite audit trail,” he wrote in an email. “We are actively working with our vendor on the best solution for preserving and storing the first draft provided by the assistant, as well as a minor tweak to ensure the disclosure is present on each printed page, rather than just the first page as it is now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for the East Palo Alto Department said his agency has no official response to the law at this time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12007615\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12007615\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5.jpg\" alt=\"A woman dressed in a police uniform sits at a desk in an office looking at a computer screen.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">East Palo Alto Police Officer Wendy Venegas reviews body camera footage and uses Axon’s Draft One AI-based system to draft reports based on the audio from the camera at police headquarters in East Palo Alto on Sept. 23, 2024. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Opponents of the bill included the California Police Chiefs Association and the Police Officers Research Association of California, a police union advocacy and lobbying group. The Chiefs Association did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, PORAC President Brian R. Marvel said the signed version of the law is an improvement over earlier drafts.[aside postID=news_12060365 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/SamAltmanGetty.jpg']“In its original form, SB 524 would have put significant administrative burden on already short-staffed police forces and created broad liability by requiring agencies to retain every AI-generated draft, interim, and final version of a report, each labeled with AI disclosure language,” he wrote. “PORAC advocated to amend this bill … We were pleased to see several of these amendments taken, with the final version of the bill significantly narrowed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Axon representative Victoria Keough said the company is committed to complying with all state and federal laws, including SB 524.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When developing AI for public safety, transparency and accountability are essential,” Keough wrote in a statement. “Responsible innovation remains at the core of how Axon designs and delivers new technology.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new requirements go into effect on Jan. 1, 2026.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kvpr.org/people/kerry-klein\">\u003cem>Kerry Klein\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a reporter and editor with KVPR in Fresno. Additional reporting was provided by KQED’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/slewis\">\u003cem>Sukey Lewis\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. \u003cem>The story was produced with support from \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/californianewsroom\">\u003cem>The California Newsroom\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a collaboration of public media outlets throughout the state. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>FRESNO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom this month signed a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12007520/how-artificial-intelligence-is-changing-the-reports-police-write\">first-of-its-kind California law\u003c/a> requiring police to disclose how they use generative artificial intelligence, a move aimed at boosting transparency and public trust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California is among the first states to address the issue. KQED \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12007520/how-artificial-intelligence-is-changing-the-reports-police-write\">first reported\u003c/a> last October on local departments adopting AI tools. The reporting was cited in the legislative analysis of the bill that ultimately became the law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Senate Bill 524, signed into law Oct. 10, requires police officers to disclose when they use AI to write police reports. The tools include Draft One, an AI assistant that transcribes and summarizes body-camera footage to produce a draft report, which officers can then revise and edit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Specifically, the law now requires a written disclosure to appear at the bottom of each page of a police report for which Draft One or other similar tools were used. The legislation also requires an “audit trail” that would preserve the original draft as well as identify the source bodycam footage or audio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Police departments in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12007520/how-artificial-intelligence-is-changing-the-reports-police-write\">East Palo Alto\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kvpr.org/government-politics/2024-11-15/ai-is-helping-fresno-police-officers-write-their-reports-could-it-outperform-them\">Fresno\u003c/a> were among the first in the state to adopt the technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Axon, the company that developed Draft One, told KVPR and KQED last year that its developers built safeguards into their software. For example, officers must fill in prompts within the generated report, then sign off on the report’s accuracy before it can be submitted. The tool also includes a disclaimer that Draft One was used, though police agencies have thus far been able to customize where in a report it’s placed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12006138\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12006138\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"The torso of a person dressed in a police uniform holds a hand over a body camera.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-06-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An East Palo Alto Police officer’s Axon body camera in East Palo Alto on Sept. 23, 2024. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Police departments have said the technology saves officers significant time, and even that some AI-generated reports are better than the ones written entirely by officers. Nevertheless, the bill arose out of concerns that bias or errors generated by AI software could make their way into final incident reports, which play a key role in charging, detaining and sentencing suspects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kate Chatfield, executive director of the California Public Defenders Association, which sponsored the bill, said she’s grateful the measure became law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Due process requires transparency,” Chatfield wrote in a public statement. “Everyone in the legal system — judges, juries, attorneys and the accused — deserve to know who wrote the police report.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“With SB 524, California is sending a clear message: Innovation in policing must be tethered to accountability,” state Sen. Jesse Arreguín, who wrote the bill, said in the statement. “No more opaque reports, no more guessing whether AI shaped the narrative.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kevin Little, a defense attorney in Fresno, said the law is a step in the right direction, but not a true remedy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My own experience with AI in an unrelated context leads me to conclude that AI platforms have a significant amount of user bias and tend to support the agendas of the user,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Larry Bowlan, a spokesperson for the Fresno Police Department, said the agency had already implemented some of the safeguards now required by the law and does not expect the new rules to be especially burdensome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our AI-powered narrative assistant … already generates a disclosure and requires our users to sign acknowledgements. Draft One also already produces the requisite audit trail,” he wrote in an email. “We are actively working with our vendor on the best solution for preserving and storing the first draft provided by the assistant, as well as a minor tweak to ensure the disclosure is present on each printed page, rather than just the first page as it is now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for the East Palo Alto Department said his agency has no official response to the law at this time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12007615\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12007615\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5.jpg\" alt=\"A woman dressed in a police uniform sits at a desk in an office looking at a computer screen.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/240923-AI-IN-POLICING-MD-15-KQED-5-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">East Palo Alto Police Officer Wendy Venegas reviews body camera footage and uses Axon’s Draft One AI-based system to draft reports based on the audio from the camera at police headquarters in East Palo Alto on Sept. 23, 2024. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Opponents of the bill included the California Police Chiefs Association and the Police Officers Research Association of California, a police union advocacy and lobbying group. The Chiefs Association did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, PORAC President Brian R. Marvel said the signed version of the law is an improvement over earlier drafts.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“In its original form, SB 524 would have put significant administrative burden on already short-staffed police forces and created broad liability by requiring agencies to retain every AI-generated draft, interim, and final version of a report, each labeled with AI disclosure language,” he wrote. “PORAC advocated to amend this bill … We were pleased to see several of these amendments taken, with the final version of the bill significantly narrowed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Axon representative Victoria Keough said the company is committed to complying with all state and federal laws, including SB 524.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When developing AI for public safety, transparency and accountability are essential,” Keough wrote in a statement. “Responsible innovation remains at the core of how Axon designs and delivers new technology.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new requirements go into effect on Jan. 1, 2026.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kvpr.org/people/kerry-klein\">\u003cem>Kerry Klein\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a reporter and editor with KVPR in Fresno. Additional reporting was provided by KQED’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/slewis\">\u003cem>Sukey Lewis\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. \u003cem>The story was produced with support from \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/californianewsroom\">\u003cem>The California Newsroom\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a collaboration of public media outlets throughout the state. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "ChatGPT Will Soon Allow Adults to Generate Erotica. Is This the Future We Want?",
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"content": "\u003cp>OpenAI isn’t the first developer to announce plans to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12038154/kids-talking-ai-companion-chatbots-stanford-researchers-say-thats-bad-idea\">offer erotic content on its chatbot\u003c/a>. But the blowback against the tech company’s decision to loosen restrictions this week has been bigger, given the San Francisco-based company’s promise to ensure its AI\u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/our-structure/\"> benefits all of humanity\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most significant change will roll out in December, when OpenAI will allow more comprehensive age-gating, allowing verified adults to generate erotic content using the tool — “as part of our ‘treat adult users like adults’ principle,” OpenAI CEO Sam \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/sama/status/1978129344598827128\">Altman posted Tuesday\u003c/a> on the social media platform X.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Consumer advocates say OpenAI is following the lead of xAI’s Grok, which offers loosely moderated “adult” modes with minimal age verification, raising concerns that teenage users may have access to explicit content. Meta AI is believed to be following xAI’s lead as well, and its back and forth over whether it is intentionally pushing mature content to minors has \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senator-hawley-launches-probe-into-meta-ai-policies-2025-08-15/\">prompted\u003c/a> U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, to investigate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue, we wanted to get this right,” Altman wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The announcement came less than two months after the company was sued by the parents of Adam Raine, a teenager who \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12054490/child-safety-groups-demand-mental-health-guardrails-after-california-teens-suicide-using-chatgpt\">died by suicide\u003c/a> earlier this year, for ChatGPT allegedly providing him with specific advice on how to kill himself — setting off a firestorm of news coverage and comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11989313\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11989313\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/GettyImages-2155035557-scaled-e1760733694503.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The OpenAI ChatGPT logo. \u003ccite>(Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Altman delivered \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/sama/status/1978539332215681076\">a follow-up\u003c/a> on Wednesday. “We will still not allow things that cause harm to others, and we will treat users who are having mental health crises very different from users who are not … But we are not the elected moral police of the world. In the same way that society differentiates other appropriate boundaries (R-rated movies, for example), we want to do a similar thing here,” Altman wrote, although it remains unclear whether OpenAI will extend erotica to its AI voice, image and video generation tools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Comparing content moderation of chatbot interactions with movie ratings is not really useful,” wrote Irina Raicu, director of the Internet Ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. “It downplays both the nature and the extent of the problems that we’re seeing when people get more and more dependent on and influenced by chatbot ‘relationships.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mark Cuban, the entrepreneur, investor and media personality, argued much the same in a string of \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/mcuban/status/1978317936336028016\">posts on X\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t see how OpenAI can age-gate successfully enough. I’m also not sure that it can’t psychologically damage young adults. We just don’t know yet how addictive LLMs can be. Which, in my OPINION, means that parents and schools, that would otherwise want to use ChatGPT because of its current ubiquity, will decide not to use it,” Cuban wrote.[aside postID=news_12059714 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/GavinNewsomAISF1.jpg']Others see the drive for paying subscribers and increased profit behind the move. As a private company, OpenAI does not release its shareholder reports publicly. However, \u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-02/openai-completes-share-sale-at-record-500-billion-valuation?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2MDcxODQwMSwiZXhwIjoxNzYxMzIzMjAxLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUM0hLMkNHUFdDSEIwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJBM0VCRjM5ODM4RDc0RDI4QUJDREM4MDZDMDA5RTVBMiJ9.ADGZysjoeNVhUDWXwiuAxieyKueee-676dgJIAM9BvQ\">Bloomberg\u003c/a> recently reported that OpenAI has completed a deal to help employees sell shares in the company at a $500 billion valuation. According to Altman, ChatGPT is already used by \u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/06/sam-altman-says-chatgpt-has-hit-800m-weekly-active-users/\">800 million weekly active users\u003c/a>. With so much investment at stake, OpenAI is under pressure to grow its subscriber base. The company has also raised billions of dollars for a historic infrastructure buildout, an investment OpenAI eventually needs to pay back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is no secret that sexual content is one of the most popular and lucrative aspects of the internet,” wrote Jennifer King, a privacy and data policy fellow at the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. She noted that nearly 20 U.S. states have passed laws \u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/2025/01/16/adult-website-age-verification-states\">requiring age verification for online adult content\u003c/a> sites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“By openly embracing business models that allow access to adult content, mainstream providers like OpenAI will face the burden of demonstrating that they have robust methods for excluding children under 18 and potentially adults under the age of 21,” King said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AI chatbots appear to be going the way of social media, said California Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, D-San Ramon, whose bill that would have required child safety guardrails for companion chatbots was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12059714/newsom-vetoes-most-watched-childrens-ai-bill-signs-16-others-targeting-tech\">vetoed earlier this week\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11802216\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11802216\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut.jpg\" alt=\"Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan says local jurisdictions need the power to stop a wildfire disaster before it starts. The assemblymember and other state lawmakers announced a bill to expand enforcement actions against PG&E and other utilities on February, 18, 2020.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1832x1374.jpg 1832w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1376x1032.jpg 1376w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1044x783.jpg 1044w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-632x474.jpg 632w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-536x402.jpg 536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan on Feb. 18, 2020. \u003ccite>(Eli Walsh/Bay City News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“My fear is that we are on a path to creating the next, frankly, more addictive, more harmful version of social media for our children,” Bauer-Kahan told KQED. “I do not think that the addictive features in these chatbots that result in our children having relationships with a chatbot instead of their fellow humans is a positive thing, and the experts \u003ca href=\"https://cdt.org/insights/hand-in-hand-schools-embrace-of-ai-connected-to-increased-risks-to-students/\">confirm that\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OpenAI did not comment for this story, but the company has written that it’s \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/teen-safety-freedom-and-privacy/\">working\u003c/a> on an under-18 version of ChatGPT, which will redirect minors to age-appropriate content. A couple of weeks ago, OpenAI announced it’s rolling out safety features for minors, including an age prediction system and a way for \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/introducing-parental-controls/\">parents\u003c/a> to control their teens’ ChatGPT accounts. This week, OpenAI announced the formation of \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/expert-council-on-well-being-and-ai/\">an expert council \u003c/a>of mental health professionals to advise the company on well-being and AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In mid-September, the Federal Trade Commission launched an \u003ca href=\"https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/09/ftc-launches-inquiry-ai-chatbots-acting-companions\">inquiry\u003c/a> into seven AI chatbot developers, including xAI, Meta and OpenAI, “seeking information on how these firms measure, test, and monitor potentially negative impacts of this technology on children and teens.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the most part, a couple of dozen \u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/06/the-growing-debate-over-expanding-age-verification-laws/\">states\u003c/a> and their \u003ca href=\"https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/AI%20Chatbot_FINAL%20%2844%29.pdf\">attorneys general\u003c/a> have taken the lead on regulation, enacting measures like age verification and requiring many online platforms to verify users’ identities before granting access. East Bay Assemblymember Buffy Wicks won the \u003ca href=\"https://a14.asmdc.org/press-releases/20250909-google-meta-among-tech-leaders-and-child-advocates-voicing-support-wicks\">support of major tech\u003c/a> companies for her measure, \u003ca href=\"https://a14.asmdc.org/press-releases/20250602-asm-wicks-bill-protect-kids-online-passes-assembly-bipartisan-support\">AB 1043\u003c/a>, which was just signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But any parent knows it’s easy for children to sidestep those controls, or reach out to older siblings or friends who can help them, Bauer-Kahan said. She said she sees a coincidence in the fact that the veto of her toughest bill was announced on Monday, and Altman’s announcement was posted on Tuesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Here was a bill that was really requiring very clear, safe-by-design AI for children with real liability. And I think that was further than the industry wanted California to go. I just found the timing of the veto and then this announcement about access to erotica too coincidental not to call out,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>OpenAI isn’t the first developer to announce plans to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12038154/kids-talking-ai-companion-chatbots-stanford-researchers-say-thats-bad-idea\">offer erotic content on its chatbot\u003c/a>. But the blowback against the tech company’s decision to loosen restrictions this week has been bigger, given the San Francisco-based company’s promise to ensure its AI\u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/our-structure/\"> benefits all of humanity\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most significant change will roll out in December, when OpenAI will allow more comprehensive age-gating, allowing verified adults to generate erotic content using the tool — “as part of our ‘treat adult users like adults’ principle,” OpenAI CEO Sam \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/sama/status/1978129344598827128\">Altman posted Tuesday\u003c/a> on the social media platform X.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Consumer advocates say OpenAI is following the lead of xAI’s Grok, which offers loosely moderated “adult” modes with minimal age verification, raising concerns that teenage users may have access to explicit content. Meta AI is believed to be following xAI’s lead as well, and its back and forth over whether it is intentionally pushing mature content to minors has \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senator-hawley-launches-probe-into-meta-ai-policies-2025-08-15/\">prompted\u003c/a> U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, to investigate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue, we wanted to get this right,” Altman wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The announcement came less than two months after the company was sued by the parents of Adam Raine, a teenager who \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12054490/child-safety-groups-demand-mental-health-guardrails-after-california-teens-suicide-using-chatgpt\">died by suicide\u003c/a> earlier this year, for ChatGPT allegedly providing him with specific advice on how to kill himself — setting off a firestorm of news coverage and comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11989313\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11989313\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/GettyImages-2155035557-scaled-e1760733694503.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The OpenAI ChatGPT logo. \u003ccite>(Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Altman delivered \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/sama/status/1978539332215681076\">a follow-up\u003c/a> on Wednesday. “We will still not allow things that cause harm to others, and we will treat users who are having mental health crises very different from users who are not … But we are not the elected moral police of the world. In the same way that society differentiates other appropriate boundaries (R-rated movies, for example), we want to do a similar thing here,” Altman wrote, although it remains unclear whether OpenAI will extend erotica to its AI voice, image and video generation tools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Comparing content moderation of chatbot interactions with movie ratings is not really useful,” wrote Irina Raicu, director of the Internet Ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. “It downplays both the nature and the extent of the problems that we’re seeing when people get more and more dependent on and influenced by chatbot ‘relationships.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mark Cuban, the entrepreneur, investor and media personality, argued much the same in a string of \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/mcuban/status/1978317936336028016\">posts on X\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t see how OpenAI can age-gate successfully enough. I’m also not sure that it can’t psychologically damage young adults. We just don’t know yet how addictive LLMs can be. Which, in my OPINION, means that parents and schools, that would otherwise want to use ChatGPT because of its current ubiquity, will decide not to use it,” Cuban wrote.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Others see the drive for paying subscribers and increased profit behind the move. As a private company, OpenAI does not release its shareholder reports publicly. However, \u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-02/openai-completes-share-sale-at-record-500-billion-valuation?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2MDcxODQwMSwiZXhwIjoxNzYxMzIzMjAxLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUM0hLMkNHUFdDSEIwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJBM0VCRjM5ODM4RDc0RDI4QUJDREM4MDZDMDA5RTVBMiJ9.ADGZysjoeNVhUDWXwiuAxieyKueee-676dgJIAM9BvQ\">Bloomberg\u003c/a> recently reported that OpenAI has completed a deal to help employees sell shares in the company at a $500 billion valuation. According to Altman, ChatGPT is already used by \u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/06/sam-altman-says-chatgpt-has-hit-800m-weekly-active-users/\">800 million weekly active users\u003c/a>. With so much investment at stake, OpenAI is under pressure to grow its subscriber base. The company has also raised billions of dollars for a historic infrastructure buildout, an investment OpenAI eventually needs to pay back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is no secret that sexual content is one of the most popular and lucrative aspects of the internet,” wrote Jennifer King, a privacy and data policy fellow at the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. She noted that nearly 20 U.S. states have passed laws \u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/2025/01/16/adult-website-age-verification-states\">requiring age verification for online adult content\u003c/a> sites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“By openly embracing business models that allow access to adult content, mainstream providers like OpenAI will face the burden of demonstrating that they have robust methods for excluding children under 18 and potentially adults under the age of 21,” King said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AI chatbots appear to be going the way of social media, said California Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, D-San Ramon, whose bill that would have required child safety guardrails for companion chatbots was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12059714/newsom-vetoes-most-watched-childrens-ai-bill-signs-16-others-targeting-tech\">vetoed earlier this week\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11802216\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11802216\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut.jpg\" alt=\"Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan says local jurisdictions need the power to stop a wildfire disaster before it starts. The assemblymember and other state lawmakers announced a bill to expand enforcement actions against PG&E and other utilities on February, 18, 2020.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1832x1374.jpg 1832w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1376x1032.jpg 1376w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1044x783.jpg 1044w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-632x474.jpg 632w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-536x402.jpg 536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan on Feb. 18, 2020. \u003ccite>(Eli Walsh/Bay City News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“My fear is that we are on a path to creating the next, frankly, more addictive, more harmful version of social media for our children,” Bauer-Kahan told KQED. “I do not think that the addictive features in these chatbots that result in our children having relationships with a chatbot instead of their fellow humans is a positive thing, and the experts \u003ca href=\"https://cdt.org/insights/hand-in-hand-schools-embrace-of-ai-connected-to-increased-risks-to-students/\">confirm that\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OpenAI did not comment for this story, but the company has written that it’s \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/teen-safety-freedom-and-privacy/\">working\u003c/a> on an under-18 version of ChatGPT, which will redirect minors to age-appropriate content. A couple of weeks ago, OpenAI announced it’s rolling out safety features for minors, including an age prediction system and a way for \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/introducing-parental-controls/\">parents\u003c/a> to control their teens’ ChatGPT accounts. This week, OpenAI announced the formation of \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/expert-council-on-well-being-and-ai/\">an expert council \u003c/a>of mental health professionals to advise the company on well-being and AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In mid-September, the Federal Trade Commission launched an \u003ca href=\"https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/09/ftc-launches-inquiry-ai-chatbots-acting-companions\">inquiry\u003c/a> into seven AI chatbot developers, including xAI, Meta and OpenAI, “seeking information on how these firms measure, test, and monitor potentially negative impacts of this technology on children and teens.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the most part, a couple of dozen \u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/06/the-growing-debate-over-expanding-age-verification-laws/\">states\u003c/a> and their \u003ca href=\"https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/AI%20Chatbot_FINAL%20%2844%29.pdf\">attorneys general\u003c/a> have taken the lead on regulation, enacting measures like age verification and requiring many online platforms to verify users’ identities before granting access. East Bay Assemblymember Buffy Wicks won the \u003ca href=\"https://a14.asmdc.org/press-releases/20250909-google-meta-among-tech-leaders-and-child-advocates-voicing-support-wicks\">support of major tech\u003c/a> companies for her measure, \u003ca href=\"https://a14.asmdc.org/press-releases/20250602-asm-wicks-bill-protect-kids-online-passes-assembly-bipartisan-support\">AB 1043\u003c/a>, which was just signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But any parent knows it’s easy for children to sidestep those controls, or reach out to older siblings or friends who can help them, Bauer-Kahan said. She said she sees a coincidence in the fact that the veto of her toughest bill was announced on Monday, and Altman’s announcement was posted on Tuesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Here was a bill that was really requiring very clear, safe-by-design AI for children with real liability. And I think that was further than the industry wanted California to go. I just found the timing of the veto and then this announcement about access to erotica too coincidental not to call out,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When ChatGPT launched in 2022, it kicked off what some have called the “AI hype machine” — a frenzy of promotion and investment that has sent some tech companies’ valuations soaring to record heights. Meanwhile, computational linguist Emily M. Bender and AI researcher and sociologist Alex Hanna have proudly worn the titles of “AI hype busters,” critiquing the industry’s loftiest claims and pointing out the real-world harms behind this wave of excitement. What began as a satirical podcast is now a book, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://thecon.ai/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The AI Con\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">:\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. In this episode, Alex and Emily explain why the very term “AI” is misleading, how AI boosters and doomers are really flip sides of the same coin, and why we should question the AI inevitability narrative. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC5696998106\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/emilymbender.bsky.social\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Emily Bender\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, professor of linguistics the University of Washington\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/alexhanna.bsky.social\">Alex Hanna\u003c/a>, director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further reading/listening: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://thecon.ai/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Emily Bender and Alex Hanna\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.dair-institute.org/maiht3k/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 Podcast\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.techpolicy.press/ai-hurts-consumers-and-workers-and-isnt-intelligent/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“AI” Hurts Consumers and Workers — and Isn’t Intelligent\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Emily Bender and Alex Hanna, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tech Policy Press\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://lithub.com/on-the-very-real-dangers-of-the-artificial-intelligence-hype-machine/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On the Very Real Dangers of the Artificial Intelligence Hype Machine: Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna Explore AI History, the Cold War, and a Fatally Overhyped Idea \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— Emily M. Bender, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">LitHub\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.404media.co/sora-2-content-violation-guardrails-error/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People Are Crashing Out Over Sora 2’s New Guardrails\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Samantha Cole, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">404 Media\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/sora-2-financial-problem\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sora 2 Has a Huge Financial Problem\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Victor Tangermann, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Futurism\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — James O’Donnell and Casey Crownhart, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">MIT Technology Review\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003c/h2>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A few weeks ago, OpenAI launched an app, Sora. It’s a vertical video social platform, similar to TikTok, except all the videos are generated by the company’s AI image generator, Sora 2. Within days, the app was a copyright infringement nightmare. There were videos of SpongeBob cooking meth, unsanctioned Rick and Morty ads for crypto startups, and many, many videos of open AI CEO Sam Altman doing depraved things to copyrighted characters. Like the one where he brutally barbecues and carves up Pikachu. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[AI CEO Sam Altman] Pikachu on the grill here. It’s already got a beautiful char and it smells like somebody plugged in a chicken. Let’s give it a flip. I’m gonna carve it into some thick steaks. Look at that. Crust on the outside, pink and juicy in the middle. Cheers.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of these 10 second videos require an immense amount of computing power, which is extremely costly to maintain. In a blog post, Sam Altman admitted that the company still needs to figure out how to make money off of Sora. He wrote, “People are generating much more than we expected per user, and a lot of videos are being generated for very small audiences.” Facing heat from copyright holders like Disney and Nintendo, Altman also announced extra guardrails for the app to curb infringement. Now, users are complaining that everything they try to generate using Sora 2 gets flagged as a violation of the copyrighted content policy. They’re already getting bored of the app. This whole cycle has been described as the AI hype machine. Big investments are made based on big promises of innovation, disruption, revolution. This hype fuels more investment, which, in turn, fuels the hype. The cycle continues when a new product launches. Meta, for example, launched its own AI social video app, called Vibes, last month too, which was quickly forgotten about when Sora launched. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">AI hype is effectively premised on fear of missing out. It is the fear that if you don’t get onto this new technology, you are going to be left behind. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s Alex Hanna, a sociologist and the Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you’re a corporate manager, you’re going to have your competitors just leave you in the dust. If you are a teacher, you are doing a disservice to your students by not preparing them for the job market of the future. If you were a student, you were going to miss out on all the skills and all your classmates are going to be outperforming you. And as a worker, you will be doing things the old way, the analog way, and everyone is going to be outpacing you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alex and her co-author, Emily M. Bender, recently published a book, The AI Con, How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want. Emily runs the computational linguistics program at the University of Washington. This is a field of study that combines human language with machine learning. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I often get asked the question, well aren’t you worried that students are going to get left behind? Etc. And my answer to that is often, where is everybody going? Like, this metaphor of left behind suggests that people are running off into some brilliant future. I just don’t see it, you know, setting aside the fact that the technology doesn’t do what it’s being sold to do, but that is overhyped and over promised. The idea that we’d be better off with instead of interacting with people at all stages, interacting with screens that that’s just not the future that I want. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this episode, we’re talking about the AI hype machine, when it started, how it’s fed, and why a growing corner of critics say they see right through it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All right, like we always do, we’re starting by opening a new tab. What is P-Doom? In their book, The AI Con, Alex and Emily talk about these two groups. There are the AI boosters, the people who are optimistic that AI will pave the way to our utopian future. Then there are the AI doomers: the people that catastrophize, and believe that AI progress will usher in an era of societal collapse and human extinction. It’s very Matrix. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip from the film “The Matrix] The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But before we break this down further, let’s start by defining our terms. Here’s Emily. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Artificial intelligence does not refer to a coherent set of technologies, and it has throughout its history, since it was coined by John McCarthy in 1955, basically been used to sell this idea of some magic do-everything technology in order to get money. Initially, it was research funding and then DOD money and now a lot of it is venture capital money. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, and the way that this has proliferated in the modern day is that so many things get called AI. So that could be automated decision-making systems used for determining whether someone gets social services. And so that gets looped in, and then we also get recommendation systems, things like the TikTok algorithm, the Instagram Reels algorithm, pick your short-form video. But then, it’s really manifest in these large language models and diffusion models that are looped into the category of generative AI.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You start this book from this one moment in 2023, when Chuck Schumer at the time, the Senate majority leader, held a series of forums around AI. Can you take us back to that moment and like set the scene for us? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, late 2023, Chuck Schumer is convening the eighth of total nine Senate Insight forums around AI, and he asks folks, this is very weird, he asks, “what is folks’ probability of doom?” And this is abbreviated as P(doom), and for this instance, it’s an audio platform, that is P, open parentheses, doom, closed parentheses. And he also asked, “what people’s pee hope is.” So this means what is your probability that there’s going to be some kind of a doom scenario, in which through, you know, hook or crook, some kind of thing called AI is going to outperform or outsmart humans and take over and lead to human extinction. And in the book, we start and we say, well, this is the wrong question. But also if you’re looking at harms that are happening in the here and now, there are many that exist, whether that be deep fake porn being made out of non-consensual adults and children, the use of automated decision-making and weapons targeting, especially in Gaza, and then we also talk about students having their exams effectively being judged by these automated tools. So talking about P(doom) in this register is asking the wrong question and focusing on the wrong things. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But oftentimes it looks like the doomers, the people with a high P(doom) value, the people who take that question seriously in the first place, um, and the boosters, the people who say this is gonna solve all our problems, are like the opposite ends of a spectrum. And that is how these people present themselves, it is how the media often presents what’s going on, and it is very misleading. I think that one of the points that we make is that doomerism is another kind of AI hype, because it’s saying, our system is very powerful. It’s so powerful, it’s going to kill us all, is a way of saying it’s very powerful, but also we make the point that the doomers and the boosters are two sides of the same coin. And it, I think, becomes very clear if you look at it this way, which is to say, the doomers say, “AI is a thing, it’s imminent, it’s inevitable, and it’s gonna kill us all.” And the boosters say, “AI’s a thing, it’s imminent, it’s inevitable, and it is gonna solve all of our problems.” And it’s pretty easy to see these are the same position with just a different twist at the end. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And the funny thing about this boosterism, doomerism dichotomy is that these are many of the same people or they run in many of same circles. So, you know, there was this document that was put out called AI 2027, in which it ends with humanity dying and the kind of choose your own adventure. There’s only two endings here. The choose your own adventure and one of them, you know everyone dies. But the lead author of this works at OpenAI. And there’s many such cases of people who are working on quote unquote, “AI alignment”, who are in these industries. So, it’s again not as if they’re against the building of AI, or we should just say no, it’s actually a very narrow segment of people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You described this industry as the AI hype machine, the modern AI hype machine, what does it look like? I mean, who are the players? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean, the players are many of the big tech players that we know. So Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, but with some new entrants, OpenAI being the most significant one. Um, and along with OpenAI, a few offshoots, so Anthropic is kind of the most notable one. And then the company that’s creating the shovels for the gold rush, so that’s your Nvidia, and then your Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing company, abbreviated as TSMC. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I want to say that we see AI hype not just originating from those big players, like that is a large source of it. Also we hear over and over and again about people working in various businesses being told by their higher ups that they have to try this new AI thing. And so there’s this sort of secondary promulgation of hype that comes from middle management and up that have been sold on the idea that this is going to, you know, really increase productivity. And, you know, on the one hand, it’s a very useful excuse for doing layoffs that they may have otherwise already wanted to do, but then on the other hand, some people seem to have really bought into the idea. So they tell the people working for them, you have to spend time figuring out how to make yourself more productive by using these so-called AI tools, because everyone’s telling me that that’s the way of the future. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, the obvious way people are, these players, are feeding into the AI hype machine is by extolling the virtues of AI, or, you know, kind of spreading this very doomerous sci-fi rhetoric. But what other strategies are being used to feed this machine? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So one important strategy is what I sometimes call citations to the future. So people will say, yeah, yeah. It’s got problems now, but it’s going to do all of these things. And I think it really is the only technology that we are expected to evaluate based on promises of what it will be doing, right? That car that I just bought only gets, you know, 35 miles to the gallon. But that’s OK, because the later one’s going to get 50. We don’t talk about it that way, except with the so-called AI technology.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, citations to the future is one big strategy and another one is anthropomorphizing language, talking about things that have happened as if the computer systems themselves did it of their own volition and autonomously instead of people having used the system to do it or done something in order to build the system. So it’ll be something like, AI needs lots and lots of data. Well, no, people who want to build the system that they’re calling AI are amassing lots and lots of data in order to build them, or AI is thirsty, it needs lots of water, or AI was able to identify, you know, something in a blurry image. It’s like — in no sense, right? \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People used XYZ tool in order do a thing, or in order to build these tools, they are using lots of of water and so on. So this anthropomorphizing language sort of shifts the people out of the frame and hides a bunch of accountability, and at the same time, makes the systems sound cooler than they are. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alex and Emily also pointed out that players in the AI industry push this adoption of AI into our everyday lives by really trying to humanize the product. We’re gonna dive into that in a new tab. First, a quick break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Time for a new tab! Are we really just meat machines?\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s talk about the technology itself, like the way people talk about large language models as AI, um, ChatGPT, Claude, Grok. Many people understand that these models are basically predicting the words that most often go together. But can you break it down further? Like, what’s really going on under the hood there? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, the first very important lesson is that when we say word, we’re actually talking about two things. We’re talking about the way the word is spelled and pronounced and what it is used to mean. And one thing that makes that hard to keep in mind is that as proficient speakers of the languages we speak, pretty much anytime we encounter the spelling or sound of a word, we are also encountering what the person using it is using it to talk about. And so we always experience the form and meaning together. But a language model, so that the core component of something like Gemini or Grok or Claude or ChatGPT is literally a system for modeling which bits of words go with which other bits of words in whatever the input collection of text was to create that model. And so what we have are models that are very good at putting literally like spellings of parts of words next to each other in a way that looks like something somebody might say. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Emily and Alex have come up with a few phrases that illustrate what large language models really are, which also describe the limitations of this tech. We’ve got synthetic text extruding machine. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The choice of the word extrude is very intentional because it’s a little gross. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Racist pile of linear algebra. Spicy autocomplete. And one phrase that really took off, stochastic parrot. Emily coined the phrase in a research paper she co-authored in 2020. Parrots can mimic human speech, but whether they can really comprehend it, that’s dubious. Stochastic comes from probability theory. It means randomly determined. So a stochastic parrot essentially mimics language in a random order and does so convincingly, but it doesn’t understand it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Starting with OpenAI’s GPT-2 and GPT3, they were using it to create synthetic text. And so one of the things we worried about in that paper is what happens if someone comes across synthetic text and doesn’t know that it was synthetic? What we didn’t realize at the time is that people would be happy to look at synthetic text while knowing that it’s synthetic. That is very surprising to me. And so the phrase stochastic parrots was this attempt to make vivid what’s going on, to help people understand why the output of a language model run to repeatedly answer the question, what’s a likely next word, is not the same thing as text produced by a person or group of people with something to communicate. And what’s happened, it’s been fascinating as a linguist to watch that phrase go out into the world, so for the first little while, it was people referring to the paper, and then it sort of became people talking about, um, that claim that large language models are not understanding, they’re just repeatedly predicting a likely next word. And then it got picked up or interpreted as an insult, which is surprising to me because in order for it to be an insult, the thing that it’s being applied to would have to the kind of thing that could be insulted. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then in 2022, Sam Altman tweeted, I am a stochastic parrot and so are you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think what happens when Sam Altman picks it up and tweets that is that it is, on the one hand, sort of an attempt to reclaim what is understood as an insult or slur by people in that mindset, but also, and very importantly, it is about minimizing what it is to be human, so that he can claim that the system that he’s built is as good as a person.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Emily and Alex say this concept of comparing humans to, essentially, flesh machines is a classic move in the AI hype machine playbook. It’s reducing humanity and what it means to be human to programming, like Eliza in the 60s. Eliza was an early natural language processing program designed to mimic a therapist. Think of it as a great, great, great, grand chatbot of ChatGPT. A lot of people, from academics to government leaders to tech industry giants, bought into the Eliza hype. And that freaked out Eliza’s own creator, Joseph Weizenbaum. In a book he published in the 70s, Weizenbaum warned that machines would never be able to make the same decisions that humans make because they don’t have human empathy. His criticism of AI caused a stir in the research community. And decades later, AI boosters are still making that same claim. That humans and machines aren’t that different. But what does this devaluing of humanity really mean for us? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean, it means a lot of things. It really seems to emphasize that there is, kind of, aspects of human behavior that can just be reduced to our observable outputs, right? Humans are just things that output language or output actions, when that’s not true. Humans have a much more vivid internal life. Um, we think about others. Uh, we think about, kind of, co-presence, but it’s more about saying how we’re comparing ourselves to machines that are programmed by people and those people in those institutions have particular types of incentives to make machines that behave as such. So that’s the kind of implications that it has and it also has the implications of other kinds of moves into humanism, dehumanization and what that does and how we treat people and with regards to dignity and propriety of rights. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Can you also give concrete examples of where we see this kind of, uh, devaluing of humans? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think if we say that humans can be reduced to their outputs, that that leads to lots of problems. And one is we end up saying, you know, the form of, or the words that teachers and students say in the classroom is the learning situation. And so we can replace the teacher with a system for outputting words and then those students will get as much and maybe it’ll be personalized and it’ll better. And that is dehumanizing to teachers clearly and also to students because it removes, you know, everything that is about the student and teacher’s internal life and about their relationship and about their community from the situation. But I think it’s also really important in terms of the workforce more generally, that basically if we say, well, humans like large language models are systems for outputting words, then it’s a very small step to basically saying the whole value of this person is how many words they can output and doing a very, very dehumanizing work environment to people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We also see this in other domains like the Amazon work floor and the ways that these mini robots flit from place to place and the so-called quote unquote pickers. People on Amazon work warehouses have to pick things and then deliver them. So there’s a lot of implications for that and I think also in seeing the humanity in other folks and how we treat other folks. You know, if they’re merely meat machines, then what does it say about how we view them with respect to, kind of, personal rights and human rights and what kind of rights they should be afforded? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This idea of human beings just being walking meat machines is chilling. It definitely creeped me out. What are the other real world consequences of this thinking? Let’s open a new tab. Who’s really harmed by AI hype? Alex and Emily have said that their goal with writing the AI con is to reduce the harm caused by AI hype. Automation, for example, doesn’t just replace jobs. Healthcare providers are increasingly relying on AI products for medical triage to decide which patients to see first. Free legal representation, a guaranteed right in criminal cases, can be replaced by a lawyer using a chat bot. All of this potentially lowers the quality of these services. And introduces bias into these systems. Artists and other creatives, meanwhile, are struggling to make ends meet as AI generators, sometimes trained on their own work, are used as a cheaper, faster alternative. And then there’s how large language models are disrupting our whole information ecosystem. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s a metaphor we use in the book, the idea that information is being output from these models and results in information ecosystem spills, like toxic spills that really can’t be cleaned up. There’s not really a reliable way to detect synthetic text. And so you’re having to deal with and navigate and try to understand whether something on the internet is actually reflective of truth claims that are being made and perhaps researched more deeply by human individuals. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You’ve written that the strongest critiques against AI boosterism come from black, brown, poor, queer, and disabled scholars and activists. Can you talk about some examples of these critiques and why these groups specifically are so uniquely positioned to make them? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So we wrote about that in the register of thinking about the ways in which systems, in here, I want to say data-driven systems, not just large language models, but even different systems just don’t work for black, brown communities, queer, and trans people, and then people like refugees and people on the move. The kind of pioneering work of Drs. Temnit Gebru and Joy Buolamwini in their paper Gender Shades talks about facial analysis systems, specifically the way that facial analysis systems do very poorly on darker-skinned women and that there’s a huge delta between darker-skinned women and lighter-skinned men. Sasha Costanza-Chock talks about how tools like TSA scanners do very poorly on trans people. Typically flagging genitals as anomalies or chest areas as anomalities, and then the kind of disparities of how systems talk about women. So there’s been a few papers talking about the ways in which different tools, in this case a word embedding space, makes associations between people and occupation. So, man is to doctor, women is to… typically, the completion is nurse, so it makes presuppositions of this. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of this stuff effectively happens in large-language models [laughter] and happens in image generation models as well. There’s some great research by the Bloomberg data team that shows that if you input something like a nurse, uh, typically or a housekeeper, it outputs a kind of a phenotypically looking darker-skinned woman. If you type in CEO, white man. And so those kinds of elements are the bias element of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ruha Benjamin sums it up really nicely in this beautiful essay called The New Artificial Intelligentsia that appeared in the LA Review of Books in 2024. And she’s talking about these ideas of transhumanism and merging with the machines. She says this zealous desire to transcend humanity ignores the fact that we have not all had the chance to be fully human. My interpretation of what she’s saying is that the people that society does not accord full humanity to have a very different experience of technology, both in the ways, as Alex is saying, it’s being used on them, in the ways that doesn’t work well for them and just in the way that it intrudes on their life. And so people who have the privilege of not experiencing any of that tend to be less sensitized to what’s going on and to have a less informed perspective. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And this less-informed perspective encourages AI boosters, who continue to fuel the hype machine. This means investing in and launching new products at a breakneck pace, often overlooking the real-world impact. The MIT Technology Review recently reported that generating one 5-second AI video uses about 3.4 million joules, the equivalent of running a microwave for over an hour. At scale this amount of energy consumption is devastating for the environment. And running all of this comes at a steep price for AI companies, too. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like we talked about earlier, OpenAI’s Sora app is proving to be wildly expensive, with more users generating videos than actually watching them. And after the copyright fiasco and subsequent new guardrails, it seems like some initial adopters are already moving on. Can the hype machine sustain this kind of frenzied investment with such limited return? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, we’re opening one last tab. Is the height machine breaking? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Do you think the AI hype bubble is going to burst? I mean, like, are there economic critiques? You’ve heard the social ones, but is there anything pointing to the AI height bubble possibly at least deflating? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, well, the problem is that there’s so much capital expenditure going into building things like data centers, and they’re going into these massive data center build out where, you know, the kind of projections and how much OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta are spending on this all is astronomical. I mean, hundreds of billions of dollars, just some of the largest technological infrastructure projects that we’ve ever seen. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the same time, OpenAI again, the company that has the most queries to Chat GPT, people using most of its products, is making revenue on the order of maybe $10 billion a year. So it’s just orders of magnitude less. And the kind of metaphor that’s being used as well, we have to build the railroads first, and then once the rail roads get going, we can put rail cars in them. But that metaphor doesn’t work at all. People are already using the product. And, you know, companies are already saying, we’re not getting a lot of value out of this. You know, there was an, something that was coming out of MIT, which said 95% of companies just haven’t really gained value from quote unquote AI. So what’s happening? This is very bubble shaped, you now, and I don’t know how the story ends, but it’s very alarming that these four to seven companies are propping up the US and world economy right now, so what happens when the bubble deflates or bursts, it’s not going to be good. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like you said, um, you finished this book in September 2024. The AI industry has only grown since then. What have you learned about the state of the AI hype machine from the reception to your book? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I would say what I’ve learned the most about is about the resilience of people and the importance of connection and community. So the antidote to the hype is a variety of things, one is ridicule as praxis, as we say in the book, and also solidarity and labor movements, but also just sort of connection. And one form of that connection is that there’s a lot of people who are, who feel isolated in a workplace or a social circle where everyone around them seems just completely gaga for this technology and they’re the odd one out. And so one of the joys of both our podcasts and this book has been to find those people and be found by those people who say, oh, so glad I’m not the only one. And then they can form community with other people who have the same reaction and I think that that is super important. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the things we grapple a lot just like within Close All Tabs is where to draw the line with AI use, you know. And again, that’s complicated. What is AI? For example, we don’t use ChatGPT, but we use an AI transcription tool for our interviews. Are there conditions under which using large language models, AI tools, are reasonable or justified, appropriate? And then what’s your message to the average listener who maybe uses ChatGPT in their daily but they’re not necessarily AI boosters and not necessarily AI doomers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. Um, so to the first question, I would say I never call it an AI transcription tool. I would say automatic transcription, right? And that is a use case where, you know, you want to look at the labor conditions of the people who produced it, where the training data come from. And it’s also a use case where you are well positioned to check the output and see if it’s working well for you, right. You’ve got something that has been recorded, you’ve got an automatically produced transcript, you’re presumably going through and correcting it. And if it is wrong all the time, or if you have one that is particularly bad for non-Anglo names, for example, you might start looking for something that’s better. So that is a case of automation that I think can be okay. You still want to look into who produced it. Are there privacy implications? Can I use this tool without uploading my data to somebody else and so on? But there’s reasonable uses and reasonable ways to produce automatic transcription. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If we’re talking about chat bots of the form of ChatGPT, I don’t see reasonable use cases there. And partially we know that the labor and environmental costs are extraordinarily high, that this is not produced ethically. But even setting that aside, every time you turn to ChatGPT for information, you’re cutting yourself off from important sense-making. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the examples I like to use, if you think about an old fashioned search engine that gave you back, you know, the 10 blue links and you’ve got a medical query, what might come back in those links is a link to, you know something like the Mayo Clinic and then your regional university medical center, so in the Bay area, you know UCSF. And you might get a link to Dr. Oz’s page and you might get a link to a discussion forum where people with the same medical questions are talking to each other. And you can then look at those and understand the information that’s there based on what you know about the Mayo Clinic and UCSF and Dr. Oz and discussion forums. But that also helps you continue to update what you know, about those kinds of sites. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Whereas if you asked a chatbot and you got back something that was just sort of some paper mache made up out of some combination of what’s in those sites, you not only don’t know how to contextualize what you’ve seen, but you’re also cut off from ability to continue to understand the information environment. And then very importantly, if you think about that discussion forum, any given, you know, sentence from that discussion forum interpreted as information, you’re going to want to take with a big grain of salt. But the chance to connect with people who are going through the same medical journey is priceless. And there’s a, the scholar Chris Gilliard describes these technologies as technologies of isolation. And I think it’s really important to think about anytime you might turn to a chat bot- what would you have done three years ago? What would you have done when ChatGPT was not in your world and what are you missing out on by not doing that now? The connections that you would make with people, the ongoing maintenance of relationships, the building of community, the deeper sense of what’s going on in the world around you, all of these are precious and I think not to be thrown away for the semblance of convenience. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then I think the final thing that I would say is look out for, identify, and reject the inevitability narrative. So the tech companies would like us to believe that AI is the future, it’s definitely coming. Even if you don’t like it, you have to resign yourself to it. And you’ll get people saying, well, it’s here to stay, we have to learn what to live with it. And I refuse that. I say that is also a bid to steal our agency because the future is not written. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Those are all my questions. Thank you so much for joining us.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, thank you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was a pleasure. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s close all of these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Chris Egusa and edited by Jen Chien. Close All tabs producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our senior editor. Additional editing by Chris Hambrick and Jen Chien, who’s KQED’s director of podcasts. Original music, including our theme song and credits by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Katie Sprenger is our podcast operations manager and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our editor in chief. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by my dad, Casey Sung, and recorded on his white and blue Epomaker Aula F99 keyboard with Greywood V3 switches and Cherry Profile PBT keycaps. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, and I know it’s a podcast cliche, but if you like these deep dives and want us to keep making more, it would really help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Follow us on Instagram at CloseAllTabsPod, or TikTok at Close All Tabs. Thanks for listening. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"description": "When ChatGPT launched in 2022, it kicked off what some have called the “AI hype machine” — a frenzy of promotion and investment that has sent some tech companies’ valuations soaring to record heights. Meanwhile, computational linguist Emily M. Bender and AI researcher and sociologist Alex Hanna have proudly worn the titles of “AI hype busters,” critiquing the industry’s loftiest claims and pointing out the real-world harms behind this wave of excitement. What began as a satirical podcast is now a book, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want. In this episode, Alex and Emily explain why the very term “AI” is misleading, how AI boosters and doomers are really flip sides of the same coin, and why we should question the AI inevitability narrative.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When ChatGPT launched in 2022, it kicked off what some have called the “AI hype machine” — a frenzy of promotion and investment that has sent some tech companies’ valuations soaring to record heights. Meanwhile, computational linguist Emily M. Bender and AI researcher and sociologist Alex Hanna have proudly worn the titles of “AI hype busters,” critiquing the industry’s loftiest claims and pointing out the real-world harms behind this wave of excitement. What began as a satirical podcast is now a book, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://thecon.ai/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The AI Con\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">:\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. In this episode, Alex and Emily explain why the very term “AI” is misleading, how AI boosters and doomers are really flip sides of the same coin, and why we should question the AI inevitability narrative. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC5696998106\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/emilymbender.bsky.social\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Emily Bender\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, professor of linguistics the University of Washington\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/alexhanna.bsky.social\">Alex Hanna\u003c/a>, director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further reading/listening: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://thecon.ai/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Emily Bender and Alex Hanna\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.dair-institute.org/maiht3k/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 Podcast\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.techpolicy.press/ai-hurts-consumers-and-workers-and-isnt-intelligent/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“AI” Hurts Consumers and Workers — and Isn’t Intelligent\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Emily Bender and Alex Hanna, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tech Policy Press\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://lithub.com/on-the-very-real-dangers-of-the-artificial-intelligence-hype-machine/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On the Very Real Dangers of the Artificial Intelligence Hype Machine: Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna Explore AI History, the Cold War, and a Fatally Overhyped Idea \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— Emily M. Bender, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">LitHub\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.404media.co/sora-2-content-violation-guardrails-error/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People Are Crashing Out Over Sora 2’s New Guardrails\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Samantha Cole, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">404 Media\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/sora-2-financial-problem\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sora 2 Has a Huge Financial Problem\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Victor Tangermann, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Futurism\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — James O’Donnell and Casey Crownhart, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">MIT Technology Review\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A few weeks ago, OpenAI launched an app, Sora. It’s a vertical video social platform, similar to TikTok, except all the videos are generated by the company’s AI image generator, Sora 2. Within days, the app was a copyright infringement nightmare. There were videos of SpongeBob cooking meth, unsanctioned Rick and Morty ads for crypto startups, and many, many videos of open AI CEO Sam Altman doing depraved things to copyrighted characters. Like the one where he brutally barbecues and carves up Pikachu. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[AI CEO Sam Altman] Pikachu on the grill here. It’s already got a beautiful char and it smells like somebody plugged in a chicken. Let’s give it a flip. I’m gonna carve it into some thick steaks. Look at that. Crust on the outside, pink and juicy in the middle. Cheers.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of these 10 second videos require an immense amount of computing power, which is extremely costly to maintain. In a blog post, Sam Altman admitted that the company still needs to figure out how to make money off of Sora. He wrote, “People are generating much more than we expected per user, and a lot of videos are being generated for very small audiences.” Facing heat from copyright holders like Disney and Nintendo, Altman also announced extra guardrails for the app to curb infringement. Now, users are complaining that everything they try to generate using Sora 2 gets flagged as a violation of the copyrighted content policy. They’re already getting bored of the app. This whole cycle has been described as the AI hype machine. Big investments are made based on big promises of innovation, disruption, revolution. This hype fuels more investment, which, in turn, fuels the hype. The cycle continues when a new product launches. Meta, for example, launched its own AI social video app, called Vibes, last month too, which was quickly forgotten about when Sora launched. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">AI hype is effectively premised on fear of missing out. It is the fear that if you don’t get onto this new technology, you are going to be left behind. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s Alex Hanna, a sociologist and the Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you’re a corporate manager, you’re going to have your competitors just leave you in the dust. If you are a teacher, you are doing a disservice to your students by not preparing them for the job market of the future. If you were a student, you were going to miss out on all the skills and all your classmates are going to be outperforming you. And as a worker, you will be doing things the old way, the analog way, and everyone is going to be outpacing you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alex and her co-author, Emily M. Bender, recently published a book, The AI Con, How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want. Emily runs the computational linguistics program at the University of Washington. This is a field of study that combines human language with machine learning. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I often get asked the question, well aren’t you worried that students are going to get left behind? Etc. And my answer to that is often, where is everybody going? Like, this metaphor of left behind suggests that people are running off into some brilliant future. I just don’t see it, you know, setting aside the fact that the technology doesn’t do what it’s being sold to do, but that is overhyped and over promised. The idea that we’d be better off with instead of interacting with people at all stages, interacting with screens that that’s just not the future that I want. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this episode, we’re talking about the AI hype machine, when it started, how it’s fed, and why a growing corner of critics say they see right through it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All right, like we always do, we’re starting by opening a new tab. What is P-Doom? In their book, The AI Con, Alex and Emily talk about these two groups. There are the AI boosters, the people who are optimistic that AI will pave the way to our utopian future. Then there are the AI doomers: the people that catastrophize, and believe that AI progress will usher in an era of societal collapse and human extinction. It’s very Matrix. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip from the film “The Matrix] The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But before we break this down further, let’s start by defining our terms. Here’s Emily. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Artificial intelligence does not refer to a coherent set of technologies, and it has throughout its history, since it was coined by John McCarthy in 1955, basically been used to sell this idea of some magic do-everything technology in order to get money. Initially, it was research funding and then DOD money and now a lot of it is venture capital money. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, and the way that this has proliferated in the modern day is that so many things get called AI. So that could be automated decision-making systems used for determining whether someone gets social services. And so that gets looped in, and then we also get recommendation systems, things like the TikTok algorithm, the Instagram Reels algorithm, pick your short-form video. But then, it’s really manifest in these large language models and diffusion models that are looped into the category of generative AI.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You start this book from this one moment in 2023, when Chuck Schumer at the time, the Senate majority leader, held a series of forums around AI. Can you take us back to that moment and like set the scene for us? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, late 2023, Chuck Schumer is convening the eighth of total nine Senate Insight forums around AI, and he asks folks, this is very weird, he asks, “what is folks’ probability of doom?” And this is abbreviated as P(doom), and for this instance, it’s an audio platform, that is P, open parentheses, doom, closed parentheses. And he also asked, “what people’s pee hope is.” So this means what is your probability that there’s going to be some kind of a doom scenario, in which through, you know, hook or crook, some kind of thing called AI is going to outperform or outsmart humans and take over and lead to human extinction. And in the book, we start and we say, well, this is the wrong question. But also if you’re looking at harms that are happening in the here and now, there are many that exist, whether that be deep fake porn being made out of non-consensual adults and children, the use of automated decision-making and weapons targeting, especially in Gaza, and then we also talk about students having their exams effectively being judged by these automated tools. So talking about P(doom) in this register is asking the wrong question and focusing on the wrong things. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But oftentimes it looks like the doomers, the people with a high P(doom) value, the people who take that question seriously in the first place, um, and the boosters, the people who say this is gonna solve all our problems, are like the opposite ends of a spectrum. And that is how these people present themselves, it is how the media often presents what’s going on, and it is very misleading. I think that one of the points that we make is that doomerism is another kind of AI hype, because it’s saying, our system is very powerful. It’s so powerful, it’s going to kill us all, is a way of saying it’s very powerful, but also we make the point that the doomers and the boosters are two sides of the same coin. And it, I think, becomes very clear if you look at it this way, which is to say, the doomers say, “AI is a thing, it’s imminent, it’s inevitable, and it’s gonna kill us all.” And the boosters say, “AI’s a thing, it’s imminent, it’s inevitable, and it is gonna solve all of our problems.” And it’s pretty easy to see these are the same position with just a different twist at the end. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And the funny thing about this boosterism, doomerism dichotomy is that these are many of the same people or they run in many of same circles. So, you know, there was this document that was put out called AI 2027, in which it ends with humanity dying and the kind of choose your own adventure. There’s only two endings here. The choose your own adventure and one of them, you know everyone dies. But the lead author of this works at OpenAI. And there’s many such cases of people who are working on quote unquote, “AI alignment”, who are in these industries. So, it’s again not as if they’re against the building of AI, or we should just say no, it’s actually a very narrow segment of people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You described this industry as the AI hype machine, the modern AI hype machine, what does it look like? I mean, who are the players? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean, the players are many of the big tech players that we know. So Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, but with some new entrants, OpenAI being the most significant one. Um, and along with OpenAI, a few offshoots, so Anthropic is kind of the most notable one. And then the company that’s creating the shovels for the gold rush, so that’s your Nvidia, and then your Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing company, abbreviated as TSMC. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I want to say that we see AI hype not just originating from those big players, like that is a large source of it. Also we hear over and over and again about people working in various businesses being told by their higher ups that they have to try this new AI thing. And so there’s this sort of secondary promulgation of hype that comes from middle management and up that have been sold on the idea that this is going to, you know, really increase productivity. And, you know, on the one hand, it’s a very useful excuse for doing layoffs that they may have otherwise already wanted to do, but then on the other hand, some people seem to have really bought into the idea. So they tell the people working for them, you have to spend time figuring out how to make yourself more productive by using these so-called AI tools, because everyone’s telling me that that’s the way of the future. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, the obvious way people are, these players, are feeding into the AI hype machine is by extolling the virtues of AI, or, you know, kind of spreading this very doomerous sci-fi rhetoric. But what other strategies are being used to feed this machine? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So one important strategy is what I sometimes call citations to the future. So people will say, yeah, yeah. It’s got problems now, but it’s going to do all of these things. And I think it really is the only technology that we are expected to evaluate based on promises of what it will be doing, right? That car that I just bought only gets, you know, 35 miles to the gallon. But that’s OK, because the later one’s going to get 50. We don’t talk about it that way, except with the so-called AI technology.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, citations to the future is one big strategy and another one is anthropomorphizing language, talking about things that have happened as if the computer systems themselves did it of their own volition and autonomously instead of people having used the system to do it or done something in order to build the system. So it’ll be something like, AI needs lots and lots of data. Well, no, people who want to build the system that they’re calling AI are amassing lots and lots of data in order to build them, or AI is thirsty, it needs lots of water, or AI was able to identify, you know, something in a blurry image. It’s like — in no sense, right? \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People used XYZ tool in order do a thing, or in order to build these tools, they are using lots of of water and so on. So this anthropomorphizing language sort of shifts the people out of the frame and hides a bunch of accountability, and at the same time, makes the systems sound cooler than they are. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alex and Emily also pointed out that players in the AI industry push this adoption of AI into our everyday lives by really trying to humanize the product. We’re gonna dive into that in a new tab. First, a quick break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Time for a new tab! Are we really just meat machines?\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s talk about the technology itself, like the way people talk about large language models as AI, um, ChatGPT, Claude, Grok. Many people understand that these models are basically predicting the words that most often go together. But can you break it down further? Like, what’s really going on under the hood there? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, the first very important lesson is that when we say word, we’re actually talking about two things. We’re talking about the way the word is spelled and pronounced and what it is used to mean. And one thing that makes that hard to keep in mind is that as proficient speakers of the languages we speak, pretty much anytime we encounter the spelling or sound of a word, we are also encountering what the person using it is using it to talk about. And so we always experience the form and meaning together. But a language model, so that the core component of something like Gemini or Grok or Claude or ChatGPT is literally a system for modeling which bits of words go with which other bits of words in whatever the input collection of text was to create that model. And so what we have are models that are very good at putting literally like spellings of parts of words next to each other in a way that looks like something somebody might say. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Emily and Alex have come up with a few phrases that illustrate what large language models really are, which also describe the limitations of this tech. We’ve got synthetic text extruding machine. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The choice of the word extrude is very intentional because it’s a little gross. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Racist pile of linear algebra. Spicy autocomplete. And one phrase that really took off, stochastic parrot. Emily coined the phrase in a research paper she co-authored in 2020. Parrots can mimic human speech, but whether they can really comprehend it, that’s dubious. Stochastic comes from probability theory. It means randomly determined. So a stochastic parrot essentially mimics language in a random order and does so convincingly, but it doesn’t understand it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Starting with OpenAI’s GPT-2 and GPT3, they were using it to create synthetic text. And so one of the things we worried about in that paper is what happens if someone comes across synthetic text and doesn’t know that it was synthetic? What we didn’t realize at the time is that people would be happy to look at synthetic text while knowing that it’s synthetic. That is very surprising to me. And so the phrase stochastic parrots was this attempt to make vivid what’s going on, to help people understand why the output of a language model run to repeatedly answer the question, what’s a likely next word, is not the same thing as text produced by a person or group of people with something to communicate. And what’s happened, it’s been fascinating as a linguist to watch that phrase go out into the world, so for the first little while, it was people referring to the paper, and then it sort of became people talking about, um, that claim that large language models are not understanding, they’re just repeatedly predicting a likely next word. And then it got picked up or interpreted as an insult, which is surprising to me because in order for it to be an insult, the thing that it’s being applied to would have to the kind of thing that could be insulted. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then in 2022, Sam Altman tweeted, I am a stochastic parrot and so are you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think what happens when Sam Altman picks it up and tweets that is that it is, on the one hand, sort of an attempt to reclaim what is understood as an insult or slur by people in that mindset, but also, and very importantly, it is about minimizing what it is to be human, so that he can claim that the system that he’s built is as good as a person.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Emily and Alex say this concept of comparing humans to, essentially, flesh machines is a classic move in the AI hype machine playbook. It’s reducing humanity and what it means to be human to programming, like Eliza in the 60s. Eliza was an early natural language processing program designed to mimic a therapist. Think of it as a great, great, great, grand chatbot of ChatGPT. A lot of people, from academics to government leaders to tech industry giants, bought into the Eliza hype. And that freaked out Eliza’s own creator, Joseph Weizenbaum. In a book he published in the 70s, Weizenbaum warned that machines would never be able to make the same decisions that humans make because they don’t have human empathy. His criticism of AI caused a stir in the research community. And decades later, AI boosters are still making that same claim. That humans and machines aren’t that different. But what does this devaluing of humanity really mean for us? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean, it means a lot of things. It really seems to emphasize that there is, kind of, aspects of human behavior that can just be reduced to our observable outputs, right? Humans are just things that output language or output actions, when that’s not true. Humans have a much more vivid internal life. Um, we think about others. Uh, we think about, kind of, co-presence, but it’s more about saying how we’re comparing ourselves to machines that are programmed by people and those people in those institutions have particular types of incentives to make machines that behave as such. So that’s the kind of implications that it has and it also has the implications of other kinds of moves into humanism, dehumanization and what that does and how we treat people and with regards to dignity and propriety of rights. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Can you also give concrete examples of where we see this kind of, uh, devaluing of humans? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think if we say that humans can be reduced to their outputs, that that leads to lots of problems. And one is we end up saying, you know, the form of, or the words that teachers and students say in the classroom is the learning situation. And so we can replace the teacher with a system for outputting words and then those students will get as much and maybe it’ll be personalized and it’ll better. And that is dehumanizing to teachers clearly and also to students because it removes, you know, everything that is about the student and teacher’s internal life and about their relationship and about their community from the situation. But I think it’s also really important in terms of the workforce more generally, that basically if we say, well, humans like large language models are systems for outputting words, then it’s a very small step to basically saying the whole value of this person is how many words they can output and doing a very, very dehumanizing work environment to people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We also see this in other domains like the Amazon work floor and the ways that these mini robots flit from place to place and the so-called quote unquote pickers. People on Amazon work warehouses have to pick things and then deliver them. So there’s a lot of implications for that and I think also in seeing the humanity in other folks and how we treat other folks. You know, if they’re merely meat machines, then what does it say about how we view them with respect to, kind of, personal rights and human rights and what kind of rights they should be afforded? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This idea of human beings just being walking meat machines is chilling. It definitely creeped me out. What are the other real world consequences of this thinking? Let’s open a new tab. Who’s really harmed by AI hype? Alex and Emily have said that their goal with writing the AI con is to reduce the harm caused by AI hype. Automation, for example, doesn’t just replace jobs. Healthcare providers are increasingly relying on AI products for medical triage to decide which patients to see first. Free legal representation, a guaranteed right in criminal cases, can be replaced by a lawyer using a chat bot. All of this potentially lowers the quality of these services. And introduces bias into these systems. Artists and other creatives, meanwhile, are struggling to make ends meet as AI generators, sometimes trained on their own work, are used as a cheaper, faster alternative. And then there’s how large language models are disrupting our whole information ecosystem. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s a metaphor we use in the book, the idea that information is being output from these models and results in information ecosystem spills, like toxic spills that really can’t be cleaned up. There’s not really a reliable way to detect synthetic text. And so you’re having to deal with and navigate and try to understand whether something on the internet is actually reflective of truth claims that are being made and perhaps researched more deeply by human individuals. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You’ve written that the strongest critiques against AI boosterism come from black, brown, poor, queer, and disabled scholars and activists. Can you talk about some examples of these critiques and why these groups specifically are so uniquely positioned to make them? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So we wrote about that in the register of thinking about the ways in which systems, in here, I want to say data-driven systems, not just large language models, but even different systems just don’t work for black, brown communities, queer, and trans people, and then people like refugees and people on the move. The kind of pioneering work of Drs. Temnit Gebru and Joy Buolamwini in their paper Gender Shades talks about facial analysis systems, specifically the way that facial analysis systems do very poorly on darker-skinned women and that there’s a huge delta between darker-skinned women and lighter-skinned men. Sasha Costanza-Chock talks about how tools like TSA scanners do very poorly on trans people. Typically flagging genitals as anomalies or chest areas as anomalities, and then the kind of disparities of how systems talk about women. So there’s been a few papers talking about the ways in which different tools, in this case a word embedding space, makes associations between people and occupation. So, man is to doctor, women is to… typically, the completion is nurse, so it makes presuppositions of this. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of this stuff effectively happens in large-language models [laughter] and happens in image generation models as well. There’s some great research by the Bloomberg data team that shows that if you input something like a nurse, uh, typically or a housekeeper, it outputs a kind of a phenotypically looking darker-skinned woman. If you type in CEO, white man. And so those kinds of elements are the bias element of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ruha Benjamin sums it up really nicely in this beautiful essay called The New Artificial Intelligentsia that appeared in the LA Review of Books in 2024. And she’s talking about these ideas of transhumanism and merging with the machines. She says this zealous desire to transcend humanity ignores the fact that we have not all had the chance to be fully human. My interpretation of what she’s saying is that the people that society does not accord full humanity to have a very different experience of technology, both in the ways, as Alex is saying, it’s being used on them, in the ways that doesn’t work well for them and just in the way that it intrudes on their life. And so people who have the privilege of not experiencing any of that tend to be less sensitized to what’s going on and to have a less informed perspective. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And this less-informed perspective encourages AI boosters, who continue to fuel the hype machine. This means investing in and launching new products at a breakneck pace, often overlooking the real-world impact. The MIT Technology Review recently reported that generating one 5-second AI video uses about 3.4 million joules, the equivalent of running a microwave for over an hour. At scale this amount of energy consumption is devastating for the environment. And running all of this comes at a steep price for AI companies, too. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like we talked about earlier, OpenAI’s Sora app is proving to be wildly expensive, with more users generating videos than actually watching them. And after the copyright fiasco and subsequent new guardrails, it seems like some initial adopters are already moving on. Can the hype machine sustain this kind of frenzied investment with such limited return? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, we’re opening one last tab. Is the height machine breaking? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Do you think the AI hype bubble is going to burst? I mean, like, are there economic critiques? You’ve heard the social ones, but is there anything pointing to the AI height bubble possibly at least deflating? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, well, the problem is that there’s so much capital expenditure going into building things like data centers, and they’re going into these massive data center build out where, you know, the kind of projections and how much OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta are spending on this all is astronomical. I mean, hundreds of billions of dollars, just some of the largest technological infrastructure projects that we’ve ever seen. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the same time, OpenAI again, the company that has the most queries to Chat GPT, people using most of its products, is making revenue on the order of maybe $10 billion a year. So it’s just orders of magnitude less. And the kind of metaphor that’s being used as well, we have to build the railroads first, and then once the rail roads get going, we can put rail cars in them. But that metaphor doesn’t work at all. People are already using the product. And, you know, companies are already saying, we’re not getting a lot of value out of this. You know, there was an, something that was coming out of MIT, which said 95% of companies just haven’t really gained value from quote unquote AI. So what’s happening? This is very bubble shaped, you now, and I don’t know how the story ends, but it’s very alarming that these four to seven companies are propping up the US and world economy right now, so what happens when the bubble deflates or bursts, it’s not going to be good. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like you said, um, you finished this book in September 2024. The AI industry has only grown since then. What have you learned about the state of the AI hype machine from the reception to your book? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I would say what I’ve learned the most about is about the resilience of people and the importance of connection and community. So the antidote to the hype is a variety of things, one is ridicule as praxis, as we say in the book, and also solidarity and labor movements, but also just sort of connection. And one form of that connection is that there’s a lot of people who are, who feel isolated in a workplace or a social circle where everyone around them seems just completely gaga for this technology and they’re the odd one out. And so one of the joys of both our podcasts and this book has been to find those people and be found by those people who say, oh, so glad I’m not the only one. And then they can form community with other people who have the same reaction and I think that that is super important. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the things we grapple a lot just like within Close All Tabs is where to draw the line with AI use, you know. And again, that’s complicated. What is AI? For example, we don’t use ChatGPT, but we use an AI transcription tool for our interviews. Are there conditions under which using large language models, AI tools, are reasonable or justified, appropriate? And then what’s your message to the average listener who maybe uses ChatGPT in their daily but they’re not necessarily AI boosters and not necessarily AI doomers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. Um, so to the first question, I would say I never call it an AI transcription tool. I would say automatic transcription, right? And that is a use case where, you know, you want to look at the labor conditions of the people who produced it, where the training data come from. And it’s also a use case where you are well positioned to check the output and see if it’s working well for you, right. You’ve got something that has been recorded, you’ve got an automatically produced transcript, you’re presumably going through and correcting it. And if it is wrong all the time, or if you have one that is particularly bad for non-Anglo names, for example, you might start looking for something that’s better. So that is a case of automation that I think can be okay. You still want to look into who produced it. Are there privacy implications? Can I use this tool without uploading my data to somebody else and so on? But there’s reasonable uses and reasonable ways to produce automatic transcription. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If we’re talking about chat bots of the form of ChatGPT, I don’t see reasonable use cases there. And partially we know that the labor and environmental costs are extraordinarily high, that this is not produced ethically. But even setting that aside, every time you turn to ChatGPT for information, you’re cutting yourself off from important sense-making. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the examples I like to use, if you think about an old fashioned search engine that gave you back, you know, the 10 blue links and you’ve got a medical query, what might come back in those links is a link to, you know something like the Mayo Clinic and then your regional university medical center, so in the Bay area, you know UCSF. And you might get a link to Dr. Oz’s page and you might get a link to a discussion forum where people with the same medical questions are talking to each other. And you can then look at those and understand the information that’s there based on what you know about the Mayo Clinic and UCSF and Dr. Oz and discussion forums. But that also helps you continue to update what you know, about those kinds of sites. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Whereas if you asked a chatbot and you got back something that was just sort of some paper mache made up out of some combination of what’s in those sites, you not only don’t know how to contextualize what you’ve seen, but you’re also cut off from ability to continue to understand the information environment. And then very importantly, if you think about that discussion forum, any given, you know, sentence from that discussion forum interpreted as information, you’re going to want to take with a big grain of salt. But the chance to connect with people who are going through the same medical journey is priceless. And there’s a, the scholar Chris Gilliard describes these technologies as technologies of isolation. And I think it’s really important to think about anytime you might turn to a chat bot- what would you have done three years ago? What would you have done when ChatGPT was not in your world and what are you missing out on by not doing that now? The connections that you would make with people, the ongoing maintenance of relationships, the building of community, the deeper sense of what’s going on in the world around you, all of these are precious and I think not to be thrown away for the semblance of convenience. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then I think the final thing that I would say is look out for, identify, and reject the inevitability narrative. So the tech companies would like us to believe that AI is the future, it’s definitely coming. Even if you don’t like it, you have to resign yourself to it. And you’ll get people saying, well, it’s here to stay, we have to learn what to live with it. And I refuse that. I say that is also a bid to steal our agency because the future is not written. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Those are all my questions. Thank you so much for joining us.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Emily M. Bender: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, thank you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alex Hanna: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was a pleasure. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s close all of these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Chris Egusa and edited by Jen Chien. Close All tabs producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our senior editor. Additional editing by Chris Hambrick and Jen Chien, who’s KQED’s director of podcasts. Original music, including our theme song and credits by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Katie Sprenger is our podcast operations manager and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our editor in chief. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by my dad, Casey Sung, and recorded on his white and blue Epomaker Aula F99 keyboard with Greywood V3 switches and Cherry Profile PBT keycaps. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, and I know it’s a podcast cliche, but if you like these deep dives and want us to keep making more, it would really help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Follow us on Instagram at CloseAllTabsPod, or TikTok at Close All Tabs. Thanks for listening. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"slug": "newsom-vetoes-most-watched-childrens-ai-bill-signs-16-others-targeting-tech",
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"headTitle": "Newsom Vetoes Most-Watched Children’s AI Bill, Signs 16 Others Targeting Tech | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>California Gov. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/gavin-newsom\">Gavin Newsom\u003c/a> vetoed legislation that would have prohibited developers from offering companion AI chatbots for children unless the companies can promise the software won’t encourage harmful behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sacramento players across the political spectrum watched the legislation closely, with advocates issuing press releases, open letters and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12038154/kids-talking-ai-companion-chatbots-stanford-researchers-say-thats-bad-idea\">research reports\u003c/a> in hopes of swaying California’s tech-friendly governor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/AB-1064-Veto.pdf\">veto message\u003c/a> published Monday, Newsom wrote that AB-1064 could lead to a total ban on minors using conversational AI tools. “AI is already shaping the world, and it is imperative that adolescents learn how to safely interact with AI systems,” Newsom wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re sorely disappointed to see Governor Newsom side with Big Tech over the more than 150 families who have suffered the most unimaginable loss: the passing of their child, encouraged by companion AI,” Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan of Orinda, the bill’s author, wrote in a statement, noting the bill was sponsored by Common Sense Media, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, and more than 20 organizations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These AI companies know the risks their products pose. They’ve made purposeful design decisions that put kids in harm’s way, creating chatbots that form dangerous emotional bonds with vulnerable young people,” she added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11917730\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11917730\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56739_IMG_4228-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56739_IMG_4228-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56739_IMG_4228-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56739_IMG_4228-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56739_IMG_4228-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56739_IMG_4228-qut-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Assemblywoman Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, D-Orinda, on Political Breakdown. \u003ccite>(Guy Marzorati/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We’ve seen suicides lately. We’ve seen all sorts of mental health disruptions caused by AI companions. That said, the fight is just beginning,” Common Sense Media CEO Jim Steyer told KQED. “California is clearly leading the way in the United States and globally on these issues, and the next year or two are going to be absolutely critical in defining regulations, guardrails and a common sense future for the big tech industry.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The trade group TechNet lobbied heavily against the bill, \u003ca href=\"https://www.technet.org/the-impact-of-ca-ab-1064/\">running ads\u003c/a> that warned that Bauer-Kahan’s bill could deny children access to critical tools they need to succeed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We appreciate Governor Newsom’s thoughtful consideration and ultimate veto of this proposed legislation,” wrote Robert Boykin, TechNet’s Executive Director for California and the Southwest. “While TechNet shares the goal of AB 1064, the bill fails to meet its stated objectives while threatening students’ access to valuable AI-driven learning tools, potentially life-saving medical treatments, crisis response interventions, safety mechanisms, and other valuable AI technologies.”[aside postID=news_12059209 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251008_ENDOF10_-9-KQED.jpg']The host of AI-related bills that made it to Newsom’s desk this legislative session presented him with a political \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12052617/newsoms-tightrope-walk-between-ai-regulation-and-silicon-valley-cash\">balancing act\u003c/a>, as he eyes a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12043766/newsom-tries-to-find-political-footing-in-clash-with-trump\">run for the White House\u003c/a>. Many of the bills were opposed by trade associations heavily bankrolled by Silicon Valley, and California is home to \u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/lists/ai50/\">32 of the 50 top AI companies\u003c/a> worldwide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As if anticipating the blowback from child safety advocates, Newsom’s office released \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/10/13/governor-newsom-signs-bills-to-further-strengthen-californias-leadership-in-protecting-children-online/\">a list of 16 AI bills\u003c/a> he approved this session, some focused on children. “California has long stood as a bold leader in protecting children from the danger of emerging technology,” the statement read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the list: SB 243 by Sen. Steve Padilla, D-San Diego, which placed softer limits on AI chatbots for kids. Advocacy groups, including Common Sense Media and \u003ca href=\"https://techoversight.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/SB-243-Remove-Support.pdf\">Tech Oversight California\u003c/a>, pulled their support from the bill in mid-September, arguing industry-friendly amendments weakened it and could establish a “dangerous” precedent for other states and countries taking California’s lead on AI regulation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a similar vein, Newsom signed an \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12058013/newsom-signs-california-ai-transparency-bill-tailored-to-meet-tech-industry-tastes\">industry-friendly version\u003c/a> of SB-53 by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), after his original effort became target No. 1 for Silicon Valley lobbyists\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12007323/can-california-still-lead-on-ai-regulation-following-newsoms-veto-of-ai-safety-bill\"> last legislative session\u003c/a> and died on Newsom’s desk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not all the bills Newsom signed this legislation session lack teeth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AB 621, for instance, expands the ability of deepfake pornography victims to sue anyone who creates, digitally alters, or distributes a sexually explicit image or video in which they appear to engage in sexual conduct without their consent. The expanded private right of action is considered a notable strength when most other AI bills rely on regulatory enforcement, penalties, or agency reporting to sway business practices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Steyer said he was happy to see Newsom’s signature on AB 56, which supporters say will require first-in-the-nation warning labels on social media, similar to what California has mandated on packaging for alcohol and cigarettes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s clear that Gov. Newsom, and also the first partner, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who’s heavily involved in all this legislation, have listened to parents, and advocacy groups around the state,” Steyer said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "The legislation would have restricted children’s access to AI chatbots, but Newsom sided with the tech industry, saying it would have led to a total ban on some AI tools for adolescents.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>California Gov. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/gavin-newsom\">Gavin Newsom\u003c/a> vetoed legislation that would have prohibited developers from offering companion AI chatbots for children unless the companies can promise the software won’t encourage harmful behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sacramento players across the political spectrum watched the legislation closely, with advocates issuing press releases, open letters and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12038154/kids-talking-ai-companion-chatbots-stanford-researchers-say-thats-bad-idea\">research reports\u003c/a> in hopes of swaying California’s tech-friendly governor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/AB-1064-Veto.pdf\">veto message\u003c/a> published Monday, Newsom wrote that AB-1064 could lead to a total ban on minors using conversational AI tools. “AI is already shaping the world, and it is imperative that adolescents learn how to safely interact with AI systems,” Newsom wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re sorely disappointed to see Governor Newsom side with Big Tech over the more than 150 families who have suffered the most unimaginable loss: the passing of their child, encouraged by companion AI,” Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan of Orinda, the bill’s author, wrote in a statement, noting the bill was sponsored by Common Sense Media, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, and more than 20 organizations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These AI companies know the risks their products pose. They’ve made purposeful design decisions that put kids in harm’s way, creating chatbots that form dangerous emotional bonds with vulnerable young people,” she added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11917730\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11917730\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56739_IMG_4228-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56739_IMG_4228-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56739_IMG_4228-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56739_IMG_4228-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56739_IMG_4228-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/06/RS56739_IMG_4228-qut-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Assemblywoman Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, D-Orinda, on Political Breakdown. \u003ccite>(Guy Marzorati/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We’ve seen suicides lately. We’ve seen all sorts of mental health disruptions caused by AI companions. That said, the fight is just beginning,” Common Sense Media CEO Jim Steyer told KQED. “California is clearly leading the way in the United States and globally on these issues, and the next year or two are going to be absolutely critical in defining regulations, guardrails and a common sense future for the big tech industry.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The trade group TechNet lobbied heavily against the bill, \u003ca href=\"https://www.technet.org/the-impact-of-ca-ab-1064/\">running ads\u003c/a> that warned that Bauer-Kahan’s bill could deny children access to critical tools they need to succeed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We appreciate Governor Newsom’s thoughtful consideration and ultimate veto of this proposed legislation,” wrote Robert Boykin, TechNet’s Executive Director for California and the Southwest. “While TechNet shares the goal of AB 1064, the bill fails to meet its stated objectives while threatening students’ access to valuable AI-driven learning tools, potentially life-saving medical treatments, crisis response interventions, safety mechanisms, and other valuable AI technologies.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The host of AI-related bills that made it to Newsom’s desk this legislative session presented him with a political \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12052617/newsoms-tightrope-walk-between-ai-regulation-and-silicon-valley-cash\">balancing act\u003c/a>, as he eyes a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12043766/newsom-tries-to-find-political-footing-in-clash-with-trump\">run for the White House\u003c/a>. Many of the bills were opposed by trade associations heavily bankrolled by Silicon Valley, and California is home to \u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/lists/ai50/\">32 of the 50 top AI companies\u003c/a> worldwide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As if anticipating the blowback from child safety advocates, Newsom’s office released \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/10/13/governor-newsom-signs-bills-to-further-strengthen-californias-leadership-in-protecting-children-online/\">a list of 16 AI bills\u003c/a> he approved this session, some focused on children. “California has long stood as a bold leader in protecting children from the danger of emerging technology,” the statement read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the list: SB 243 by Sen. Steve Padilla, D-San Diego, which placed softer limits on AI chatbots for kids. Advocacy groups, including Common Sense Media and \u003ca href=\"https://techoversight.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/SB-243-Remove-Support.pdf\">Tech Oversight California\u003c/a>, pulled their support from the bill in mid-September, arguing industry-friendly amendments weakened it and could establish a “dangerous” precedent for other states and countries taking California’s lead on AI regulation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a similar vein, Newsom signed an \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12058013/newsom-signs-california-ai-transparency-bill-tailored-to-meet-tech-industry-tastes\">industry-friendly version\u003c/a> of SB-53 by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), after his original effort became target No. 1 for Silicon Valley lobbyists\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12007323/can-california-still-lead-on-ai-regulation-following-newsoms-veto-of-ai-safety-bill\"> last legislative session\u003c/a> and died on Newsom’s desk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not all the bills Newsom signed this legislation session lack teeth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AB 621, for instance, expands the ability of deepfake pornography victims to sue anyone who creates, digitally alters, or distributes a sexually explicit image or video in which they appear to engage in sexual conduct without their consent. The expanded private right of action is considered a notable strength when most other AI bills rely on regulatory enforcement, penalties, or agency reporting to sway business practices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Steyer said he was happy to see Newsom’s signature on AB 56, which supporters say will require first-in-the-nation warning labels on social media, similar to what California has mandated on packaging for alcohol and cigarettes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s clear that Gov. Newsom, and also the first partner, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who’s heavily involved in all this legislation, have listened to parents, and advocacy groups around the state,” Steyer said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Gov. Gavin Newsom today \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/09/29/governor-newsom-signs-sb-53-advancing-californias-world-leading-artificial-intelligence-industry/\">signed\u003c/a> into law\u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB53\"> Senate Bill 53\u003c/a>, which would require large model developers like Anthropic and Open AI to be transparent about safety measures they put in place to prevent catastrophic events. The legislation would also create CalCompute, a public cloud infrastructure that expands access to AI resources for researchers, startups and public institutions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In announcing his decision, Newsom wrote, “California has proven that we can establish regulations to protect our communities while also ensuring that the growing AI industry continues to thrive. This legislation strikes that balance.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) authored the bill, after his original effort became target No. 1 for Silicon Valley lobbyists\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12007323/can-california-still-lead-on-ai-regulation-following-newsoms-veto-of-ai-safety-bill\"> last legislative session\u003c/a> and died on Newsom’s desk. That bill spooked high-profile California politicians, including\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12002254/california-bill-to-regulate-catastrophic-effects-of-ai-heads-to-newsoms-desk\"> Nancy Pelosi,\u003c/a> nervous about getting on the wrong side of Big Tech. In last year’s veto message for SB 1047, Newsom announced a working group on AI, which helped lay the groundwork for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12020857/california-lawmaker-ready-revive-fight-regulating-ai\">SB 53\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With a technology as transformative as AI, we have a responsibility to support that innovation while putting in place commonsense guardrails to understand and reduce risk,” \u003ca href=\"https://sd11.senate.ca.gov/news/governor-newsom-signs-senator-wieners-landmark-ai-law-set-commonsense-guardrails-boost\">wrote\u003c/a> Wiener. “I’m grateful to the Governor for his leadership in convening the Joint California AI Policy Working Group, working with us to refine the legislation, and now signing it into law.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The working group issued its\u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/June-17-2025-%E2%80%93-The-California-Report-on-Frontier-AI-Policy.pdf\"> report\u003c/a> in June, calling on lawmakers to pass transparency requirements and whistleblower protections, declaring that California has the “responsibility” to ensure the safety of generative artificial intelligence software, “so that their benefit to society can be realized.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12058035\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/GettyImages-2159671948-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12058035\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/GettyImages-2159671948-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/GettyImages-2159671948-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/GettyImages-2159671948-2000x1333.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/GettyImages-2159671948-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/GettyImages-2159671948-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/GettyImages-2159671948-2048x1365.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Close-up of phone screen displaying Anthropic Claude, a Large Language Model (LLM) powered generative artificial intelligence chatbot, in Lafayette, California, June 27, 2024. \u003ccite>(Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The report noted that AI systems have been observed finding loopholes that allow them to behave in ways their programmers did not intend. Also, that competitive pressures are undermining safety, and policy intervention is needed to prevent a race to the bottom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anthropic, which makes the chatbot Claude, was the first major AI developer to endorse SB 53, having offered more cautious support for SB 1047. “We’re proud to have worked with Senator Wiener to help bring industry to the table and develop practical safeguards that create real accountability for how powerful AI systems are developed and deployed, which will in turn keep everyone safer as the rapid acceleration of AI capabilities continues,” wrote Jack Clark, co-founder and head of policy for Anthropic.[aside postID=news_12052617 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/GETTYIMAGES-2228237489-KQED.jpg']Federal lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have historically taken a relatively\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11905230/do-federal-lawmakers-have-the-stomach-to-rein-in-big-tech\"> light touch\u003c/a> toward regulating the technology industry. Despite high-drama hearings about troubling trends in social media and now AI, few bills make it out of their respective committees, let alone to a floor vote. “While federal standards remain essential to avoid a patchwork of state regulations, California has created a strong framework that balances public safety with continued innovation,” Clark added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This time around, other AI developers got behind Wiener’s effort. “Meta supports balanced AI regulation and the California Frontier AI law is a positive step in that direction,” a spokesperson for Meta wrote in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier this year, a coalition of more than 20 tech and youth safety advocacy organizations\u003ca href=\"https://encodeai.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/SB-53-Coalition-Letter-9_24_2025.pdf\"> sent a letter\u003c/a> to Gov. Newsom in support of SB 53. “If basic guardrails like this had existed at the inception of social media, our children could be living in a safer, healthier world,” the letter said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are incredibly proud to have worked with Senator Wiener and Governor Newsom on this AI safety legislation,” wrote Sneha Revanur, founder of Encode AI, a youth-led nonprofit that pushes for responsible AI through policy. The group was one of the primary drivers behind that coalition. “Frontier AI models have immense potential but without proper oversight, they can create real risks and harms. California has shown it’s possible to lead on AI safety without stifling progress.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill was opposed by business and industry representatives, including the California Chamber of Commerce, TechNet and Silicon Valley Leadership Group and TechNet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s vital that we strengthen California’s role as the global leader in AI and the epicenter of innovation. SVLG is committed to advocating for policies that seek to responsibly scale this transformative technology at this pivotal juncture and to unleash a new wave of innovation and growth,” Ahmad Thomas, CEO of Silicon Valley Leadership Group, wrote in a statement. “We will continue to work with the Governor and leaders in the Legislature to ensure that new laws and regulations don’t impose undue burdens on the most innovative companies in the world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Gov. Gavin Newsom today \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/09/29/governor-newsom-signs-sb-53-advancing-californias-world-leading-artificial-intelligence-industry/\">signed\u003c/a> into law\u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB53\"> Senate Bill 53\u003c/a>, which would require large model developers like Anthropic and Open AI to be transparent about safety measures they put in place to prevent catastrophic events. The legislation would also create CalCompute, a public cloud infrastructure that expands access to AI resources for researchers, startups and public institutions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In announcing his decision, Newsom wrote, “California has proven that we can establish regulations to protect our communities while also ensuring that the growing AI industry continues to thrive. This legislation strikes that balance.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) authored the bill, after his original effort became target No. 1 for Silicon Valley lobbyists\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12007323/can-california-still-lead-on-ai-regulation-following-newsoms-veto-of-ai-safety-bill\"> last legislative session\u003c/a> and died on Newsom’s desk. That bill spooked high-profile California politicians, including\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12002254/california-bill-to-regulate-catastrophic-effects-of-ai-heads-to-newsoms-desk\"> Nancy Pelosi,\u003c/a> nervous about getting on the wrong side of Big Tech. In last year’s veto message for SB 1047, Newsom announced a working group on AI, which helped lay the groundwork for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12020857/california-lawmaker-ready-revive-fight-regulating-ai\">SB 53\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With a technology as transformative as AI, we have a responsibility to support that innovation while putting in place commonsense guardrails to understand and reduce risk,” \u003ca href=\"https://sd11.senate.ca.gov/news/governor-newsom-signs-senator-wieners-landmark-ai-law-set-commonsense-guardrails-boost\">wrote\u003c/a> Wiener. “I’m grateful to the Governor for his leadership in convening the Joint California AI Policy Working Group, working with us to refine the legislation, and now signing it into law.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The working group issued its\u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/June-17-2025-%E2%80%93-The-California-Report-on-Frontier-AI-Policy.pdf\"> report\u003c/a> in June, calling on lawmakers to pass transparency requirements and whistleblower protections, declaring that California has the “responsibility” to ensure the safety of generative artificial intelligence software, “so that their benefit to society can be realized.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12058035\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/GettyImages-2159671948-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12058035\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/GettyImages-2159671948-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/GettyImages-2159671948-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/GettyImages-2159671948-2000x1333.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/GettyImages-2159671948-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/GettyImages-2159671948-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/GettyImages-2159671948-2048x1365.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Close-up of phone screen displaying Anthropic Claude, a Large Language Model (LLM) powered generative artificial intelligence chatbot, in Lafayette, California, June 27, 2024. \u003ccite>(Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The report noted that AI systems have been observed finding loopholes that allow them to behave in ways their programmers did not intend. Also, that competitive pressures are undermining safety, and policy intervention is needed to prevent a race to the bottom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anthropic, which makes the chatbot Claude, was the first major AI developer to endorse SB 53, having offered more cautious support for SB 1047. “We’re proud to have worked with Senator Wiener to help bring industry to the table and develop practical safeguards that create real accountability for how powerful AI systems are developed and deployed, which will in turn keep everyone safer as the rapid acceleration of AI capabilities continues,” wrote Jack Clark, co-founder and head of policy for Anthropic.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Federal lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have historically taken a relatively\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11905230/do-federal-lawmakers-have-the-stomach-to-rein-in-big-tech\"> light touch\u003c/a> toward regulating the technology industry. Despite high-drama hearings about troubling trends in social media and now AI, few bills make it out of their respective committees, let alone to a floor vote. “While federal standards remain essential to avoid a patchwork of state regulations, California has created a strong framework that balances public safety with continued innovation,” Clark added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This time around, other AI developers got behind Wiener’s effort. “Meta supports balanced AI regulation and the California Frontier AI law is a positive step in that direction,” a spokesperson for Meta wrote in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier this year, a coalition of more than 20 tech and youth safety advocacy organizations\u003ca href=\"https://encodeai.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/SB-53-Coalition-Letter-9_24_2025.pdf\"> sent a letter\u003c/a> to Gov. Newsom in support of SB 53. “If basic guardrails like this had existed at the inception of social media, our children could be living in a safer, healthier world,” the letter said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are incredibly proud to have worked with Senator Wiener and Governor Newsom on this AI safety legislation,” wrote Sneha Revanur, founder of Encode AI, a youth-led nonprofit that pushes for responsible AI through policy. The group was one of the primary drivers behind that coalition. “Frontier AI models have immense potential but without proper oversight, they can create real risks and harms. California has shown it’s possible to lead on AI safety without stifling progress.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill was opposed by business and industry representatives, including the California Chamber of Commerce, TechNet and Silicon Valley Leadership Group and TechNet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s vital that we strengthen California’s role as the global leader in AI and the epicenter of innovation. SVLG is committed to advocating for policies that seek to responsibly scale this transformative technology at this pivotal juncture and to unleash a new wave of innovation and growth,” Ahmad Thomas, CEO of Silicon Valley Leadership Group, wrote in a statement. “We will continue to work with the Governor and leaders in the Legislature to ensure that new laws and regulations don’t impose undue burdens on the most innovative companies in the world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>San Francisco-based chatbot maker Anthropic said Monday that it is backing\u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB53\"> landmark artificial intelligence \u003c/a>legislation in California, one year after the first attempt to regulate the burgeoning industry \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12007087/california-blinks-governor-newsom-vetoes-ai-bill-aimed-at-catastrophic-harms\">ended in a veto\u003c/a> by Gov. Gavin Newsom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The endorsement makes \u003ca href=\"https://www.anthropic.com/\">Anthropic\u003c/a> the first large AI company to back SB 53 by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), which would require the biggest AI companies to disclose their safety and security protocols and report critical safety incidents to the governor’s office within 15 days. It would also offer protections to whistleblowers at AI companies of any size who call out risky or dangerous behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anthropic’s support is a big win for Wiener, but the bill still faces opposition from large business and tech groups. Still, the company’s support could help Wiener get the bill over the finish line — and may help convince Newsom, who, after vetoing last year’s bill, created a \u003ca href=\"https://www.cafrontieraigov.org/\">working group to develop recommendations for AI regulation\u003c/a>. Wiener said he crafted SB 53 to align with that group’s findings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an interview with KQED, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Wiener’s bill, which was \u003ca href=\"https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2025/09/scott-wiener-significantly-amends-ai-transparency-bill-with-apparent-input-from-openai-others-00548813\">narrowed last week\u003c/a> to apply only to large AI programs, strikes a balance between safety and progress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“SB 53 focuses on a particular subset of the risks, what we call catastrophic risks, which are some of the kinds of the largest things that can go wrong — things like large-scale cyberattacks,” he said. “It forces companies to be transparent about how they measure these risks, about the safety and security testing that they do in order to quantify these risks. This is something that Anthropic actually already does.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12039671\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12039671\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250218-SFDowntown-03-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250218-SFDowntown-03-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250218-SFDowntown-03-BL_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250218-SFDowntown-03-BL_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250218-SFDowntown-03-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250218-SFDowntown-03-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250218-SFDowntown-03-BL_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sen. Scott Wiener speaks during a press conference in Union Square, San Francisco, on Feb. 18, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Amodei noted that when Anthropic tested its latest AI model, Claude 4, earlier this year, researchers \u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/2025/05/23/anthropic-ai-deception-risk\">found some concerning responses\u003c/a>, like “resisting being shut down or blackmailing employees.” That testing, he said, is being conducted even as Anthropic continues to grow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve managed to do that while being a profitable and fast-growing company. And so our thinking is that if we can do that, the other large companies in the space can do that as well,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Congress has so far failed to enact any sort of national AI regulations. Wiener’s first attempt last year, praised as “a promising first step” by Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, drew criticism from Newsom in his veto message over its limited focus on the largest models.[aside postID=news_12052617 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/GETTYIMAGES-2228237489-KQED.jpg']Amodei said he thinks SB 53 could go even further, but he did have concerns about how prescriptive last year’s legislation was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We saw a good idea at the heart of it, but we were concerned, actually, that with the field moving so fast, having to comply with all these precise tests would be too rigid and they would kind of quickly become out of date,” Amodei said. “So I would say we had mixed feelings about it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SB 53, he said, strikes a good balance — in part because it does distinguish between large and small AI companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t want to stifle competition or even just be accused of stifling competition,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a written statement, Wiener praised Amodei, saying that under his leadership, “Anthropic has been a courageous and steadfast champion for innovating safely and responsibly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It can be difficult to tell where many AI companies will come down on safety issues. Never Anthropic,” he added. “I’m grateful to have support from a homegrown San Francisco company that’s shown the world it’s possible to lead on both responsible practices and product performance. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The legislation must pass both houses and be sent to Newsom by Friday. He will have a month to decide whether to sign or veto the bill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>San Francisco-based chatbot maker Anthropic said Monday that it is backing\u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB53\"> landmark artificial intelligence \u003c/a>legislation in California, one year after the first attempt to regulate the burgeoning industry \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12007087/california-blinks-governor-newsom-vetoes-ai-bill-aimed-at-catastrophic-harms\">ended in a veto\u003c/a> by Gov. Gavin Newsom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The endorsement makes \u003ca href=\"https://www.anthropic.com/\">Anthropic\u003c/a> the first large AI company to back SB 53 by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), which would require the biggest AI companies to disclose their safety and security protocols and report critical safety incidents to the governor’s office within 15 days. It would also offer protections to whistleblowers at AI companies of any size who call out risky or dangerous behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anthropic’s support is a big win for Wiener, but the bill still faces opposition from large business and tech groups. Still, the company’s support could help Wiener get the bill over the finish line — and may help convince Newsom, who, after vetoing last year’s bill, created a \u003ca href=\"https://www.cafrontieraigov.org/\">working group to develop recommendations for AI regulation\u003c/a>. Wiener said he crafted SB 53 to align with that group’s findings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an interview with KQED, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Wiener’s bill, which was \u003ca href=\"https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2025/09/scott-wiener-significantly-amends-ai-transparency-bill-with-apparent-input-from-openai-others-00548813\">narrowed last week\u003c/a> to apply only to large AI programs, strikes a balance between safety and progress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“SB 53 focuses on a particular subset of the risks, what we call catastrophic risks, which are some of the kinds of the largest things that can go wrong — things like large-scale cyberattacks,” he said. “It forces companies to be transparent about how they measure these risks, about the safety and security testing that they do in order to quantify these risks. This is something that Anthropic actually already does.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12039671\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12039671\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250218-SFDowntown-03-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250218-SFDowntown-03-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250218-SFDowntown-03-BL_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250218-SFDowntown-03-BL_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250218-SFDowntown-03-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250218-SFDowntown-03-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/05/250218-SFDowntown-03-BL_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sen. Scott Wiener speaks during a press conference in Union Square, San Francisco, on Feb. 18, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Amodei noted that when Anthropic tested its latest AI model, Claude 4, earlier this year, researchers \u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/2025/05/23/anthropic-ai-deception-risk\">found some concerning responses\u003c/a>, like “resisting being shut down or blackmailing employees.” That testing, he said, is being conducted even as Anthropic continues to grow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve managed to do that while being a profitable and fast-growing company. And so our thinking is that if we can do that, the other large companies in the space can do that as well,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Congress has so far failed to enact any sort of national AI regulations. Wiener’s first attempt last year, praised as “a promising first step” by Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, drew criticism from Newsom in his veto message over its limited focus on the largest models.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Amodei said he thinks SB 53 could go even further, but he did have concerns about how prescriptive last year’s legislation was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We saw a good idea at the heart of it, but we were concerned, actually, that with the field moving so fast, having to comply with all these precise tests would be too rigid and they would kind of quickly become out of date,” Amodei said. “So I would say we had mixed feelings about it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SB 53, he said, strikes a good balance — in part because it does distinguish between large and small AI companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t want to stifle competition or even just be accused of stifling competition,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a written statement, Wiener praised Amodei, saying that under his leadership, “Anthropic has been a courageous and steadfast champion for innovating safely and responsibly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It can be difficult to tell where many AI companies will come down on safety issues. Never Anthropic,” he added. “I’m grateful to have support from a homegrown San Francisco company that’s shown the world it’s possible to lead on both responsible practices and product performance. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The legislation must pass both houses and be sent to Newsom by Friday. He will have a month to decide whether to sign or veto the bill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "‘We Have To, and Are Proud To’: Silicon Valley Embraces the U.S. Military",
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"headTitle": "‘We Have To, and Are Proud To’: Silicon Valley Embraces the U.S. Military | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>A decade ago, most major tech companies swore off working with the U.S. military. Google, Meta and OpenAI even once had policies banning the use of AI in weapons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But times have changed, and now Silicon Valley is fully embracing contracts and collaborations with the military. Sheera Frenkel, tech reporter with the New York Times, explains how and why this shift occurred.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Links:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/technology/google-meta-openai-military-war.html\">The Militarization of Silicon Valley\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC5559995627&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:00:00] I’m Jessica Kariisa, and welcome to The Bay, local news to keep you rooted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ambi \u003c/strong>[00:00:05] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Army Jacket Ceremony and the Commissioning Ceremony for Detachment 201.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:00:13] In June of this year, four current and former executives from Meta, OpenAI, and Palantir took center stage at a ceremony at the Joint Base Meyer Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia. Wearing combat gear and boots, the executives were there for their swearing-in ceremony as Lieutenant Colonels in Detachment 201. A new unit to advise the Army on new technology for use in combat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ambi \u003c/strong>[00:00:45] In an era defined by information warfare, automation, and digital disruption, the army needs skilled technologists in its ranks now more than ever.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:00:58] Big tech has embraced the U.S. Military. It’s a dramatic shift from just a decade ago when most of Silicon Valley was firmly against helping the government wage war. These days, tech executives are singing a different tune.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:01:14] You’re seeing a lot of posting about how great America is and how proud they are to be Americans doing business in America. That’s a shift and it’s really noticeable among the top executives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:01:30] Today, Sheera Frenkel from The New York Times talks with The Bay’s host, Ericka Cruz Guevarra, about how Silicon Valley changed its mind on working with the military.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:51] Sheera, I guess how might you describe how tight Silicon Valley and the U.S. Government and U. S. Military in particular are these days?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:02:01] We are in a moment of exceptional closeness between the U.S. government and Silicon Valley, and that is really unusual. Silicon Valley had its origins with funding from the U.S. Government. But until now, there has not been this kind of widespread across the board move of Silicon Valley, you know, big companies, executives working closely with the U S military and having the kind of technology that’s actually useful for them. This is a region that saw itself as liberal, progressive, independent, connecting the world. That was a big motto. This idea that it was really international and it was about the good of all humankind, and not something that was specifically wedded to kind of an American patriotism. There’ve been figures, there’ve been characters, there’s been companies that have been public about their want and their need to work with the U.S. Government, but as much as a decade ago, there was widespread protests across Silicon Valley by the employee base at the idea of working closely with the government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:12] Yeah, don’t be evil, right, as Google used to say. And I’m thinking, you mentioned the protests, I’m thinking back to 2018 and Google when there were these mass protests by employees there around Google’s involvement in a Pentagon program, right? Can you just remind me of that era of Google, of this like don’t-be-evil sort of motto?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:03:38] That was an era where people came to work at Google, they would graduate from the top universities in the United States. And as people in their early 20s, they saw it as this just really sort of do good, do positive things for the world kind of company. And executives fed into it, this idea of it’s bottom-up kind of culture and we listen to every employee and if you guys protest, we want to hear about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>News clip \u003c/strong>[00:04:03] A letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai is signed by more than 3,000 Google workers. Here’s what it says, quote, we believe Google should not be in the business of war, therefore we ask that Project Maven be canceled and that Google draft publicize.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:04:18] And so when Google employees came out en masse and said they did not want executives to pursue a contract with the U.S. Government with the Pentagon, executives listened and they backed down. And you saw employees at smaller companies across Silicon Valley taking note.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:04:31] And I remember the protests not just being effective in stopping the collaboration with this program but it literally became policy at Google to not pursue contracts with the US Military right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:04:50] Three of the the biggest companies, Meta, OpenAI, and Google, all changed their terms of service so that they would not work with the U.S. Government and that specifically their AI technology wouldn’t be used to help build defense systems. It was literally, we’re going to create policy so that our systems can’t be used for defense or for military purposes. That’s how strongly these executives doubled down on what their employees were asking for.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:16] Around this time, Sheera, is it fair to say that everyone in tech was pretty much against military contracts?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:05:24] I wouldn’t say everyone because you had outliers. You had companies like Palantir, who was very outspoken about their work with the US government. They, in fact, sued the army to get a contract because they were so keen on being a tech company that was very out, very public, very aggressive about wanting to be a tech companies that worked with the U.S. Military.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alex Karp \u003c/strong>[00:05:47] And while there, you had the idea for Palantir? Yeah, well, you know, post 9-11, I think the idea, again, it was Silicon Valley ought to be involved in fighting terrorism and protecting our civil liberties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:05:59] Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, talks about the importance of working with the government all the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alex Karp \u003c/strong>[00:06:05] We are kind of the greatest democracy in the world, and we tend to win wars where the people believe in what they’re doing. Where the people think that there’s a trade-off between civil liberties and fighting cyber terrorists, it’s going to be very hard to win.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:06:17] I just remember how clear it was that they were outliers at that time to what the rest of kind of the Silicon Valley companies were feeling and doing and saying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:06:31] And for folks who maybe aren’t as familiar with Palantir, what do they do?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:06:35] Palantire is a funny company in that they had a certain mysterious aura around them for a long time, and I think they encouraged that by not saying much about what they did. They build systems. They build data systems that can analyze data, that can process it, that can draw conclusions. For instance, they work across the U.S. Federal government, and they’ll come into a place and say, right, here is all the data you sit on. We are not just going to organize it for you, we’re going to make it easy for you visualize it, to analyze it, our AI will draw conclusions. So for a long time, they were used by police departments, for instance, or they were used by different intelligence services to help look at their own data and sort of be able to understand it, even if you were not necessarily a technically minded person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:07:23] I guess we’re talking now because, as you’re just talking about, Palantir was sort of this outlier among tech companies, really among one of the only ones really working closely with the U.S. Military, but increasingly they’re someone that other tech companies are becoming more and more jealous of these days, it seems like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:07:44] Yeah, it’s really interesting. It’s come full circle. All these tech companies that, you know, stepped away from the US government are now looking at Palantir’s incredibly lucrative contracts across the US Government. Each one of these contracts can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And once you are working with the US government, they’re pretty faithful as clients. So you’re looking at these contracts that are going to give you amazing revenue year after year. And they want to work with American companies. They seek out American companies. And so I’ve heard some pretty senior executives at Meta and at Google say quite plainly, like, we’re jealous. We wish we were in there sooner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:08:26] What exactly has changed here? Like, how did a company like Google go from don’t be evil to now attempting, it looks like, to pursue contracts with the US military? Like, what is this change?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:08:39] I think an executive at Google would say, well, we’ve rethought what it looks like to be evil. A couple things have happened in the last five years or so that have shifted their view. I think primarily the war in Ukraine, seeing the way that Russia and Ukraine have been fighting that war has really mobilized a lot of American executives into thinking that the US Army is not ready to fight the kind of wars that get fought now. Tanks and fighter jets and all that are always going to be part of the U.S. Military. But the way that drone warfare has shifted things, the way the AI systems have shifted both the way militaries collect intelligence and choose targets and select how to act, all of that is not possible without the kind of technical companies and expertise you have in Silicon Valley. And so there’s this sense of like, oh, well, if America goes to war and we’re they’re helping, we may not win. We also have seen a really radically shifting political climate in Silicon Valley. More and more executives have openly expressed support of Donald Trump and his administration. You hear a lot of people out here being like, well, I may not agree with everything that Trump does, but he’s good for business and he’s good for this. And you hear that kind of thing more and more. And so you have a certain willingness of executives to kind of come out and say, I want to work with Trump. I think it’s positive for me and my company to work with him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:10:25] I also have to imagine that money plays a big role here. You mentioned how many of these military contracts have a pretty big price tag on them. I mean, what role do you think that plays? And I know the president too has pledged to spend a lot more on the military.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:10:45] Trump wants to put into place budgets that are going to see a lot of money flowing to the kind of new technology that Silicon Valley can produce. And so if you’re an executive out here, and not to name names, but you’ve decided to rename your company Meta because you think the Metaverse is the future. And then people are kind of like, well, I don’t know if I want to live in the Metaverse. I’m not sure that I want AR and VR goggles. And then the US military comes around and they’re like, Well, we’ll buy half a billion dollars worth of VR goggles because we want to train our soldiers on how to fight in war by putting them through battle scenarios. And suddenly, suddenly there’s a reason to name your company Meta. Suddenly there’s an actual client that wants to buy all that. And so it makes a lot of business sense for these companies to be in this way, and finding military applications for the technology they’ve been working on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:11:37] Yeah, you just mentioned Meta and these AR VR goggles. I mean, what are some examples, I guess, of this shift that is happening in Silicon Valley? And I guess what specifically to our tech executives saying?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:11:53] You hear a lot of pride among tech executives that they’re working this closely with the U.S. Government, I like to look at their Instagram or their threads or their X pages because you can tell a lot by what they post. And if you look at them over the last, I’d say, year or so, you’re seeing a lot of like American flags flying in the background of posts. You’re seeing lot of posting about how great America is and how proud they are to be Americans doing business in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Altman \u003c/strong>[00:12:22] Of course, we have to and are proud to and really want to engage in national security areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:12:29] Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has started talking about the importance of working with the U.S. Government just in the last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Altman \u003c/strong>[00:12:36] Part of AI to benefit all of humanity very clearly involves supporting the US and our allies to uphold democratic values around the world and to keep us safe. And this is like an integral part of our mission. This is not some side quest that maybe we think about at some point.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:12:55] That’s a shift, and it’s really noticeable among the top executives. That’s something you’re really seeing at the top, and I think there is a gulf here between what executives are saying and posting and feeling about all this, and what the workforce is feeling about the direction that their companies are taking. You’ve also seen a lot of contracts signed. You’ve seen companies like OpenAI partnering with Andrel to use their AI technology to create weapons of the future. The question now isn’t whether the US is going to have autonomous weapons. It’s when will the US have autonomous weapons, and how quickly will companies like Google, or OpenAI, or Microsoft be able to use and pivot their AI technology to create these weapons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:46] I mean, this is making me think about Google back in 2018, as we were talking about earlier, and the role that the employees at these companies played in pushing back against this working with the US military. Are we seeing that same kind of pushback by tech employees in Silicon Valley now?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:14:08] We are not seeing the kind of loud public pushback that we saw a little less than a decade ago. I spoke to quite a few engineers and employees at tech companies that are working with the U.S. Government who are worried. They’re sitting there and going, well, I joined this company because I believed in the ethos of connecting the world or do no evil. And now, I don’t know, I might be building an AI system that helps choose bombing targets faster for some future war, in which were you know, launching aerial strikes. I just think there’s this interesting moment where a lot of these people are asking themselves, do I feel good about the work I’m doing? But they’re doing it quietly, to be clear, because the last few years have seen a lot of layoffs across the big companies. And a lot of these people are worried for their jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:14:57] And we’ve seen that over the issue of Israel and Palestine, for example, at some of these tech companies, right? That there is real pushback happening now from the top.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:15:08] Very much so. And a couple of the employees I spoke to looked specifically at Gaza as an example of a very AI driven war. I’ve written about this a lot about the systems that Israel built to be able to choose more targets to strike, to be to analyze intelligence quickly, to, you know, the facial recognition software that they’re deploying to use across Gaza. All of this are the kinds of systems that America is thinking about building. And you’re an employee, you’re looking at and you’re saying, is that the future of war?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:15:40] I mean, Sheera, there’s obviously this moral opposition here. But I mean are there any other reasons why this collaboration between Silicon Valley and the US military is a maybe concerning trend? I mean I’m thinking about this technology and its use for surveillance in the US potentially even. I mean what are the other concerns around this?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:16:08] I think the concerns are that you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Technology can introduce different levels of surveillance that the US government can then choose to use as it wants to, right? And so there’s questions of how much more of a surveillance state does the US become. There are questions of, again, autonomous weapons. And every soldier I’ve met has talked about how the introduction of autonomous weapons removes one layer of humanity in war and that when it is robots firing at robots, it’s a very different war. And so there are people out there that are asking these questions of, do we want all these autonomous systems? What does that mean? Are we just making killing easier in the next conflict? And so, yes, anytime a technology is introduced, I think there’s a rush to kind of embrace that new technology. And then often a little like a beat later, like some would say a moment too late, there’s the question of, is this good?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:17:14] Well, Sheera, thank you so much for sharing your reporting with us.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:00:00] I’m Jessica Kariisa, and welcome to The Bay, local news to keep you rooted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ambi \u003c/strong>[00:00:05] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Army Jacket Ceremony and the Commissioning Ceremony for Detachment 201.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:00:13] In June of this year, four current and former executives from Meta, OpenAI, and Palantir took center stage at a ceremony at the Joint Base Meyer Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia. Wearing combat gear and boots, the executives were there for their swearing-in ceremony as Lieutenant Colonels in Detachment 201. A new unit to advise the Army on new technology for use in combat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ambi \u003c/strong>[00:00:45] In an era defined by information warfare, automation, and digital disruption, the army needs skilled technologists in its ranks now more than ever.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:00:58] Big tech has embraced the U.S. Military. It’s a dramatic shift from just a decade ago when most of Silicon Valley was firmly against helping the government wage war. These days, tech executives are singing a different tune.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:01:14] You’re seeing a lot of posting about how great America is and how proud they are to be Americans doing business in America. That’s a shift and it’s really noticeable among the top executives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:01:30] Today, Sheera Frenkel from The New York Times talks with The Bay’s host, Ericka Cruz Guevarra, about how Silicon Valley changed its mind on working with the military.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:51] Sheera, I guess how might you describe how tight Silicon Valley and the U.S. Government and U. S. Military in particular are these days?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:02:01] We are in a moment of exceptional closeness between the U.S. government and Silicon Valley, and that is really unusual. Silicon Valley had its origins with funding from the U.S. Government. But until now, there has not been this kind of widespread across the board move of Silicon Valley, you know, big companies, executives working closely with the U S military and having the kind of technology that’s actually useful for them. This is a region that saw itself as liberal, progressive, independent, connecting the world. That was a big motto. This idea that it was really international and it was about the good of all humankind, and not something that was specifically wedded to kind of an American patriotism. There’ve been figures, there’ve been characters, there’s been companies that have been public about their want and their need to work with the U.S. Government, but as much as a decade ago, there was widespread protests across Silicon Valley by the employee base at the idea of working closely with the government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:12] Yeah, don’t be evil, right, as Google used to say. And I’m thinking, you mentioned the protests, I’m thinking back to 2018 and Google when there were these mass protests by employees there around Google’s involvement in a Pentagon program, right? Can you just remind me of that era of Google, of this like don’t-be-evil sort of motto?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:03:38] That was an era where people came to work at Google, they would graduate from the top universities in the United States. And as people in their early 20s, they saw it as this just really sort of do good, do positive things for the world kind of company. And executives fed into it, this idea of it’s bottom-up kind of culture and we listen to every employee and if you guys protest, we want to hear about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>News clip \u003c/strong>[00:04:03] A letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai is signed by more than 3,000 Google workers. Here’s what it says, quote, we believe Google should not be in the business of war, therefore we ask that Project Maven be canceled and that Google draft publicize.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:04:18] And so when Google employees came out en masse and said they did not want executives to pursue a contract with the U.S. Government with the Pentagon, executives listened and they backed down. And you saw employees at smaller companies across Silicon Valley taking note.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:04:31] And I remember the protests not just being effective in stopping the collaboration with this program but it literally became policy at Google to not pursue contracts with the US Military right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:04:50] Three of the the biggest companies, Meta, OpenAI, and Google, all changed their terms of service so that they would not work with the U.S. Government and that specifically their AI technology wouldn’t be used to help build defense systems. It was literally, we’re going to create policy so that our systems can’t be used for defense or for military purposes. That’s how strongly these executives doubled down on what their employees were asking for.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:16] Around this time, Sheera, is it fair to say that everyone in tech was pretty much against military contracts?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:05:24] I wouldn’t say everyone because you had outliers. You had companies like Palantir, who was very outspoken about their work with the US government. They, in fact, sued the army to get a contract because they were so keen on being a tech company that was very out, very public, very aggressive about wanting to be a tech companies that worked with the U.S. Military.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alex Karp \u003c/strong>[00:05:47] And while there, you had the idea for Palantir? Yeah, well, you know, post 9-11, I think the idea, again, it was Silicon Valley ought to be involved in fighting terrorism and protecting our civil liberties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:05:59] Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, talks about the importance of working with the government all the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alex Karp \u003c/strong>[00:06:05] We are kind of the greatest democracy in the world, and we tend to win wars where the people believe in what they’re doing. Where the people think that there’s a trade-off between civil liberties and fighting cyber terrorists, it’s going to be very hard to win.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:06:17] I just remember how clear it was that they were outliers at that time to what the rest of kind of the Silicon Valley companies were feeling and doing and saying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:06:31] And for folks who maybe aren’t as familiar with Palantir, what do they do?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:06:35] Palantire is a funny company in that they had a certain mysterious aura around them for a long time, and I think they encouraged that by not saying much about what they did. They build systems. They build data systems that can analyze data, that can process it, that can draw conclusions. For instance, they work across the U.S. Federal government, and they’ll come into a place and say, right, here is all the data you sit on. We are not just going to organize it for you, we’re going to make it easy for you visualize it, to analyze it, our AI will draw conclusions. So for a long time, they were used by police departments, for instance, or they were used by different intelligence services to help look at their own data and sort of be able to understand it, even if you were not necessarily a technically minded person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:07:23] I guess we’re talking now because, as you’re just talking about, Palantir was sort of this outlier among tech companies, really among one of the only ones really working closely with the U.S. Military, but increasingly they’re someone that other tech companies are becoming more and more jealous of these days, it seems like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:07:44] Yeah, it’s really interesting. It’s come full circle. All these tech companies that, you know, stepped away from the US government are now looking at Palantir’s incredibly lucrative contracts across the US Government. Each one of these contracts can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And once you are working with the US government, they’re pretty faithful as clients. So you’re looking at these contracts that are going to give you amazing revenue year after year. And they want to work with American companies. They seek out American companies. And so I’ve heard some pretty senior executives at Meta and at Google say quite plainly, like, we’re jealous. We wish we were in there sooner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:08:26] What exactly has changed here? Like, how did a company like Google go from don’t be evil to now attempting, it looks like, to pursue contracts with the US military? Like, what is this change?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:08:39] I think an executive at Google would say, well, we’ve rethought what it looks like to be evil. A couple things have happened in the last five years or so that have shifted their view. I think primarily the war in Ukraine, seeing the way that Russia and Ukraine have been fighting that war has really mobilized a lot of American executives into thinking that the US Army is not ready to fight the kind of wars that get fought now. Tanks and fighter jets and all that are always going to be part of the U.S. Military. But the way that drone warfare has shifted things, the way the AI systems have shifted both the way militaries collect intelligence and choose targets and select how to act, all of that is not possible without the kind of technical companies and expertise you have in Silicon Valley. And so there’s this sense of like, oh, well, if America goes to war and we’re they’re helping, we may not win. We also have seen a really radically shifting political climate in Silicon Valley. More and more executives have openly expressed support of Donald Trump and his administration. You hear a lot of people out here being like, well, I may not agree with everything that Trump does, but he’s good for business and he’s good for this. And you hear that kind of thing more and more. And so you have a certain willingness of executives to kind of come out and say, I want to work with Trump. I think it’s positive for me and my company to work with him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:10:25] I also have to imagine that money plays a big role here. You mentioned how many of these military contracts have a pretty big price tag on them. I mean, what role do you think that plays? And I know the president too has pledged to spend a lot more on the military.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:10:45] Trump wants to put into place budgets that are going to see a lot of money flowing to the kind of new technology that Silicon Valley can produce. And so if you’re an executive out here, and not to name names, but you’ve decided to rename your company Meta because you think the Metaverse is the future. And then people are kind of like, well, I don’t know if I want to live in the Metaverse. I’m not sure that I want AR and VR goggles. And then the US military comes around and they’re like, Well, we’ll buy half a billion dollars worth of VR goggles because we want to train our soldiers on how to fight in war by putting them through battle scenarios. And suddenly, suddenly there’s a reason to name your company Meta. Suddenly there’s an actual client that wants to buy all that. And so it makes a lot of business sense for these companies to be in this way, and finding military applications for the technology they’ve been working on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:11:37] Yeah, you just mentioned Meta and these AR VR goggles. I mean, what are some examples, I guess, of this shift that is happening in Silicon Valley? And I guess what specifically to our tech executives saying?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:11:53] You hear a lot of pride among tech executives that they’re working this closely with the U.S. Government, I like to look at their Instagram or their threads or their X pages because you can tell a lot by what they post. And if you look at them over the last, I’d say, year or so, you’re seeing a lot of like American flags flying in the background of posts. You’re seeing lot of posting about how great America is and how proud they are to be Americans doing business in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Altman \u003c/strong>[00:12:22] Of course, we have to and are proud to and really want to engage in national security areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:12:29] Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has started talking about the importance of working with the U.S. Government just in the last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Altman \u003c/strong>[00:12:36] Part of AI to benefit all of humanity very clearly involves supporting the US and our allies to uphold democratic values around the world and to keep us safe. And this is like an integral part of our mission. This is not some side quest that maybe we think about at some point.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:12:55] That’s a shift, and it’s really noticeable among the top executives. That’s something you’re really seeing at the top, and I think there is a gulf here between what executives are saying and posting and feeling about all this, and what the workforce is feeling about the direction that their companies are taking. You’ve also seen a lot of contracts signed. You’ve seen companies like OpenAI partnering with Andrel to use their AI technology to create weapons of the future. The question now isn’t whether the US is going to have autonomous weapons. It’s when will the US have autonomous weapons, and how quickly will companies like Google, or OpenAI, or Microsoft be able to use and pivot their AI technology to create these weapons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:46] I mean, this is making me think about Google back in 2018, as we were talking about earlier, and the role that the employees at these companies played in pushing back against this working with the US military. Are we seeing that same kind of pushback by tech employees in Silicon Valley now?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:14:08] We are not seeing the kind of loud public pushback that we saw a little less than a decade ago. I spoke to quite a few engineers and employees at tech companies that are working with the U.S. Government who are worried. They’re sitting there and going, well, I joined this company because I believed in the ethos of connecting the world or do no evil. And now, I don’t know, I might be building an AI system that helps choose bombing targets faster for some future war, in which were you know, launching aerial strikes. I just think there’s this interesting moment where a lot of these people are asking themselves, do I feel good about the work I’m doing? But they’re doing it quietly, to be clear, because the last few years have seen a lot of layoffs across the big companies. And a lot of these people are worried for their jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:14:57] And we’ve seen that over the issue of Israel and Palestine, for example, at some of these tech companies, right? That there is real pushback happening now from the top.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:15:08] Very much so. And a couple of the employees I spoke to looked specifically at Gaza as an example of a very AI driven war. I’ve written about this a lot about the systems that Israel built to be able to choose more targets to strike, to be to analyze intelligence quickly, to, you know, the facial recognition software that they’re deploying to use across Gaza. All of this are the kinds of systems that America is thinking about building. And you’re an employee, you’re looking at and you’re saying, is that the future of war?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:15:40] I mean, Sheera, there’s obviously this moral opposition here. But I mean are there any other reasons why this collaboration between Silicon Valley and the US military is a maybe concerning trend? I mean I’m thinking about this technology and its use for surveillance in the US potentially even. I mean what are the other concerns around this?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sheera Frenkel \u003c/strong>[00:16:08] I think the concerns are that you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Technology can introduce different levels of surveillance that the US government can then choose to use as it wants to, right? And so there’s questions of how much more of a surveillance state does the US become. There are questions of, again, autonomous weapons. And every soldier I’ve met has talked about how the introduction of autonomous weapons removes one layer of humanity in war and that when it is robots firing at robots, it’s a very different war. And so there are people out there that are asking these questions of, do we want all these autonomous systems? What does that mean? Are we just making killing easier in the next conflict? And so, yes, anytime a technology is introduced, I think there’s a rush to kind of embrace that new technology. And then often a little like a beat later, like some would say a moment too late, there’s the question of, is this good?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:17:14] Well, Sheera, thank you so much for sharing your reporting with us.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "‘Not Even AI Can Save Me’: Students and Teachers on ChatGPT in the Classroom",
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"headTitle": "‘Not Even AI Can Save Me’: Students and Teachers on ChatGPT in the Classroom | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>Artificial intelligence inside California schools feels a lot like building the plane as it’s flying. Students who are familiar with tools like ChatGPT are using it faster than teachers and administrators can regulate it. Jesse Dukes, co-host of the Homework Machine podcast, talked with dozens of students and teachers across the country about their thoughts on AI in the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC8258569586&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Links:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.teachlabpodcast.com/\">TeachLab Presents: The Homework Machine\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:28] It does feel like AI is sort of everywhere now, including in classrooms. Is that pretty accurate? Is it safe to say that AI is just everywhere?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:01:44] It depends what you mean by AI, right? I mean, if we’re talking about generative AI, which is, you know, chat GPT in this generation of AI, it’s certainly made its way into schools. When you’re talking about what do students use, either in ways that their teachers approve of or in ways their teachers disapprove of, it’s gonna be like chat GPT, I would say like 90% of the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:15] Well, I mean, you’re in the thick of it in a sense because you did a bunch of interviews with both teachers and students for this story. And I know you met a student named Emilia. Can you tell me a little bit about Emila? Who is she and where is she from?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:02:32] So I talked to a student named Emilia who asked to stay anonymous. She’s from somewhere in Northern California and she was a senior last school year when I spoke with her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emilia \u003c/strong>[00:02:48] My schedule is from 8.30 to 5 being at school and then from 5 to 6 I have soccer. So it’s just like I love being at school. I don’t like being at my house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:03:01] She says that she likes to learn too. And she actually, when I was asking her, do you see students using AI to do their schoolwork or do their homework, she said she did and expressed some disapproval of that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emilia \u003c/strong>[00:03:17] You’re not learning. You’re just learning how to copy and paste. Why would schools be invented then? Or like, why would we come to school? Or like it just like, it just applied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:03:30] And she also described herself as somebody who really likes writing as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:34] Okay, so she sounds a little bit like a rule follower.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:03:37] Yeah, usually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:39] That is until she it seems hit a wall with one of her classes. What happened?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:03:49] There was a teacher who I believe was new to the school, an English teacher, so somebody who didn’t know her, and Emilia said that when she was turning in writing assignments, the teacher just didn’t seem to like her writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emilia \u003c/strong>[00:04:03] All the essays that we have been doing. She has given me either a C. Or an F.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:04:10] And Emilia found that confusing because, you know, as I mentioned, she thought of herself as a good writer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emilia \u003c/strong>[00:04:15] I actually took a college class with a professor in UC Berkeley and I never had these type of like, your writing sucks, uni, so much and so much. I always had A’s in that class and the professor even liked so many of my writings. I was just like, how am I getting A’s, in my college classes, and with you, I’m getting F’s and C’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:04:42] She’s in the class, she’s frustrated, and she keeps getting grades she doesn’t like on writing assignments and one time there’s an in-class extra credit assignment. So it’s sort of low stakes, right? You’re not gonna get a bad grade if you don’t do a good job. And she thinks, I don’t know, I wonder what will happen if I get ChatGPT to do this for me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emilia \u003c/strong>[00:05:04] Yeah, I mean, I could just write it myself, but I was just so tired, I was like, I’m just AI-ing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:05:15] So she gave it a try. And then apparently her teacher was able to detect that she had used ChatGPT. And so then Emilia got this message, I believe it was in Google Chat, that essentially said, I don’t think this is your work and you’re not gonna get any extra credit. And if you wanna dispute that, you can come talk to me. But Amelia didn’t dispute that because she knew that the teacher was correct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emilia \u003c/strong>[00:05:42] That was like my whole jaw dropped and I was like not even AI can save me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:05:48] She had this kind of pit of the stomach moment, as many of us would when you get caught doing something embarrassing or against the rules and maybe something that in Amelia’s case goes against her own values.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:06:00] Totally, totally. I’m just thinking like how I was as a student, that’s like my worst nightmare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:06:05] Yeah, no, I get a little bit of a shiver just thinking about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:06:09] I think I can easily imagine how a student might use ChatGPT for like a social science class or an English class, but how can it be used for maybe like a math or science class?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:06:21] It’s pretty good at math. You can just transcribe the math problem into ChatGPT, but there’s also something called Photomath. Have you seen Photometh? Which is an app that integrates the phone’s camera and you can just hold Photomoth above the math problem, even if it’s hand written and it will solve it for you and output an answer. And it even works with word problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:06:46] I gotta say, as someone who is not good at math, I might have been tempted by that as a student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:06:53] It’s very tempting. So Justin, my co-host, tells a story about how he was helping his 14-year-old daughter with her math homework, and they were both stuck. And the daughter just whipped out her phone and put it into photo math, and they used it to figure out how to solve that problem. Now, according to Justin, then they put the phone away and tried to do the rest of the problems without using photo math. And actually, this use case I just described to you, I think this is a classic gray area, if you’re stuck in your homework. Many teachers say you can use resources. Can you use photo math as a resource or ChatGPT as a research to figure out how to solve the math problem, particularly if you then put it away and solve the rest of them using your own brain? It’s a little bit unclear right now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:07:36] I want to talk more, Jesse, about some of the conversations you had with educators. You spoke to dozens of educators about how they’re feeling about AI. And I feel like whenever I hear conversations about AI in classrooms, the main concern is always, as we’ve been talking about, this idea of cheating. But what are some of other concerns that you heard from educators about AI right now?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:08:03] Cheating is probably the biggest one. One of the major concerns around cheating is, you know, there’s this sort of ethical concern, but there’s also the concern that if the student is using AI to do their homework, they’re bypassing the learning that the teacher is trying to get them engaged in. They’re bypassed the thinking. Other concerns, will what we’re trying to do… To keep students from cheating end up having its own harm? Are we going to punish students unfairly or harshly who are suspected of AI cheating? Is that discipline going to be unfair or inequitable in some ways? There are concerns among teachers that teachers might be replaced by AI. I don’t think that is imminent, but there are a number of pilot programs of AI-powered tutors right now. And then I think there’s a concern, this sort of existential concern about, are we teaching students what they are going to need to be successful in an uncertain future that may very well have more AI in it? It’s an age old question. Are we teaching the right things in schools? And AI has exacerbated that question.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:09:21] And you mentioned earlier this idea of disciplining students and how to discipline students for using AI, which feels tied to what policies schools have around AI and whether those even exist. I mean, are there policies around AI for schools in California?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:09:41] It’s really school by school, district by district. We did a survey with the RAND Corporation that found that in early 2024, so about a year ago, only about one in four teachers said their schools had an AI policy or had gotten any AI guidance. Both the teachers and the students are saying it can be a little bit confusing what counts as a responsible use of AI by a student and what counts is cheating. If we did that survey again now, we’re now in the fall of 2025, I suspect that more schools do have policies written. More schools have probably had these conversations about how do we want our students to use AI responsibly? What kind of guidance do we wanna give our students? What do we consider cheating? But it’s taken a while.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sara Falls \u003c/strong>[00:10:37] AI keeps changing and keeps getting better and keeps more and more tempting and more and accessible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:10:46] Sara Falls is a veteran teacher, English teacher, who teaches at Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco. She’s been teaching there at least 20 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sara Falls \u003c/strong>[00:10:57] I trust a lot of my methodology, I trust a lot my processes. It’s not just about writing, it’s about thinking and I’m really good at helping kind of unpack and help students to think critically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:11:11] For her, AI has been kind of horrifying, seeing it come into school, seeing it coming to the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sara Falls \u003c/strong>[00:11:17] I’m starting to worry that the career I’ve built that’s really about deepening student critical thinking in order to create something meaningful is going to just go out the window. That people are going to say, my ability to think critically about this and write about it well does not matter. That, for me, is the biggest issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:11:39] Yeah, I mean, how did she see her students maybe using AI in the classroom and how did she get her school to address it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:11:47] She really wanted her school to adopt a kind of zero tolerance policy when it came to AI. And around that time, she reached out to the school district for guidance, and she said due to personnel issues and staffing issues, the person at the district level who would usually, whose job it would be to think about these things, that person’s job had been eliminated and not replaced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sara Falls \u003c/strong>[00:12:10] I would like to feel like SFUSD leaders recognize that this is a concern, and especially, again, as teachers of writing, what are we going to do about this? Where does it become a really useful tool versus it’s getting in the way of students’ ability to create and draft and revise meaningfully on their own?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:12:32] The district did have some guidance about AI, but it was pretty basic. So she thought we were just going to have to come up with our own guidance for the students. And so she started a process to write a responsible AI policy for her school, uh, roped in other members of the English department. They wrote a draft and they shared it with the rest of the school. And then my understanding is they went through some revision processes and then she presented it to her school’s leadership over the summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sara Falls \u003c/strong>[00:13:06] The first to do is some deterrence, trying to explain what the concerns are. It’s detrimental to the environment. It uses copyrighted works and is creative theft. If using Grammarly, be an active editor, don’t necessarily accept all the suggestions, their style isn’t always better. Google Translate, use it to look up words, but not, don’t write in one language and then run the entire text through Google Translate. Mostly what I wanted was to feel like We’re all sort of discussing this and deciding that this is a district-wide concern and let’s figure out how we’re going to move forward with it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:49] We’ll be right back with more from Jesse Duke’s co-host of the Homework Machine podcast right after this. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:14:05] So Sara is the sort of AI skeptic, it sounds like, but I know you did talk with some teachers who find it pretty helpful, actually. What did you hear from those teachers about positive uses of AI?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:14:22] Well, for one thing, you know, teachers are sort of even handed. So even the most skeptical teacher, you know, because they’re sort of like journalists in this way. You’re like, well, can you think of anything good about AI? They’ll usually come up with something, right? They’re like I used it to sort my students into their field trip groups. So there are these organizational tasks. I’ve had a number of teachers tell me that they use it to write their self-evaluations, which, gosh, there’s a lot to say about that. There are some teachers who describe uses of AI to really support learning in interesting ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Eric Timmons \u003c/strong>[00:15:00] I was reading about OpenAI and ChatGPT. And so I started playing with it. And like everybody else, I was like, well, this is pretty incredible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:15:10] So one of those enthusiasts was Eric Timmons, who is a film and English teacher at Santa Ana High School. He teaches film. His students are majority Latino, majority low income. And he talks about using AI to help him come up with kind of like teaching ideas and curriculum ideas. And I should say, he’s a veteran teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Eric Timmons \u003c/strong>[00:15:36] The part of our job that is sometimes cumbersome of like putting the curriculum together and all these plans and stuff like that, it makes it really fast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:15:43] He was giving his students an article to read about gentrification in Santa Ana. And, you know, this was an article he found. It wasn’t something the school had given him. So there were no discussion questions. There were no bridge activities. So he wanted to come up with some kind of in-class discussion framework. I was like, okay, let me try and apply ChatGPT and come up with a structure for this. So he asked ChatGpT to design some discussion questions He’s somebody who’s taken some classes from different curriculum designers. And he’s a fan of something called Project Zero. And they have a particular bridge activity framework that he likes. So he asked ChatGPT to design some discussion questions in accordance with that Project Zero’s bridge activity. And it sped out some questions for him. He kept the ones he liked, he got rid of the ones he didn’t think were gonna be very effective, and that gave him his in-class discussion activity, you know, in like two minutes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Eric Timmons \u003c/strong>[00:16:44] As a teacher there’s like sometimes a feeling of like well you know what like I’m not a curriculum designer like should I be going and doing all of this work for free you know um but at the end of the day it’s not going to happen so I have to do it right being able to work with the smartest curriculum designer that’s ever existed and have that at at my disposal is incredible\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:17:07] And I think one thing that, you know, my co-host Justin Reich, who’s a professor of education, would be very quick to point out probably is that there does seem to be a pattern that the teachers who use generative AI effectively often tend to be the veteran teachers who already probably could do the thing they’re asking chat GPT how to do. First of all, they’re able to know what to ask for in very, very specific terms. And they’re also. Able to evaluate what the AI bot gives them and keep the good and dispense with the part of that that’s less useful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:17:49] I’m wondering how myself and just people who are maybe seeing what’s happening in classrooms around the country and California, how we’re sort of supposed to make sense of all of this hype and this push around AI by our state leaders, by AI tech companies, and how we sort of square that with what you’ve heard from students and teachers and the People actually like living it in these classrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:18:20] I think we should all be a little bit skeptical of the idea that AI is going to transform and democratize education and do so quickly. And I think that we don’t really know what skills students are going to need in the future, even if there is way more AI in the workplace. And historically, we’ve not been very good at predicting what skills our students are going to need to succeed in a world that is being increasingly redefined and shaped by different technologies. But I think the absolute most important thing that schools need to be doing right now, and I’ve definitely heard this from teachers, is they need to creating space for the kinds of conversations between teachers, between teachers and students, between school leaders about what values they want to center when they are giving their students guidance about how to use AI responsibly. You know, what counts as responsible use of AI? What counts as cheating? There are gonna be people in the schools who disagree about that. And if they can bring students into those conversations, all the better. But too many schools haven’t really convened those conversations. They haven’t given their teachers the chance to discuss AI, responsible use of AI with one another. And what I’m hearing from teachers is that when they’ve had a chance to be exposed to a little bit of information about AI and to talk these things out with their colleagues, with students, with school leaders. At least they feel a lot more comfortable and they feel like they can work towards a framework for how to proceed in this pretty complicated and confusing moment.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Artificial intelligence inside California schools feels a lot like building the plane as it’s flying. Students who are familiar with tools like ChatGPT are using it faster than teachers and administrators can regulate it. Jesse Dukes, co-host of the Homework Machine podcast, talked with dozens of students and teachers across the country about their thoughts on AI in the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC8258569586&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Links:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.teachlabpodcast.com/\">TeachLab Presents: The Homework Machine\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:28] It does feel like AI is sort of everywhere now, including in classrooms. Is that pretty accurate? Is it safe to say that AI is just everywhere?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:01:44] It depends what you mean by AI, right? I mean, if we’re talking about generative AI, which is, you know, chat GPT in this generation of AI, it’s certainly made its way into schools. When you’re talking about what do students use, either in ways that their teachers approve of or in ways their teachers disapprove of, it’s gonna be like chat GPT, I would say like 90% of the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:15] Well, I mean, you’re in the thick of it in a sense because you did a bunch of interviews with both teachers and students for this story. And I know you met a student named Emilia. Can you tell me a little bit about Emila? Who is she and where is she from?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:02:32] So I talked to a student named Emilia who asked to stay anonymous. She’s from somewhere in Northern California and she was a senior last school year when I spoke with her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emilia \u003c/strong>[00:02:48] My schedule is from 8.30 to 5 being at school and then from 5 to 6 I have soccer. So it’s just like I love being at school. I don’t like being at my house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:03:01] She says that she likes to learn too. And she actually, when I was asking her, do you see students using AI to do their schoolwork or do their homework, she said she did and expressed some disapproval of that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emilia \u003c/strong>[00:03:17] You’re not learning. You’re just learning how to copy and paste. Why would schools be invented then? Or like, why would we come to school? Or like it just like, it just applied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:03:30] And she also described herself as somebody who really likes writing as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:34] Okay, so she sounds a little bit like a rule follower.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:03:37] Yeah, usually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:39] That is until she it seems hit a wall with one of her classes. What happened?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:03:49] There was a teacher who I believe was new to the school, an English teacher, so somebody who didn’t know her, and Emilia said that when she was turning in writing assignments, the teacher just didn’t seem to like her writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emilia \u003c/strong>[00:04:03] All the essays that we have been doing. She has given me either a C. Or an F.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:04:10] And Emilia found that confusing because, you know, as I mentioned, she thought of herself as a good writer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emilia \u003c/strong>[00:04:15] I actually took a college class with a professor in UC Berkeley and I never had these type of like, your writing sucks, uni, so much and so much. I always had A’s in that class and the professor even liked so many of my writings. I was just like, how am I getting A’s, in my college classes, and with you, I’m getting F’s and C’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:04:42] She’s in the class, she’s frustrated, and she keeps getting grades she doesn’t like on writing assignments and one time there’s an in-class extra credit assignment. So it’s sort of low stakes, right? You’re not gonna get a bad grade if you don’t do a good job. And she thinks, I don’t know, I wonder what will happen if I get ChatGPT to do this for me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emilia \u003c/strong>[00:05:04] Yeah, I mean, I could just write it myself, but I was just so tired, I was like, I’m just AI-ing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:05:15] So she gave it a try. And then apparently her teacher was able to detect that she had used ChatGPT. And so then Emilia got this message, I believe it was in Google Chat, that essentially said, I don’t think this is your work and you’re not gonna get any extra credit. And if you wanna dispute that, you can come talk to me. But Amelia didn’t dispute that because she knew that the teacher was correct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emilia \u003c/strong>[00:05:42] That was like my whole jaw dropped and I was like not even AI can save me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:05:48] She had this kind of pit of the stomach moment, as many of us would when you get caught doing something embarrassing or against the rules and maybe something that in Amelia’s case goes against her own values.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:06:00] Totally, totally. I’m just thinking like how I was as a student, that’s like my worst nightmare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:06:05] Yeah, no, I get a little bit of a shiver just thinking about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:06:09] I think I can easily imagine how a student might use ChatGPT for like a social science class or an English class, but how can it be used for maybe like a math or science class?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:06:21] It’s pretty good at math. You can just transcribe the math problem into ChatGPT, but there’s also something called Photomath. Have you seen Photometh? Which is an app that integrates the phone’s camera and you can just hold Photomoth above the math problem, even if it’s hand written and it will solve it for you and output an answer. And it even works with word problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:06:46] I gotta say, as someone who is not good at math, I might have been tempted by that as a student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:06:53] It’s very tempting. So Justin, my co-host, tells a story about how he was helping his 14-year-old daughter with her math homework, and they were both stuck. And the daughter just whipped out her phone and put it into photo math, and they used it to figure out how to solve that problem. Now, according to Justin, then they put the phone away and tried to do the rest of the problems without using photo math. And actually, this use case I just described to you, I think this is a classic gray area, if you’re stuck in your homework. Many teachers say you can use resources. Can you use photo math as a resource or ChatGPT as a research to figure out how to solve the math problem, particularly if you then put it away and solve the rest of them using your own brain? It’s a little bit unclear right now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:07:36] I want to talk more, Jesse, about some of the conversations you had with educators. You spoke to dozens of educators about how they’re feeling about AI. And I feel like whenever I hear conversations about AI in classrooms, the main concern is always, as we’ve been talking about, this idea of cheating. But what are some of other concerns that you heard from educators about AI right now?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:08:03] Cheating is probably the biggest one. One of the major concerns around cheating is, you know, there’s this sort of ethical concern, but there’s also the concern that if the student is using AI to do their homework, they’re bypassing the learning that the teacher is trying to get them engaged in. They’re bypassed the thinking. Other concerns, will what we’re trying to do… To keep students from cheating end up having its own harm? Are we going to punish students unfairly or harshly who are suspected of AI cheating? Is that discipline going to be unfair or inequitable in some ways? There are concerns among teachers that teachers might be replaced by AI. I don’t think that is imminent, but there are a number of pilot programs of AI-powered tutors right now. And then I think there’s a concern, this sort of existential concern about, are we teaching students what they are going to need to be successful in an uncertain future that may very well have more AI in it? It’s an age old question. Are we teaching the right things in schools? And AI has exacerbated that question.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:09:21] And you mentioned earlier this idea of disciplining students and how to discipline students for using AI, which feels tied to what policies schools have around AI and whether those even exist. I mean, are there policies around AI for schools in California?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:09:41] It’s really school by school, district by district. We did a survey with the RAND Corporation that found that in early 2024, so about a year ago, only about one in four teachers said their schools had an AI policy or had gotten any AI guidance. Both the teachers and the students are saying it can be a little bit confusing what counts as a responsible use of AI by a student and what counts is cheating. If we did that survey again now, we’re now in the fall of 2025, I suspect that more schools do have policies written. More schools have probably had these conversations about how do we want our students to use AI responsibly? What kind of guidance do we wanna give our students? What do we consider cheating? But it’s taken a while.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sara Falls \u003c/strong>[00:10:37] AI keeps changing and keeps getting better and keeps more and more tempting and more and accessible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:10:46] Sara Falls is a veteran teacher, English teacher, who teaches at Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco. She’s been teaching there at least 20 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sara Falls \u003c/strong>[00:10:57] I trust a lot of my methodology, I trust a lot my processes. It’s not just about writing, it’s about thinking and I’m really good at helping kind of unpack and help students to think critically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:11:11] For her, AI has been kind of horrifying, seeing it come into school, seeing it coming to the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sara Falls \u003c/strong>[00:11:17] I’m starting to worry that the career I’ve built that’s really about deepening student critical thinking in order to create something meaningful is going to just go out the window. That people are going to say, my ability to think critically about this and write about it well does not matter. That, for me, is the biggest issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:11:39] Yeah, I mean, how did she see her students maybe using AI in the classroom and how did she get her school to address it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:11:47] She really wanted her school to adopt a kind of zero tolerance policy when it came to AI. And around that time, she reached out to the school district for guidance, and she said due to personnel issues and staffing issues, the person at the district level who would usually, whose job it would be to think about these things, that person’s job had been eliminated and not replaced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sara Falls \u003c/strong>[00:12:10] I would like to feel like SFUSD leaders recognize that this is a concern, and especially, again, as teachers of writing, what are we going to do about this? Where does it become a really useful tool versus it’s getting in the way of students’ ability to create and draft and revise meaningfully on their own?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:12:32] The district did have some guidance about AI, but it was pretty basic. So she thought we were just going to have to come up with our own guidance for the students. And so she started a process to write a responsible AI policy for her school, uh, roped in other members of the English department. They wrote a draft and they shared it with the rest of the school. And then my understanding is they went through some revision processes and then she presented it to her school’s leadership over the summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sara Falls \u003c/strong>[00:13:06] The first to do is some deterrence, trying to explain what the concerns are. It’s detrimental to the environment. It uses copyrighted works and is creative theft. If using Grammarly, be an active editor, don’t necessarily accept all the suggestions, their style isn’t always better. Google Translate, use it to look up words, but not, don’t write in one language and then run the entire text through Google Translate. Mostly what I wanted was to feel like We’re all sort of discussing this and deciding that this is a district-wide concern and let’s figure out how we’re going to move forward with it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:49] We’ll be right back with more from Jesse Duke’s co-host of the Homework Machine podcast right after this. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:14:05] So Sara is the sort of AI skeptic, it sounds like, but I know you did talk with some teachers who find it pretty helpful, actually. What did you hear from those teachers about positive uses of AI?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:14:22] Well, for one thing, you know, teachers are sort of even handed. So even the most skeptical teacher, you know, because they’re sort of like journalists in this way. You’re like, well, can you think of anything good about AI? They’ll usually come up with something, right? They’re like I used it to sort my students into their field trip groups. So there are these organizational tasks. I’ve had a number of teachers tell me that they use it to write their self-evaluations, which, gosh, there’s a lot to say about that. There are some teachers who describe uses of AI to really support learning in interesting ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Eric Timmons \u003c/strong>[00:15:00] I was reading about OpenAI and ChatGPT. And so I started playing with it. And like everybody else, I was like, well, this is pretty incredible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:15:10] So one of those enthusiasts was Eric Timmons, who is a film and English teacher at Santa Ana High School. He teaches film. His students are majority Latino, majority low income. And he talks about using AI to help him come up with kind of like teaching ideas and curriculum ideas. And I should say, he’s a veteran teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Eric Timmons \u003c/strong>[00:15:36] The part of our job that is sometimes cumbersome of like putting the curriculum together and all these plans and stuff like that, it makes it really fast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:15:43] He was giving his students an article to read about gentrification in Santa Ana. And, you know, this was an article he found. It wasn’t something the school had given him. So there were no discussion questions. There were no bridge activities. So he wanted to come up with some kind of in-class discussion framework. I was like, okay, let me try and apply ChatGPT and come up with a structure for this. So he asked ChatGpT to design some discussion questions He’s somebody who’s taken some classes from different curriculum designers. And he’s a fan of something called Project Zero. And they have a particular bridge activity framework that he likes. So he asked ChatGPT to design some discussion questions in accordance with that Project Zero’s bridge activity. And it sped out some questions for him. He kept the ones he liked, he got rid of the ones he didn’t think were gonna be very effective, and that gave him his in-class discussion activity, you know, in like two minutes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Eric Timmons \u003c/strong>[00:16:44] As a teacher there’s like sometimes a feeling of like well you know what like I’m not a curriculum designer like should I be going and doing all of this work for free you know um but at the end of the day it’s not going to happen so I have to do it right being able to work with the smartest curriculum designer that’s ever existed and have that at at my disposal is incredible\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:17:07] And I think one thing that, you know, my co-host Justin Reich, who’s a professor of education, would be very quick to point out probably is that there does seem to be a pattern that the teachers who use generative AI effectively often tend to be the veteran teachers who already probably could do the thing they’re asking chat GPT how to do. First of all, they’re able to know what to ask for in very, very specific terms. And they’re also. Able to evaluate what the AI bot gives them and keep the good and dispense with the part of that that’s less useful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:17:49] I’m wondering how myself and just people who are maybe seeing what’s happening in classrooms around the country and California, how we’re sort of supposed to make sense of all of this hype and this push around AI by our state leaders, by AI tech companies, and how we sort of square that with what you’ve heard from students and teachers and the People actually like living it in these classrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jesse Dukes \u003c/strong>[00:18:20] I think we should all be a little bit skeptical of the idea that AI is going to transform and democratize education and do so quickly. And I think that we don’t really know what skills students are going to need in the future, even if there is way more AI in the workplace. And historically, we’ve not been very good at predicting what skills our students are going to need to succeed in a world that is being increasingly redefined and shaped by different technologies. But I think the absolute most important thing that schools need to be doing right now, and I’ve definitely heard this from teachers, is they need to creating space for the kinds of conversations between teachers, between teachers and students, between school leaders about what values they want to center when they are giving their students guidance about how to use AI responsibly. You know, what counts as responsible use of AI? What counts as cheating? There are gonna be people in the schools who disagree about that. And if they can bring students into those conversations, all the better. But too many schools haven’t really convened those conversations. They haven’t given their teachers the chance to discuss AI, responsible use of AI with one another. And what I’m hearing from teachers is that when they’ve had a chance to be exposed to a little bit of information about AI and to talk these things out with their colleagues, with students, with school leaders. At least they feel a lot more comfortable and they feel like they can work towards a framework for how to proceed in this pretty complicated and confusing moment.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "teachers-strike-back-against-ai-cheating",
"title": "Teachers Strike Back Against AI Cheating",
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"headTitle": "Teachers Strike Back Against AI Cheating | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cheating in school isn’t new. But with AI making it easier than ever, teachers face a new challenge: where to draw the line and how to make sure students are still learning. In this episode, we’ll take a look at three different approaches educators are adopting to deal with AI in their classrooms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">First, Morgan sits down with Max Spero, CEO and co-founder of the AI detection company Pangram Labs, to discuss how detection tools should, and should not, be used in the classroom. Then, we hear from KQED reporter Marlena Jackson Retondo about the return of the iconic “blue books,” and the benefits of “analog” learning. Finally, Morgan calls up her cousin, Jeremy Na, who happens to be an English teacher in San Jose. He explains how he adapted his teaching style to focus on the process of learning, rather than a final grade — and why his method has kept AI out of his classroom (for the most part).\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC8041204001\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jeremy Na, Bay Area-based educator\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.pangram.com/about-us\">Max Spero\u003c/a>, founder of Pangram Labs \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/mjacksonretondo\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Marlena Jackson-Retondo\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, engagement producer and reporter for KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further reading/listening: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/openai-chatgpt-ai-cheating-education-college-students-school.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – James D. Walsh, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">NYMag\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/64992/taking-exams-in-blue-books-its-back-to-help-curb-ai-use-and-rampant-cheating\">Taking Exams in Blue Books? They’re Back to Help Curb AI Use and Rampant Cheating\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> –\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Marlena Jackson Retondo\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003ci>KQED’s Mindshift\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/business/chatgpt-ai-cheating-college-blue-books-5e3014a6\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They Were Every Student’s Worst Nightmare. Now Blue Books Are Back. \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">– Ben Cohen, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Wall Street Journal \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What are your thoughts on, on generative AI? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Generative AI is a fancy autocomplete, in my opinion. Trusting it is no different than trusting a magic 8-ball. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jeremy Na is a Bay Area High School English teacher. He’s a great teacher, and I know this because he’s my older cousin, and he spent a lot of his teenage years at my parents’ dining table as my math tutor. Let’s just say I wasn’t the most cooperative student. One of the first hurdles of his teaching career was probably getting me to understand basic algebra. The second, getting me to actually sit down and do my math homework. And now, like many teachers, he faces another challenge: AI in the classroom. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When my students tell me a lot about how they trust AI answers and stuff like that, I reference the SpongeBob episode where, you know, everyone in Bikini Bottom is trusting a magic conch shell to give them answers and decide their life. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>SpongeBob SquarePants: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh magic conch shell, what do we need to do to get out of the kelp forest? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>SpongeBob SquarePants: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Nothing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>SpongeBob SquarePants: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The shell has spoken! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think it’s a big scam. Or rather, I know it’s big scam because, you know, it just sucks up money and is burning the environment for nothing. That’s my personal view of generative AI. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So yeah, my cousin Jeremy, not a fan of AI. In recent years, the use of AI tools has been a major point of contention between students and teachers. Scroll through any social media platform and you’ll see students give tips for getting away with submitting AI essays. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TikTok: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I use ChatGPT, but this is the way to use ChatGPT and not get flagged for any plagiarism or anything like that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Teachers fretting about their students’ dependence on AI. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TikTok: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a nightmare that is destroying learning. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there are the students who don’t use AI but get dragged in anyway. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TikTok: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was falsely accused of using AI on my final paper last term, it was flagged as 60% AI. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In his nine years of teaching, my cousin Jeremy has seen his fair share of cheating attempts. His students have used ChatGBT since it launched about three years ago. But he quickly realized that his students were using it for more than just an academic shortcut. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They were asking me stuff like, Mr. Na, uh, how can I use AI to help me with this assignment? Or Mr. Na, you know, I was using AI the other day and it really helped me with X, Y, Z problem. At first, I thought these students were just kinda trolling cause like I thought to myself, there’s no way anyone would trust AI. This is the machines that like tell people to staple cheese to pizza to make it stick better. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Google AI actually recommended adding glue to pizza, but his point still stands. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But no, I realized soon enough that my students were like serious about trusting AI. And that’s when I realized, oh, my students, you know, they’ve fallen for the propaganda. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s still no consensus on the role of AI in education. Some teachers embrace it as a feature of their lesson plans. Others ban it from their classrooms entirely and blame AI for their students’ atrophied critical thinking skills. And at the center of this debate is a question that’s haunted educators throughout human history. What do we do about cheating? Now that everyone can carry little AI cheating machines in their pockets, AKA their phones, that debate has kicked into overdrive. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today’s episode is a little different, because instead of following one thread, this internet rabbit hole will take us down a few different paths. We’re going to look at three different approaches to curbing AI cheating in school. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Back when the internet was brand new, students suddenly had access to a virtually endless trove of information to copy and paste from. Academics needed a way to tell what was original and what was copied. So plagiarism detection was born. An entire industry dedicated to identifying and flagging stolen work. But with generative AI blowing up, checking for plagiarism isn’t enough. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">First up, a new tab. What’s up with AI detection? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To get into this, I called up Max Spero, co-founder and self-described chief slop janitor of Pangram Labs. Pangram is an AI detection tool that flags texts generated by all the major models like ChatGBT and Claude and Grok, and also detects AI-generated edits from tools like Grammarly. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Max Spero:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It could be an essay, it could be a review, it could a social media post. And then so we help people tell you like, yeah, what’s AI and what’s human. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cleaning up the slop. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Max Spero:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cleaning up the slop as they say. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Slop is the colloquial term for that low-quality, AI-generated content flooding the internet. Pangram didn’t start out as an educational tool. Max said that the company’s first customers were actually websites trying to detect and delete fake reviews. Pangram offered a free trial version of the tool on its website. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Max Spero:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But then we were looking at the signups and we kept on seeing signups from like EDU addresses, people who are putting in what’s clearly student papers and people are doing this like at huge volumes. They’re just pasting in like dozens of papers a day. And then, so I think we were realizing like, hey, there’s a much bigger market here on this consumer side as well, where we can help teachers out because this is clearly a big need. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Pangram’s detection works by showing its model two writing samples. The first, written by a human, and the second, similar but AI-generated. They do this over and over and again. The model learns to recognize the way humans write, and distinguish it from AI trying to replicate it. That’s how certain sentence structures or words like “delve” and “rich cultural tapestry”, or even, my beloved em-dash, became associated with AI writing. Humans use all of those features in writing, but AI models overuse them. They’re predictable. There’s a misconception that students can bypass detection tools by paraphrasing AI-generated writing. That may have been the case a few years ago, but detection tools are getting better. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Max Spero:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We found that you need to rewrite at least 30% to 40% of some text before it’ll come back as human written. So you really have to like rewrite a large portion of the text before you’re able to erase these signs of AI writing. At that point, you might as well just write your essay yourself. But in the end, like all of these tools, at Pangram and other AI detectors, we can still train on these, the outputs of these tools, so we can detect, not only does this look AI generated, but it also looks like it was run through a humanizer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s a program that rewrites AI-generated text to sound more, well, human. And of course, humanizers use AI to do that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Max Spero:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And that’s even more clearly a sign of acting in bad faith. Like this is a clear indication that no, you didn’t just like misunderstand that you weren’t allowed to use ChatGPT, but like you actually were actively cheating here. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s not impossible to bypass AI detection, but Max said that many AI detectors, including Pangram, can still flag humanized text as AI. He added that since these students are often trying to take the path of least resistance, the threat of detection could be enough to deter cheating. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Max Spero:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Adding a little bit of friction here goes a long way to helping put down these guardrails and say like, okay, fine, you know, if it’s not really easy for me to just use AI to generate my assignment, I’ll just do it myself. It’s not that bad. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some teachers have tried to AI-proof their assignments by adding a random prompt in white text, like “mention bananas in every paragraph.” The human eye can’t see the white text on a white digital background. If a student copies and pastes it into ChatGPT, they’ll get a generated essay that has nothing to do with the actual assignment, but a lot to do with bananas. It’s a dead giveaway that they used AI to complete the paper. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s also some confusion over what detection scores mean. A score of 60% doesn’t mean that 60% of the essay is AI-generated, it’s a confidence score. It means that the detection tool is 60% certain that the text it analyzed is AI generated, which is pretty far from certain. That’s why students who wrote completely original papers have been accused of cheating. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These AI-proofing hacks and the knee-jerk reaction to accuse students of using AI without hearing them out says a lot about the relationship between students and teachers right now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Max Spero:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think there’s a big problem in trust right now in education, especially because, um, the nature of it is so adversarial. I think like we really need to take a step back and realize that we have a shared goal. The goal is to get the student to learn. And I think a lot of this starts with like how we understand assignments. Like, teachers need to be very clear to students like, hey, these are the guardrails. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like you can use AI, for example, to do brainstorming or an outline, but don’t use AI to fully produce your assignment. Um, and similarly, once the student has like a very clear understanding of like, these are the guidelines, this is what I can and can’t do, um, then it’s easier for them to work together. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What’s your stance on teachers using Pangram to grade? Are AI detection tools like the end all be all? Can teachers rely on it completely? How do you best see Pangram being used in the grading process? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Max Spero:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s like really only the start. It is best used as a smoke detector to tell you, hey, something’s wrong. I should look into what’s going on here. I don’t think it’s appropriate to say like, hey, this AI detector flagged your work as AI, so I’m gonna give you a zero and then just like move on. I think that’s, that’s lazy and that doesn’t really turn the opportunity into a teaching moment. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Detection tools are just one part of a holistic grading process. Max added that some teachers integrate AI detection into their classroom platforms so that students can check themselves before they turn in their assignments. But other teachers are taking a wildly different approach. Instead of leaning into detection, they’re going back to the olden days. We’ll dive into the return of handwriting after this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re back. Let’s take a look at the next strategy teachers have employed to hold the line against AI. If you were in college before the pandemic started, you might remember this vintage classic. Okay, new tab. Back to blue books. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My colleague, Marlena Jackson-Retondo, is joining us for this part of our deep dive. Marlena has been reporting on AI and K through 12 education for MindShift, another KQED podcast about the future of learning. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I guess now we can say that blue books are an old-fashioned, in quotes, tool that, um, a lot of professors and high school teachers use to test students. And they’re used for a lot midterms and finals, and are an alternative to now what we know as, you know, digital testing tools. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ve used blue books. You’ve used blue books. I feel like it wasn’t that long ago that we were using blue books. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re not that old. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Blue books are exactly what they sound like. They’re little booklets with a baby blue cover and lined paper. They’ve been around since the 1920s and they’ve been a staple of written exams in high school and college. I still remember the absolute horror I felt my junior year of college when my pen exploded just as I finished my constitutional law final and I had to turn in a blue book covered in purple ink. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But blue books were phased out when the pandemic shut down schools in 2020. Everything involved in learning, from lessons to homework to exams, took place online. And then, late last year, Marlena saw a viral post from Jason Coupe, a professor in Atlanta. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And he was talking about using blue books, bringing them back to the classroom for his first midterm of that school year. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Can you talk about his reasoning behind moving to blue books? How did other teachers react to that? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He and a couple other professors in his department got together and discussed ways to mitigate cheating, use of AI, and also to reengage their students. When we spoke last year, there was a lot of discussion about really getting students to think on their feet, think critically, respond to questions in ways that they might in the real world. And he wasn’t seeing a lot of that in digital exams. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So this wasn’t just about cheating. It wasn’t just about AI. There was also that sense of reconnecting the students to the coursework. And it was a learning curve for a lot of students, um, as I’ve heard from multiple professors, but it went well, and a lot of folks will continue to, to use these blue books. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By 2024, you know, this is a generation of students that have spent at least four years, you know, learning digitally in some capacity. How did they respond to having to go back to handwriting? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, so a lot of Coupe’s students didn’t know what a blue book was. They had never taken a handwritten exam. They didn’t what to do with the blue book, where to write their name. So he had to teach them. And I remember him saying that it reminded him of his time in teaching in elementary school, um, having to really break down certain processes for students. But, you know, they learned, they took the exam by hand, and he and other professors noticed a difference right away. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Aside from deterring cheating, how else does prioritizing handwritten notes impact learning? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The research on handwriting is actually really interesting. I spoke with Sophia Vinci-Booher out of Vanderbilt University. She talked to me about handwriting in a really interesting way in that it creates these neural connections to what you’re learning. And this is what she called the visual motor learning system. So it’s combining these two systems, the motor system of handwriting and the visuals of learning something that might be written on the board or a PowerPoint, and it’s combining them and it’s reinforcing what you’re learning when you’re writing by hand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s been shown that the mode of taking notes, when it correlates with the mode of having to recall that information, like taking an exam. When those modes are synced, so let’s say there’s a student who takes notes by hand, and then they have to go and take an exam on a blue book, the recall is better that way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So essentially, students are “learning more”, that’s in big quotes, because obviously there are other factors involved in learning. But there’s better learning happening when the mode of note taking and recalling those notes is the same. So, you know, I think there’s a lot more research to look at and to be done, but there are certain benefits to writing by hand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And blue books are hot again. Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that blue book sales were up more than 30% at Texas A&M University and almost 50% at the University of Florida. At UC Berkeley, blue book sales shot up 80% over the past two years. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Of course, this return to our roots has its limits. Blue books are great for exams, but they’re not a realistic option for longer assignments like research papers. And neither approach we’ve covered so far, AI detection and blue books, addresses the core reasons students cheat. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s look at one final strategy in a new tab. The testmaxxing problem. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s go back to my cousin, Jeremy, who’s a high school English teacher in the Bay Area. We both grew up in New York City and went to very academically rigorous public high schools. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The standards of the time, this was in, you know, the early 2000s, was very much, let’s call it testmaxxing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In gaming, there’s this practice called minmaxxing — maximizing your stats with a minimal amount of effort. On the internet, adding maxing to the end of any word is kind of like a joke about optimizing. So by test maxing, Jeremy is referring to the way that students are encouraged to shape their whole approach to school around succeeding on tests instead of actually learning. He believes that’s the reason students cheat. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, when I became a teacher, I set out to make sure that like no one else has that same experience as I did that, you know, students don’t have this miserable high school experience where they’re treated like cattle, basically. Like you gotta you gotta get those numbers up. Your entire worth is decided by these numbers. Our society has placed a lot of importance on the end result of education rather than like education itself. What I mean by that is it’s more important what grade you get on the test than what you learned through the process before taking the test. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To counter the pressure of testmaxxing, Jeremy does things differently in his classroom. He never assigns homework. All the work, including reading and writing assignments, is done in the classroom. He does assign long-term projects, like essays, but he has his own way of AI-proofing them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This methodology, this pedagogy that I’ve developed is developed from shifting priorities away from the end result over into focusing on the process, right? So the fact that it’s inconvenient to use AI was just kind of like a happy little bonus. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He really does make it inconvenient to cheat in his classes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, I don’t see a lot of AI usage. It’s always like one or two out of my 150 students. And the reason I don’t see a lof of AI usage is because when we’re doing it, a long-term assignment like an essay, I make sure to break down that assignment into as many granular pieces as possible. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So for example, with my freshmen, ninth graders, when we were doing an essay I’ll often walk them through, not only like how to construct each paragraph, but how to construct like the parts of each paragraph. Like sometimes we’ll go sentence by sentence. In that scenario it would be kind of absurd to use AI, right? Because like Mr. Na is telling you, okay, write one sentence about your opinion on this part of the book, right. Why, why would you go ask Grok or ChatGPT opinion about the book when you can just write your own opinion in one sentence. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What is your classroom AI policy, even though, you know, you personally despise AI? Like do you use a detection tool for your students? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t use detection tools at all. I would not trust AI to tell me what the weather is. Why would I trust it to read student reports and, you know, analyze them? That’s absurd. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Despite his evident disdain for generative AI, my cousin doesn’t have the same zero tolerance policy that a lot of other teachers have. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t explicitly call out their paper for being AI. But what I will do is, you know, I’ll sit with them and be like, “You know, this, this paper’s got a lot of problems. This assignment that you wrote has lots of problems, like it’s, it’s overflowing with problems. I got to sit you down here and we got to talk for like 15 minutes. Sentence by sentence and deconstruct this essay to fix it.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I feel like in that scenario, students do learn like what’s wrong with using AI. Conceivably, they could learn to cheat better this way, but in my view, what they’re actually learning is that the assignment I’m asking them to do is not something outside of their capabilities. So yes, they are learning what the flaws of AI are, but they’re also learning that they are more capable than they might think. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Telling a teenager not to do something never works. Yeah. If you want a teenager to do something, right? If you want that horse to drink that water, you gotta make the water appealing. You gotta explain why it’s in their best interests not to so, right? They gotta come to that conclusion on their own. The downside is that this process takes a lot of time. So yes, I don’t get through many bucks throughout the school year, but I feel like the quality of the work and the learning that students receive is a lot better for that sacrifice. And I’m willing, I’m, I am willing to make that sacrifice \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I feel like on Reddit, I’m always seeing teachers and professors talk about the ways that they AI-proof their assignments, like adding white text to trip up the prompts or splitting up instructions into multiple documents so it’s really inconvenient to give it to ChatGPT. Have you and your colleagues tried any of these? What do you think about these, like, AI-proofing tricks? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think getting into a arms race with AI is unhelpful. So coming up with different ways to detect AI, and then AI comes up with ways of getting around that, you know, this arms race that you’re describing, I don’t see a point to engaging with it. If you want students to stop using AI, you got to address the core issue, right, rather than just constantly dealing with these symptoms like some absurd game of whack-a-mole. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As you might be able to tell, Jeremy feels pretty strongly about this. He believes that putting so much value on the final product, whether a final paper or a final test score, deprioritizes actual learning, overwhelms students, and incentivizes cheating. Still, he has to teach within the system that values end results. His students still have to take California’s standardized tests. But he said that prepping them for the annual state assessments doesn’t take that much time. For the rest of the school year, he can focus on breaking down assignments and, through that, developing their critical thinking skills. It’s not that grades don’t matter, but by focusing on actual learning, students feel less pressure to cheat. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Everyone is telling them to participate in this rat race, that they have to. That they have no choice but to participate in this rat race to climb to the top, you know. If they are learning, right? I tell students not to deride all of their self-worth from the numbers they get at school. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It seems like the larger question we’re trying to answer throughout the episode is how do you maintain that sense of trust between students and teachers when generative AI tools makes cheating so easy? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t think, say that like trust between student and teacher has eroded. I think it’s more that teachers are becoming more suspicious overall because the tools that they’ve developed in the past no longer work. Students using AI is not a sign of, I don’t know, like moral degeneracy, and the youth of today are worse than they have been in the past, no. But you know, students are cheating nowadays, just like students would have cheated back when I was in high school or when my parents were in high score when my grandparents were in high school. It’s not a sign of moral decay. It’s a sign of, I don’t know, of the downfall of Western civilization or nothing like that. It’s just a new chapter in the book that’s been written forever. Cheating. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s not just teachers trying to curb their students’ use of AI. Students are also upset with teachers for using ChatGPT to write lesson plans. In a New York Times report this year, students complained about their professors cheating them out of their tuition money, because in a way, it was ChatGpT teaching them. These issues have existed in education long before generative AI tools did. The existence and widespread use of AI just magnified them. Including this adversarial relationship between students and teachers. But in this scenario, teachers can set an example. If they don’t use AI, then maybe students won’t feel like they need to, either. Okay, now let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Hambrick. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Additional editing by Jen Chien, who is KQED’s Director of Podcasts. Our audio engineer is Brendan Willard.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Original music, including our theme song and credits, by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager and Ethan Toven-Lindsay is our Editor in Chief.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dustsilver K-84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron Red switches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, and I know it’s podcast cliche, but if you like these deep dives, and want us to keep making more, it would really help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Don’t forget to drop a comment and tell your friends, too. Or even your enemies! Or… frenemies? Your support is so important, especially in these unprecedented times. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate dot KQED.org/podcasts! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Also! We want to hear from you! Email us CloseAllTabs@kqed.org. Follow us on instagram @CloseAllTabsPod. Or TikTok @CloseAllTabs. And join our Discord — we’re in the Close All Tabs channel at discord.gg/KQED.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks for listening! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"title": "Teachers Strike Back Against AI Cheating | KQED",
"description": "Cheating in school isn’t new. But with AI making it easier than ever, teachers face a new challenge: where to draw the line, and how to make sure students are still learning. In this episode, we’ll take a look at three different approaches educators are adopting to deal with AI in their classrooms.First, Morgan sits down with Max Spero, founder of the AI detection company Pangram Labs, to discuss how detection tools should — and should not — be used in the classroom. Then, we hear from KQED reporter Marlena Jackson Retondo about the return of the iconic “blue books,” and the benefits of “analog” learning. Finally, Morgan calls up her cousin, Jeremy Na, who happens to be an English teacher in San Jose. He explains how he adapted his teaching style to focus on the process of learning, rather than a final grade — and why his method has kept AI out of his classroom (for the most part).",
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"socialDescription": "Cheating in school isn’t new. But with AI making it easier than ever, teachers face a new challenge: where to draw the line, and how to make sure students are still learning. In this episode, we’ll take a look at three different approaches educators are adopting to deal with AI in their classrooms.First, Morgan sits down with Max Spero, founder of the AI detection company Pangram Labs, to discuss how detection tools should — and should not — be used in the classroom. Then, we hear from KQED reporter Marlena Jackson Retondo about the return of the iconic “blue books,” and the benefits of “analog” learning. Finally, Morgan calls up her cousin, Jeremy Na, who happens to be an English teacher in San Jose. He explains how he adapted his teaching style to focus on the process of learning, rather than a final grade — and why his method has kept AI out of his classroom (for the most part).",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cheating in school isn’t new. But with AI making it easier than ever, teachers face a new challenge: where to draw the line and how to make sure students are still learning. In this episode, we’ll take a look at three different approaches educators are adopting to deal with AI in their classrooms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">First, Morgan sits down with Max Spero, CEO and co-founder of the AI detection company Pangram Labs, to discuss how detection tools should, and should not, be used in the classroom. Then, we hear from KQED reporter Marlena Jackson Retondo about the return of the iconic “blue books,” and the benefits of “analog” learning. Finally, Morgan calls up her cousin, Jeremy Na, who happens to be an English teacher in San Jose. He explains how he adapted his teaching style to focus on the process of learning, rather than a final grade — and why his method has kept AI out of his classroom (for the most part).\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC8041204001\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jeremy Na, Bay Area-based educator\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.pangram.com/about-us\">Max Spero\u003c/a>, founder of Pangram Labs \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/mjacksonretondo\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Marlena Jackson-Retondo\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, engagement producer and reporter for KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Further reading/listening: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/openai-chatgpt-ai-cheating-education-college-students-school.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> – James D. Walsh, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">NYMag\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/64992/taking-exams-in-blue-books-its-back-to-help-curb-ai-use-and-rampant-cheating\">Taking Exams in Blue Books? They’re Back to Help Curb AI Use and Rampant Cheating\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> –\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Marlena Jackson Retondo\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003ci>KQED’s Mindshift\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/business/chatgpt-ai-cheating-college-blue-books-5e3014a6\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They Were Every Student’s Worst Nightmare. Now Blue Books Are Back. \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">– Ben Cohen, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Wall Street Journal \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Follow us on Instagram\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What are your thoughts on, on generative AI? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Generative AI is a fancy autocomplete, in my opinion. Trusting it is no different than trusting a magic 8-ball. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jeremy Na is a Bay Area High School English teacher. He’s a great teacher, and I know this because he’s my older cousin, and he spent a lot of his teenage years at my parents’ dining table as my math tutor. Let’s just say I wasn’t the most cooperative student. One of the first hurdles of his teaching career was probably getting me to understand basic algebra. The second, getting me to actually sit down and do my math homework. And now, like many teachers, he faces another challenge: AI in the classroom. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When my students tell me a lot about how they trust AI answers and stuff like that, I reference the SpongeBob episode where, you know, everyone in Bikini Bottom is trusting a magic conch shell to give them answers and decide their life. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>SpongeBob SquarePants: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh magic conch shell, what do we need to do to get out of the kelp forest? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>SpongeBob SquarePants: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Nothing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>SpongeBob SquarePants: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The shell has spoken! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think it’s a big scam. Or rather, I know it’s big scam because, you know, it just sucks up money and is burning the environment for nothing. That’s my personal view of generative AI. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So yeah, my cousin Jeremy, not a fan of AI. In recent years, the use of AI tools has been a major point of contention between students and teachers. Scroll through any social media platform and you’ll see students give tips for getting away with submitting AI essays. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TikTok: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I use ChatGPT, but this is the way to use ChatGPT and not get flagged for any plagiarism or anything like that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Teachers fretting about their students’ dependence on AI. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TikTok: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a nightmare that is destroying learning. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there are the students who don’t use AI but get dragged in anyway. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TikTok: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was falsely accused of using AI on my final paper last term, it was flagged as 60% AI. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In his nine years of teaching, my cousin Jeremy has seen his fair share of cheating attempts. His students have used ChatGBT since it launched about three years ago. But he quickly realized that his students were using it for more than just an academic shortcut. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They were asking me stuff like, Mr. Na, uh, how can I use AI to help me with this assignment? Or Mr. Na, you know, I was using AI the other day and it really helped me with X, Y, Z problem. At first, I thought these students were just kinda trolling cause like I thought to myself, there’s no way anyone would trust AI. This is the machines that like tell people to staple cheese to pizza to make it stick better. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Google AI actually recommended adding glue to pizza, but his point still stands. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But no, I realized soon enough that my students were like serious about trusting AI. And that’s when I realized, oh, my students, you know, they’ve fallen for the propaganda. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s still no consensus on the role of AI in education. Some teachers embrace it as a feature of their lesson plans. Others ban it from their classrooms entirely and blame AI for their students’ atrophied critical thinking skills. And at the center of this debate is a question that’s haunted educators throughout human history. What do we do about cheating? Now that everyone can carry little AI cheating machines in their pockets, AKA their phones, that debate has kicked into overdrive. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today’s episode is a little different, because instead of following one thread, this internet rabbit hole will take us down a few different paths. We’re going to look at three different approaches to curbing AI cheating in school. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Back when the internet was brand new, students suddenly had access to a virtually endless trove of information to copy and paste from. Academics needed a way to tell what was original and what was copied. So plagiarism detection was born. An entire industry dedicated to identifying and flagging stolen work. But with generative AI blowing up, checking for plagiarism isn’t enough. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">First up, a new tab. What’s up with AI detection? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To get into this, I called up Max Spero, co-founder and self-described chief slop janitor of Pangram Labs. Pangram is an AI detection tool that flags texts generated by all the major models like ChatGBT and Claude and Grok, and also detects AI-generated edits from tools like Grammarly. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Max Spero:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It could be an essay, it could be a review, it could a social media post. And then so we help people tell you like, yeah, what’s AI and what’s human. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cleaning up the slop. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Max Spero:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cleaning up the slop as they say. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Slop is the colloquial term for that low-quality, AI-generated content flooding the internet. Pangram didn’t start out as an educational tool. Max said that the company’s first customers were actually websites trying to detect and delete fake reviews. Pangram offered a free trial version of the tool on its website. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Max Spero:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But then we were looking at the signups and we kept on seeing signups from like EDU addresses, people who are putting in what’s clearly student papers and people are doing this like at huge volumes. They’re just pasting in like dozens of papers a day. And then, so I think we were realizing like, hey, there’s a much bigger market here on this consumer side as well, where we can help teachers out because this is clearly a big need. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Pangram’s detection works by showing its model two writing samples. The first, written by a human, and the second, similar but AI-generated. They do this over and over and again. The model learns to recognize the way humans write, and distinguish it from AI trying to replicate it. That’s how certain sentence structures or words like “delve” and “rich cultural tapestry”, or even, my beloved em-dash, became associated with AI writing. Humans use all of those features in writing, but AI models overuse them. They’re predictable. There’s a misconception that students can bypass detection tools by paraphrasing AI-generated writing. That may have been the case a few years ago, but detection tools are getting better. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Max Spero:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We found that you need to rewrite at least 30% to 40% of some text before it’ll come back as human written. So you really have to like rewrite a large portion of the text before you’re able to erase these signs of AI writing. At that point, you might as well just write your essay yourself. But in the end, like all of these tools, at Pangram and other AI detectors, we can still train on these, the outputs of these tools, so we can detect, not only does this look AI generated, but it also looks like it was run through a humanizer. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s a program that rewrites AI-generated text to sound more, well, human. And of course, humanizers use AI to do that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Max Spero:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And that’s even more clearly a sign of acting in bad faith. Like this is a clear indication that no, you didn’t just like misunderstand that you weren’t allowed to use ChatGPT, but like you actually were actively cheating here. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s not impossible to bypass AI detection, but Max said that many AI detectors, including Pangram, can still flag humanized text as AI. He added that since these students are often trying to take the path of least resistance, the threat of detection could be enough to deter cheating. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Max Spero:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Adding a little bit of friction here goes a long way to helping put down these guardrails and say like, okay, fine, you know, if it’s not really easy for me to just use AI to generate my assignment, I’ll just do it myself. It’s not that bad. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some teachers have tried to AI-proof their assignments by adding a random prompt in white text, like “mention bananas in every paragraph.” The human eye can’t see the white text on a white digital background. If a student copies and pastes it into ChatGPT, they’ll get a generated essay that has nothing to do with the actual assignment, but a lot to do with bananas. It’s a dead giveaway that they used AI to complete the paper. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s also some confusion over what detection scores mean. A score of 60% doesn’t mean that 60% of the essay is AI-generated, it’s a confidence score. It means that the detection tool is 60% certain that the text it analyzed is AI generated, which is pretty far from certain. That’s why students who wrote completely original papers have been accused of cheating. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These AI-proofing hacks and the knee-jerk reaction to accuse students of using AI without hearing them out says a lot about the relationship between students and teachers right now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Max Spero:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think there’s a big problem in trust right now in education, especially because, um, the nature of it is so adversarial. I think like we really need to take a step back and realize that we have a shared goal. The goal is to get the student to learn. And I think a lot of this starts with like how we understand assignments. Like, teachers need to be very clear to students like, hey, these are the guardrails. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like you can use AI, for example, to do brainstorming or an outline, but don’t use AI to fully produce your assignment. Um, and similarly, once the student has like a very clear understanding of like, these are the guidelines, this is what I can and can’t do, um, then it’s easier for them to work together. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What’s your stance on teachers using Pangram to grade? Are AI detection tools like the end all be all? Can teachers rely on it completely? How do you best see Pangram being used in the grading process? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Max Spero:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s like really only the start. It is best used as a smoke detector to tell you, hey, something’s wrong. I should look into what’s going on here. I don’t think it’s appropriate to say like, hey, this AI detector flagged your work as AI, so I’m gonna give you a zero and then just like move on. I think that’s, that’s lazy and that doesn’t really turn the opportunity into a teaching moment. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Detection tools are just one part of a holistic grading process. Max added that some teachers integrate AI detection into their classroom platforms so that students can check themselves before they turn in their assignments. But other teachers are taking a wildly different approach. Instead of leaning into detection, they’re going back to the olden days. We’ll dive into the return of handwriting after this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re back. Let’s take a look at the next strategy teachers have employed to hold the line against AI. If you were in college before the pandemic started, you might remember this vintage classic. Okay, new tab. Back to blue books. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My colleague, Marlena Jackson-Retondo, is joining us for this part of our deep dive. Marlena has been reporting on AI and K through 12 education for MindShift, another KQED podcast about the future of learning. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I guess now we can say that blue books are an old-fashioned, in quotes, tool that, um, a lot of professors and high school teachers use to test students. And they’re used for a lot midterms and finals, and are an alternative to now what we know as, you know, digital testing tools. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ve used blue books. You’ve used blue books. I feel like it wasn’t that long ago that we were using blue books. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re not that old. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Blue books are exactly what they sound like. They’re little booklets with a baby blue cover and lined paper. They’ve been around since the 1920s and they’ve been a staple of written exams in high school and college. I still remember the absolute horror I felt my junior year of college when my pen exploded just as I finished my constitutional law final and I had to turn in a blue book covered in purple ink. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But blue books were phased out when the pandemic shut down schools in 2020. Everything involved in learning, from lessons to homework to exams, took place online. And then, late last year, Marlena saw a viral post from Jason Coupe, a professor in Atlanta. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And he was talking about using blue books, bringing them back to the classroom for his first midterm of that school year. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Can you talk about his reasoning behind moving to blue books? How did other teachers react to that? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He and a couple other professors in his department got together and discussed ways to mitigate cheating, use of AI, and also to reengage their students. When we spoke last year, there was a lot of discussion about really getting students to think on their feet, think critically, respond to questions in ways that they might in the real world. And he wasn’t seeing a lot of that in digital exams. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So this wasn’t just about cheating. It wasn’t just about AI. There was also that sense of reconnecting the students to the coursework. And it was a learning curve for a lot of students, um, as I’ve heard from multiple professors, but it went well, and a lot of folks will continue to, to use these blue books. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By 2024, you know, this is a generation of students that have spent at least four years, you know, learning digitally in some capacity. How did they respond to having to go back to handwriting? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, so a lot of Coupe’s students didn’t know what a blue book was. They had never taken a handwritten exam. They didn’t what to do with the blue book, where to write their name. So he had to teach them. And I remember him saying that it reminded him of his time in teaching in elementary school, um, having to really break down certain processes for students. But, you know, they learned, they took the exam by hand, and he and other professors noticed a difference right away. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Aside from deterring cheating, how else does prioritizing handwritten notes impact learning? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Marlena Jackson-Retondo:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The research on handwriting is actually really interesting. I spoke with Sophia Vinci-Booher out of Vanderbilt University. She talked to me about handwriting in a really interesting way in that it creates these neural connections to what you’re learning. And this is what she called the visual motor learning system. So it’s combining these two systems, the motor system of handwriting and the visuals of learning something that might be written on the board or a PowerPoint, and it’s combining them and it’s reinforcing what you’re learning when you’re writing by hand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s been shown that the mode of taking notes, when it correlates with the mode of having to recall that information, like taking an exam. When those modes are synced, so let’s say there’s a student who takes notes by hand, and then they have to go and take an exam on a blue book, the recall is better that way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So essentially, students are “learning more”, that’s in big quotes, because obviously there are other factors involved in learning. But there’s better learning happening when the mode of note taking and recalling those notes is the same. So, you know, I think there’s a lot more research to look at and to be done, but there are certain benefits to writing by hand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And blue books are hot again. Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that blue book sales were up more than 30% at Texas A&M University and almost 50% at the University of Florida. At UC Berkeley, blue book sales shot up 80% over the past two years. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Of course, this return to our roots has its limits. Blue books are great for exams, but they’re not a realistic option for longer assignments like research papers. And neither approach we’ve covered so far, AI detection and blue books, addresses the core reasons students cheat. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s look at one final strategy in a new tab. The testmaxxing problem. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s go back to my cousin, Jeremy, who’s a high school English teacher in the Bay Area. We both grew up in New York City and went to very academically rigorous public high schools. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The standards of the time, this was in, you know, the early 2000s, was very much, let’s call it testmaxxing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In gaming, there’s this practice called minmaxxing — maximizing your stats with a minimal amount of effort. On the internet, adding maxing to the end of any word is kind of like a joke about optimizing. So by test maxing, Jeremy is referring to the way that students are encouraged to shape their whole approach to school around succeeding on tests instead of actually learning. He believes that’s the reason students cheat. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, when I became a teacher, I set out to make sure that like no one else has that same experience as I did that, you know, students don’t have this miserable high school experience where they’re treated like cattle, basically. Like you gotta you gotta get those numbers up. Your entire worth is decided by these numbers. Our society has placed a lot of importance on the end result of education rather than like education itself. What I mean by that is it’s more important what grade you get on the test than what you learned through the process before taking the test. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To counter the pressure of testmaxxing, Jeremy does things differently in his classroom. He never assigns homework. All the work, including reading and writing assignments, is done in the classroom. He does assign long-term projects, like essays, but he has his own way of AI-proofing them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This methodology, this pedagogy that I’ve developed is developed from shifting priorities away from the end result over into focusing on the process, right? So the fact that it’s inconvenient to use AI was just kind of like a happy little bonus. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He really does make it inconvenient to cheat in his classes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, I don’t see a lot of AI usage. It’s always like one or two out of my 150 students. And the reason I don’t see a lof of AI usage is because when we’re doing it, a long-term assignment like an essay, I make sure to break down that assignment into as many granular pieces as possible. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So for example, with my freshmen, ninth graders, when we were doing an essay I’ll often walk them through, not only like how to construct each paragraph, but how to construct like the parts of each paragraph. Like sometimes we’ll go sentence by sentence. In that scenario it would be kind of absurd to use AI, right? Because like Mr. Na is telling you, okay, write one sentence about your opinion on this part of the book, right. Why, why would you go ask Grok or ChatGPT opinion about the book when you can just write your own opinion in one sentence. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What is your classroom AI policy, even though, you know, you personally despise AI? Like do you use a detection tool for your students? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t use detection tools at all. I would not trust AI to tell me what the weather is. Why would I trust it to read student reports and, you know, analyze them? That’s absurd. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Despite his evident disdain for generative AI, my cousin doesn’t have the same zero tolerance policy that a lot of other teachers have. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t explicitly call out their paper for being AI. But what I will do is, you know, I’ll sit with them and be like, “You know, this, this paper’s got a lot of problems. This assignment that you wrote has lots of problems, like it’s, it’s overflowing with problems. I got to sit you down here and we got to talk for like 15 minutes. Sentence by sentence and deconstruct this essay to fix it.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I feel like in that scenario, students do learn like what’s wrong with using AI. Conceivably, they could learn to cheat better this way, but in my view, what they’re actually learning is that the assignment I’m asking them to do is not something outside of their capabilities. So yes, they are learning what the flaws of AI are, but they’re also learning that they are more capable than they might think. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Telling a teenager not to do something never works. Yeah. If you want a teenager to do something, right? If you want that horse to drink that water, you gotta make the water appealing. You gotta explain why it’s in their best interests not to so, right? They gotta come to that conclusion on their own. The downside is that this process takes a lot of time. So yes, I don’t get through many bucks throughout the school year, but I feel like the quality of the work and the learning that students receive is a lot better for that sacrifice. And I’m willing, I’m, I am willing to make that sacrifice \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I feel like on Reddit, I’m always seeing teachers and professors talk about the ways that they AI-proof their assignments, like adding white text to trip up the prompts or splitting up instructions into multiple documents so it’s really inconvenient to give it to ChatGPT. Have you and your colleagues tried any of these? What do you think about these, like, AI-proofing tricks? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think getting into a arms race with AI is unhelpful. So coming up with different ways to detect AI, and then AI comes up with ways of getting around that, you know, this arms race that you’re describing, I don’t see a point to engaging with it. If you want students to stop using AI, you got to address the core issue, right, rather than just constantly dealing with these symptoms like some absurd game of whack-a-mole. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As you might be able to tell, Jeremy feels pretty strongly about this. He believes that putting so much value on the final product, whether a final paper or a final test score, deprioritizes actual learning, overwhelms students, and incentivizes cheating. Still, he has to teach within the system that values end results. His students still have to take California’s standardized tests. But he said that prepping them for the annual state assessments doesn’t take that much time. For the rest of the school year, he can focus on breaking down assignments and, through that, developing their critical thinking skills. It’s not that grades don’t matter, but by focusing on actual learning, students feel less pressure to cheat. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Everyone is telling them to participate in this rat race, that they have to. That they have no choice but to participate in this rat race to climb to the top, you know. If they are learning, right? I tell students not to deride all of their self-worth from the numbers they get at school. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It seems like the larger question we’re trying to answer throughout the episode is how do you maintain that sense of trust between students and teachers when generative AI tools makes cheating so easy? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeremy Na:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t think, say that like trust between student and teacher has eroded. I think it’s more that teachers are becoming more suspicious overall because the tools that they’ve developed in the past no longer work. Students using AI is not a sign of, I don’t know, like moral degeneracy, and the youth of today are worse than they have been in the past, no. But you know, students are cheating nowadays, just like students would have cheated back when I was in high school or when my parents were in high score when my grandparents were in high school. It’s not a sign of moral decay. It’s a sign of, I don’t know, of the downfall of Western civilization or nothing like that. It’s just a new chapter in the book that’s been written forever. Cheating. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s not just teachers trying to curb their students’ use of AI. Students are also upset with teachers for using ChatGPT to write lesson plans. In a New York Times report this year, students complained about their professors cheating them out of their tuition money, because in a way, it was ChatGpT teaching them. These issues have existed in education long before generative AI tools did. The existence and widespread use of AI just magnified them. Including this adversarial relationship between students and teachers. But in this scenario, teachers can set an example. If they don’t use AI, then maybe students won’t feel like they need to, either. Okay, now let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Hambrick. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Additional editing by Jen Chien, who is KQED’s Director of Podcasts. Our audio engineer is Brendan Willard.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Original music, including our theme song and credits, by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager and Ethan Toven-Lindsay is our Editor in Chief.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dustsilver K-84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron Red switches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, and I know it’s podcast cliche, but if you like these deep dives, and want us to keep making more, it would really help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Don’t forget to drop a comment and tell your friends, too. Or even your enemies! Or… frenemies? Your support is so important, especially in these unprecedented times. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate dot KQED.org/podcasts! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Also! We want to hear from you! Email us CloseAllTabs@kqed.org. Follow us on instagram @CloseAllTabsPod. Or TikTok @CloseAllTabs. And join our Discord — we’re in the Close All Tabs channel at discord.gg/KQED.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks for listening! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"title": "Newsom’s Tightrope Walk Between AI Regulation and Silicon Valley Cash",
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"content": "\u003cp>As Gov. Gavin Newsom eyes a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12043766/newsom-tries-to-find-political-footing-in-clash-with-trump\">potential run for the White House\u003c/a>, he faces a political challenge on the homefront. Roughly 30 AI-related bills are moving through the state Legislature in the last weeks of this legislative session, and it’s estimated a dozen or so will land on Newsom’s desk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Does he veto all or most of them to mollify Silicon Valley donors? Or does he defy President Donald Trump’s industry-friendly light touch and model a tougher state stance on regulation?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At an Aug. 7 event announcing \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12051433/california-teams-with-google-microsoft-ibm-adobe-to-prepare-students-for-ai-era\">AI training partnerships\u003c/a> with Adobe, Google, IBM and Microsoft, Newsom told reporters he is trying to establish a middle ground that provides guardrails for public safety without squelching innovation: “We’ve led in AI innovation, and we’ve led in AI regulation, but we’re trying to find a balance.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newsom noted that, even though he vetoed the most \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12000892/ai-safety-testing-bill-heads-for-a-floor-vote-in-sacramento-taking-heavy-fire-from-silicon-valley\">controversial bill\u003c/a> of the last legislative session, he ultimately signed 18 AI-related bills into law, addressing everything from training data transparency to deepfakes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Industry voices, chief among them OpenAI’s Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane, continue to lobby against binding regulation at all levels of government. Lehane often appears to be speaking to California in his public posts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11802216\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11802216\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut.jpg\" alt=\"Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan says local jurisdictions need the power to stop a wildfire disaster before it starts. The assemblymember and other state lawmakers announced a bill to expand enforcement actions against PG&E and other utilities on February, 18, 2020.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1832x1374.jpg 1832w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1376x1032.jpg 1376w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1044x783.jpg 1044w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-632x474.jpg 632w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-536x402.jpg 536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan on Feb. 18, 2020. \u003ccite>(Eli Walsh/Bay City News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Imagine how hard it would have been for the US to win the Space Race if California’s aerospace and tech industries got tangled up in state-by-state regulations impeding the innovation of transistor technology,” Lehane wrote pointedly on \u003ca href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7361704760334274560/\">LinkedIn\u003c/a> last week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But if Silicon Valley lobbyists see the industry in a “space race” against foreign adversaries, it’s not clear whether the general public shares that sense of urgency for technological advancement at any cost. An \u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-ai-plus-62025700-399b-11f0-b37f-b73dfdd12f1d\">Axios/Harris poll\u003c/a> released in early June 2025 showed strong majorities of Americans across all age groups want companies to take AI development slowly to “get it right the first time, even if that delays breakthroughs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Signing some of the AI bills that make it to his desk could also provide Newsom with an opportunity to stick a thumb in the eye of Trump. The challenge for Newsom is choosing which of the roughly 30 bills making their way through Sacramento are least likely to upset his supporters in Silicon Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Assemblymember \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11998817/ai-regulation-still-in-the-mix-as-california-legislature-returns-to-session\">Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, \u003c/a>D-Orinda, could be considered the foremost advocate for AI regulation this legislative session, having authored six still in play:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>AB 222\u003c/strong> — Would require data centers that power AI to disclose how much water and electricity they use, so the public can see their environmental footprint.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>AB 412\u003c/strong> — Would require AI developers to disclose when copyrighted works were used to train their models and give rights holders a way to check and challenge that use.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>AB 621\u003c/strong> — Would let victims, including minors, sue creators and facilitators of non-consensual deepfake sexual material and increase the damages they can collect.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>AB 1018\u003c/strong> — Would regulate how AI-driven decision systems are developed, tested, disclosed, audited, and appealed when used to make consequential decisions about people.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>AB 1064\u003c/strong> — Would ban AI chatbots from manipulating children into forming emotional attachments or harvesting their personal and biometric data.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>AB 1405\u003c/strong> — Would require AI auditors to enroll with the state, follow conflict-of-interest and reporting rules, and create a system for the public to report auditor misconduct starting in 2027.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>When pressed to pick a personal favorite on the list, Bauer-Kahan chose \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1064\">AB 1064\u003c/a>, the Leading Ethical AI Development for Kids Act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I have teenage children. You know, I live it every day,” Bauer-Kahan said. “We have to step in and make sure these companies are doing right by our children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m driven mostly as a mother, and I think that Gov. Newsom is driven as a father,” she said. “You know, his children are going to grow up in the AI age, as are mine. And I think he wants a safe environment, and I’m hopeful that will lead him to find balance between what industry needs and what the public needs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12005278\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2121px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12005278\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1460098524.jpg\" alt=\"Close-up female hands with a blue manicure using pink smartphone outdoors.\" width=\"2121\" height=\"1414\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1460098524.jpg 2121w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1460098524-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1460098524-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1460098524-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1460098524-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1460098524-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1460098524-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2121px) 100vw, 2121px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Research shows that about 70% of teens use at least one kind of AI tool. \u003ccite>(Tatiana Meteleva/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Bauer-Kahan said the long game for AI legislation requires a careful effort to define terms so it’s not easy for companies to sidestep the mandate, and to protect mechanisms of enforcement so the law has teeth. For instance, if a child suffers actual harm as a result of the use of a covered product, AB 1064 allows that child, or a parent or guardian, to sue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But industry critics say the bill is misguided and full of issues that could lead to unintended consequences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“AB 1064’s definitions are drafted so broadly that they could unintentionally capture almost all chatbot tools, even basic customer service functions, and would require invasive age-verification to maintain functionality … It risks limiting minors’ access to lawful and beneficial AI tools — raising significant First Amendment concerns,” Robert Boykin, executive director of California and the Southwest for the trade group TechNet, wrote in an email to KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill could also spur costly litigation and create substantial regulatory uncertainty, Boykin said.[aside postID=news_12051433 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/GavinNewsomAISF1.jpg']But a bill that provides no capacity for individuals to sue is a bill without teeth, according to many who watch Sacramento politics. That is to say, the State Attorney General’s Office has limited budget, people and attention to carry the entire burden of enforcement on its proverbial shoulders, especially when it’s busy pursuing \u003ca href=\"https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/six-months-second-trump-administration-attorney-general-bonta-reports-california\">more than 37 lawsuits\u003c/a> against the second Trump administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After congressional Republicans rejected a push to ban states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Trump appears to have signaled his intent to roll out a backdoor ban with his \u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Americas-AI-Action-Plan.pdf\">AI Action Plan\u003c/a>. The executive orders include language like, “AI is far too important to smother in bureaucracy at this early stage, whether at the state or Federal level.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The implied threat: leave off AI regulation or federal funding could be reduced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It seemed to be using money as a cudgel, but I’m not sure that will be effective here, or that’s something that really, would bother us, or prevent us in California from moving forward,” state Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park, said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Becker has introduced two AI bills this session. \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB243&firstNav=tracking\">SB 243\u003c/a> would require companion chatbots to frequently remind users that it isn’t a person, in order to reduce the risk of emotional manipulation or \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12038154/kids-talking-ai-companion-chatbots-stanford-researchers-say-thats-bad-idea\">unhealthy attachment\u003c/a>. \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB468&firstNav=tracking\">SB 468\u003c/a> requires AI developers to design and disclose their own security measures to protect personal data, subject to state oversight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Becker, a former businessman, said he works with industry lobbyists to hash out language companies consider feasible, if not unobjectionable. In the case of SB 243, Boykin of TechNet acknowledged Becker’s constructive engagement, adding, “Our goal has always been to narrow some of the sweeping provisions — particularly around the definition of companion chatbots, reporting obligations, and costly third-party audits.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Becker said California lawmakers are also well practiced in battling Silicon Valley lobbyists intent on killing or neutering legislation. “Even before Trump, there [was] a bipartisan effort to preempt our privacy laws here in California. So that’s gonna be a constant fight,” Becker said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He added that he speaks with people who work in Silicon Valley who tell him they want regulation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My anecdotal experience is that there’s much more conversation by the people who work at these companies offline, about the potential impact of these technologies, than you’ll hear out of the communications people,” Becker said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>As Gov. Gavin Newsom eyes a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12043766/newsom-tries-to-find-political-footing-in-clash-with-trump\">potential run for the White House\u003c/a>, he faces a political challenge on the homefront. Roughly 30 AI-related bills are moving through the state Legislature in the last weeks of this legislative session, and it’s estimated a dozen or so will land on Newsom’s desk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Does he veto all or most of them to mollify Silicon Valley donors? Or does he defy President Donald Trump’s industry-friendly light touch and model a tougher state stance on regulation?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At an Aug. 7 event announcing \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12051433/california-teams-with-google-microsoft-ibm-adobe-to-prepare-students-for-ai-era\">AI training partnerships\u003c/a> with Adobe, Google, IBM and Microsoft, Newsom told reporters he is trying to establish a middle ground that provides guardrails for public safety without squelching innovation: “We’ve led in AI innovation, and we’ve led in AI regulation, but we’re trying to find a balance.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newsom noted that, even though he vetoed the most \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12000892/ai-safety-testing-bill-heads-for-a-floor-vote-in-sacramento-taking-heavy-fire-from-silicon-valley\">controversial bill\u003c/a> of the last legislative session, he ultimately signed 18 AI-related bills into law, addressing everything from training data transparency to deepfakes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Industry voices, chief among them OpenAI’s Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane, continue to lobby against binding regulation at all levels of government. Lehane often appears to be speaking to California in his public posts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11802216\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11802216\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut.jpg\" alt=\"Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan says local jurisdictions need the power to stop a wildfire disaster before it starts. The assemblymember and other state lawmakers announced a bill to expand enforcement actions against PG&E and other utilities on February, 18, 2020.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1832x1374.jpg 1832w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1376x1032.jpg 1376w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-1044x783.jpg 1044w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-632x474.jpg 632w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/RS41373_IMG_0396-qut-536x402.jpg 536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan on Feb. 18, 2020. \u003ccite>(Eli Walsh/Bay City News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Imagine how hard it would have been for the US to win the Space Race if California’s aerospace and tech industries got tangled up in state-by-state regulations impeding the innovation of transistor technology,” Lehane wrote pointedly on \u003ca href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7361704760334274560/\">LinkedIn\u003c/a> last week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But if Silicon Valley lobbyists see the industry in a “space race” against foreign adversaries, it’s not clear whether the general public shares that sense of urgency for technological advancement at any cost. An \u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-ai-plus-62025700-399b-11f0-b37f-b73dfdd12f1d\">Axios/Harris poll\u003c/a> released in early June 2025 showed strong majorities of Americans across all age groups want companies to take AI development slowly to “get it right the first time, even if that delays breakthroughs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Signing some of the AI bills that make it to his desk could also provide Newsom with an opportunity to stick a thumb in the eye of Trump. The challenge for Newsom is choosing which of the roughly 30 bills making their way through Sacramento are least likely to upset his supporters in Silicon Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Assemblymember \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11998817/ai-regulation-still-in-the-mix-as-california-legislature-returns-to-session\">Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, \u003c/a>D-Orinda, could be considered the foremost advocate for AI regulation this legislative session, having authored six still in play:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>AB 222\u003c/strong> — Would require data centers that power AI to disclose how much water and electricity they use, so the public can see their environmental footprint.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>AB 412\u003c/strong> — Would require AI developers to disclose when copyrighted works were used to train their models and give rights holders a way to check and challenge that use.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>AB 621\u003c/strong> — Would let victims, including minors, sue creators and facilitators of non-consensual deepfake sexual material and increase the damages they can collect.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>AB 1018\u003c/strong> — Would regulate how AI-driven decision systems are developed, tested, disclosed, audited, and appealed when used to make consequential decisions about people.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>AB 1064\u003c/strong> — Would ban AI chatbots from manipulating children into forming emotional attachments or harvesting their personal and biometric data.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>AB 1405\u003c/strong> — Would require AI auditors to enroll with the state, follow conflict-of-interest and reporting rules, and create a system for the public to report auditor misconduct starting in 2027.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>When pressed to pick a personal favorite on the list, Bauer-Kahan chose \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1064\">AB 1064\u003c/a>, the Leading Ethical AI Development for Kids Act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I have teenage children. You know, I live it every day,” Bauer-Kahan said. “We have to step in and make sure these companies are doing right by our children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m driven mostly as a mother, and I think that Gov. Newsom is driven as a father,” she said. “You know, his children are going to grow up in the AI age, as are mine. And I think he wants a safe environment, and I’m hopeful that will lead him to find balance between what industry needs and what the public needs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12005278\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2121px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12005278\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1460098524.jpg\" alt=\"Close-up female hands with a blue manicure using pink smartphone outdoors.\" width=\"2121\" height=\"1414\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1460098524.jpg 2121w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1460098524-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1460098524-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1460098524-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1460098524-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1460098524-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/09/GettyImages-1460098524-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2121px) 100vw, 2121px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Research shows that about 70% of teens use at least one kind of AI tool. \u003ccite>(Tatiana Meteleva/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Bauer-Kahan said the long game for AI legislation requires a careful effort to define terms so it’s not easy for companies to sidestep the mandate, and to protect mechanisms of enforcement so the law has teeth. For instance, if a child suffers actual harm as a result of the use of a covered product, AB 1064 allows that child, or a parent or guardian, to sue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But industry critics say the bill is misguided and full of issues that could lead to unintended consequences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“AB 1064’s definitions are drafted so broadly that they could unintentionally capture almost all chatbot tools, even basic customer service functions, and would require invasive age-verification to maintain functionality … It risks limiting minors’ access to lawful and beneficial AI tools — raising significant First Amendment concerns,” Robert Boykin, executive director of California and the Southwest for the trade group TechNet, wrote in an email to KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill could also spur costly litigation and create substantial regulatory uncertainty, Boykin said.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>But a bill that provides no capacity for individuals to sue is a bill without teeth, according to many who watch Sacramento politics. That is to say, the State Attorney General’s Office has limited budget, people and attention to carry the entire burden of enforcement on its proverbial shoulders, especially when it’s busy pursuing \u003ca href=\"https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/six-months-second-trump-administration-attorney-general-bonta-reports-california\">more than 37 lawsuits\u003c/a> against the second Trump administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After congressional Republicans rejected a push to ban states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Trump appears to have signaled his intent to roll out a backdoor ban with his \u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Americas-AI-Action-Plan.pdf\">AI Action Plan\u003c/a>. The executive orders include language like, “AI is far too important to smother in bureaucracy at this early stage, whether at the state or Federal level.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The implied threat: leave off AI regulation or federal funding could be reduced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It seemed to be using money as a cudgel, but I’m not sure that will be effective here, or that’s something that really, would bother us, or prevent us in California from moving forward,” state Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park, said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Becker has introduced two AI bills this session. \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB243&firstNav=tracking\">SB 243\u003c/a> would require companion chatbots to frequently remind users that it isn’t a person, in order to reduce the risk of emotional manipulation or \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12038154/kids-talking-ai-companion-chatbots-stanford-researchers-say-thats-bad-idea\">unhealthy attachment\u003c/a>. \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB468&firstNav=tracking\">SB 468\u003c/a> requires AI developers to design and disclose their own security measures to protect personal data, subject to state oversight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Becker, a former businessman, said he works with industry lobbyists to hash out language companies consider feasible, if not unobjectionable. In the case of SB 243, Boykin of TechNet acknowledged Becker’s constructive engagement, adding, “Our goal has always been to narrow some of the sweeping provisions — particularly around the definition of companion chatbots, reporting obligations, and costly third-party audits.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Becker said California lawmakers are also well practiced in battling Silicon Valley lobbyists intent on killing or neutering legislation. “Even before Trump, there [was] a bipartisan effort to preempt our privacy laws here in California. So that’s gonna be a constant fight,” Becker said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He added that he speaks with people who work in Silicon Valley who tell him they want regulation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My anecdotal experience is that there’s much more conversation by the people who work at these companies offline, about the potential impact of these technologies, than you’ll hear out of the communications people,” Becker said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Starting with the Gold Rush, San Francisco has always been a boom and bust town. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">latest\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> boom is being driven by artificial intelligence, as AI companies and startups scoop up venture capital, real estate, office space and tech talent in the city. Scott talks with the Los Angeles Times technology reporter Queenie Wong about how the AI boom is affecting San Francisco’s culture and economy. Then, he’s joined by Jake Lahut, senior writer for WIRED, to discuss Silicon Valley’s fluctuating influence in D.C. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Check out \u003ca class=\"c-link\" href=\"https://www.kqed.org/newsletters/political-breakdown\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-stringify-link=\"https://www.kqed.org/newsletters/political-breakdown\" data-sk=\"tooltip_parent\">Political Breakdown’s weekly newsletter\u003c/a>, delivered straight to your inbox.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
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"soldout": {
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