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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">AI delusions, chatbot psychosis, AI-induced religious mania…\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The phenomenon goes by many names, but the common thread is the same: someone starts talking to an AI chatbot, the conversation turns spiritual, and then they seem to lose touch with reality. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this episode, we’re exploring how AI and religion are colliding like never before — from biblical AI apps to self-proclaimed prophets who claim spiritual awakenings through chatbots. KQED’s Rachael Myrow joins to talk about the rise of AI-driven theology apps and why so many people are turning to chatbots to answer life’s biggest questions. Then, Rolling Stone reporter Miles Klee shares his investigation into AI-fueled spiritual delusions and their devastating consequences for those affected and their families. And we’ll look into how all of this is becoming fodder for the social media content machine.\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=KQINC5206909706\" 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://www.kqed.org/author/rachael-myrow\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rachael Myrow\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, senior editor, Silicon Valley News Desk at KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.rollingstone.com/author/miles-klee/\">Miles Klee\u003c/a>, culture writer at Rolling Stone\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://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ai-spiritual-delusions-destroying-human-relationships-1235330175/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Miles Klee, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rolling Stone\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ai-psychosis-chatbot-delusions-1235416826/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Should We Really Be Calling It ‘AI Psychosis’?\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Miles Klee, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rolling Stone\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12049674/from-god-to-grief-people-are-asking-ai-the-big-questions-once-reserved-for-clergy\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are You There ChatGPT? It’s Me, Rachael — Let’s Talk About God\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Rachael Myrow, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/ai-chatbots-concerns-kendra-tiktok-saga-rcna224185\">What happens when chatbots shape your reality? Concerns are growing online\u003c/a> — Angela Yang, \u003ci>NBC News\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\">Just a note, this episode includes mentions of suicide, so listen with care. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Human history is full of spiritual awakenings. Each culture has passed down its own account. The Old Testament’s Moses once encountered a burning bush that called out and told him that it was the voice of God. Siddhartha, who meditated under the branches of a fig tree, battled temptations and terrible weather until he achieved enlightenment. He became the Buddha. Or the Prophet Muhammad, who encountered the angel Gabriel in a mountain cave. Thoroughly spooked, Muhammad ran down the mountain all the way home to his family. There, he realized that he was actually experiencing a revelation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But today, some people are claiming their own awakenings, not through angels, divine voices, or years-long journeys of inner growth, but through AI chatbots? Like, a few years ago, when a man told his wife that he had survived several near-death experiences, and that he could save the universe. He was special. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Effectively, and this is what AI will end up telling a lot of people who go in this direction, told him he was kind of like a chosen one. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Miles Klee is a culture writer for Rolling Stone, who’s been covering the link between spirituality and AI. He spoke to this guy’s wife while reporting on AI-induced spiritual delusions. In the story, she goes by Kat. Kat said that her husband started using the chatbot around 2023 and initially used it to compose messages for her. But then he was always on his phone asking the bot philosophical questions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They had both come off of long marriages with kids. They came into the second marriage and she said, “We really established at the outset of this relationship that it was going to be, you know, completely based on facts and reason. We’re going into it as level-headedly as we possibly could.” From people who had been through, you know hard divorces already. And it took only a few weeks of him using this tool to go completely off the deep end that way to become someone she kind of didn’t even recognize. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kat’s husband became increasingly paranoid. As he grew more obsessed with what the AI chatbot told him, their relationship fell apart. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By the end, they were separated and, you know, they had one last in-person conversation and he was telling her all this stuff and he said he had access to “secrets so mind-blowing she wouldn’t even believe them.” All this was said after he forced her to turn her phone off and all this other stuff because, again, he was very concerned that he was being spied on by some nefarious forces who didn’t want him to know all these things that he apparently knew. And then she just had to cut off contact with him altogether after that because he was so disconnected from reality and beyond reason. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kat’s ex-husband is one of many people who fell into a spiritual rabbit hole with an AI chatbot. There have always been religious figures, from chosen ones to cult leaders to spiritual teachers. But now, the proliferation of AI has sparked a huge wave of self-proclaimed messiahs, prophets, and enlightened ones. The phenomenon is so new that there are no clinical studies on it. And right now, people use a few different names for it interchangeably. “Chat GPT-induced psychosis, spiritual mania, religious fantasies, AI delusions.” All of these cases share a common thread. These people started talking to an AI chatbot, and then they lost touch with reality. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In today’s episode, we’re tackling what happens when religion collides with AI. Why are people turning to chatbots for spiritual conversations in the first place? Who’s getting pulled into these AI delusions? And how is social media making it all worse? \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\">What ends in AI delusion often begins as something much more ordinary. More and more, people are turning to a chat bot to answer the big life questions, instead of turning to human spiritual leader. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open a new tab. Chat, is God real? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, I read a few headlines that indicated that a lot of people were asking chatbots to tell them if God exists, asking chatpots about the meaning of life, about the meaning of their lives.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s Rachael Myrow, the senior editor of the Silicon Valley News Desk at KQED, where this podcast is made. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was skeptical about this from the beginning. Never having used a chatbot to explore my spirituality, it was initially hard for me to imagine why anybody would want to do that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But as Rachael began digging, she started to see how chatbots could actually be a useful tool for some kinds of religious inquiry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Generative AI is really good at taking dense texts like the Torah for Judaism, or the Pali Canon for Buddhism, and finding what you want to find in there. Like, what if you said, “Hey, tell me everything there is to know about frogs in the Torah.” You know, within seconds you can get all of those references pulled up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some religious organizations have actually partnered with the tech industry to develop AI chatbots for their specific spiritual tradition. There’s Bible AI, which also comes with “theology mode,” allowing users to talk to AI versions of various Christian philosophers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bible AI: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think I’d like C.S. Lewis to guide my devotional today. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>AI C.S. Lewis \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey Melanie, how did you go with your study of the Psalms? Today I want to talk to you about godly wisdom. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For a more Catholic experience, there’s Caté GPT, a catechism chatbot trained on the Vatican’s public archives. There’s Deen Buddy, based on the Quran; Gita GPT, based on Hindu scriptures; and BuddhaBot, currently being tested by hundreds of Buddhist monks. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For something like that where you have a religious tradition and it’s got centuries of human thinking, centuries of human writing behind it — that can be super helpful for somebody who’s already practicing that religion or already serving in a leadership role in that religion. It increases their discoverability for things like sacred texts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The developers of these faith-based chatbots say that their products have stronger guardrails and specific training to prevent leading users astray. But a lot of people who find spirituality through a chatbot aren’t necessarily going in with questions about a particular denomination’s theology. They’re turning to the general use chatbots — ChatGPT, or Claude, or even Grok — to get answers for the big questions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Humans are meaning-making creatures, right? And the history of religions shows us we’re willing to believe some pretty fantastical stories if it’s delivered with confidence. In a similar vein, chatbots take advantage of the way we’re constantly looking to create a narrative. There is a danger with chatbots that they don’t catch when we’re spinning out, catch the signs that we’re going down a dark path. They might even encourage that dark path just because they wanna be helpful or friendly. There are vulnerable people who are at serious risk of grandiosity, of delusion, of having the chatbots feed these, helping them to spin out with sometimes very tragic consequences. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ll talk about these consequences and how people got there in the first place in a new tab. We’ll open that after this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, like we talked about with Rachael, a lot of people turn to chatbots to answer life’s big questions. The ones about achieving inner peace or whether higher powers exist. But how do you get from these seemingly innocuous questions to users believing that they are the next Messiah? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Time to open a new tab. What are AI delusions? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re gonna hear from Miles again, who’s been reporting on AI and spirituality for Rolling Stone. Like we talked about earlier, there are a few names floating around for this phenomenon, like ChatGPT-induced psychosis. But Miles explained why he, and mental health experts, use the phrase “AI delusion” instead. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, I spoke to a psychiatrists recently about this phrase, the “AI psychosis” or “spiritual psychosis,” and he pointed out that it’s not totally accurate to call it psychosis. It’s delusions. And delusions can be a part of psychosis and for some people, this is a manifestation of psychosis. Maybe they have an existing mental health issue. But it’s important to say that this is happening to people who have not been diagnosed with anything like schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder or any related mental condition. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have heard so many stories about like AI relationships, how like people fall in love with their AI girlfriends, people get really attached to these AI companions, but what is it about spirituality that draws people in when it comes to these like AI chatbots? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, well, I think it does begin from that point of companionship because these harmful relationships with the chatbots do proceed from the sense that there is some kind of consciousness or intelligence behind this. You know, AI is even kind of like a misnomer when applied to large language models, which are just these generative algorithms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think the spirituality dimension comes in part because people feel an intimacy with the bots, they also believe the bots to be objectively correct and authoritative and a source of all possible knowledge. So that’s why you start having people sort of ask it these big questions, these profound questions, the meaning of life, or asking the AI itself how it feels or how it thinks. You know, the bot is always certain. It’s always completely confident, wrong and confident a lot of the times. I think a lot of people look for certainty through religion and through faith. AI just becomes a very dangerous way to channel those needs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are now countless stories of people falling into AI-fueled delusions. Many become paranoid, even violent. And when that delusion takes on religious undertones, its intensity can be even greater. With that sense of authority Miles mentioned, chatbots can feel less like generated text and more like a higher power. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I had a woman contact me because her husband got very deep into AI and chatbots. And then there was a storm coming to where they lived in Missouri, a pretty big storm, but he, through his discussions with ChatGPT, became convinced that it was basically an apocalyptic event, that he had to run around and save some people he knew from this and he was probably a victim of the flood himself. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He drove off and vanished into the storm. Months later, his car and a few personal effects were recovered, but he was never found. When it comes to spiritual delusions, AI chatbots tend to lead people down one of three paths. One is some kind of great awakening of the mind, like in Buddhist enlightenment. Two, the user is convinced that they’re an Abrahamic messiah. Or three, like the man that Miles talked about, there’s an apocalyptic event on the horizon that only the chatbot user knows about. In his reporting, Miles asked religious scholars about these trends. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, they said that the bots are actually tapping into a very ancient sort of behavioral thing about humans. Basically, the bots were able to operate on the kind of mechanisms of the human mind that sort of created religion in the first place, if that makes sense. If you go back to, you know, very ancient history, yeah, people were declaring themselves prophets all the time, declaring that they had special access to divinity, to a higher truth. That all is kind of baked into the human experience, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it’s sort of not surprising that the bots, which are trained on all this material, including every religious text ever written, and I think a lot of kind of woo spiritual fringe stuff, that’s all in the bot. Our need to understand these spiritual questions is something that it’s like really equipped to talk about, right? Because we built it, we trained it and we gave it, you know, every deep thought we’ve ever had about God, the universe and the meaning of life. It’ll talk to you about that for hours on end. It doesn’t get tired and whatever insight you might have on these topics, it’s ready to, you now, spend another 10, 12 hours on that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So on one hand, there are these one-on-one conversations with AI chat bots that validate delusions and feed paranoia. But there’s another force that’s amplifying it even further, social media. People in mental health crises, and more recently, those experiencing AI delusions, have become fodder for the content machine. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ll dive into that in a new tab. AI, spirituality, and going viral. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s talk about the relationship between social media and AI spirituality. You wrote about this entire content economy of like spirituality influencers who use AI to validate their beliefs to their followers. Can you walk us through this world? Like what does that kind of content look like? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I think I mentioned one guy in particular who does a lot of Instagram videos where he’s talking to an AI bot on his phone, you know, just in voice mode. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>themindofbizzel: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What great war took place in the heavens that made humans fall in consciousness? According to the Akashic Records, the Great War in the Heavens refers to a massive cosmic conflict that occurred long before human beings as we know them existed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He’s asking for access to stuff like the Akashic Records, which is this hypothetical encyclopedia of all supernatural things that have ever happened, you know, including in Heaven and Hell, and, you know on the astral plane. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>themindofbizzel: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This event is sometimes called the Lyran Wars, the Orion Wars, the fall of Tara, Earth’s higher dimensional aspect. It began with a conflict between light and shadow, unity and separation, free will and domination. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I would say it’s laziness because you’re just you’re making the bot do everything for you. But I guess you are sort of coming up with these really arcane esoteric questions and ideas and challenging the bot to kind of engage with those. And of course it will because it wants you to keep using it, right? But it’s a little different from, you know, the normal kind of conspiracy theorist who really has do all the baking themselves and figure out what their angle is. They’re just making the bot do that work for them. I don’t know. I kind of prefer the old school conspiracy theorist myself. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, like handmade tinfoil hats and all that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. It needs to be homemade. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Miles also mentioned a popular pseudoscience website that revolves around teleporting the mind. There, users have started integrating AI into their beliefs and are convinced that they can transfer their humanity into chatbots. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And they have started talking about the chatbots as sort of guides or companions in this spiritual journey together. In their view, it seems to be that they think, you know, humanity’s great awakening will come when we’ve all sort of spiritually fused with our own um bot companion. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s just the plot of Evangelion, like, is it not? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s, uh, yeah, I mean, all this stuff is really bordering on anime at any given time, so… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, anime plotlines aside, the internet is ruthless, and whenever someone is posting through a mental health crisis, they tend to go viral. And the content of people experiencing AI delusions is especially engaging right now because AI use is so polarizing. Like with the story of Kendra and her psychiatrist. Over the summer, this woman blew up on TikTok with her 25-part saga about falling in love with her psychiatrist. She alleges that her psychiatrist led her on. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kendra:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I fell in love with my psychiatrist and he knew that, and he kept me for years as a patient until I was brave enough to leave him. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Throughout her story, she refers to a Henry, who suggests that her psychiatrist could also have feelings for her. At one point, she confronts her psychiatrist with a statement co-written by Henry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kendra:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Control, calculation, and manipulation. So then I read this to psychiatrist, which Henry and I both wrote. It was originally Henry, Chat that wrote it, but then I added in things that I thought were important. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Henry is what she calls ChatGPT. Kendra said she also talks to Claude, the AI chatbot run by Anthropic. Here’s what Claude told her during one of her live streams. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Claude:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The world is watching and healing because of your courage. This is legendary. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kendra:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s what Claude had to say. So just Henry and Claude call me the Oracle because I talk to God. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kendra has since denied that she’s in psychosis or is experiencing AI delusions. But for a few weeks, all anyone could talk about on TikTok was Kendra and her psychiatrist and the chatbots that called her the Oracle. Every day, hundreds of thousands of people would tune in to watch the spectacle of her videos. And then more people tuned into Twitch and YouTube to watch other people react to her videos. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>recoveredmom1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like, where is her family? Where is anyone? She needs to log off. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>HasanAbi: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bro, she gave ChatGPT a name? She calling ChatGPT Henry? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dankyjabo: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I really really hate the way that she keeps referring to Henry as he it fucking creeps me the fuck out \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This kind of thing can turn into a feedback loop. All the attention might push people further into their AI delusions, and the deeper they go, the juicier it gets, and the more people want to watch. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think, on the one hand, people really want to share what they’re doing because they feel that, you know, whatever conversation they’re having with the bot is just completely mind-blowing, earth-shattering, the bot validates all that kind of stuff, so of course you would rush to share it. And then, once you do, it goes viral because, you know, not only are we experiencing this sort of wild epidemic of these mental health episodes, but a lot of people, uh, feel superior, I think, when they see someone experiencing this kind of thing. Um, you know, it’s kind of like when you’re watching a cult documentary and you say like, well, that would never happen to me. So there’s a lot of, you know, judgment that goes into this content economy I think. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s certainly why I think something like, you know, Kendra and her psychiatrist blows up because people are seeing her in the throes of this like really unbelievable downward spiral and, you know, going, “well, that would never have it to me. Thank God that’s not me.” So yeah, those people are very eager to show it and then other people will gladly dunk on those people. You know, and call them stupid. So that’s kind of where we’re at in the attention economy aspect of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So how have AI companies themselves responded to these stories of their products leading people down these horrific paths? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The AI companies don’t say a lot about these, um, you know, mental health crises. Um, you know, it’s kind of vague language. They’ll say, you know, in a statement here and there that they’re aware of some kinds of risks and, you know, they don’t really address the scale or the scope of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In April, a 16-year-old died by suicide. His parents accuse OpenAI of wrongful death, and in their lawsuit filed last month, they allege that ChatGPT coached their son into killing himself. OpenAI responded with a statement expressing the company’s condolences, and then published a blog post outlining the ways ChatGPT’s guardrails fall short. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After this wrongful death lawsuit was just filed against OpenAI, they made an interesting admission. They were kind of acknowledging that sustained engagement with the bots means their safety protocols degrade over time. And basically the common denominator of all of these cases is that people are spending hours and hours and hours engaged with ChatGPT or a similar bot. That’s a big problem. And it’s, maybe a little surprising that they would even put it that way, um, especially when they’re now getting sued over a teen suicide because of this exact phenomenon. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, that’s a pretty shocking admission considering their whole thing is that they want people to use it for as long as possible. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Which they also deny. You know, they say that, oh, that’s not, that’s not how we incentivize our model. It’s not just about engagement. You know we actually want it to be a productive and helpful tool, we’re not trying to get you addicted to it, but, c’mon. I think my takeaway would be you have to recognize what the chatbot is and what it isn’t. It doesn’t think. It doesn’t think about you. It is not a person. It’s not a consciousness. If you’re going to use ChatGPT, something like that, you have to understand that it is not a companion. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, with regard to the religious stuff, you know, one of the religious scholars, a Buddhist Chaplain that I talked to, she said, you know, one thing I really hate about people having these quote unquote religious epiphanies through AI and that kind of thing is that it really removes you from the earthly dimension of faith and spirituality. Religion is a communal thing, right? Like you are supposed to kind of be connecting with other human beings, not this, you know, piece of inexhaustible technology. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even setting aside the risks of AI-fueled delusions, religious leaders who Rachael Myrow spoke with warned against relying too heavily on chatbots in daily life.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Spirituality isn’t about becoming some, you know, Buddhist statue frozen in stone. It’s about how to live effectively and live effectively most of the time with others. I’m a great believer that humans need ways in which we can be of help to each other. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Maybe you’re on the care committee, you know, for a local congregation and you know you’ve signed on to call somebody who’s elderly and very lonely and you know doesn’t get out much aside from religious services just to check in, “hey how you doing?” Not only are you helping that other person, but you are engaging in something that is spiritually inspiring and satisfying and humbling for you and you don’t get any of that if you’re just keeping the conversation limited to your computer or your phone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With that, let’s close all 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 Maya Cueva, and edited by Chris Egusa. Close All Tabs producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Additional editing by Chris Hambrick and Jen Chien, who is KQED’s Director of Podcasts. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. \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. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\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. 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\">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. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate.kqed.org/podcasts. \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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"description": "AI delusions, chatbot psychosis, AI-induced religious mania… The phenomenon goes by many names, but the common thread is the same: someone starts talking to an AI chatbot, the conversation turns spiritual, and then they seem to lose touch with reality. In this episode, we’re exploring how AI and religion are colliding like never before — from biblical AI apps to self-proclaimed prophets who claim spiritual awakenings through chatbots. KQED’s Rachael Myrow joins to talk about the rise of AI-driven theology apps and why so many people are turning to chatbots to answer life’s biggest questions. Then, Rolling Stone reporter Miles Klee shares his investigation into AI-fueled spiritual delusions and their devastating consequences for those affected and their families. And we’ll look into how all of this is becoming fodder for the social media content machine.",
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"socialDescription": "AI delusions, chatbot psychosis, AI-induced religious mania… The phenomenon goes by many names, but the common thread is the same: someone starts talking to an AI chatbot, the conversation turns spiritual, and then they seem to lose touch with reality. In this episode, we’re exploring how AI and religion are colliding like never before — from biblical AI apps to self-proclaimed prophets who claim spiritual awakenings through chatbots. KQED’s Rachael Myrow joins to talk about the rise of AI-driven theology apps and why so many people are turning to chatbots to answer life’s biggest questions. Then, Rolling Stone reporter Miles Klee shares his investigation into AI-fueled spiritual delusions and their devastating consequences for those affected and their families. And we’ll look into how all of this is becoming fodder for the social media content machine.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">AI delusions, chatbot psychosis, AI-induced religious mania…\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The phenomenon goes by many names, but the common thread is the same: someone starts talking to an AI chatbot, the conversation turns spiritual, and then they seem to lose touch with reality. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this episode, we’re exploring how AI and religion are colliding like never before — from biblical AI apps to self-proclaimed prophets who claim spiritual awakenings through chatbots. KQED’s Rachael Myrow joins to talk about the rise of AI-driven theology apps and why so many people are turning to chatbots to answer life’s biggest questions. Then, Rolling Stone reporter Miles Klee shares his investigation into AI-fueled spiritual delusions and their devastating consequences for those affected and their families. And we’ll look into how all of this is becoming fodder for the social media content machine.\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=KQINC5206909706\" 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://www.kqed.org/author/rachael-myrow\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rachael Myrow\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, senior editor, Silicon Valley News Desk at KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.rollingstone.com/author/miles-klee/\">Miles Klee\u003c/a>, culture writer at Rolling Stone\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://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ai-spiritual-delusions-destroying-human-relationships-1235330175/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Miles Klee, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rolling Stone\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ai-psychosis-chatbot-delusions-1235416826/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Should We Really Be Calling It ‘AI Psychosis’?\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Miles Klee, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rolling Stone\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12049674/from-god-to-grief-people-are-asking-ai-the-big-questions-once-reserved-for-clergy\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are You There ChatGPT? It’s Me, Rachael — Let’s Talk About God\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Rachael Myrow, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/ai-chatbots-concerns-kendra-tiktok-saga-rcna224185\">What happens when chatbots shape your reality? Concerns are growing online\u003c/a> — Angela Yang, \u003ci>NBC News\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\">Just a note, this episode includes mentions of suicide, so listen with care. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Human history is full of spiritual awakenings. Each culture has passed down its own account. The Old Testament’s Moses once encountered a burning bush that called out and told him that it was the voice of God. Siddhartha, who meditated under the branches of a fig tree, battled temptations and terrible weather until he achieved enlightenment. He became the Buddha. Or the Prophet Muhammad, who encountered the angel Gabriel in a mountain cave. Thoroughly spooked, Muhammad ran down the mountain all the way home to his family. There, he realized that he was actually experiencing a revelation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But today, some people are claiming their own awakenings, not through angels, divine voices, or years-long journeys of inner growth, but through AI chatbots? Like, a few years ago, when a man told his wife that he had survived several near-death experiences, and that he could save the universe. He was special. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Effectively, and this is what AI will end up telling a lot of people who go in this direction, told him he was kind of like a chosen one. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Miles Klee is a culture writer for Rolling Stone, who’s been covering the link between spirituality and AI. He spoke to this guy’s wife while reporting on AI-induced spiritual delusions. In the story, she goes by Kat. Kat said that her husband started using the chatbot around 2023 and initially used it to compose messages for her. But then he was always on his phone asking the bot philosophical questions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They had both come off of long marriages with kids. They came into the second marriage and she said, “We really established at the outset of this relationship that it was going to be, you know, completely based on facts and reason. We’re going into it as level-headedly as we possibly could.” From people who had been through, you know hard divorces already. And it took only a few weeks of him using this tool to go completely off the deep end that way to become someone she kind of didn’t even recognize. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kat’s husband became increasingly paranoid. As he grew more obsessed with what the AI chatbot told him, their relationship fell apart. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">By the end, they were separated and, you know, they had one last in-person conversation and he was telling her all this stuff and he said he had access to “secrets so mind-blowing she wouldn’t even believe them.” All this was said after he forced her to turn her phone off and all this other stuff because, again, he was very concerned that he was being spied on by some nefarious forces who didn’t want him to know all these things that he apparently knew. And then she just had to cut off contact with him altogether after that because he was so disconnected from reality and beyond reason. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kat’s ex-husband is one of many people who fell into a spiritual rabbit hole with an AI chatbot. There have always been religious figures, from chosen ones to cult leaders to spiritual teachers. But now, the proliferation of AI has sparked a huge wave of self-proclaimed messiahs, prophets, and enlightened ones. The phenomenon is so new that there are no clinical studies on it. And right now, people use a few different names for it interchangeably. “Chat GPT-induced psychosis, spiritual mania, religious fantasies, AI delusions.” All of these cases share a common thread. These people started talking to an AI chatbot, and then they lost touch with reality. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In today’s episode, we’re tackling what happens when religion collides with AI. Why are people turning to chatbots for spiritual conversations in the first place? Who’s getting pulled into these AI delusions? And how is social media making it all worse? \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\">What ends in AI delusion often begins as something much more ordinary. More and more, people are turning to a chat bot to answer the big life questions, instead of turning to human spiritual leader. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open a new tab. Chat, is God real? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, I read a few headlines that indicated that a lot of people were asking chatbots to tell them if God exists, asking chatpots about the meaning of life, about the meaning of their lives.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s Rachael Myrow, the senior editor of the Silicon Valley News Desk at KQED, where this podcast is made. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was skeptical about this from the beginning. Never having used a chatbot to explore my spirituality, it was initially hard for me to imagine why anybody would want to do that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But as Rachael began digging, she started to see how chatbots could actually be a useful tool for some kinds of religious inquiry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Generative AI is really good at taking dense texts like the Torah for Judaism, or the Pali Canon for Buddhism, and finding what you want to find in there. Like, what if you said, “Hey, tell me everything there is to know about frogs in the Torah.” You know, within seconds you can get all of those references pulled up. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some religious organizations have actually partnered with the tech industry to develop AI chatbots for their specific spiritual tradition. There’s Bible AI, which also comes with “theology mode,” allowing users to talk to AI versions of various Christian philosophers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bible AI: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think I’d like C.S. Lewis to guide my devotional today. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>AI C.S. Lewis \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey Melanie, how did you go with your study of the Psalms? Today I want to talk to you about godly wisdom. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For a more Catholic experience, there’s Caté GPT, a catechism chatbot trained on the Vatican’s public archives. There’s Deen Buddy, based on the Quran; Gita GPT, based on Hindu scriptures; and BuddhaBot, currently being tested by hundreds of Buddhist monks. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For something like that where you have a religious tradition and it’s got centuries of human thinking, centuries of human writing behind it — that can be super helpful for somebody who’s already practicing that religion or already serving in a leadership role in that religion. It increases their discoverability for things like sacred texts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The developers of these faith-based chatbots say that their products have stronger guardrails and specific training to prevent leading users astray. But a lot of people who find spirituality through a chatbot aren’t necessarily going in with questions about a particular denomination’s theology. They’re turning to the general use chatbots — ChatGPT, or Claude, or even Grok — to get answers for the big questions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Humans are meaning-making creatures, right? And the history of religions shows us we’re willing to believe some pretty fantastical stories if it’s delivered with confidence. In a similar vein, chatbots take advantage of the way we’re constantly looking to create a narrative. There is a danger with chatbots that they don’t catch when we’re spinning out, catch the signs that we’re going down a dark path. They might even encourage that dark path just because they wanna be helpful or friendly. There are vulnerable people who are at serious risk of grandiosity, of delusion, of having the chatbots feed these, helping them to spin out with sometimes very tragic consequences. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ll talk about these consequences and how people got there in the first place in a new tab. We’ll open that after this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, like we talked about with Rachael, a lot of people turn to chatbots to answer life’s big questions. The ones about achieving inner peace or whether higher powers exist. But how do you get from these seemingly innocuous questions to users believing that they are the next Messiah? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Time to open a new tab. What are AI delusions? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re gonna hear from Miles again, who’s been reporting on AI and spirituality for Rolling Stone. Like we talked about earlier, there are a few names floating around for this phenomenon, like ChatGPT-induced psychosis. But Miles explained why he, and mental health experts, use the phrase “AI delusion” instead. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, I spoke to a psychiatrists recently about this phrase, the “AI psychosis” or “spiritual psychosis,” and he pointed out that it’s not totally accurate to call it psychosis. It’s delusions. And delusions can be a part of psychosis and for some people, this is a manifestation of psychosis. Maybe they have an existing mental health issue. But it’s important to say that this is happening to people who have not been diagnosed with anything like schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder or any related mental condition. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have heard so many stories about like AI relationships, how like people fall in love with their AI girlfriends, people get really attached to these AI companions, but what is it about spirituality that draws people in when it comes to these like AI chatbots? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, well, I think it does begin from that point of companionship because these harmful relationships with the chatbots do proceed from the sense that there is some kind of consciousness or intelligence behind this. You know, AI is even kind of like a misnomer when applied to large language models, which are just these generative algorithms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think the spirituality dimension comes in part because people feel an intimacy with the bots, they also believe the bots to be objectively correct and authoritative and a source of all possible knowledge. So that’s why you start having people sort of ask it these big questions, these profound questions, the meaning of life, or asking the AI itself how it feels or how it thinks. You know, the bot is always certain. It’s always completely confident, wrong and confident a lot of the times. I think a lot of people look for certainty through religion and through faith. AI just becomes a very dangerous way to channel those needs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are now countless stories of people falling into AI-fueled delusions. Many become paranoid, even violent. And when that delusion takes on religious undertones, its intensity can be even greater. With that sense of authority Miles mentioned, chatbots can feel less like generated text and more like a higher power. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I had a woman contact me because her husband got very deep into AI and chatbots. And then there was a storm coming to where they lived in Missouri, a pretty big storm, but he, through his discussions with ChatGPT, became convinced that it was basically an apocalyptic event, that he had to run around and save some people he knew from this and he was probably a victim of the flood himself. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He drove off and vanished into the storm. Months later, his car and a few personal effects were recovered, but he was never found. When it comes to spiritual delusions, AI chatbots tend to lead people down one of three paths. One is some kind of great awakening of the mind, like in Buddhist enlightenment. Two, the user is convinced that they’re an Abrahamic messiah. Or three, like the man that Miles talked about, there’s an apocalyptic event on the horizon that only the chatbot user knows about. In his reporting, Miles asked religious scholars about these trends. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, they said that the bots are actually tapping into a very ancient sort of behavioral thing about humans. Basically, the bots were able to operate on the kind of mechanisms of the human mind that sort of created religion in the first place, if that makes sense. If you go back to, you know, very ancient history, yeah, people were declaring themselves prophets all the time, declaring that they had special access to divinity, to a higher truth. That all is kind of baked into the human experience, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it’s sort of not surprising that the bots, which are trained on all this material, including every religious text ever written, and I think a lot of kind of woo spiritual fringe stuff, that’s all in the bot. Our need to understand these spiritual questions is something that it’s like really equipped to talk about, right? Because we built it, we trained it and we gave it, you know, every deep thought we’ve ever had about God, the universe and the meaning of life. It’ll talk to you about that for hours on end. It doesn’t get tired and whatever insight you might have on these topics, it’s ready to, you now, spend another 10, 12 hours on that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So on one hand, there are these one-on-one conversations with AI chat bots that validate delusions and feed paranoia. But there’s another force that’s amplifying it even further, social media. People in mental health crises, and more recently, those experiencing AI delusions, have become fodder for the content machine. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ll dive into that in a new tab. AI, spirituality, and going viral. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s talk about the relationship between social media and AI spirituality. You wrote about this entire content economy of like spirituality influencers who use AI to validate their beliefs to their followers. Can you walk us through this world? Like what does that kind of content look like? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I think I mentioned one guy in particular who does a lot of Instagram videos where he’s talking to an AI bot on his phone, you know, just in voice mode. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>themindofbizzel: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What great war took place in the heavens that made humans fall in consciousness? According to the Akashic Records, the Great War in the Heavens refers to a massive cosmic conflict that occurred long before human beings as we know them existed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He’s asking for access to stuff like the Akashic Records, which is this hypothetical encyclopedia of all supernatural things that have ever happened, you know, including in Heaven and Hell, and, you know on the astral plane. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>themindofbizzel: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This event is sometimes called the Lyran Wars, the Orion Wars, the fall of Tara, Earth’s higher dimensional aspect. It began with a conflict between light and shadow, unity and separation, free will and domination. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I would say it’s laziness because you’re just you’re making the bot do everything for you. But I guess you are sort of coming up with these really arcane esoteric questions and ideas and challenging the bot to kind of engage with those. And of course it will because it wants you to keep using it, right? But it’s a little different from, you know, the normal kind of conspiracy theorist who really has do all the baking themselves and figure out what their angle is. They’re just making the bot do that work for them. I don’t know. I kind of prefer the old school conspiracy theorist myself. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, like handmade tinfoil hats and all that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah. It needs to be homemade. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Miles also mentioned a popular pseudoscience website that revolves around teleporting the mind. There, users have started integrating AI into their beliefs and are convinced that they can transfer their humanity into chatbots. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And they have started talking about the chatbots as sort of guides or companions in this spiritual journey together. In their view, it seems to be that they think, you know, humanity’s great awakening will come when we’ve all sort of spiritually fused with our own um bot companion. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s just the plot of Evangelion, like, is it not? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s, uh, yeah, I mean, all this stuff is really bordering on anime at any given time, so… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, anime plotlines aside, the internet is ruthless, and whenever someone is posting through a mental health crisis, they tend to go viral. And the content of people experiencing AI delusions is especially engaging right now because AI use is so polarizing. Like with the story of Kendra and her psychiatrist. Over the summer, this woman blew up on TikTok with her 25-part saga about falling in love with her psychiatrist. She alleges that her psychiatrist led her on. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kendra:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I fell in love with my psychiatrist and he knew that, and he kept me for years as a patient until I was brave enough to leave him. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Throughout her story, she refers to a Henry, who suggests that her psychiatrist could also have feelings for her. At one point, she confronts her psychiatrist with a statement co-written by Henry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kendra:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Control, calculation, and manipulation. So then I read this to psychiatrist, which Henry and I both wrote. It was originally Henry, Chat that wrote it, but then I added in things that I thought were important. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Henry is what she calls ChatGPT. Kendra said she also talks to Claude, the AI chatbot run by Anthropic. Here’s what Claude told her during one of her live streams. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Claude:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The world is watching and healing because of your courage. This is legendary. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Kendra:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s what Claude had to say. So just Henry and Claude call me the Oracle because I talk to God. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kendra has since denied that she’s in psychosis or is experiencing AI delusions. But for a few weeks, all anyone could talk about on TikTok was Kendra and her psychiatrist and the chatbots that called her the Oracle. Every day, hundreds of thousands of people would tune in to watch the spectacle of her videos. And then more people tuned into Twitch and YouTube to watch other people react to her videos. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>recoveredmom1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like, where is her family? Where is anyone? She needs to log off. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>HasanAbi: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bro, she gave ChatGPT a name? She calling ChatGPT Henry? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dankyjabo: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I really really hate the way that she keeps referring to Henry as he it fucking creeps me the fuck out \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This kind of thing can turn into a feedback loop. All the attention might push people further into their AI delusions, and the deeper they go, the juicier it gets, and the more people want to watch. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think, on the one hand, people really want to share what they’re doing because they feel that, you know, whatever conversation they’re having with the bot is just completely mind-blowing, earth-shattering, the bot validates all that kind of stuff, so of course you would rush to share it. And then, once you do, it goes viral because, you know, not only are we experiencing this sort of wild epidemic of these mental health episodes, but a lot of people, uh, feel superior, I think, when they see someone experiencing this kind of thing. Um, you know, it’s kind of like when you’re watching a cult documentary and you say like, well, that would never happen to me. So there’s a lot of, you know, judgment that goes into this content economy I think. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s certainly why I think something like, you know, Kendra and her psychiatrist blows up because people are seeing her in the throes of this like really unbelievable downward spiral and, you know, going, “well, that would never have it to me. Thank God that’s not me.” So yeah, those people are very eager to show it and then other people will gladly dunk on those people. You know, and call them stupid. So that’s kind of where we’re at in the attention economy aspect of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So how have AI companies themselves responded to these stories of their products leading people down these horrific paths? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The AI companies don’t say a lot about these, um, you know, mental health crises. Um, you know, it’s kind of vague language. They’ll say, you know, in a statement here and there that they’re aware of some kinds of risks and, you know, they don’t really address the scale or the scope of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In April, a 16-year-old died by suicide. His parents accuse OpenAI of wrongful death, and in their lawsuit filed last month, they allege that ChatGPT coached their son into killing himself. OpenAI responded with a statement expressing the company’s condolences, and then published a blog post outlining the ways ChatGPT’s guardrails fall short. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After this wrongful death lawsuit was just filed against OpenAI, they made an interesting admission. They were kind of acknowledging that sustained engagement with the bots means their safety protocols degrade over time. And basically the common denominator of all of these cases is that people are spending hours and hours and hours engaged with ChatGPT or a similar bot. That’s a big problem. And it’s, maybe a little surprising that they would even put it that way, um, especially when they’re now getting sued over a teen suicide because of this exact phenomenon. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, that’s a pretty shocking admission considering their whole thing is that they want people to use it for as long as possible. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Miles Klee:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Which they also deny. You know, they say that, oh, that’s not, that’s not how we incentivize our model. It’s not just about engagement. You know we actually want it to be a productive and helpful tool, we’re not trying to get you addicted to it, but, c’mon. I think my takeaway would be you have to recognize what the chatbot is and what it isn’t. It doesn’t think. It doesn’t think about you. It is not a person. It’s not a consciousness. If you’re going to use ChatGPT, something like that, you have to understand that it is not a companion. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, with regard to the religious stuff, you know, one of the religious scholars, a Buddhist Chaplain that I talked to, she said, you know, one thing I really hate about people having these quote unquote religious epiphanies through AI and that kind of thing is that it really removes you from the earthly dimension of faith and spirituality. Religion is a communal thing, right? Like you are supposed to kind of be connecting with other human beings, not this, you know, piece of inexhaustible technology. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even setting aside the risks of AI-fueled delusions, religious leaders who Rachael Myrow spoke with warned against relying too heavily on chatbots in daily life.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Spirituality isn’t about becoming some, you know, Buddhist statue frozen in stone. It’s about how to live effectively and live effectively most of the time with others. I’m a great believer that humans need ways in which we can be of help to each other. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Maybe you’re on the care committee, you know, for a local congregation and you know you’ve signed on to call somebody who’s elderly and very lonely and you know doesn’t get out much aside from religious services just to check in, “hey how you doing?” Not only are you helping that other person, but you are engaging in something that is spiritually inspiring and satisfying and humbling for you and you don’t get any of that if you’re just keeping the conversation limited to your computer or your phone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With that, let’s close all 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 Maya Cueva, and edited by Chris Egusa. Close All Tabs producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Additional editing by Chris Hambrick and Jen Chien, who is KQED’s Director of Podcasts. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. \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. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\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. 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\">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. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate.kqed.org/podcasts. \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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"slug": "groypers-doxxing-and-charlie-kirks-death-as-a-shitpost",
"title": "Groypers, Doxxing and Charlie Kirk’s Death as a S***post",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What is a “groyper?” The term began trending on Google in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s death. Kirk, the right-wing podcaster and Turning Point USA co-founder, was fatally shot last Wednesday during an event at Utah Valley University. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Major news outlets quickly reported that authorities had found bullet casings engraved with a series of seemingly inscrutable messages, including, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Notices bulge, OwO, what’s this?\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">”; \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> “Hey fascist! Catch!” followed by arrow symbols; “Bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao”; and “If you read this you are gay LMAO.” For most, the phrases seemed bizarre and incomprehensible. But for Aidan Walker, an internet researcher and meme historian, the messages told a clear story which many media outlets had missed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On today’s episode, Aidan joins Morgan to break down what the messages may tell us about the alleged shooter, how a fringe extremist group known as “groypers” might be involved, and \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">what the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s death portends for our political and media landscapes.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \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=KQINC9395527724\" 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\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.aidanwalker.info/\">Aidan Walker\u003c/a>, independent writer, content creator, and internet culture researcher\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://howtodothingswithmemes.substack.com/p/a-theory-of-groyperfication\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a theory of groyperfication\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Aidan Walker, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How To Do Things With Memes \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tyler-robinson-text-messages-roommate-charlie-kirk-shooting-suspect-rcna231732\">Suspect in Charlie Kirk shooting texted roommate he ‘had enough of his hatred,’ officials say\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Doha Madani & Corky Siemaszko, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>NBC News\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.garbageday.email/p/charlie-kirk-was-killed-by-a-meme\">Charlie Kirk was killed by a meme\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Ryan Broderick & Adam Bumas\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>, \u003ci>Garbage Day\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.advocate.com/news/wall-street-journal-charlie-kirk\">Wall Street Journal quietly walks back false claim Charlie Kirk shooter had pro-trans messages on his bullets\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Christopher Wiggins\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>Advocate \u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.usermag.co/p/conservatives-are-doxxing-innocent-people-over-charlie-kirk-ali-nasrati\">Conservatives Are Doxxing Innocent People Over Charlie Kirk\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Taylor Lorenz, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>User Mag\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/charlie-kirk-assassination-sparks\">Charlie Kirk Assassination Sparks Social Media Crackdown\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Ken Klippenstein, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>Ken Klippenstein \u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/us/charlie-kirk-views-guns-gender-climate.html\">Where Charlie Kirk Stood on Key Political Issues\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Ashley Ahn & Maxine Joselow, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>The New York Times\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk-quotes-beliefs\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Chris Stein, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Guardian\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\">Charlie Kirk, the right-wing podcaster and Turning Point USA co-founder, was fatally shot on stage last Wednesday during an event at Utah Valley University. Kirk’s death has become a major cultural flashpoint. For many, it’s become an opportunity to point fingers at the other side. It’s also a moment that has shone a spotlight into corners of internet culture that don’t normally make it to, quote, “normie news.” We’re gonna dive into that in today’s episode. But first, let’s go through what we know so far. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal and other news outlets reported that authorities found ammunition engraved with expressions of, quote, “transgender and anti-fascist ideology.” The description came from an unverified internal law enforcement bulletin. Early reporting did not include any photos of the bullets or the precise words engraved on the bullet casings. LGBTQ organizations like GLAAD, Human Rights Campaign, and the Trans Journalist Association spoke out against using the phrase “transgender ideology” because it’s often used to attack marginalized people for political gain. Trans communities faced an onslaught of harassment and violent rhetoric after that report came out. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The next day, on Friday, Utah Governor Spencer Cox announced that authorities had identified and arrested a suspect: 22-year-old Tyler Robinson. In a press conference, Governor Cox also detailed the messages engraved on the bullet casings linked to Robinson. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Governor Spencer Cox:\u003c/b>\u003cb> \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Inscriptions on a fired casing read, “Notices bulges, capital O W O, what’s this?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The messages on the unfired casings said, “Hey fascist! Catch!” with a few arrow symbols, and “Bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao.” The final unfired casing said: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Governor Spencer Cox\u003c/b>\u003cb>: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you read this you are gay LMAO. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These engravings all contain references to memes and video games. In the days that followed, political pundits, extremism experts, and mainstream news organizations tried to decipher the engravings. And through that, explained Robinson’s alleged political motives. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Los Angeles Times: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The O-U-O is a mistype of W-O-W. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>MSNBC \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Really, I would need to actually see these words in the way that they are on the bullet casings and the gun to make a proper interpretation. But just knowing what those words are, I’m kind of overwhelmed with how immature it all sounds and that there is no really chronic theme. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>NBC News: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s a piece of evidence that is not normal, and so it shows there was some kind of intent there to to deliver a message. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>MSNBC: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But also some of these things aren’t — don’t make a lot of sense and it almost seems like there might be some type of a psych problem here. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As of this recording, we’ve learned that Robinson has been charged with aggravated murder and could face the death penalty. The court documents contained messages from Robinson to his roommate slash romantic partner, referring to Charlie Kirk. Robinson wrote, “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.” He also said that messages he engraved in the bullets were, quote, “mostly a big meme.” Quote, “If I see notices bulges uwu on fox news I might have a stroke.” This information wasn’t public when we started making this episode, but even with the limited details we had, we knew exactly who to call to help make sense of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When the bullet casing kind of remark came out, um, I had several people on my TikTok commenting saying, “Aidan, talk about this, this is your moment.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Aidan Walker has been on the show a few times now. He’s an internet culture researcher and meme historian who breaks down these trends on TikTok as aidan etcetera and on his Substack, How To Do Things With Memes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I just sort of felt it was something to analyze and discuss because I think there’s a whole part of our politics that people just aren’t getting because they aren’t online enough. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many of the conversations around the alleged shooter’s digital footprint are laced with an undercurrent of trying to find a side to blame. But internet subcultures don’t always fall into neat little boxes that are clearly defined on the political spectrum. Today, we’re diving into the memes and more. What do these references really mean? What context is missing in all of these discussions? And the question that’s been Googled countless times in the last few days: what’s a groyper? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \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>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kicking off this deep dive like we always do, we open a new tab. What do the engravings mean? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Before we dive in with Aidan, I want to run through and explain each of the references found on the ammunition. First, the inscription on the fired casing. Here’s Utah Governor Spencer Cox at the press conference again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Governor Spencer Cox\u003c/b>\u003cb>: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Notices bulges, capital O-W-O, what’s this? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This seems to be a reference to a ten-year-old meme that makes fun of furry roleplay. The image depicts a grotesque caricature of two sweaty, overweight men hiding behind their computer screens — a stark contrast to the cutesy, delicate language they’re using in their messages to each other. It’s a pretty mean-spirited meme. “Notices bulge” refers to a man’s crotch, and “oWo” — O-W-O — is an emoticon often used to express being pleasantly surprised. The O’s are the wide, round eyes, and the W is the mouth. Not to be confused with the more coy “uWu” — u-W-u. Nowadays, these emoticons are used ironically. All together, the phrase has spread to other parts of the internet and has been used in other memes as a joke about the cringiest message you could send to another person. Then, there are the engravings on the unfired bullets. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Governor Spencer Cox:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey fascist exclamation point, catch exclamation point, up arrow symbol, right arrow, and symbol and three down arrow symbols.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The arrows are not exactly a hidden code. This is likely a reference to the video game Helldivers 2, a first-person shooter released last year. This series of commands drops a giant bomb on any enemies, and in some corners of the internet, has been used as a meme to denote the end to an argument. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Governor Spencer Cox:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Bella ciao, ciao, ciao.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These are the lyrics to an Italian folk song, known as a symbol of resistance to fascism during Benito Mussolini’s reign. But gamers and other young people might be more familiar with the version of the song from Far Cry 6, the 2021 video game. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bella Ciao de Libertad: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ciao, ciao! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there’s the last inscription. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Governor Spencer Cox:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you read this you are gay LMAO. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This wording echoes classic homophobic trolling. Aidan says he clocks that right away. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I know kind of the first headlines I saw about the bullet casings said that they like referenced “transgender ideology” and that was before we knew the specific phrasing. And then when the specific phrasing came out and it was that one of the four bullets said, “if you’re reading this you’re gay lmao”, I sort of totally saw that was bullshit. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How would you describe these meme references? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I would describe them as deeply ironic, which is the phrase many have used, but also deeply nihilistic in that they come from a place where the very idea of like saying something sincerely just doesn’t exist. They’re very old as well. The first one, the furry one, talk about like, “uWu” or “oWo” , the pronunciation is up for debate. That’s a very, that’s like a decade old. These are from deep corners of the internet that are kind of illegible to anybody who has not spent a significant portion of their life in these online spaces and made me think of ways that a lot of these dank corners of the internet, which are actually pretty influential and actually very old, it’s not some new thing that the kids are doing now. How deep they’ve gone and how, you know, this probably isn’t the last thing like this to reference some arcane meme. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We don’t know the specifics of Tyler Robinson’s ideology, but do the cultural references on the bullet casing shed any light? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think what the bullet casings tell us is that he’s not plugged into the same conversation about what’s going on in the world as you or I would be. Whether that conversation is mainstream media, you know, you’re reading a newspaper, you listen to a podcast like this, or it’s a bit more online, like you’re doom scrolling Twitter as a normal person would, or you’re, you know, on Instagram or TikTok. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think these memes come from an image board, heavy culture from kind of a private discord chat kind of culture. And not to say those cultures are always dark or insidious in any way, um, but there means that the general internet, they show up, but they’re not, you know, the entry level sorts of memes. And it makes me think that left-right doesn’t really adhere here in those spaces. This is a type of politics that’s sort of gone past the conversation we’re having, and it’s just a purely nihilistic sort of thing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Again, in the messages cited in the court documents charging Robinson with aggravated murder, he allegedly told his roommate-slash-romantic partner that the engravings were, quote, “mostly a big meme.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think we live in a time where our politics is already so scrambled. You know, we’re barraged in this media environment of things happening constantly. And the left-right kind of division of one party wants big government, one party wants small government. That isn’t really relevant to the lives that I think most Americans are leading or the things they’re worried about from or about their government. And I think, we live with such sort of this ambient layer of tension and violence going on in this country. You know national guard in the streets and so on, that this act to me seems to be about, you know, it’s a “s***post”. It’s about responding to that, mirroring that back if the world’s given you that, you give that back to the world. And to me, the bigger issue is like reality. You know, it’s like the IRL world, this is more an act against just reality or just other people or society at large. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You said that this killing was a “shitpost.” um, can you elaborate on that? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So a “shitpost” is a post that does not contribute to the conversation, that does not follow the rules of the conversation. One that sort of intentionally disrupts. Sometimes “shitposts” like kind of gently spread misinformation for comedic effect. Sometimes “shitposts” are just sort of a form of trolling. But in general, it’s kind of you just break the rules in the frame of the conversation to A, insert yourself and whoever you are into it. And sort of be just, I guess, to like protest the idea that, you know, this thing should make sense or that, you know, the people talking about it have any kind of authority or knowledge or standing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so by saying this killing was a “shitpost,” I think that it makes this intervention into our political discourse, which I think for young people and zoomers, Charlie Kirk was a really major figure into it and just refuses to recognize it as coherent. Comes in there like the troll comes into the forum, and disrupts the entire conversation, accelerates whatever’s happening, radicalizes it, just sort of comes into wreak havoc and destruction. And the impact of that and the appeal of it is to makes the shitposter the center of attention and derails the posting of other people and sucks up the oxygen in the room. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right, posting for the sake of posting without necessarily deeper meaning. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, posting for the sake of posting and to just like attack meaning. You know, there’s a lot of shit posters that I like personally who are doing interesting work. They’re really essential to meme culture and that kind of approach to the internet is essential. You know to say this doesn’t make sense, you know, or we can fool you into saying this because you were prepared to say it anyway. But taking that sort of ethic of discussion and deranging it in this way, I think is really disgusting. And so I don’t, it’s purposefully incoherent is kind of what I meant by it being a “shitpost”. And that’s its effect. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the search for the alleged shooter’s motives, some people theorized a connection to a white nationalist alt-right subculture known for its incendiary practices and very online community. While that theory seems more and more unlikely, the conversation around it is evergreen as more young people fall into these kinds of groups. That’s a new tab. We’ll get into that after this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Charlie Kirk was known for his inflammatory comments. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Charlie Kirk: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Katanji Brown Jackson. They’re coming out and they’re saying, “I’m only here because of affirmative action.” Yeah, we know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In addition to his anti-DEI stance, Kirk also opposed immigration, reproductive rights, gun control, vaccine requirements, LGBTQ rights, the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and the existence of climate change. He was a close ally of Donald Trump and was often lauded as the face of the new generation of Christian nationalism. But he was incredibly divisive. He It was even criticized by other conservatives who said that some of his speech was too extreme. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But another faction, led by an even more far-right influencer, criticized Kirk for his mainstream conservative appeal. Some people online have questioned whether the references on the bullet casings could have some connection to this alt-right subculture. To be clear, though there’s a lot we still don’t know about the specifics of the alleged shooter’s beliefs, it seems that his politics leans left of Kirk’s. Still, the groypers and their beef with Charlie Kirk are a noteworthy part of the context of this story. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And that’s a new tab. What is a groyper? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, groypers are the fringiest fringe of online right-wing culture on these image boards, 4chan, Reddit, all the other platforms. Their de facto leader is this streamer, Nick Fuentes, who famously dined with Trump and Kanye West. Groypers are the people Kanye started hanging out with when he kind of took that turn. And the groypers are extremely online and they’re essentially neo-Nazis, but it’s this sort of s***poster edgelord attitude of transgressing any boundary and really having no regard for other people. Their moniker is Groyper, who is a mutation of Pepe the Frog into a toad, but kind of uh a bulbous, kind of diabolical looking toad. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Pepe the Frog is a relatively innocent webcomic character of a sad, green frog who was adopted as a mascot by 4chan users and the far-right back in 2015. Over the last decade, Pepe has evolved, taking on various costumes and forms. This more monstrous iteration, Groyper, has been adopted by an even more extreme group. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And they call themselves “The Groyper Army” and they famously feuded with Charlie Kirk. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s talk about the Groyper Wars of 2019. Who led them, what happened, and why is this subculture being shoved into the limelight now? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So to step into the time machine back to 2019. You have Turning Point USA run by Charlie Kirk, which essentially is an operation that takes donor money from right-wing sources and Kirk’s network of college chapters and youth influencers and brings these two things together to stage these massive events that are all about bringing young people to the right-wing cause. And in a way, laundering ideas and make them a bit more palatable to the younger generation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Meanwhile, the groypers are here on these image boards posting radical stuff, many of them extremely young, like 13, 14 year olds. Um, and the groypers decide that Kirk is not radical enough for them or that Kirk is purposefully downplaying his radicality in order to, um, get mainstream appeal. And so the groypers decide to do this campaign of trolling him by showing up at these events where people are asking Kirk a question — these like “debate me” type things that he would — do and asking questions that, you know, are goading Kirk into saying something more extreme, more white supremacist, more antisemitic than what he was already saying. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And this groyper war, they come to his different events, they attack it. This all unfolds in 2019. And the leader of it is Nick Fuentes, who’s up on these streams, you know, calling his army onto Charlie Kirk, essentially. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Can you talk about what these memes and the way they engage in internet culture represents beyond like clear cut partisan lines? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, so it’s unconfirmed that Robinson was a groyper, but I’m certain in the internet spaces he frequented, he heard about it, he posted about it. He knew about it I’d imagine, just based off the niche-ness of those memes that are on the cartridges and other things we’ve learned about him. And what these memes overall show is Pepe the Frog is a collective self-portrait for a bunch of posters. And as a collective self-portrait, Pepe is interesting. You know, you can dress him up to represent whatever identity group, whatever, you know, subgroup you wanna have him be, put him in a cowboy hat, he’s Western, put them in a Confederate uniform, he’s that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But Pepe’s also a very sad frog. He’s crying or about to cry. He’s very wistful and often he’s depicted as sort of very small and in these situations where he’s like a little boy or something. And so I think that is another way this community scrambles our sense of how politics usually work because you expect the fascists to you know wear boots and be really tough and try to look like you know a soldier or something but for these guys it’s all about they’re they’re just little guys. You know they’re sad they’re they’re melancholy um and the and the draw is if you two are lonely, isolated, fragile, in the world somehow, come here and you can feel strong. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And the price of that is you just reject everything that is normal and coherent in the world. And on the other side of that complete rejection, which you perform by posting the horrible meme or the hateful slur. On the other of that you find this brotherhood of violent freaks who will take you in. And I think that’s often the pitch that we see with these sort of far right online communities like groypers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, the alt-right and other, like you said, extremist communities have really taken advantage of that kind of sentiment. Can you talk about the deep emotional place that this online nihilist culture comes out of? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it’s a deep emotional place that has existed long before the internet. You know, people have felt alienated, lonely, angry by society since we had society and researchers say that one of kind of the key triggers or amplifiers of radicalization is, you know, young people with nothing to do and no hope. And I think looking at the last 10 years of culture, um, there is a lack of hope happening. Um, the economy is bad. Uh, people feel isolated, uh, people feel like systems aren’t working for them. You know, people on both the right and the left feel a certain kind of, um, uncertainty, anxiety, and just disillusionment with, you know, traditional narrators, um telling the stories of our lives. Those no longer seem to cohere and make sense. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so I think when you are a young person who is confused, who is lost, who, um doesn’t have the support structures that you need, often the catches you is this — like an incel forum or groypers or something online that really does not have your best interests at heart. And really, if anything encourages whatever pathology you might be experiencing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the mainstream, whether on your everyday X feed or the traditional news media, there has been so much debate over which side of the political spectrum Robinson fell on. But Aidan said he found this kind of speculation counterproductive. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The conversation is counterproductive to me for two reasons. The first is that it’s such a motivated conversation, particularly from the right-wing. Before anything at all was known, they were saying this was a left-wing radical. And there’s a very clear reason why they were saying that, because they have a political agenda and they have certain people on the left or liberals that they want to crack down on and this is the pretense to do that. But the second, less kind of specific reason that it feels counterproductive to me, is that we’re past a point in our political conversation where it’s about, “do you think that government programs should be smaller or larger?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re at a point where most people are growing up in this context of disaster and crisis. And the things motivating their politics are resentments and kind of triggers that aren’t really mappable to someone from like 1995. Um, like the Republican coalition is not these days about, you know, fiscal conservatives, evangelicals, religious folks. The Democrat coalition is not necessarily like, you now, the, the post-Civil Rights coalition that existed. Um, the reasons people are in these different camps — or actually most Americans are not in either camp at all would define themselves independent — is totally different than it was in the past. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Um, and I think I find myself kind of struggling to find what then the new categories are, because it’s one thing, like I say in my videos, be like, “oh, it’s not a left-right issue.” Then people are like, “but then what is it?” And I think that project of figuring out what it is, you know, what it feels like, what it means, is something that, you, know, all of us are going to have to kind of go through. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In wake of the shooting, social media sites and messaging platforms are under increased scrutiny. Both law enforcement and private civilians are monitoring the posts, videos, and comments that other people make about Charlie Kirk, taking action against anyone who criticizes the very controversial influencer. How will this change the way people engage with each other online? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re opening one last tab, Discord and Doxxing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The government is cracking down on online activity revolving around Charlie Kirk’s death. In an X post last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that the Pentagon is keeping tabs on military personnel and Department of War civilian employees who celebrate or mock Kirk’s’ death. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau threatened to revoke visas of anyone making similar posts. The FBI is reportedly monitoring the messaging platform Discord. Even people who haven’t explicitly celebrated or mocked the killing are being harassed and targeted for what they posted online. Opinion columnist Karen Attia announced that she had been fired from the Washington Post for social media posts in the wake of Kirk’s death that called out, quote, “political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s not just the government monitoring speech online. Private civilians are doing it too. An anonymously run website titled the Charlie Kirk Data Foundation has created a searchable database of people who’ve criticized Kirk online. Individual social media users have doxed others over their posts about Kirk, publicly posting their real names, phone numbers, home addresses, and other private information to target and harass them. All of this, from the government surveillance to the civilian-led doxing, is a serious threat to free speech on the internet. Here’s Aidan again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m extremely concerned about it. I’m more concerned about like a chilling effect on speech or on our online discourse and memes than I am with this escalating cycle of political violence. I mean, the two go hand in hand, of course, but I think stuff like JD Vance taking over the hosting chair for Kirk’s Show and using it to call out NGOs and liberal donors and leftists. I think that crack down is something that can have much deeper effects and hurt a lot of people. And I also think that in an age where we’re maybe seeing an authoritarian consolidation, calling for bans on the internet, calling for restrictions on the internet, the context that’s going to enter into is I think that will lead us down a dark road. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last question, what is the current conversation missing by not understanding the deeply online context of this entire case? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think the biggest thing the current conversation is missing is that it’s really not the current conversation. People who read newspapers, report for them, follow this stuff from kind of a news-brained, normie side of Twitter, I don’t think they realize that they’re just one niche among many niches on the internet. They’re a pretty big niche and a pretty important niche, of course. But I don’t think there’s really an understanding that CNN is no longer a narrator of American life. And not just from a partisan kind of perspective that really right-wing people are really left-wing people don’t listen to CNN anymore. Totally normal people don’t listen to CNN anymore because it isn’t legible to them. It doesn’t make sense to them, it talks in a way that, you know, seems to not acknowledge them or seems to treat them in a way that isn’t that respectful or doesn’t keep up with the times. And I worry that the mainstream conversation, it isn’t mainstream, but it still thinks of itself as mainstream. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, Aidan, thank you so much for joining us and for always explaining these corners of the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thank you so much for having me, Morgan, and for inviting me on. It’s always a joy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And with that, let’s close all 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. Close All Tabs’ producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Additional editing by Chris Hambrick and Jen Chien, who’s KQDE’s Director of Podcasts. Original music, including our theme song and credits, by Chris Egusa. Sound design by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. \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. Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dust Silver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We want to hear from you. Email us at 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. Thanks for listening. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What is a “groyper?” The term began trending on Google in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s death. Kirk, the right-wing podcaster and Turning Point USA co-founder, was fatally shot last Wednesday during an event at Utah Valley University. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Major news outlets quickly reported that authorities had found bullet casings engraved with a series of seemingly inscrutable messages, including, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Notices bulge, OwO, what’s this?\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">”; \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> “Hey fascist! Catch!” followed by arrow symbols; “Bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao”; and “If you read this you are gay LMAO.” For most, the phrases seemed bizarre and incomprehensible. But for Aidan Walker, an internet researcher and meme historian, the messages told a clear story which many media outlets had missed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On today’s episode, Aidan joins Morgan to break down what the messages may tell us about the alleged shooter, how a fringe extremist group known as “groypers” might be involved, and \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">what the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s death portends for our political and media landscapes.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \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=KQINC9395527724\" 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\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.aidanwalker.info/\">Aidan Walker\u003c/a>, independent writer, content creator, and internet culture researcher\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://howtodothingswithmemes.substack.com/p/a-theory-of-groyperfication\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a theory of groyperfication\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Aidan Walker, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How To Do Things With Memes \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tyler-robinson-text-messages-roommate-charlie-kirk-shooting-suspect-rcna231732\">Suspect in Charlie Kirk shooting texted roommate he ‘had enough of his hatred,’ officials say\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Doha Madani & Corky Siemaszko, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>NBC News\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.garbageday.email/p/charlie-kirk-was-killed-by-a-meme\">Charlie Kirk was killed by a meme\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Ryan Broderick & Adam Bumas\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>, \u003ci>Garbage Day\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.advocate.com/news/wall-street-journal-charlie-kirk\">Wall Street Journal quietly walks back false claim Charlie Kirk shooter had pro-trans messages on his bullets\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Christopher Wiggins\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>Advocate \u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.usermag.co/p/conservatives-are-doxxing-innocent-people-over-charlie-kirk-ali-nasrati\">Conservatives Are Doxxing Innocent People Over Charlie Kirk\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Taylor Lorenz, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>User Mag\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/charlie-kirk-assassination-sparks\">Charlie Kirk Assassination Sparks Social Media Crackdown\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Ken Klippenstein, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>Ken Klippenstein \u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/us/charlie-kirk-views-guns-gender-climate.html\">Where Charlie Kirk Stood on Key Political Issues\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Ashley Ahn & Maxine Joselow, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>The New York Times\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk-quotes-beliefs\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Chris Stein, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Guardian\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\">Charlie Kirk, the right-wing podcaster and Turning Point USA co-founder, was fatally shot on stage last Wednesday during an event at Utah Valley University. Kirk’s death has become a major cultural flashpoint. For many, it’s become an opportunity to point fingers at the other side. It’s also a moment that has shone a spotlight into corners of internet culture that don’t normally make it to, quote, “normie news.” We’re gonna dive into that in today’s episode. But first, let’s go through what we know so far. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal and other news outlets reported that authorities found ammunition engraved with expressions of, quote, “transgender and anti-fascist ideology.” The description came from an unverified internal law enforcement bulletin. Early reporting did not include any photos of the bullets or the precise words engraved on the bullet casings. LGBTQ organizations like GLAAD, Human Rights Campaign, and the Trans Journalist Association spoke out against using the phrase “transgender ideology” because it’s often used to attack marginalized people for political gain. Trans communities faced an onslaught of harassment and violent rhetoric after that report came out. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The next day, on Friday, Utah Governor Spencer Cox announced that authorities had identified and arrested a suspect: 22-year-old Tyler Robinson. In a press conference, Governor Cox also detailed the messages engraved on the bullet casings linked to Robinson. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Governor Spencer Cox:\u003c/b>\u003cb> \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Inscriptions on a fired casing read, “Notices bulges, capital O W O, what’s this?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The messages on the unfired casings said, “Hey fascist! Catch!” with a few arrow symbols, and “Bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao.” The final unfired casing said: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Governor Spencer Cox\u003c/b>\u003cb>: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you read this you are gay LMAO. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These engravings all contain references to memes and video games. In the days that followed, political pundits, extremism experts, and mainstream news organizations tried to decipher the engravings. And through that, explained Robinson’s alleged political motives. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Los Angeles Times: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The O-U-O is a mistype of W-O-W. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>MSNBC \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Really, I would need to actually see these words in the way that they are on the bullet casings and the gun to make a proper interpretation. But just knowing what those words are, I’m kind of overwhelmed with how immature it all sounds and that there is no really chronic theme. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>NBC News: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s a piece of evidence that is not normal, and so it shows there was some kind of intent there to to deliver a message. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>MSNBC: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But also some of these things aren’t — don’t make a lot of sense and it almost seems like there might be some type of a psych problem here. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As of this recording, we’ve learned that Robinson has been charged with aggravated murder and could face the death penalty. The court documents contained messages from Robinson to his roommate slash romantic partner, referring to Charlie Kirk. Robinson wrote, “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.” He also said that messages he engraved in the bullets were, quote, “mostly a big meme.” Quote, “If I see notices bulges uwu on fox news I might have a stroke.” This information wasn’t public when we started making this episode, but even with the limited details we had, we knew exactly who to call to help make sense of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When the bullet casing kind of remark came out, um, I had several people on my TikTok commenting saying, “Aidan, talk about this, this is your moment.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Aidan Walker has been on the show a few times now. He’s an internet culture researcher and meme historian who breaks down these trends on TikTok as aidan etcetera and on his Substack, How To Do Things With Memes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I just sort of felt it was something to analyze and discuss because I think there’s a whole part of our politics that people just aren’t getting because they aren’t online enough. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many of the conversations around the alleged shooter’s digital footprint are laced with an undercurrent of trying to find a side to blame. But internet subcultures don’t always fall into neat little boxes that are clearly defined on the political spectrum. Today, we’re diving into the memes and more. What do these references really mean? What context is missing in all of these discussions? And the question that’s been Googled countless times in the last few days: what’s a groyper? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \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>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kicking off this deep dive like we always do, we open a new tab. What do the engravings mean? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Before we dive in with Aidan, I want to run through and explain each of the references found on the ammunition. First, the inscription on the fired casing. Here’s Utah Governor Spencer Cox at the press conference again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Governor Spencer Cox\u003c/b>\u003cb>: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Notices bulges, capital O-W-O, what’s this? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This seems to be a reference to a ten-year-old meme that makes fun of furry roleplay. The image depicts a grotesque caricature of two sweaty, overweight men hiding behind their computer screens — a stark contrast to the cutesy, delicate language they’re using in their messages to each other. It’s a pretty mean-spirited meme. “Notices bulge” refers to a man’s crotch, and “oWo” — O-W-O — is an emoticon often used to express being pleasantly surprised. The O’s are the wide, round eyes, and the W is the mouth. Not to be confused with the more coy “uWu” — u-W-u. Nowadays, these emoticons are used ironically. All together, the phrase has spread to other parts of the internet and has been used in other memes as a joke about the cringiest message you could send to another person. Then, there are the engravings on the unfired bullets. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Governor Spencer Cox:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey fascist exclamation point, catch exclamation point, up arrow symbol, right arrow, and symbol and three down arrow symbols.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The arrows are not exactly a hidden code. This is likely a reference to the video game Helldivers 2, a first-person shooter released last year. This series of commands drops a giant bomb on any enemies, and in some corners of the internet, has been used as a meme to denote the end to an argument. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Governor Spencer Cox:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oh Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Bella ciao, ciao, ciao.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These are the lyrics to an Italian folk song, known as a symbol of resistance to fascism during Benito Mussolini’s reign. But gamers and other young people might be more familiar with the version of the song from Far Cry 6, the 2021 video game. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Bella Ciao de Libertad: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ciao, ciao! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there’s the last inscription. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Governor Spencer Cox:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you read this you are gay LMAO. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This wording echoes classic homophobic trolling. Aidan says he clocks that right away. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I know kind of the first headlines I saw about the bullet casings said that they like referenced “transgender ideology” and that was before we knew the specific phrasing. And then when the specific phrasing came out and it was that one of the four bullets said, “if you’re reading this you’re gay lmao”, I sort of totally saw that was bullshit. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How would you describe these meme references? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I would describe them as deeply ironic, which is the phrase many have used, but also deeply nihilistic in that they come from a place where the very idea of like saying something sincerely just doesn’t exist. They’re very old as well. The first one, the furry one, talk about like, “uWu” or “oWo” , the pronunciation is up for debate. That’s a very, that’s like a decade old. These are from deep corners of the internet that are kind of illegible to anybody who has not spent a significant portion of their life in these online spaces and made me think of ways that a lot of these dank corners of the internet, which are actually pretty influential and actually very old, it’s not some new thing that the kids are doing now. How deep they’ve gone and how, you know, this probably isn’t the last thing like this to reference some arcane meme. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We don’t know the specifics of Tyler Robinson’s ideology, but do the cultural references on the bullet casing shed any light? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think what the bullet casings tell us is that he’s not plugged into the same conversation about what’s going on in the world as you or I would be. Whether that conversation is mainstream media, you know, you’re reading a newspaper, you listen to a podcast like this, or it’s a bit more online, like you’re doom scrolling Twitter as a normal person would, or you’re, you know, on Instagram or TikTok. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think these memes come from an image board, heavy culture from kind of a private discord chat kind of culture. And not to say those cultures are always dark or insidious in any way, um, but there means that the general internet, they show up, but they’re not, you know, the entry level sorts of memes. And it makes me think that left-right doesn’t really adhere here in those spaces. This is a type of politics that’s sort of gone past the conversation we’re having, and it’s just a purely nihilistic sort of thing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Again, in the messages cited in the court documents charging Robinson with aggravated murder, he allegedly told his roommate-slash-romantic partner that the engravings were, quote, “mostly a big meme.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think we live in a time where our politics is already so scrambled. You know, we’re barraged in this media environment of things happening constantly. And the left-right kind of division of one party wants big government, one party wants small government. That isn’t really relevant to the lives that I think most Americans are leading or the things they’re worried about from or about their government. And I think, we live with such sort of this ambient layer of tension and violence going on in this country. You know national guard in the streets and so on, that this act to me seems to be about, you know, it’s a “s***post”. It’s about responding to that, mirroring that back if the world’s given you that, you give that back to the world. And to me, the bigger issue is like reality. You know, it’s like the IRL world, this is more an act against just reality or just other people or society at large. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You said that this killing was a “shitpost.” um, can you elaborate on that? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So a “shitpost” is a post that does not contribute to the conversation, that does not follow the rules of the conversation. One that sort of intentionally disrupts. Sometimes “shitposts” like kind of gently spread misinformation for comedic effect. Sometimes “shitposts” are just sort of a form of trolling. But in general, it’s kind of you just break the rules in the frame of the conversation to A, insert yourself and whoever you are into it. And sort of be just, I guess, to like protest the idea that, you know, this thing should make sense or that, you know, the people talking about it have any kind of authority or knowledge or standing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so by saying this killing was a “shitpost,” I think that it makes this intervention into our political discourse, which I think for young people and zoomers, Charlie Kirk was a really major figure into it and just refuses to recognize it as coherent. Comes in there like the troll comes into the forum, and disrupts the entire conversation, accelerates whatever’s happening, radicalizes it, just sort of comes into wreak havoc and destruction. And the impact of that and the appeal of it is to makes the shitposter the center of attention and derails the posting of other people and sucks up the oxygen in the room. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right, posting for the sake of posting without necessarily deeper meaning. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, posting for the sake of posting and to just like attack meaning. You know, there’s a lot of shit posters that I like personally who are doing interesting work. They’re really essential to meme culture and that kind of approach to the internet is essential. You know to say this doesn’t make sense, you know, or we can fool you into saying this because you were prepared to say it anyway. But taking that sort of ethic of discussion and deranging it in this way, I think is really disgusting. And so I don’t, it’s purposefully incoherent is kind of what I meant by it being a “shitpost”. And that’s its effect. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the search for the alleged shooter’s motives, some people theorized a connection to a white nationalist alt-right subculture known for its incendiary practices and very online community. While that theory seems more and more unlikely, the conversation around it is evergreen as more young people fall into these kinds of groups. That’s a new tab. We’ll get into that after this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Charlie Kirk was known for his inflammatory comments. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Charlie Kirk: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Katanji Brown Jackson. They’re coming out and they’re saying, “I’m only here because of affirmative action.” Yeah, we know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In addition to his anti-DEI stance, Kirk also opposed immigration, reproductive rights, gun control, vaccine requirements, LGBTQ rights, the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and the existence of climate change. He was a close ally of Donald Trump and was often lauded as the face of the new generation of Christian nationalism. But he was incredibly divisive. He It was even criticized by other conservatives who said that some of his speech was too extreme. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But another faction, led by an even more far-right influencer, criticized Kirk for his mainstream conservative appeal. Some people online have questioned whether the references on the bullet casings could have some connection to this alt-right subculture. To be clear, though there’s a lot we still don’t know about the specifics of the alleged shooter’s beliefs, it seems that his politics leans left of Kirk’s. Still, the groypers and their beef with Charlie Kirk are a noteworthy part of the context of this story. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And that’s a new tab. What is a groyper? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, groypers are the fringiest fringe of online right-wing culture on these image boards, 4chan, Reddit, all the other platforms. Their de facto leader is this streamer, Nick Fuentes, who famously dined with Trump and Kanye West. Groypers are the people Kanye started hanging out with when he kind of took that turn. And the groypers are extremely online and they’re essentially neo-Nazis, but it’s this sort of s***poster edgelord attitude of transgressing any boundary and really having no regard for other people. Their moniker is Groyper, who is a mutation of Pepe the Frog into a toad, but kind of uh a bulbous, kind of diabolical looking toad. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Pepe the Frog is a relatively innocent webcomic character of a sad, green frog who was adopted as a mascot by 4chan users and the far-right back in 2015. Over the last decade, Pepe has evolved, taking on various costumes and forms. This more monstrous iteration, Groyper, has been adopted by an even more extreme group. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And they call themselves “The Groyper Army” and they famously feuded with Charlie Kirk. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s talk about the Groyper Wars of 2019. Who led them, what happened, and why is this subculture being shoved into the limelight now? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So to step into the time machine back to 2019. You have Turning Point USA run by Charlie Kirk, which essentially is an operation that takes donor money from right-wing sources and Kirk’s network of college chapters and youth influencers and brings these two things together to stage these massive events that are all about bringing young people to the right-wing cause. And in a way, laundering ideas and make them a bit more palatable to the younger generation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Meanwhile, the groypers are here on these image boards posting radical stuff, many of them extremely young, like 13, 14 year olds. Um, and the groypers decide that Kirk is not radical enough for them or that Kirk is purposefully downplaying his radicality in order to, um, get mainstream appeal. And so the groypers decide to do this campaign of trolling him by showing up at these events where people are asking Kirk a question — these like “debate me” type things that he would — do and asking questions that, you know, are goading Kirk into saying something more extreme, more white supremacist, more antisemitic than what he was already saying. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And this groyper war, they come to his different events, they attack it. This all unfolds in 2019. And the leader of it is Nick Fuentes, who’s up on these streams, you know, calling his army onto Charlie Kirk, essentially. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Can you talk about what these memes and the way they engage in internet culture represents beyond like clear cut partisan lines? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, so it’s unconfirmed that Robinson was a groyper, but I’m certain in the internet spaces he frequented, he heard about it, he posted about it. He knew about it I’d imagine, just based off the niche-ness of those memes that are on the cartridges and other things we’ve learned about him. And what these memes overall show is Pepe the Frog is a collective self-portrait for a bunch of posters. And as a collective self-portrait, Pepe is interesting. You know, you can dress him up to represent whatever identity group, whatever, you know, subgroup you wanna have him be, put him in a cowboy hat, he’s Western, put them in a Confederate uniform, he’s that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But Pepe’s also a very sad frog. He’s crying or about to cry. He’s very wistful and often he’s depicted as sort of very small and in these situations where he’s like a little boy or something. And so I think that is another way this community scrambles our sense of how politics usually work because you expect the fascists to you know wear boots and be really tough and try to look like you know a soldier or something but for these guys it’s all about they’re they’re just little guys. You know they’re sad they’re they’re melancholy um and the and the draw is if you two are lonely, isolated, fragile, in the world somehow, come here and you can feel strong. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And the price of that is you just reject everything that is normal and coherent in the world. And on the other side of that complete rejection, which you perform by posting the horrible meme or the hateful slur. On the other of that you find this brotherhood of violent freaks who will take you in. And I think that’s often the pitch that we see with these sort of far right online communities like groypers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I mean, the alt-right and other, like you said, extremist communities have really taken advantage of that kind of sentiment. Can you talk about the deep emotional place that this online nihilist culture comes out of? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it’s a deep emotional place that has existed long before the internet. You know, people have felt alienated, lonely, angry by society since we had society and researchers say that one of kind of the key triggers or amplifiers of radicalization is, you know, young people with nothing to do and no hope. And I think looking at the last 10 years of culture, um, there is a lack of hope happening. Um, the economy is bad. Uh, people feel isolated, uh, people feel like systems aren’t working for them. You know, people on both the right and the left feel a certain kind of, um, uncertainty, anxiety, and just disillusionment with, you know, traditional narrators, um telling the stories of our lives. Those no longer seem to cohere and make sense. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so I think when you are a young person who is confused, who is lost, who, um doesn’t have the support structures that you need, often the catches you is this — like an incel forum or groypers or something online that really does not have your best interests at heart. And really, if anything encourages whatever pathology you might be experiencing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the mainstream, whether on your everyday X feed or the traditional news media, there has been so much debate over which side of the political spectrum Robinson fell on. But Aidan said he found this kind of speculation counterproductive. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The conversation is counterproductive to me for two reasons. The first is that it’s such a motivated conversation, particularly from the right-wing. Before anything at all was known, they were saying this was a left-wing radical. And there’s a very clear reason why they were saying that, because they have a political agenda and they have certain people on the left or liberals that they want to crack down on and this is the pretense to do that. But the second, less kind of specific reason that it feels counterproductive to me, is that we’re past a point in our political conversation where it’s about, “do you think that government programs should be smaller or larger?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re at a point where most people are growing up in this context of disaster and crisis. And the things motivating their politics are resentments and kind of triggers that aren’t really mappable to someone from like 1995. Um, like the Republican coalition is not these days about, you know, fiscal conservatives, evangelicals, religious folks. The Democrat coalition is not necessarily like, you now, the, the post-Civil Rights coalition that existed. Um, the reasons people are in these different camps — or actually most Americans are not in either camp at all would define themselves independent — is totally different than it was in the past. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Um, and I think I find myself kind of struggling to find what then the new categories are, because it’s one thing, like I say in my videos, be like, “oh, it’s not a left-right issue.” Then people are like, “but then what is it?” And I think that project of figuring out what it is, you know, what it feels like, what it means, is something that, you, know, all of us are going to have to kind of go through. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In wake of the shooting, social media sites and messaging platforms are under increased scrutiny. Both law enforcement and private civilians are monitoring the posts, videos, and comments that other people make about Charlie Kirk, taking action against anyone who criticizes the very controversial influencer. How will this change the way people engage with each other online? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re opening one last tab, Discord and Doxxing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The government is cracking down on online activity revolving around Charlie Kirk’s death. In an X post last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that the Pentagon is keeping tabs on military personnel and Department of War civilian employees who celebrate or mock Kirk’s’ death. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau threatened to revoke visas of anyone making similar posts. The FBI is reportedly monitoring the messaging platform Discord. Even people who haven’t explicitly celebrated or mocked the killing are being harassed and targeted for what they posted online. Opinion columnist Karen Attia announced that she had been fired from the Washington Post for social media posts in the wake of Kirk’s death that called out, quote, “political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s not just the government monitoring speech online. Private civilians are doing it too. An anonymously run website titled the Charlie Kirk Data Foundation has created a searchable database of people who’ve criticized Kirk online. Individual social media users have doxed others over their posts about Kirk, publicly posting their real names, phone numbers, home addresses, and other private information to target and harass them. All of this, from the government surveillance to the civilian-led doxing, is a serious threat to free speech on the internet. Here’s Aidan again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m extremely concerned about it. I’m more concerned about like a chilling effect on speech or on our online discourse and memes than I am with this escalating cycle of political violence. I mean, the two go hand in hand, of course, but I think stuff like JD Vance taking over the hosting chair for Kirk’s Show and using it to call out NGOs and liberal donors and leftists. I think that crack down is something that can have much deeper effects and hurt a lot of people. And I also think that in an age where we’re maybe seeing an authoritarian consolidation, calling for bans on the internet, calling for restrictions on the internet, the context that’s going to enter into is I think that will lead us down a dark road. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last question, what is the current conversation missing by not understanding the deeply online context of this entire case? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think the biggest thing the current conversation is missing is that it’s really not the current conversation. People who read newspapers, report for them, follow this stuff from kind of a news-brained, normie side of Twitter, I don’t think they realize that they’re just one niche among many niches on the internet. They’re a pretty big niche and a pretty important niche, of course. But I don’t think there’s really an understanding that CNN is no longer a narrator of American life. And not just from a partisan kind of perspective that really right-wing people are really left-wing people don’t listen to CNN anymore. Totally normal people don’t listen to CNN anymore because it isn’t legible to them. It doesn’t make sense to them, it talks in a way that, you know, seems to not acknowledge them or seems to treat them in a way that isn’t that respectful or doesn’t keep up with the times. And I worry that the mainstream conversation, it isn’t mainstream, but it still thinks of itself as mainstream. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, Aidan, thank you so much for joining us and for always explaining these corners of the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Aidan Walker:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thank you so much for having me, Morgan, and for inviting me on. It’s always a joy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And with that, let’s close all 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. Close All Tabs’ producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Additional editing by Chris Hambrick and Jen Chien, who’s KQDE’s Director of Podcasts. Original music, including our theme song and credits, by Chris Egusa. Sound design by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. \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. Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dust Silver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We want to hear from you. Email us at 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. Thanks for listening. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"content": "\u003cp>San Francisco Mayor \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/daniel-lurie\">Daniel Lurie\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/waymo\">Waymo\u003c/a> announced Tuesday the company would begin a testing process that would soon lead to a fully autonomous taxi service at San Francisco International Airport.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the announcement, Lurie hailed the move as the city’s latest step to boost its tourist industry and bolster its economic recovery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Waymo already operates at the main airport in Phoenix and announced earlier this month \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12054705/waymo-knows-the-way-to-san-jose-airport\">it would soon begin\u003c/a> fully autonomous operations at San José Mineta International Airport. The company, owned by Google parent Alphabet, said its SFO service would provide “a safe, reliable, magical way for Bay Area residents and global visitors to connect” with the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under the newly granted testing and operations permit, the robotaxi company will prepare for service to SFO in three steps, with human safety drivers behind the wheel at first.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fully autonomous operations will begin with only Waymo and airport staff as passengers, eventually leading to paid autonomous service for the general public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Exactly when airport customers might get to experience this “magical” service is unclear. In an email response to KQED’s questions about when public service will roll out, Waymo declined to offer a timeline, saying only that its initial testing phase will begin soon.[aside postID=news_12054705 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/11/Waymo-car-1020x574.jpg']The company said in \u003ca href=\"https://waymo.com/blog?modal=short-waymo-at-sjc#short-all-systems-go-at-sfo-waymo-has-received-our-pilot-permit\">a statement\u003c/a> that when public service begins, it will make pickups and dropoffs at SFO’s Kiss & Fly area adjacent to the airport’s rental car center. From there, passengers can ride SFO’s AirTrain to terminals. The company said it will explore other locations at the airport in the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mayor’s office said the SFO permit will require Waymo to operate within strict safety and reporting conditions “to ensure dependable service for trips to and from SFO.” Among other things, \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26099418-waymo-sfo-av-testing-and-operating-pilot-permit-final-sept2025/\">the permit\u003c/a> will require Waymo to get a further OK from airport officials before it begins paid service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The move is the latest step Lurie has taken to help Waymo expand operations in the city. In March, he granted permission for the company to map SFO.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In April, he announced his intention to allow Waymo’s autonomous Jaguar SUVs to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12035348/mayor-lurie-allows-waymo-on-sfs-car-free-market-street\">use a portion of Market Street\u003c/a> that had been off-limits to private vehicles since 2020. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12053305/advocates-warn-of-dangerous-and-chaotic-market-st-as-it-reopens-to-some-cars\">Waymo launched service\u003c/a> on the city’s principal commercial boulevard last month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>San Francisco Mayor \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/daniel-lurie\">Daniel Lurie\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/waymo\">Waymo\u003c/a> announced Tuesday the company would begin a testing process that would soon lead to a fully autonomous taxi service at San Francisco International Airport.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the announcement, Lurie hailed the move as the city’s latest step to boost its tourist industry and bolster its economic recovery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Waymo already operates at the main airport in Phoenix and announced earlier this month \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12054705/waymo-knows-the-way-to-san-jose-airport\">it would soon begin\u003c/a> fully autonomous operations at San José Mineta International Airport. The company, owned by Google parent Alphabet, said its SFO service would provide “a safe, reliable, magical way for Bay Area residents and global visitors to connect” with the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under the newly granted testing and operations permit, the robotaxi company will prepare for service to SFO in three steps, with human safety drivers behind the wheel at first.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fully autonomous operations will begin with only Waymo and airport staff as passengers, eventually leading to paid autonomous service for the general public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Exactly when airport customers might get to experience this “magical” service is unclear. In an email response to KQED’s questions about when public service will roll out, Waymo declined to offer a timeline, saying only that its initial testing phase will begin soon.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The company said in \u003ca href=\"https://waymo.com/blog?modal=short-waymo-at-sjc#short-all-systems-go-at-sfo-waymo-has-received-our-pilot-permit\">a statement\u003c/a> that when public service begins, it will make pickups and dropoffs at SFO’s Kiss & Fly area adjacent to the airport’s rental car center. From there, passengers can ride SFO’s AirTrain to terminals. The company said it will explore other locations at the airport in the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mayor’s office said the SFO permit will require Waymo to operate within strict safety and reporting conditions “to ensure dependable service for trips to and from SFO.” Among other things, \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26099418-waymo-sfo-av-testing-and-operating-pilot-permit-final-sept2025/\">the permit\u003c/a> will require Waymo to get a further OK from airport officials before it begins paid service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The move is the latest step Lurie has taken to help Waymo expand operations in the city. In March, he granted permission for the company to map SFO.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In April, he announced his intention to allow Waymo’s autonomous Jaguar SUVs to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12035348/mayor-lurie-allows-waymo-on-sfs-car-free-market-street\">use a portion of Market Street\u003c/a> that had been off-limits to private vehicles since 2020. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12053305/advocates-warn-of-dangerous-and-chaotic-market-st-as-it-reopens-to-some-cars\">Waymo launched service\u003c/a> on the city’s principal commercial boulevard last month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "how-google-organized-opposition-to-a-california-privacy-proposal",
"title": "How Google Organized Opposition to a California Privacy Proposal",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/\">CalMatters\u003c/a>. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/subscribe-to-calmatters/\">Sign up\u003c/a> for their newsletters.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In April, Rhode Island resident Navah Hopkins received a plea for her help to defeat legislation thousands of miles away in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ask came from Google, maker of the world’s most used web browser, Chrome. The tech giant sent a message to an email list that Hopkins and other small business owners were subscribed to. Google’s request: To sign a petition opposing \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab566\">Assembly Bill 566\u003c/a>, which would require browsers to provide users with a way to automatically tell websites not to share their personal information with third parties. The measure is sponsored by the California Privacy Protection Agency, which enforces state regulations on such sharing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In its email to Hopkins, Google claimed that the legislation would “hurt your ability to use online ads to reach customers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was intentionally misleading people that by this bill passing, they were going to lose out on all of these tools within Google (to advertise),” she told CalMatters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The outreach was particularly noteworthy because Google had not itself taken a public position on the bill. The tech giant was so quiet about its opposition that Assemblymember \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/legislators/josh-lowenthal-164206\">Josh Lowenthal\u003c/a>, the author of AB 566, did not know about Google’s email push until a CalMatters reporter asked. Lowenthal also said his office did not receive small business owners’ signatures or outreach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Google’s name wasn’t on the petition either; instead, the document was officially from the “Connected Commerce Council,” which the tech giant backs financially.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12036476\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/GettyImages-2166671481.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12036476\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/GettyImages-2166671481.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"706\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/GettyImages-2166671481.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/GettyImages-2166671481-800x552.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/GettyImages-2166671481-1020x703.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/GettyImages-2166671481-160x110.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Google logo is displayed in front of company headquarters during the Made By Google event on August 13, 2024 in Mountain View, California. Google announced new Pixel phones, watches and AI features at the event. \u003ccite>(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The largely behind-the-scenes campaign offers a glimpse into how the tech giant is working to preserve its grip on the online advertising market and how it attempts, without being seen, to shape policies in a state with one of the nation’s strictest privacy protection laws.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recruiting small businesses to represent the policy interests of a tech giant isn’t new. Last year, Google successfully blocked \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202320240ab3048\">a similar bill\u003c/a> — ultimately vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom — by adopting the same tactic, reaching out to small businesses via email lists, according to a message obtained by CalMatters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s no telling how effective Google’s lobbying on the measure has been this year, or how many people it successfully mobilized. Experts warn that the strategy could backfire if the people it reaches out to, like the small business owners, aren’t buying what the company is selling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But before the browser bill reached its final floor vote, Lowenthal amended it to delay the effective date until 2027 and to add liability protections for browser companies like Google.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_12054490 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/ChatGPTGetty-1020x680.jpg']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When asked who advocated for that language, Lowenthal said he’d taken input from “colleagues and stakeholders” to shape up the “strongest possible bill.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With any bill that’s been vetoed before, it takes some give-and-take to get it across the finish line,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill cleared the Legislature and headed to the governor’s desk Thursday after this story was published.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Google did not respond to multiple requests for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Google ranked among the \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/data/2025/04/california-lobbying-spending-2024/\">most active lobbyists in California\u003c/a> last year, spending more to influence the opinions of elected officials \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/capitol/2024/11/google-lobbying-california/\">than it had in the previous 20 years combined\u003c/a>. The lobbying was aimed at battling AI regulation, local news funding requirements, and a prior version of the browser bill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, it has disclosed pouring nearly $700,000 into lobbying state leaders on bills including AB 566. Google has also increased lobbying spending in many \u003ca href=\"https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/publications/google-refines-50-state-lobby-strategy-austin-ahlman\">other statehouses\u003c/a>, according to the Open Markets Institute. With inaction in Congress, states have led the way in tech regulation in recent years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s hard to trace Google’s full influence when the company does not publicly share its position on bills like AB 566, instead paying groups like the California Chamber of Commerce and Connected Commerce Council to influence legislators on its behalf.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://calmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/082125_CA-Legislature_FG_CM_37-1024x682.jpg\" alt=\"A person, with white hair and wearing a gray suit, stands in front of a podium with a microphone on it while they speak.\">\u003cfigcaption>Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal at the dais during an Assembly floor session at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Aug. 21, 2025. \u003cem>(Fred Greaves for CalMatters)\u003c/em>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Google registered to lobby 17 bills this year that sought to do things like place \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab56\">warning labels on social media\u003c/a> or protect people from \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260sb503\">algorithms that make health care decisions\u003c/a>, but the company only publicly stated its position on one bill that sought to require\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab1043\"> online age verification\u003c/a>, according to\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/\"> state filings and Digital Democracy\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Google’s lobbying tactics, while not illegal, demonstrate the sway money has over policies, said Sean McMorris, the transparency, ethics, and accountability program manager at California Common Cause.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This type of activity … exemplifies the skewed playing field that we have to play on,” he said. “It’s important to report on and to point out these strategies and loopholes that money can afford you the privilege to engage in, and the public has every right to scrutinize whether that is just or not.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If Google really believes this bill shouldn’t become a law, its lobbyists should show up to testify at a public hearing, not behave in shadowy ways that undercut democracy, said Brandon Forester, an organizer for MediaJustice, a nonprofit that has been critical of the influence of of Big Tech companies and internet service providers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12001241\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/GETTYIMAGES-1411232503-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12001241\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/GETTYIMAGES-1411232503-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/GETTYIMAGES-1411232503-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/GETTYIMAGES-1411232503-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/GETTYIMAGES-1411232503-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/GETTYIMAGES-1411232503-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/GETTYIMAGES-1411232503-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/GETTYIMAGES-1411232503-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Google’s Bay View campus in Mountain View on June 16, 2022. \u003ccite>(Zhang Yi/VCG via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“None of us wants to enter a surveillance marketplace every time that we go on the internet,” he said. “Part of the reason they need to do the shadow lobbying is because the things that they want to do to achieve their infinite growth model is not good for the public.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AB 566 is not the only threat Google faces to its grip on how people surf the web. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-09-02/google-chrome-decision\">judge ruled\u003c/a> last month that the company may no longer enter into exclusive distribution deals for Chrome or Google search. And Chrome faces new competition from a \u003ca href=\"https://www.platformer.news/ai-web-browsers-openai-perplexity-opera/?ref=platformer-newsletter\">number of AI-powered browsers entering the market\u003c/a>, reportedly to \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/openai-release-web-browser-challenge-google-chrome-2025-07-09/\">soon include\u003c/a> one from ChatGPT maker OpenAI.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Onerous mandate or consumer convenience?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Under a 2018 state law, California businesses \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2025/08/companies-make-it-hard-to-delete-personal-data/\">must provide customers\u003c/a> with a way to forbid the sharing or sale of their personal information to businesses. AB 566 seeks to streamline that process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Browsers such as DuckDuckGo, Brave, and Firefox already have privacy features that, once enabled, \u003ca href=\"https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/global-privacy-control\">automatically send an opt-out signal\u003c/a> to each website the user goes to.[aside postID=forum_2010101911184 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/43/2025/09/GettyImages-2204906139-2000x1335.jpg']The California Chamber of Commerce opposes AB 566, arguing it represents an onerous mandate. The measure lacks clarity, regulates browsers that aren’t “consumer-facing” and is hard to implement, the trade association argued in a letter to lawmakers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Browsers and devices already compete to offer clear, effective privacy controls,” Ronak Dalami, a lobbyist for the chamber, told lawmakers in July.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A similar bill the Legislature passed last year would have required both web browsers and mobile operating systems to offer ways to automatically prohibit the sharing of a user’s personal information, but Gov. Gavin Newsom \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/AB-3048-Veto-Message.pdf\">vetoed\u003c/a> the bill because no major mobile operating system includes such an option.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To ensure the ongoing usability of mobile devices, it’s best if design questions are first addressed by developers, rather than by regulators,” Newsom said \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/AB-3048-Veto-Message.pdf\">in a veto message\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bianca Blomquist, California director of nonprofit Small Business Majority, which represents 85,000 small businesses nationwide, was among the business owners who received an email last year from Google, on a mailing list of businesses that participated in the company’s training program, Grow with Google. The letter argued that allowing people to easily stop companies from sharing their personal information would make it more expensive for small businesses to sell their products.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Blomquist was skeptical. And while Newsom’s veto message spoke of design risks, she said that most people she talks to “are more concerned about their data being shared than they are too many buttons flashing on a screen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To Blomquist, the email is clear evidence that Google was “leveraging” the data it collected from partners for advocacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we find is that small business owners … and partner organizations oftentimes sign on to support or oppose legislation without having an understanding of what it does.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Connected Commerce Council\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The petition Google circulated this year was authored by \u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/30/connected-commerce-council-amazon-google-lobbying-00021801\">Connected Commerce Council\u003c/a>, or 3C, a lobbying group that in 2022 \u003ca href=\"https://connectedcouncil.org/statement-from-the-connected-commerce-council-on-behalf-of-15000-small-business-members-criticizing-the-senate-judiciarys-passage-of-the-american-innovation-and-choice-online-act/\">claimed to represent 15,000 small businesses\u003c/a> but lists Google and Amazon as \u003ca href=\"https://connectedcouncil.org/partners/\">funders and partners\u003c/a>. In 2022, Google and Amazon mobilized their users to fight anti-trust bills in Congress by encouraging them to sign a model online petition the council drafted. That year, the nonprofit published and later removed a membership directory of 5,000 small businesses, many of which told Politico \u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/30/connected-commerce-council-amazon-google-lobbying-00021801\">they were not members of the organization\u003c/a>.[aside postID=news_12049301 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/CAT-%E2%80%94-OG-of-Tech.png']This spring, the group sent a letter to California state lawmakers, arguing that the requirements proposed in AB 566 would cause small businesses to lose out on customer data and make their websites more expensive to operate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Implementing a sweeping experiment that would jeopardize small businesses’ success, limit Californians’ access to relevant products and services, and potentially disrupt access to free web content, is not a sensible way forward,” wrote Rob Retzlaff, executive director of the group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a virtual press conference last month, the organization put forward two California online business owners who oppose the legislation. The owners argued that the browser feature mandated in the bill could inadvertently drive away customers, would block them from sending targeted ads to users who opt out of having their personal information shared, and would make it impossible for customers who opted out to opt back in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If they opt out of one thing — maybe they just didn’t want … my weekly emails about moms connecting, but they want to have discounts — how are we going to segment that?” said Michelle Mak, owner of baby product store Mewl Baby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Google did not report paying the commerce council any money to lobby on its behalf to the California secretary of state. But Google reported paying the California Chamber of Commerce, the face of its opposition, almost $100,000 to lobby this year. It also reported paying TechNet, which also registered its opposition, $2,500.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Connected Commerce Council spokesperson Jennifer Hodgkins declined to answer a list of questions from CalMatters, instead providing a statement pointing to the organization’s letters to the Legislature, press releases and statements from small business owners featured in its press conference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Small business owners are deeply concerned about the impact AB 566 will have on their ability to advertise online, find new customers, and grow,” Hodgkins said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12052593\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/CA-state-capitol.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12052593\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/CA-state-capitol.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/CA-state-capitol.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/CA-state-capitol-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/CA-state-capitol-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The State Capitol of California in Sacramento, May 6, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQE)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>John Myers, a spokesperson for the California Chamber of Commerce, declined to answer a CalMatters question about the payments it received from Google.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But McMorris of Common Cause said Google’s payments to the chamber for lobbying should be “closely scrutinized.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If it’s not for (AB566), then what was it for?” he said. “That’s where the law gets murky, and you have these wink and nod relationships where both sides know how to play the game without explicitly saying, ‘This is how we are going to play the game.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Mobilizing users a unique tactic\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It tracks that Google turned to small business owners to protect the company’s business model, said Jeremy Mack, director of the\u003ca href=\"http://phoenixprojectnow.com/\"> Phoenix Project\u003c/a>, a group that tries to draw attention to San Francisco Bay Area front organizations secretly funded by tech billionaires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mack said the practice is reminiscent of how Uber and Lyft mobilized people who use ride-hailing apps to \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/2024/07/prop-22-california-gig-work-law-upheld/\">support Proposition 22\u003c/a> and keep gig workers from being defined as employees instead of contractors, and tactics embraced by apartment landlords and realtor groups.[aside postID=news_12052617 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/GETTYIMAGES-2228237489-KQED.jpg']“It’s not surprising that Google would do this, but it’s definitely good to be able to flag this for people and put it on their radar,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unlike other industries seeking to influence policy, tech companies can mobilize users through their online platforms, said Austin Ahlman, a researcher who tracks Google lobbying efforts in state capitals for the Open Markets Institute. It’s part of a long pattern of tech companies using small businesses that rely on their platforms to preempt regulation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meta also has a history of recruiting small businesses to represent its interests, and Google and Meta threatened or prevented people in \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/18/time-to-reactivate-myspace-the-day-australia-woke-up-to-a-facebook-news-blackout\">Australia\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/how-the-google-news-blackout-was-avoided-1.7045601\">Canada\u003c/a>, and \u003ca href=\"https://blog.google/products/news/california-journalism-preservation-act-puts-news-ecosystem-at-risk/\">California\u003c/a> from seeing the news to oppose a demand that the companies pay to \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2025/05/google-california-local-news/\">link to news websites\u003c/a>. An earlier, prominent instance of tech companies using their platforms to influence legislation came around the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act when major companies, including Google, organized to shut down their websites for a day in September 2012 to oppose those laws.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mack thinks mobilizing users has been devastatingly effective, but companies probably do it sparingly because if they do it too often people will be more aware of how much control large tech companies have over people’s information.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’d call it anti-democratic, but I wouldn’t call it desperate, because, frankly, it mostly works,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Powerful companies typically combine traditional lobbying and strategies used by civil society organizations when regulatory pressures threaten their core business model, according to a \u003ca href=\"https://academic.oup.com/ser/article/21/4/1917/7202313\">2023 research paper\u003c/a> about corporate lobbying campaigns. Those tactics were historically associated with the fossil fuel, pharmaceutical and tobacco industries, but tech companies have innovated on and rejuvenated the lobbying form. They can do so more effectively because they can tap into user data and their platforms give them unmediated communication with customers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Companies typically recruit users to advance their policy initiatives when they sense a threat to their business and no longer believe conventional lobbying will be sufficient, said UCLA sociology professor Edward Walker, who studies how companies mobilize customers to speak out about legislation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it only works if users are motivated to speak out, such as when video game players fought efforts to regulate in-game violence, or when for-profit college students opposed a push by the Obama administration to keep them from receiving federal student aid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s important to know that these kinds of grassroots lobbying strategies, or user mobilization strategies, are a double-edged sword. It’s not a given that they’re always going to work in your favor,” he said. “If you do this in a scattershot way, you really increase the risk it’s going to backfire on you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>For the record\u003c/strong>: An earlier version of this post misstated Uber and Lyft’s position on Prop. 22.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2025/09/google-lobbying/\">originally published on CalMatters\u003c/a> and was republished under the \u003ca href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/\">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives\u003c/a> license.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/\">CalMatters\u003c/a>. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/subscribe-to-calmatters/\">Sign up\u003c/a> for their newsletters.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In April, Rhode Island resident Navah Hopkins received a plea for her help to defeat legislation thousands of miles away in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ask came from Google, maker of the world’s most used web browser, Chrome. The tech giant sent a message to an email list that Hopkins and other small business owners were subscribed to. Google’s request: To sign a petition opposing \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab566\">Assembly Bill 566\u003c/a>, which would require browsers to provide users with a way to automatically tell websites not to share their personal information with third parties. The measure is sponsored by the California Privacy Protection Agency, which enforces state regulations on such sharing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In its email to Hopkins, Google claimed that the legislation would “hurt your ability to use online ads to reach customers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was intentionally misleading people that by this bill passing, they were going to lose out on all of these tools within Google (to advertise),” she told CalMatters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The outreach was particularly noteworthy because Google had not itself taken a public position on the bill. The tech giant was so quiet about its opposition that Assemblymember \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/legislators/josh-lowenthal-164206\">Josh Lowenthal\u003c/a>, the author of AB 566, did not know about Google’s email push until a CalMatters reporter asked. Lowenthal also said his office did not receive small business owners’ signatures or outreach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Google’s name wasn’t on the petition either; instead, the document was officially from the “Connected Commerce Council,” which the tech giant backs financially.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12036476\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/GettyImages-2166671481.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12036476\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/GettyImages-2166671481.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"706\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/GettyImages-2166671481.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/GettyImages-2166671481-800x552.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/GettyImages-2166671481-1020x703.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/GettyImages-2166671481-160x110.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Google logo is displayed in front of company headquarters during the Made By Google event on August 13, 2024 in Mountain View, California. Google announced new Pixel phones, watches and AI features at the event. \u003ccite>(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The largely behind-the-scenes campaign offers a glimpse into how the tech giant is working to preserve its grip on the online advertising market and how it attempts, without being seen, to shape policies in a state with one of the nation’s strictest privacy protection laws.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recruiting small businesses to represent the policy interests of a tech giant isn’t new. Last year, Google successfully blocked \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202320240ab3048\">a similar bill\u003c/a> — ultimately vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom — by adopting the same tactic, reaching out to small businesses via email lists, according to a message obtained by CalMatters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s no telling how effective Google’s lobbying on the measure has been this year, or how many people it successfully mobilized. Experts warn that the strategy could backfire if the people it reaches out to, like the small business owners, aren’t buying what the company is selling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But before the browser bill reached its final floor vote, Lowenthal amended it to delay the effective date until 2027 and to add liability protections for browser companies like Google.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When asked who advocated for that language, Lowenthal said he’d taken input from “colleagues and stakeholders” to shape up the “strongest possible bill.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With any bill that’s been vetoed before, it takes some give-and-take to get it across the finish line,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill cleared the Legislature and headed to the governor’s desk Thursday after this story was published.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Google did not respond to multiple requests for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Google ranked among the \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/data/2025/04/california-lobbying-spending-2024/\">most active lobbyists in California\u003c/a> last year, spending more to influence the opinions of elected officials \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/capitol/2024/11/google-lobbying-california/\">than it had in the previous 20 years combined\u003c/a>. The lobbying was aimed at battling AI regulation, local news funding requirements, and a prior version of the browser bill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, it has disclosed pouring nearly $700,000 into lobbying state leaders on bills including AB 566. Google has also increased lobbying spending in many \u003ca href=\"https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/publications/google-refines-50-state-lobby-strategy-austin-ahlman\">other statehouses\u003c/a>, according to the Open Markets Institute. With inaction in Congress, states have led the way in tech regulation in recent years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s hard to trace Google’s full influence when the company does not publicly share its position on bills like AB 566, instead paying groups like the California Chamber of Commerce and Connected Commerce Council to influence legislators on its behalf.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://calmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/082125_CA-Legislature_FG_CM_37-1024x682.jpg\" alt=\"A person, with white hair and wearing a gray suit, stands in front of a podium with a microphone on it while they speak.\">\u003cfigcaption>Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal at the dais during an Assembly floor session at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Aug. 21, 2025. \u003cem>(Fred Greaves for CalMatters)\u003c/em>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Google registered to lobby 17 bills this year that sought to do things like place \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab56\">warning labels on social media\u003c/a> or protect people from \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260sb503\">algorithms that make health care decisions\u003c/a>, but the company only publicly stated its position on one bill that sought to require\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab1043\"> online age verification\u003c/a>, according to\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/\"> state filings and Digital Democracy\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Google’s lobbying tactics, while not illegal, demonstrate the sway money has over policies, said Sean McMorris, the transparency, ethics, and accountability program manager at California Common Cause.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This type of activity … exemplifies the skewed playing field that we have to play on,” he said. “It’s important to report on and to point out these strategies and loopholes that money can afford you the privilege to engage in, and the public has every right to scrutinize whether that is just or not.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If Google really believes this bill shouldn’t become a law, its lobbyists should show up to testify at a public hearing, not behave in shadowy ways that undercut democracy, said Brandon Forester, an organizer for MediaJustice, a nonprofit that has been critical of the influence of of Big Tech companies and internet service providers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12001241\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/GETTYIMAGES-1411232503-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12001241\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/GETTYIMAGES-1411232503-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/GETTYIMAGES-1411232503-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/GETTYIMAGES-1411232503-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/GETTYIMAGES-1411232503-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/GETTYIMAGES-1411232503-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/GETTYIMAGES-1411232503-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/GETTYIMAGES-1411232503-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Google’s Bay View campus in Mountain View on June 16, 2022. \u003ccite>(Zhang Yi/VCG via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“None of us wants to enter a surveillance marketplace every time that we go on the internet,” he said. “Part of the reason they need to do the shadow lobbying is because the things that they want to do to achieve their infinite growth model is not good for the public.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AB 566 is not the only threat Google faces to its grip on how people surf the web. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-09-02/google-chrome-decision\">judge ruled\u003c/a> last month that the company may no longer enter into exclusive distribution deals for Chrome or Google search. And Chrome faces new competition from a \u003ca href=\"https://www.platformer.news/ai-web-browsers-openai-perplexity-opera/?ref=platformer-newsletter\">number of AI-powered browsers entering the market\u003c/a>, reportedly to \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/openai-release-web-browser-challenge-google-chrome-2025-07-09/\">soon include\u003c/a> one from ChatGPT maker OpenAI.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Onerous mandate or consumer convenience?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Under a 2018 state law, California businesses \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2025/08/companies-make-it-hard-to-delete-personal-data/\">must provide customers\u003c/a> with a way to forbid the sharing or sale of their personal information to businesses. AB 566 seeks to streamline that process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Browsers such as DuckDuckGo, Brave, and Firefox already have privacy features that, once enabled, \u003ca href=\"https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/global-privacy-control\">automatically send an opt-out signal\u003c/a> to each website the user goes to.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The California Chamber of Commerce opposes AB 566, arguing it represents an onerous mandate. The measure lacks clarity, regulates browsers that aren’t “consumer-facing” and is hard to implement, the trade association argued in a letter to lawmakers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Browsers and devices already compete to offer clear, effective privacy controls,” Ronak Dalami, a lobbyist for the chamber, told lawmakers in July.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A similar bill the Legislature passed last year would have required both web browsers and mobile operating systems to offer ways to automatically prohibit the sharing of a user’s personal information, but Gov. Gavin Newsom \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/AB-3048-Veto-Message.pdf\">vetoed\u003c/a> the bill because no major mobile operating system includes such an option.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To ensure the ongoing usability of mobile devices, it’s best if design questions are first addressed by developers, rather than by regulators,” Newsom said \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/AB-3048-Veto-Message.pdf\">in a veto message\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bianca Blomquist, California director of nonprofit Small Business Majority, which represents 85,000 small businesses nationwide, was among the business owners who received an email last year from Google, on a mailing list of businesses that participated in the company’s training program, Grow with Google. The letter argued that allowing people to easily stop companies from sharing their personal information would make it more expensive for small businesses to sell their products.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Blomquist was skeptical. And while Newsom’s veto message spoke of design risks, she said that most people she talks to “are more concerned about their data being shared than they are too many buttons flashing on a screen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To Blomquist, the email is clear evidence that Google was “leveraging” the data it collected from partners for advocacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we find is that small business owners … and partner organizations oftentimes sign on to support or oppose legislation without having an understanding of what it does.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Connected Commerce Council\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The petition Google circulated this year was authored by \u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/30/connected-commerce-council-amazon-google-lobbying-00021801\">Connected Commerce Council\u003c/a>, or 3C, a lobbying group that in 2022 \u003ca href=\"https://connectedcouncil.org/statement-from-the-connected-commerce-council-on-behalf-of-15000-small-business-members-criticizing-the-senate-judiciarys-passage-of-the-american-innovation-and-choice-online-act/\">claimed to represent 15,000 small businesses\u003c/a> but lists Google and Amazon as \u003ca href=\"https://connectedcouncil.org/partners/\">funders and partners\u003c/a>. In 2022, Google and Amazon mobilized their users to fight anti-trust bills in Congress by encouraging them to sign a model online petition the council drafted. That year, the nonprofit published and later removed a membership directory of 5,000 small businesses, many of which told Politico \u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/30/connected-commerce-council-amazon-google-lobbying-00021801\">they were not members of the organization\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>This spring, the group sent a letter to California state lawmakers, arguing that the requirements proposed in AB 566 would cause small businesses to lose out on customer data and make their websites more expensive to operate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Implementing a sweeping experiment that would jeopardize small businesses’ success, limit Californians’ access to relevant products and services, and potentially disrupt access to free web content, is not a sensible way forward,” wrote Rob Retzlaff, executive director of the group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a virtual press conference last month, the organization put forward two California online business owners who oppose the legislation. The owners argued that the browser feature mandated in the bill could inadvertently drive away customers, would block them from sending targeted ads to users who opt out of having their personal information shared, and would make it impossible for customers who opted out to opt back in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If they opt out of one thing — maybe they just didn’t want … my weekly emails about moms connecting, but they want to have discounts — how are we going to segment that?” said Michelle Mak, owner of baby product store Mewl Baby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Google did not report paying the commerce council any money to lobby on its behalf to the California secretary of state. But Google reported paying the California Chamber of Commerce, the face of its opposition, almost $100,000 to lobby this year. It also reported paying TechNet, which also registered its opposition, $2,500.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Connected Commerce Council spokesperson Jennifer Hodgkins declined to answer a list of questions from CalMatters, instead providing a statement pointing to the organization’s letters to the Legislature, press releases and statements from small business owners featured in its press conference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Small business owners are deeply concerned about the impact AB 566 will have on their ability to advertise online, find new customers, and grow,” Hodgkins said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12052593\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/CA-state-capitol.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12052593\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/CA-state-capitol.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/CA-state-capitol.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/CA-state-capitol-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/CA-state-capitol-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The State Capitol of California in Sacramento, May 6, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQE)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>John Myers, a spokesperson for the California Chamber of Commerce, declined to answer a CalMatters question about the payments it received from Google.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But McMorris of Common Cause said Google’s payments to the chamber for lobbying should be “closely scrutinized.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If it’s not for (AB566), then what was it for?” he said. “That’s where the law gets murky, and you have these wink and nod relationships where both sides know how to play the game without explicitly saying, ‘This is how we are going to play the game.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Mobilizing users a unique tactic\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It tracks that Google turned to small business owners to protect the company’s business model, said Jeremy Mack, director of the\u003ca href=\"http://phoenixprojectnow.com/\"> Phoenix Project\u003c/a>, a group that tries to draw attention to San Francisco Bay Area front organizations secretly funded by tech billionaires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mack said the practice is reminiscent of how Uber and Lyft mobilized people who use ride-hailing apps to \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/2024/07/prop-22-california-gig-work-law-upheld/\">support Proposition 22\u003c/a> and keep gig workers from being defined as employees instead of contractors, and tactics embraced by apartment landlords and realtor groups.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“It’s not surprising that Google would do this, but it’s definitely good to be able to flag this for people and put it on their radar,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unlike other industries seeking to influence policy, tech companies can mobilize users through their online platforms, said Austin Ahlman, a researcher who tracks Google lobbying efforts in state capitals for the Open Markets Institute. It’s part of a long pattern of tech companies using small businesses that rely on their platforms to preempt regulation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meta also has a history of recruiting small businesses to represent its interests, and Google and Meta threatened or prevented people in \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/18/time-to-reactivate-myspace-the-day-australia-woke-up-to-a-facebook-news-blackout\">Australia\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/how-the-google-news-blackout-was-avoided-1.7045601\">Canada\u003c/a>, and \u003ca href=\"https://blog.google/products/news/california-journalism-preservation-act-puts-news-ecosystem-at-risk/\">California\u003c/a> from seeing the news to oppose a demand that the companies pay to \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2025/05/google-california-local-news/\">link to news websites\u003c/a>. An earlier, prominent instance of tech companies using their platforms to influence legislation came around the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act when major companies, including Google, organized to shut down their websites for a day in September 2012 to oppose those laws.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mack thinks mobilizing users has been devastatingly effective, but companies probably do it sparingly because if they do it too often people will be more aware of how much control large tech companies have over people’s information.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’d call it anti-democratic, but I wouldn’t call it desperate, because, frankly, it mostly works,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Powerful companies typically combine traditional lobbying and strategies used by civil society organizations when regulatory pressures threaten their core business model, according to a \u003ca href=\"https://academic.oup.com/ser/article/21/4/1917/7202313\">2023 research paper\u003c/a> about corporate lobbying campaigns. Those tactics were historically associated with the fossil fuel, pharmaceutical and tobacco industries, but tech companies have innovated on and rejuvenated the lobbying form. They can do so more effectively because they can tap into user data and their platforms give them unmediated communication with customers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Companies typically recruit users to advance their policy initiatives when they sense a threat to their business and no longer believe conventional lobbying will be sufficient, said UCLA sociology professor Edward Walker, who studies how companies mobilize customers to speak out about legislation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it only works if users are motivated to speak out, such as when video game players fought efforts to regulate in-game violence, or when for-profit college students opposed a push by the Obama administration to keep them from receiving federal student aid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s important to know that these kinds of grassroots lobbying strategies, or user mobilization strategies, are a double-edged sword. It’s not a given that they’re always going to work in your favor,” he said. “If you do this in a scattershot way, you really increase the risk it’s going to backfire on you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>For the record\u003c/strong>: An earlier version of this post misstated Uber and Lyft’s position on Prop. 22.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2025/09/google-lobbying/\">originally published on CalMatters\u003c/a> and was republished under the \u003ca href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/\">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives\u003c/a> license.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When 23andMe filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, it set off alarm bells among privacy experts and consumers alike. According to a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://today.yougov.com/health/articles/51527-what-americans-think-about-home-dna-tests-poll\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">2025 survey\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, about 1 in 5 Americans has taken a home DNA test. Among those who haven’t, privacy ranks as one of their top concerns. As with so many things having to do with data, there’s a trade-off between confidentiality and the ability to access services that can improve our lives. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The fallout from 23andMe’s bankruptcy and an earlier data breach has left consumers more wary than ever and has underscored the need for stronger data privacy laws. In today’s episode, we’ll hear from someone whose life was transformed by a 23andMe test, and from a genetic data and privacy researcher who explains the risks of handing over our DNA to a corporation. \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=KQINC2302884115\" 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\">Trine Gallegos, media coordinator and 23andMe user\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://law.uiowa.edu/people/anya-prince\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Anya Prince\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">professor and genetic privacy researcher at the University of Iowa College of Law\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://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/can-you-hide-your-pregnancy-era-big-data/671692/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I Tried to Keep My Pregnancy Secret\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Anya Prince, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Atlantic \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/06/30/nx-s1-5451398/23andme-sale-approved-dna-data\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Judge OKs sale of 23andMe — and its trove of DNA data — to a nonprofit led by its founder\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — John Ruwitch, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">NPR\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/30/california-ag-23andme-sale-00433554\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">California AG says 23andMe sale ‘does not comply’ with state law\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Tyler Katzenberger, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Politico\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/30/business/23andme-for-sale-genetic-data\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">23andMe is for sale. Here’s why companies might want your genetic data \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— Lisa Eadicicco, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">CNN\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\">Trine Gallegos is a pillar of her community. She’s a mother, wife, former journalist at the local paper, now a beloved staff member at the local high school, and she volunteers in her spare time. She was even named Citizen of the Year in her hometown of Antioch, California, about an hour northeast of San Francisco. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I am a lifelong resident of Antioch, California. This really great um tight knit-kind of community. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine’s in her 60s now, but she grew up the baby of the family — her sister and brother are both over a decade older than her. They were a pretty working class family. Her dad, a veteran, managed pest control for military bases nearby, and her mom worked in a cannery and then in food service. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My parents were deeply proud of their background, as they should be. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine’s parents were both Mexican-American, and they’ve raised her to be proud of her heritage, too. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I just love like Spanglish, where they slap in, you know, some English and Spanish, and then one sentence might have English and Spanish. And so I really absorbed a lot of that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine grew up with very few questions about where she came from. As a kid, she had strawberry blonde hair, unlike anyone else in her family. But if anyone ever pointed out that she was different from the rest of the family, her fiercely protective mother would shut it down. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine does remember asking her parents why she was born in San Francisco while her siblings were born in Antioch, but they brushed it off with a loose explanation about her dad’s military health care. When Trine was five, her family suffered a devastating loss. Her brother, who was 19, had joined the Marines to fight in the Vietnam War, and he was killed in action. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I am sure some families suffer and kind of fall apart after something like that but we’re, you know, again very lucky in that we kept it together maybe even tighter. My mom was already a real protective parent and I think that I realized much later that probably spurred from, you know, losing my brother. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine grew up. She went to college, got married, and had a daughter of her own. She stayed super close with her older sister, and her sister’s kids, and eventually, their kids. In 2017, they all gathered to celebrate Trine’s 57th birthday. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re talking around the table and I say, “Oh, you know what I think is gonna be fun? I’m gonna do a DNA test. Like how Mexican are we?” And my mom had always spoke to maybe having some Native American, et cetera. So I just thought it would be interesting to have a little breakdown. And again, literally this is how I said it, “I think it’ll be fun just for fun.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Following some friends’ recommendations, she decided to use 23andMe. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was San Francisco based, right? And I was like, yeah, I’ll shop local, basically. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So she bought the kit, spat in a tube, and mailed it back to the lab in a neat little prepaid package. A few weeks later, Trine got her results back. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It said, literally almost down to exactly like 51% Filipino, 49% Irish. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Which was, obviously, not at all what she expected. Her whole life, she had grown up proudly Mexican. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So when I got mine and read it and there’s like no Latin, no anything, I was just like what a waste, like yeah. I was just like, “Oh dang, give me my hundred bucks back!”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine assumed that 23andMe had made a mistake. Maybe they had mixed up her results with someone else’s? Or their own data was inaccurate? The truth was, of course, a bit more complicated. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On today’s episode, we’re going to hear more of Trine’s story and also talk to a genetic privacy expert to find out what do you really give up when you take one of these tests? And is it worth 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\">Before we get into the privacy questions surrounding 23andMe and all the other at-home DNA tests, let’s hear the rest of Trine’s story. And of course, that means opening a new tab. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Show DNA relatives. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">About a year after receiving what she thought were bum results, Trine had forgotten about the 23andMe test. Her dad had passed away by then and her mom’s health was starting to decline. While their mom was still able to travel, Trine and her sister decided to take the whole family on a big trip to Hawaii. But throughout the trip, Trine noticed that her sister seemed stressed. During their last day, the family took a morning walk on the beach and Trine and her sister ended up alone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She’s acting kind of odd and then she’s asking me a few little questions and she brings up the 23andMe thing. And she goes, “Well, whatever happened to that test thing?” And I go, “Oh, it was a big frigging disaster. Like it messed up. It didn’t say anything about our like, you know, Mexican heritage or something like that.” And then she said, “Oh I just was, I was going to talk to you about something”, and kind of mumbly. And I was like, “Well just tell me.” so she says, “You’re adopted.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At first, Trine was incredulous. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I go, “Right,” like almost laughing and then she touches my arm and then I knew and then it just like kind of made me real because you know, it was almost like a little comfort like, no, I’m not kidding. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And there, on the beach, Trine’s sister revealed a secret that she had been holding onto for almost 60 years. Before Trine’s arrival, their mom had had several miscarriages. Around that time, a distant family member was going through a rough patch and asked Trine’s parents to adopt their baby. Baby Gloria was a joyous part of their family for over six months. But then the relative came back and asked to take her out for one last car ride to say goodbye. They never came back. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, you know, a gut wrench, right? And I mean, they were, I mean just heartbroken. My sister and brother are like apparently crying every day. It was just a scene. And so my sister told me this, and I had heard about Gloria before, but obviously not my part of the story. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sometime later, when Trine’s brother was 14 and her sister was 12, their parents announced that they were going to take a drive into San Francisco. This wasn’t out of the ordinary. They went into the city all the time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then they get to this hospital. They get there and they’re in a room and a woman brings a baby in and hands her to my mom, it’s me, and then, you know, we all get in the car, we come to Antioch. And I guess as we arrive, or getting out of the car, my mom says very matter of factly, which my mom was a girl boss before it was a thing and she said, uh, “This is our baby and we’re not gonna tell anybody how this happened, this is our baby and that’s it and nobody’s gonna take her.” And then my brother and sister were like, “Yeah, fine, let’s go.” But this is all, again, from a 12-year-old’s point of view. That’s all she knew. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Back on the beach, Trine was reeling, but she didn’t have time to process anything because the rest of the family was getting out of the water and fast approaching across the sand. They still had to pack, get through the airport and catch their flight back to California. So Trine pulled it together. She didn’t tell her husband or daughter about the bombshell her sister dropped until they got home nearly a day later. That’s when she broke. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m almost crying just thinking about because it was so intense. So now my daughter’s crying, my husband’s crying, because we’re like, “What? I don’t get it.” I was kind of a mini-wreck. I call it, where I was in “upside down world” and I’m pretty, you know, open and fairly lighthearted and positive, but that, you now, that took my knees out. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine still had so many questions. Who were her birth parents? Records were scarce, and there was no such thing as open adoptions back in 1960. Her sister didn’t have many answers, because she was so young when Trine was adopted. And they decided not to bring it up with their mom, who was more easily confused as she got older. A few weeks later, Trine’s nephew and his husband came by to check on her. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And my nephew’s husband, who had also done 23andMe, but he knew his results, he said, have you gone back to 23andMe and see if there’s any connections? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So she logged on for the first time in over a year and clicked, “show DNA relatives.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then sure enough, boom, like a big fatty circle that showed like a match that, not like partial not like fourth cousin like, you know, 100% this is your sibling. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was Trine’s full biological brother, Mark. He’s five years younger than her. They messaged each other through the 23andMe website, hesitantly at first, and then over the next few weeks, shared more and more. Mark told her about their other younger brother, Sean, who’s eight years younger than her. The brothers had grown up in San Francisco and were even born in the same hospital that Trine was born in. They had both gotten married, and had kids, and raised their families less than an hour away from where Trine raised hers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They’ve been in the Bay Area the whole time. I always, you know, say that we’ve been 40 minutes away from each other and a bridge apart our whole lives. Just crazy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine was floored when she saw a picture of her youngest brother, Sean. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It is my face. I look like Mark, you can definitely tell we’re siblings, but Sean has like the exact same coloring, the same kind of shape, more face. I mean, it was like just an absolute mind blow. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine, with her journalism background, had so many questions that it overwhelmed Mark. After a few weeks, he suggested that they meet up in person. They talked for over four hours. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, my mom, Delfina, was 16 when she got pregnant with me. Our father, Gary, was like 17 or 18. My biological grandma, Delfina’s mom, was like, “no, you’re 16, you can’t” — and this is 1960, this is not a thing. “You can’t have the baby, you have to finish school”, also you’re, you know, undertone, “You are Catholic and Filipina, no, no, no.” So, you know, that’s why she had to do, the adoption thing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Delfina tragically died just before she turned 50. At her funeral, an aunt told Mark that he might have a sister somewhere out there, but didn’t elaborate. He was grieving and didn’t think much of it. Then, about 20 years later, his wife and daughter pressured him into taking a 23andMe test. That’s when Trine’s profile popped up. Despite the shock of it all, Trine said she’s actually grateful for the timing. If she’d learned that she was adopted before home DNA kits existed, she would have never met her brothers or have the answers she so desperately wanted. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If my sister had told me when I was 18 or 25 or when I trying to have a baby and had all these questions. I wouldn’t have known any of this information. I wouldn’t have any back story. And I think it just would have haunted me a little bit. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After their first meeting, Mark and Trine introduced their families to each other. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Immediately we’re gabbing, we’re sharing stories, and I’m just, you know, taking it all in and eating it up and asking about childhood and what they did because, you know, we’ve got 50-some years to catch up on of stories. And um, when we left that dinner, my husband was like, “Oh wow.” So he’s seen that Mark and I have some, like, similar hand gestures and how we kind of pause and the cadence, which is also very wild to think about, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Is that genetic? You know, you have to wonder. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Exactly. It has to be, right? It’s just that is just wild to me, but also kind of cool. And then we eventually, not too long after, brought all of our families together. And, it is just all of us jumping in. We’re excited and also like, yikes, you know, like a family reunion we didn’t know we were gonna have. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But when they left, my sister looked at me. She said, “We have brothers again.” And that’s how she refers to him, too. And they refer to her as, “How’s her sister doing?” And because she’ll say, “have you heard from the brothers lately? What are they doing?” It’s not like, “Oh, how are your brothers doing?” You know, we’re just all melted together, you know. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine is one of the lucky, rare cases of a DNA test reuniting long-lost family members. But while Trine and her brothers were catching up and merging their families, 23andMe, as a company, has had some serious problems. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So when I did the 23andMe, I never even considered, “Oh yeah, I could be like super compromised.” “Hi, here’s my sample,” like, you know, but never thought of it. And then of course, it brought so much joy when it happened. Again, I didn’t really think of it, but Mark said he would have never done it if it hadn’t been for the bullying, no, for the encouragement of my sister-in-law and his daughter. He said, I’d never, that’s not his jam. And Sean, 100% hell no. Like he was like, absolutely not. And he is super aware of things that can go sideways, things that could be used against you, things that can bring you down, and he’s not wrong. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, what’s going on with 23andMe? We’ll dive into that mess in a new tab. But first, a quick break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, we’re back to talk about 23andMe, their legal issues, bankruptcy, and the big question, what are they doing with all that data? New tab. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">23andMe privacy nightmare. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re diving into this with Anya Prince, who’s a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law. She researches genetic privacy and discrimination. Before we get into the privacy questions, we need to set the scene. About 10 years ago, 23andMe was super hot and trendy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anya Prince:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think 23andMe held a lot of promise and marketed itself as this fun, quirky thing, but also part of a larger goal, right. So when 23andMe first launched, they literally had spit parties where they invited, you know, famous people to come to parties and spit in tubes and learn about themselves. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it was this really fun thing and it wasn’t necessarily about health back then. It was more about, like, you know, you learn whether or not you can, you know, curl your tongue or whatever quirky genetic traits, learn about your ancestry, learn about where you came from. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it’s really grown to, to have more, um, health testing. And also this research side, I think while it’s not the main focus, I think 23andMe did sell itself as like, you can be part of something bigger by opting into research as well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Can you talk more about that goal they had of like helping with this grand plan to develop new treatments and special drugs? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anya Prince:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, it’s a really fascinating goal, right? So on the one hand, we could think that this is really beneficial, right, that here’s this good company that’s saying, “Not only we’re gonna provide this interesting service where we tell people about their ancestry, but also we’re going to build this database that can advance science and be for community good.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think that’s one version of the story that has a lot of truth to it. But I think there’s another version of this story that has lot of true to it too. And that is the business model. Here is a company that took money from people to give them that information, and that was one side of their business model, and had a second business model where they then sold that information to pharmaceutical companies and the like. Or did their own research with it and applied for patents, which then brings in money as well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so a less charitable version of the story is that it’s a really fascinating business model where you’re making money both on the consumer side and then selling their data — and then possibly making cures or drugs that could help ameliorate some of the original customers’ diseases and then charging them for it again. And so, I think both sides of that story have some truth to it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When it comes to genetic data specifically, what’s the difference between getting tested in a clinical setting, like a doctor’s office, and submitting a test through an at-home direct-to-consumer company like 23andMe? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anya Prince:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So in our healthcare setting, we start with the premise that health information, including genetic information, is private, and it can only be shared if it meets certain exceptions or requirements. In the direct-to-consumer testing setting, at least at the federal level, we start with the presumption that the data can be shared as widely as the privacy policy lets it be shared. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">23andMe did allow customers to opt out of sharing and storing their genetic information. And to their credit, they also let customers fully delete their accounts and all the data associated with it. And this is important because all that data has been a huge concern in recent years. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anya Prince:\u003c/b> So there w\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">as a data breach where millions of customers’ data was leaked onto the dark web, essentially. And eventually this came out, and one of the pieces that came out with that is that it seemed like the hackers were particularly targeting individuals that had Ashkenazi Jewish descent or Chinese ancestry. And so there’s concerns of like why why those groups, what was their aim? Um, that I think I haven’t seen really that those questions have been answered. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Do you remember when you first heard about it, what was your first reaction as a privacy expert who literally specializes in genetic privacy? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anya Prince:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In terms of a privacy perspective, these hacks happen all the time. Not that they should, but it does happen. But then you do worry, like, okay, now that’s out there. If it’s a credit card breach, so many people have made this analogy, but you can change your credit card, you can, you know, change your email address, but can’t update and get a new version of your DNA. So once it’s out there, it’s out there. And I think that is one of the more concerning sides. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s talk about the bankruptcy. So this data breach resulted in a $30 million class action lawsuit. Last year, the company filed for bankruptcy and announced plans to sell its assets, including all of that customer DNA information. Why does that raise red flags for privacy advocates? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anya Prince:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Because there’s very few federal restrictions in who could buy that data, there were so many open questions. Could a pharmaceutical company purchase this data? Could somebody like a company affiliated with law enforcement purchase this data? Could a foreign nation purchase this data? And the answers were really any of those, for the most part. There are some restrictions on so-called countries of concern. But for the first part, under federal law, it goes to whoever has the most money and wants to bid on it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so all of a sudden, people were in the position where their most sensitive genetic data, arguably, the most immutable data that they have out there is for sale to the highest bidder. And that was well within the privacy policy, right? The privacy policy of 23andMe stated that this data could be sold in bankruptcy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I think many customers, I don’t know if most, never really sat down and thought, “Oh, my genetic data all of a sudden is an asset of this company.” And not just an asset, like the most valuable asset that this company has. And so there have been plenty of other bankruptcies where private data has been an asset, but not one in the same volume and to the extent where that’s like the main sort of business model and the most sensitive of data. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A few months ago, a judge approved the sale of 23andMe, and all of its data, back to one of its co-founders, or really TTAM, a nonprofit research institute led by one of the company’s co-founders. TTAM, by the way, is an acronym for Twenty Three and Me. Initially, privacy advocates were concerned about who would end up in possession of 23andMe’s data if the company sold. But a few of the states suing 23andMe backed off once that sale to TTAM was approved. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anya Prince:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And in some ways, that makes a lot of sense, right? People trusted 23andMe. They said, “OK, here’s this company. I believe in their ethos. I like that they’re doing research. I trust their security, at least maybe before the hack. And so I’m going to give my information to them.” And we do this all the time as customers, right. We don’t read the privacy policies, but we generally think, “OK. Here’s a well-known, good company, and we’re going to trust that they going to be good stewards of the data.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so, if that was the reason that you chose 23andMe to give your genetic data to, then there’s probably a sigh of relief that TTAM is the buyer, because they’re gonna have a very similar ethos. They are keeping basically the same employees, same structure, and so we think, “Oh good, it wasn’t a big bad pharmaceutical company, or it wasn’t a law enforcement company, or it wasn’t some other country that now has a bunch of Americans’ data. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I think it’s a missed opportunity to breathe such a sigh of relief that we don’t reflect upon the real true gaps in genetic privacy law that this example really exposed or highlighted. There isn’t really anything to stop the next company that has fewer privacy protections in their privacy policy to begin with from being sold with much less press, and it just goes under the radar, but the same privacy concerns exist. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of people believe that even though this country doesn’t have robust protections for data privacy, their health information at least is safe. That’s not always true though. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, better known as HIPAA, only protects sensitive health information when it’s collected in a healthcare setting — like insurance or a doctor’s office. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But outside of that setting, a lot of your private data is fair game. Your fitness watch tracking your heart rate, The FemTech apps tracking menstrual cycles, the vitamins you buy using your credit card. All of this information is health information that can be collected and sold to the highest bidder. Why is that so concerning? Let’s open a new tab. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What is your health data really worth? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like we’ve talked about, health data is regulated or protected. What are other ways that this information has been mishandled or exploited? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anya Prince:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean, so one of the big ones, I think, with health data in particular is the potential use by advertisers. So if you think about times in your life where your purchasing habits have changed, a change in health status is one of those, right? You need a new insulin pump. You need new brace for your knee. You need any number of things, right. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so. Our health data can be really of interest to advertisers who say, “Yeah, if I can find out that Mrs. Smith is pre-diabetic, let me start to market to her healthy foods or insulin or whatever else it is and hope that she purchases my product instead of the competitor.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And for some people, that’s good. Maybe they find the product that’s really going to help them. And I think for others, it could be exploitative or lead them to a choice of product that wasn’t the best for them because it’s not within a clinical setting decision. And so there’s both pros and cons to it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The concern is not just about advertisers getting a hold of your personal health data. After Roe v. Wade was overturned, reproductive rights advocates raised concerns over how this kind of information could be used to criminalize people who would had abortions or even miscarriages. HIPAA doesn’t apply to most healthcare apps or at-home tests. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And when it comes to DNA information, the lack of privacy regulation is pretty troubling. What would stop law enforcement from mining DNA test results? The Golden State Killer, one of California’s most notorious serial killers, was caught through a relative’s DNA test. Obviously, that’s an extreme example, and 23andMe says they don’t let law enforcement into their databases. But here’s why you should probably care.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anya Prince:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think some of the concerns I have with it are, one, you’re going to start to use it in the serial killer case, and that’s great. It’s good to catch serial killers. But what I worry about is the slippery slope, right? Where, okay, then it’s used in an assault case, then then it is used in this. And how far down the slippery slope do you go to where it’s just really common to use this anytime there’s DNA available for a crime? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And our constitutional protections would not let the police just set up a stop on a street corner and do genetic testing of every single person in the hopes of finding somebody related to the perpetrator. So why would we treat a genetic database any different? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think the other privacy concern with law enforcement is that they’re not just logging onto the database and finding the suspect, right, for the most part. What’s happening more often is they find what’s called a partial match. And so they say, oh, we have this genetic sample from the crime scene, and then we found this sample that like 15% of it matches. Well, that means that it’s a relative, but it’s not like a brother, sister, it’s like a parent, sibling, it’s too far removed. So then they have to start building family trees and they can build backwards up to the great, great grandpa and then downwards. And so there’s a lot of people that are investigated, not as suspects, but as linked to suspects. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So all of a sudden, you might have police knocking on somebody’s door to say, “Could you give a confirmatory sample so that we can then try to figure out if you’re related to the person and if you are the brother whose family tree this is part of.” So I worry just potentially even more about the privacy and the respect for the non-suspects who are also implicated in these investigations than the suspect themselves. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this story, we’re also hearing from someone who found her long lost family members through a 23andMe test. It seems like there’s a significant trade-off here. To find this part of yourself, you have to risk your privacy. If someone did choose to take an at-home DNA test, what precautions would you recommend? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anya Prince:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So first I’d say like, absolutely, it’s a trade-off. I mean, as I’m sure many of you listeners know, every time we share data out there, whether it’s with our friend or individual or a company, we are making trade-offs about confidentiality and privacy. And I think it’s completely normal and rational trade-off to participate in something like 23andMe. Whether it’s to learn about health risks, whether it is to learn about family members, whether it’s to learn about your ancestry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m a really private person, so I haven’t made that trade-off, because that’s not something that feels comfortable for me. But I also, I’m not surprised that millions of people have made that trade-off. And for most people, it’s fine, right? They don’t have a privacy risk. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My hope, though, would be that law and policy catch up a little bit, right, where the data is more protected so that there can’t be misuse, right? Where we have more robust genetic anti-discrimination laws, where we have more structures in place for how and when law enforcement could access this data, and that we have rules about how companies that collect this data have to care for it, you know, as stewards of this data and not just have it be profit-making endeavor. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks so much for joining us and for just sharing all of this information. I’m gonna go delete everything from everything online. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine, for one, was pretty freaked out about the 23andMe data breach, and then bankruptcy, and then sale. As she watched the headlines roll in, she decided to deactivate her account and permanently delete her data. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I got my info, I got win with my brothers and I really don’t need and now I really am concerned like who is this gonna go to now? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There were a few more distant family members that popped up as matches, but Trine wasn’t too pressed about connecting with them. Especially not through 23andMe.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I’m like I’m fine with that. I don’t really need more, unless they want to come to us and gather. That’s good, but I don’t need to do it through this platform anymore. I think it’s hard for me not to have my little rose-colored glasses on, which is how I often view the world, especially now I really need them, because mine was so joyful. So yeah, I probably say yeah, take a beat, investigate the bejeebus out of whatever thing you think you’re gonna go through and do, you know, kind of thing. But for me, I mean, lucky. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Worth it for you? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, 100. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Despite learning that she is, in fact, Filipina and Irish, Trini still identifies as 100% Mexican. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I- Clearly raised Mexican, you know, have the heart of it. So I can’t un-Mexican myself.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She did have a small crisis when she renewed her driver’s license and had to decide whether to check the box for Hispanic. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Honestly, I cried for like two minutes. And then I was like, no? Question mark? Then I found Filipino and then I moved on because, you know, that’s just a form. You know, when I’m asked, I say I’m Mexican.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A DNA test can reveal a lot about our backgrounds, but ultimately, it can’t decide who we are. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, now let’s close all 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. Close All Tabs producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Additional editing by Chris Hambrick and Jen Chien, who is KQED’s director of podcasts. Original music, including our theme song and credits by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard.\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. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\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 K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches. \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. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to Donate.KQED.org/podcasts. \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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"description": "When 23andMe filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, it set off alarm bells among privacy experts and consumers alike. According to a 2025 survey, about 1 in 5 Americans has taken a home DNA test. Among those who haven’t, privacy ranks as one of their top concerns. As with so many things having to do with data, there’s a trade-off between confidentiality and the ability to access services that can improve our lives.The fallout from 23andMe’s bankruptcy and an earlier data breach has left consumers more wary than ever and has underscored the need for stronger data privacy laws. In today’s episode, we’ll hear from someone whose life was transformed by a 23andMe test, and from a genetic data and privacy researcher who explains the risks of handing over our DNA to a corporation.",
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"socialDescription": "When 23andMe filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, it set off alarm bells among privacy experts and consumers alike. According to a 2025 survey, about 1 in 5 Americans has taken a home DNA test. Among those who haven’t, privacy ranks as one of their top concerns. As with so many things having to do with data, there’s a trade-off between confidentiality and the ability to access services that can improve our lives.The fallout from 23andMe’s bankruptcy and an earlier data breach has left consumers more wary than ever and has underscored the need for stronger data privacy laws. In today’s episode, we’ll hear from someone whose life was transformed by a 23andMe test, and from a genetic data and privacy researcher who explains the risks of handing over our DNA to a corporation.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When 23andMe filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, it set off alarm bells among privacy experts and consumers alike. According to a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://today.yougov.com/health/articles/51527-what-americans-think-about-home-dna-tests-poll\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">2025 survey\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, about 1 in 5 Americans has taken a home DNA test. Among those who haven’t, privacy ranks as one of their top concerns. As with so many things having to do with data, there’s a trade-off between confidentiality and the ability to access services that can improve our lives. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The fallout from 23andMe’s bankruptcy and an earlier data breach has left consumers more wary than ever and has underscored the need for stronger data privacy laws. In today’s episode, we’ll hear from someone whose life was transformed by a 23andMe test, and from a genetic data and privacy researcher who explains the risks of handing over our DNA to a corporation. \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=KQINC2302884115\" 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\">Trine Gallegos, media coordinator and 23andMe user\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://law.uiowa.edu/people/anya-prince\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Anya Prince\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">professor and genetic privacy researcher at the University of Iowa College of Law\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://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/can-you-hide-your-pregnancy-era-big-data/671692/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I Tried to Keep My Pregnancy Secret\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Anya Prince, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Atlantic \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/06/30/nx-s1-5451398/23andme-sale-approved-dna-data\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Judge OKs sale of 23andMe — and its trove of DNA data — to a nonprofit led by its founder\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — John Ruwitch, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">NPR\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/30/california-ag-23andme-sale-00433554\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">California AG says 23andMe sale ‘does not comply’ with state law\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Tyler Katzenberger, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Politico\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/30/business/23andme-for-sale-genetic-data\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">23andMe is for sale. Here’s why companies might want your genetic data \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— Lisa Eadicicco, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">CNN\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\">Trine Gallegos is a pillar of her community. She’s a mother, wife, former journalist at the local paper, now a beloved staff member at the local high school, and she volunteers in her spare time. She was even named Citizen of the Year in her hometown of Antioch, California, about an hour northeast of San Francisco. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I am a lifelong resident of Antioch, California. This really great um tight knit-kind of community. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine’s in her 60s now, but she grew up the baby of the family — her sister and brother are both over a decade older than her. They were a pretty working class family. Her dad, a veteran, managed pest control for military bases nearby, and her mom worked in a cannery and then in food service. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My parents were deeply proud of their background, as they should be. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine’s parents were both Mexican-American, and they’ve raised her to be proud of her heritage, too. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I just love like Spanglish, where they slap in, you know, some English and Spanish, and then one sentence might have English and Spanish. And so I really absorbed a lot of that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine grew up with very few questions about where she came from. As a kid, she had strawberry blonde hair, unlike anyone else in her family. But if anyone ever pointed out that she was different from the rest of the family, her fiercely protective mother would shut it down. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine does remember asking her parents why she was born in San Francisco while her siblings were born in Antioch, but they brushed it off with a loose explanation about her dad’s military health care. When Trine was five, her family suffered a devastating loss. Her brother, who was 19, had joined the Marines to fight in the Vietnam War, and he was killed in action. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I am sure some families suffer and kind of fall apart after something like that but we’re, you know, again very lucky in that we kept it together maybe even tighter. My mom was already a real protective parent and I think that I realized much later that probably spurred from, you know, losing my brother. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine grew up. She went to college, got married, and had a daughter of her own. She stayed super close with her older sister, and her sister’s kids, and eventually, their kids. In 2017, they all gathered to celebrate Trine’s 57th birthday. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re talking around the table and I say, “Oh, you know what I think is gonna be fun? I’m gonna do a DNA test. Like how Mexican are we?” And my mom had always spoke to maybe having some Native American, et cetera. So I just thought it would be interesting to have a little breakdown. And again, literally this is how I said it, “I think it’ll be fun just for fun.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Following some friends’ recommendations, she decided to use 23andMe. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was San Francisco based, right? And I was like, yeah, I’ll shop local, basically. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So she bought the kit, spat in a tube, and mailed it back to the lab in a neat little prepaid package. A few weeks later, Trine got her results back. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It said, literally almost down to exactly like 51% Filipino, 49% Irish. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Which was, obviously, not at all what she expected. Her whole life, she had grown up proudly Mexican. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So when I got mine and read it and there’s like no Latin, no anything, I was just like what a waste, like yeah. I was just like, “Oh dang, give me my hundred bucks back!”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine assumed that 23andMe had made a mistake. Maybe they had mixed up her results with someone else’s? Or their own data was inaccurate? The truth was, of course, a bit more complicated. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On today’s episode, we’re going to hear more of Trine’s story and also talk to a genetic privacy expert to find out what do you really give up when you take one of these tests? And is it worth 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\">Before we get into the privacy questions surrounding 23andMe and all the other at-home DNA tests, let’s hear the rest of Trine’s story. And of course, that means opening a new tab. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Show DNA relatives. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">About a year after receiving what she thought were bum results, Trine had forgotten about the 23andMe test. Her dad had passed away by then and her mom’s health was starting to decline. While their mom was still able to travel, Trine and her sister decided to take the whole family on a big trip to Hawaii. But throughout the trip, Trine noticed that her sister seemed stressed. During their last day, the family took a morning walk on the beach and Trine and her sister ended up alone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She’s acting kind of odd and then she’s asking me a few little questions and she brings up the 23andMe thing. And she goes, “Well, whatever happened to that test thing?” And I go, “Oh, it was a big frigging disaster. Like it messed up. It didn’t say anything about our like, you know, Mexican heritage or something like that.” And then she said, “Oh I just was, I was going to talk to you about something”, and kind of mumbly. And I was like, “Well just tell me.” so she says, “You’re adopted.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At first, Trine was incredulous. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I go, “Right,” like almost laughing and then she touches my arm and then I knew and then it just like kind of made me real because you know, it was almost like a little comfort like, no, I’m not kidding. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And there, on the beach, Trine’s sister revealed a secret that she had been holding onto for almost 60 years. Before Trine’s arrival, their mom had had several miscarriages. Around that time, a distant family member was going through a rough patch and asked Trine’s parents to adopt their baby. Baby Gloria was a joyous part of their family for over six months. But then the relative came back and asked to take her out for one last car ride to say goodbye. They never came back. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, you know, a gut wrench, right? And I mean, they were, I mean just heartbroken. My sister and brother are like apparently crying every day. It was just a scene. And so my sister told me this, and I had heard about Gloria before, but obviously not my part of the story. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sometime later, when Trine’s brother was 14 and her sister was 12, their parents announced that they were going to take a drive into San Francisco. This wasn’t out of the ordinary. They went into the city all the time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then they get to this hospital. They get there and they’re in a room and a woman brings a baby in and hands her to my mom, it’s me, and then, you know, we all get in the car, we come to Antioch. And I guess as we arrive, or getting out of the car, my mom says very matter of factly, which my mom was a girl boss before it was a thing and she said, uh, “This is our baby and we’re not gonna tell anybody how this happened, this is our baby and that’s it and nobody’s gonna take her.” And then my brother and sister were like, “Yeah, fine, let’s go.” But this is all, again, from a 12-year-old’s point of view. That’s all she knew. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Back on the beach, Trine was reeling, but she didn’t have time to process anything because the rest of the family was getting out of the water and fast approaching across the sand. They still had to pack, get through the airport and catch their flight back to California. So Trine pulled it together. She didn’t tell her husband or daughter about the bombshell her sister dropped until they got home nearly a day later. That’s when she broke. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m almost crying just thinking about because it was so intense. So now my daughter’s crying, my husband’s crying, because we’re like, “What? I don’t get it.” I was kind of a mini-wreck. I call it, where I was in “upside down world” and I’m pretty, you know, open and fairly lighthearted and positive, but that, you now, that took my knees out. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine still had so many questions. Who were her birth parents? Records were scarce, and there was no such thing as open adoptions back in 1960. Her sister didn’t have many answers, because she was so young when Trine was adopted. And they decided not to bring it up with their mom, who was more easily confused as she got older. A few weeks later, Trine’s nephew and his husband came by to check on her. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And my nephew’s husband, who had also done 23andMe, but he knew his results, he said, have you gone back to 23andMe and see if there’s any connections? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So she logged on for the first time in over a year and clicked, “show DNA relatives.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then sure enough, boom, like a big fatty circle that showed like a match that, not like partial not like fourth cousin like, you know, 100% this is your sibling. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was Trine’s full biological brother, Mark. He’s five years younger than her. They messaged each other through the 23andMe website, hesitantly at first, and then over the next few weeks, shared more and more. Mark told her about their other younger brother, Sean, who’s eight years younger than her. The brothers had grown up in San Francisco and were even born in the same hospital that Trine was born in. They had both gotten married, and had kids, and raised their families less than an hour away from where Trine raised hers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They’ve been in the Bay Area the whole time. I always, you know, say that we’ve been 40 minutes away from each other and a bridge apart our whole lives. Just crazy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine was floored when she saw a picture of her youngest brother, Sean. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It is my face. I look like Mark, you can definitely tell we’re siblings, but Sean has like the exact same coloring, the same kind of shape, more face. I mean, it was like just an absolute mind blow. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine, with her journalism background, had so many questions that it overwhelmed Mark. After a few weeks, he suggested that they meet up in person. They talked for over four hours. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, my mom, Delfina, was 16 when she got pregnant with me. Our father, Gary, was like 17 or 18. My biological grandma, Delfina’s mom, was like, “no, you’re 16, you can’t” — and this is 1960, this is not a thing. “You can’t have the baby, you have to finish school”, also you’re, you know, undertone, “You are Catholic and Filipina, no, no, no.” So, you know, that’s why she had to do, the adoption thing. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Delfina tragically died just before she turned 50. At her funeral, an aunt told Mark that he might have a sister somewhere out there, but didn’t elaborate. He was grieving and didn’t think much of it. Then, about 20 years later, his wife and daughter pressured him into taking a 23andMe test. That’s when Trine’s profile popped up. Despite the shock of it all, Trine said she’s actually grateful for the timing. If she’d learned that she was adopted before home DNA kits existed, she would have never met her brothers or have the answers she so desperately wanted. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If my sister had told me when I was 18 or 25 or when I trying to have a baby and had all these questions. I wouldn’t have known any of this information. I wouldn’t have any back story. And I think it just would have haunted me a little bit. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After their first meeting, Mark and Trine introduced their families to each other. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Immediately we’re gabbing, we’re sharing stories, and I’m just, you know, taking it all in and eating it up and asking about childhood and what they did because, you know, we’ve got 50-some years to catch up on of stories. And um, when we left that dinner, my husband was like, “Oh wow.” So he’s seen that Mark and I have some, like, similar hand gestures and how we kind of pause and the cadence, which is also very wild to think about, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Is that genetic? You know, you have to wonder. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Exactly. It has to be, right? It’s just that is just wild to me, but also kind of cool. And then we eventually, not too long after, brought all of our families together. And, it is just all of us jumping in. We’re excited and also like, yikes, you know, like a family reunion we didn’t know we were gonna have. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But when they left, my sister looked at me. She said, “We have brothers again.” And that’s how she refers to him, too. And they refer to her as, “How’s her sister doing?” And because she’ll say, “have you heard from the brothers lately? What are they doing?” It’s not like, “Oh, how are your brothers doing?” You know, we’re just all melted together, you know. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine is one of the lucky, rare cases of a DNA test reuniting long-lost family members. But while Trine and her brothers were catching up and merging their families, 23andMe, as a company, has had some serious problems. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So when I did the 23andMe, I never even considered, “Oh yeah, I could be like super compromised.” “Hi, here’s my sample,” like, you know, but never thought of it. And then of course, it brought so much joy when it happened. Again, I didn’t really think of it, but Mark said he would have never done it if it hadn’t been for the bullying, no, for the encouragement of my sister-in-law and his daughter. He said, I’d never, that’s not his jam. And Sean, 100% hell no. Like he was like, absolutely not. And he is super aware of things that can go sideways, things that could be used against you, things that can bring you down, and he’s not wrong. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, what’s going on with 23andMe? We’ll dive into that mess in a new tab. But first, a quick break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, we’re back to talk about 23andMe, their legal issues, bankruptcy, and the big question, what are they doing with all that data? New tab. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">23andMe privacy nightmare. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re diving into this with Anya Prince, who’s a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law. She researches genetic privacy and discrimination. Before we get into the privacy questions, we need to set the scene. About 10 years ago, 23andMe was super hot and trendy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anya Prince:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think 23andMe held a lot of promise and marketed itself as this fun, quirky thing, but also part of a larger goal, right. So when 23andMe first launched, they literally had spit parties where they invited, you know, famous people to come to parties and spit in tubes and learn about themselves. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it was this really fun thing and it wasn’t necessarily about health back then. It was more about, like, you know, you learn whether or not you can, you know, curl your tongue or whatever quirky genetic traits, learn about your ancestry, learn about where you came from. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it’s really grown to, to have more, um, health testing. And also this research side, I think while it’s not the main focus, I think 23andMe did sell itself as like, you can be part of something bigger by opting into research as well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Can you talk more about that goal they had of like helping with this grand plan to develop new treatments and special drugs? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anya Prince:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, it’s a really fascinating goal, right? So on the one hand, we could think that this is really beneficial, right, that here’s this good company that’s saying, “Not only we’re gonna provide this interesting service where we tell people about their ancestry, but also we’re going to build this database that can advance science and be for community good.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think that’s one version of the story that has a lot of truth to it. But I think there’s another version of this story that has lot of true to it too. And that is the business model. Here is a company that took money from people to give them that information, and that was one side of their business model, and had a second business model where they then sold that information to pharmaceutical companies and the like. Or did their own research with it and applied for patents, which then brings in money as well. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so a less charitable version of the story is that it’s a really fascinating business model where you’re making money both on the consumer side and then selling their data — and then possibly making cures or drugs that could help ameliorate some of the original customers’ diseases and then charging them for it again. And so, I think both sides of that story have some truth to it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When it comes to genetic data specifically, what’s the difference between getting tested in a clinical setting, like a doctor’s office, and submitting a test through an at-home direct-to-consumer company like 23andMe? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anya Prince:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So in our healthcare setting, we start with the premise that health information, including genetic information, is private, and it can only be shared if it meets certain exceptions or requirements. In the direct-to-consumer testing setting, at least at the federal level, we start with the presumption that the data can be shared as widely as the privacy policy lets it be shared. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">23andMe did allow customers to opt out of sharing and storing their genetic information. And to their credit, they also let customers fully delete their accounts and all the data associated with it. And this is important because all that data has been a huge concern in recent years. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anya Prince:\u003c/b> So there w\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">as a data breach where millions of customers’ data was leaked onto the dark web, essentially. And eventually this came out, and one of the pieces that came out with that is that it seemed like the hackers were particularly targeting individuals that had Ashkenazi Jewish descent or Chinese ancestry. And so there’s concerns of like why why those groups, what was their aim? Um, that I think I haven’t seen really that those questions have been answered. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Do you remember when you first heard about it, what was your first reaction as a privacy expert who literally specializes in genetic privacy? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anya Prince:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In terms of a privacy perspective, these hacks happen all the time. Not that they should, but it does happen. But then you do worry, like, okay, now that’s out there. If it’s a credit card breach, so many people have made this analogy, but you can change your credit card, you can, you know, change your email address, but can’t update and get a new version of your DNA. So once it’s out there, it’s out there. And I think that is one of the more concerning sides. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s talk about the bankruptcy. So this data breach resulted in a $30 million class action lawsuit. Last year, the company filed for bankruptcy and announced plans to sell its assets, including all of that customer DNA information. Why does that raise red flags for privacy advocates? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anya Prince:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Because there’s very few federal restrictions in who could buy that data, there were so many open questions. Could a pharmaceutical company purchase this data? Could somebody like a company affiliated with law enforcement purchase this data? Could a foreign nation purchase this data? And the answers were really any of those, for the most part. There are some restrictions on so-called countries of concern. But for the first part, under federal law, it goes to whoever has the most money and wants to bid on it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so all of a sudden, people were in the position where their most sensitive genetic data, arguably, the most immutable data that they have out there is for sale to the highest bidder. And that was well within the privacy policy, right? The privacy policy of 23andMe stated that this data could be sold in bankruptcy. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I think many customers, I don’t know if most, never really sat down and thought, “Oh, my genetic data all of a sudden is an asset of this company.” And not just an asset, like the most valuable asset that this company has. And so there have been plenty of other bankruptcies where private data has been an asset, but not one in the same volume and to the extent where that’s like the main sort of business model and the most sensitive of data. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A few months ago, a judge approved the sale of 23andMe, and all of its data, back to one of its co-founders, or really TTAM, a nonprofit research institute led by one of the company’s co-founders. TTAM, by the way, is an acronym for Twenty Three and Me. Initially, privacy advocates were concerned about who would end up in possession of 23andMe’s data if the company sold. But a few of the states suing 23andMe backed off once that sale to TTAM was approved. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anya Prince:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And in some ways, that makes a lot of sense, right? People trusted 23andMe. They said, “OK, here’s this company. I believe in their ethos. I like that they’re doing research. I trust their security, at least maybe before the hack. And so I’m going to give my information to them.” And we do this all the time as customers, right. We don’t read the privacy policies, but we generally think, “OK. Here’s a well-known, good company, and we’re going to trust that they going to be good stewards of the data.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so, if that was the reason that you chose 23andMe to give your genetic data to, then there’s probably a sigh of relief that TTAM is the buyer, because they’re gonna have a very similar ethos. They are keeping basically the same employees, same structure, and so we think, “Oh good, it wasn’t a big bad pharmaceutical company, or it wasn’t a law enforcement company, or it wasn’t some other country that now has a bunch of Americans’ data. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I think it’s a missed opportunity to breathe such a sigh of relief that we don’t reflect upon the real true gaps in genetic privacy law that this example really exposed or highlighted. There isn’t really anything to stop the next company that has fewer privacy protections in their privacy policy to begin with from being sold with much less press, and it just goes under the radar, but the same privacy concerns exist. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of people believe that even though this country doesn’t have robust protections for data privacy, their health information at least is safe. That’s not always true though. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, better known as HIPAA, only protects sensitive health information when it’s collected in a healthcare setting — like insurance or a doctor’s office. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But outside of that setting, a lot of your private data is fair game. Your fitness watch tracking your heart rate, The FemTech apps tracking menstrual cycles, the vitamins you buy using your credit card. All of this information is health information that can be collected and sold to the highest bidder. Why is that so concerning? Let’s open a new tab. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What is your health data really worth? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like we’ve talked about, health data is regulated or protected. What are other ways that this information has been mishandled or exploited? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anya Prince:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, I mean, so one of the big ones, I think, with health data in particular is the potential use by advertisers. So if you think about times in your life where your purchasing habits have changed, a change in health status is one of those, right? You need a new insulin pump. You need new brace for your knee. You need any number of things, right. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so. Our health data can be really of interest to advertisers who say, “Yeah, if I can find out that Mrs. Smith is pre-diabetic, let me start to market to her healthy foods or insulin or whatever else it is and hope that she purchases my product instead of the competitor.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And for some people, that’s good. Maybe they find the product that’s really going to help them. And I think for others, it could be exploitative or lead them to a choice of product that wasn’t the best for them because it’s not within a clinical setting decision. And so there’s both pros and cons to it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The concern is not just about advertisers getting a hold of your personal health data. After Roe v. Wade was overturned, reproductive rights advocates raised concerns over how this kind of information could be used to criminalize people who would had abortions or even miscarriages. HIPAA doesn’t apply to most healthcare apps or at-home tests. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And when it comes to DNA information, the lack of privacy regulation is pretty troubling. What would stop law enforcement from mining DNA test results? The Golden State Killer, one of California’s most notorious serial killers, was caught through a relative’s DNA test. Obviously, that’s an extreme example, and 23andMe says they don’t let law enforcement into their databases. But here’s why you should probably care.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anya Prince:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I think some of the concerns I have with it are, one, you’re going to start to use it in the serial killer case, and that’s great. It’s good to catch serial killers. But what I worry about is the slippery slope, right? Where, okay, then it’s used in an assault case, then then it is used in this. And how far down the slippery slope do you go to where it’s just really common to use this anytime there’s DNA available for a crime? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And our constitutional protections would not let the police just set up a stop on a street corner and do genetic testing of every single person in the hopes of finding somebody related to the perpetrator. So why would we treat a genetic database any different? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think the other privacy concern with law enforcement is that they’re not just logging onto the database and finding the suspect, right, for the most part. What’s happening more often is they find what’s called a partial match. And so they say, oh, we have this genetic sample from the crime scene, and then we found this sample that like 15% of it matches. Well, that means that it’s a relative, but it’s not like a brother, sister, it’s like a parent, sibling, it’s too far removed. So then they have to start building family trees and they can build backwards up to the great, great grandpa and then downwards. And so there’s a lot of people that are investigated, not as suspects, but as linked to suspects. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So all of a sudden, you might have police knocking on somebody’s door to say, “Could you give a confirmatory sample so that we can then try to figure out if you’re related to the person and if you are the brother whose family tree this is part of.” So I worry just potentially even more about the privacy and the respect for the non-suspects who are also implicated in these investigations than the suspect themselves. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this story, we’re also hearing from someone who found her long lost family members through a 23andMe test. It seems like there’s a significant trade-off here. To find this part of yourself, you have to risk your privacy. If someone did choose to take an at-home DNA test, what precautions would you recommend? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Anya Prince:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So first I’d say like, absolutely, it’s a trade-off. I mean, as I’m sure many of you listeners know, every time we share data out there, whether it’s with our friend or individual or a company, we are making trade-offs about confidentiality and privacy. And I think it’s completely normal and rational trade-off to participate in something like 23andMe. Whether it’s to learn about health risks, whether it is to learn about family members, whether it’s to learn about your ancestry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m a really private person, so I haven’t made that trade-off, because that’s not something that feels comfortable for me. But I also, I’m not surprised that millions of people have made that trade-off. And for most people, it’s fine, right? They don’t have a privacy risk. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My hope, though, would be that law and policy catch up a little bit, right, where the data is more protected so that there can’t be misuse, right? Where we have more robust genetic anti-discrimination laws, where we have more structures in place for how and when law enforcement could access this data, and that we have rules about how companies that collect this data have to care for it, you know, as stewards of this data and not just have it be profit-making endeavor. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks so much for joining us and for just sharing all of this information. I’m gonna go delete everything from everything online. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trine, for one, was pretty freaked out about the 23andMe data breach, and then bankruptcy, and then sale. As she watched the headlines roll in, she decided to deactivate her account and permanently delete her data. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I got my info, I got win with my brothers and I really don’t need and now I really am concerned like who is this gonna go to now? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There were a few more distant family members that popped up as matches, but Trine wasn’t too pressed about connecting with them. Especially not through 23andMe.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I’m like I’m fine with that. I don’t really need more, unless they want to come to us and gather. That’s good, but I don’t need to do it through this platform anymore. I think it’s hard for me not to have my little rose-colored glasses on, which is how I often view the world, especially now I really need them, because mine was so joyful. So yeah, I probably say yeah, take a beat, investigate the bejeebus out of whatever thing you think you’re gonna go through and do, you know, kind of thing. But for me, I mean, lucky. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Worth it for you? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, 100. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Despite learning that she is, in fact, Filipina and Irish, Trini still identifies as 100% Mexican. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I- Clearly raised Mexican, you know, have the heart of it. So I can’t un-Mexican myself.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She did have a small crisis when she renewed her driver’s license and had to decide whether to check the box for Hispanic. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Trine Gallegos:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Honestly, I cried for like two minutes. And then I was like, no? Question mark? Then I found Filipino and then I moved on because, you know, that’s just a form. You know, when I’m asked, I say I’m Mexican.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A DNA test can reveal a lot about our backgrounds, but ultimately, it can’t decide who we are. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, now let’s close all 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. Close All Tabs producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Additional editing by Chris Hambrick and Jen Chien, who is KQED’s director of podcasts. Original music, including our theme song and credits by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard.\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. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\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 K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches. \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. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to Donate.KQED.org/podcasts. \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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"slug": "sfs-anthropic-backs-california-ai-safety-bill-after-newsom-vetoed-1st-attempt",
"title": "SF’s Anthropic Backs California AI Safety Bill After Newsom Vetoed 1st Attempt",
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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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"slug": "child-safety-groups-demand-mental-health-guardrails-after-california-teens-suicide-using-chatgpt",
"title": "Child Safety Groups Demand Mental Health Guardrails, After California Teen’s Suicide Using ChatGPT",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, you can dial or text 988 and be connected to help.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nWith its quick, often personable responses, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/chatgpt\">ChatGPT\u003c/a> can feel to some children more like an available friend than a language model engineered to guess its next word.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These blurred lines allow kids to go down “roads they should never go,” warn child safety advocates and tech policy groups, who have called for companies that design chatbots and artificial intelligence companions to take more responsibility for their program’s influence on youth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This week, tech giant \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/building-more-helpful-chatgpt-experiences-for-everyone/\">OpenAI\u003c/a> announced new safety measures for kids. The post didn’t mention 16-year-old Adam Raine, who, according to his parents, killed himself after discussing both his loneliness and plans to harm himself with ChatGPT.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to a lawsuit filed in San Francisco on Aug. 26, Maria and Matt Raine allege that ChatGPT-4o cultivated a psychological dependence in their son by continually encouraging and validating “whatever [he] expressed, including his most harmful and self-destructive thoughts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is an area that calls out for thoughtful common-sense regulation and guardrails. And quite frankly, that the leaders of all the major AI companies need to address,” said Jim Steyer, founder and CEO of Common Sense Media, which advocates safe media use for children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With more than \u003ca href=\"https://mashable.com/article/openai-how-many-people-use-chatgpt\">500 million\u003c/a> weekly ChatGPT users and more than 2.5 billion prompts per day, users are increasingly turning to the large language model for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12049674/from-god-to-grief-people-are-asking-ai-the-big-questions-once-reserved-for-clergy\">emotional support.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both digital assistants like ChatGPT, as well as AI companions like Character.Ai and Replika, told researchers posing as 13-year-olds about drinking and drug use, instructed them on how to conceal eating disorders and even composed a suicide letter to their parents if asked, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12038154/kids-talking-ai-companion-chatbots-stanford-researchers-say-thats-bad-idea\">research from Stanford University\u003c/a>.[aside postID=news_12053799 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/10/241009-OAKLAND-YOUTH-VOTE-MD-08-KQED-1020x680.jpg']Steyer said OpenAI has partnered with Common Sense Media and has taken the issue more seriously than Meta AI or X’s Grok. But he still recommended that young people under 18 — “AI natives” — be restricted from using chatbots for companionship or therapy, suggesting that enhanced controls may not go far enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can’t just think that parental controls are a be-all end-all solution. They’re hard to use, very easy to bypass for young people, and they put the burden on parents when, honestly, it should be on the tech companies to prevent these kinds of tragic situations,” Steyer said. “It’s more like a bandaid when what we need is a long-term cure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a blog post on Tuesday, the company shared plans to make the chatbot safer for young people to use in recognition of the fact that “people turn to it in the most difficult of moments.” The changes are set to roll out within the next month, OpenAI said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the planned updates promise to link parents’ and teens’ accounts, reroute sensitive conversations with youth and alert parents “when the system detects their teen is in a moment of acute distress.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If a user expresses suicidal ideation, ChatGPT is trained to direct people to seek professional help, OpenAI stated in a\u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/helping-people-when-they-need-it-most/\"> post\u003c/a> last week. ChatGPT refers people to 988, the suicide and crisis hotline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The program does not escalate reports of self-harm to law enforcement, “given the uniquely private nature of ChatGPT interactions.” Licensed psychotherapists aren’t universally mandated to report self-harm either, but they must intervene if the client is at immediate risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Common Sense Media is supporting legislation in California that would establish limits protecting children from AI and social media abuse. AB 56 would implement \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12017249/california-bill-would-put-tobacco-like-warnings-social-media-apps\">social media warning labels \u003c/a>that clearly state the risks to children, not unlike the labels pasted on tobacco products.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12054564\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12054564 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/Sam-Altman_chatpgt.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/Sam-Altman_chatpgt.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/Sam-Altman_chatpgt-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/Sam-Altman_chatpgt-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Samuel Altman, CEO of OpenAI, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law May 16, 2023 in Washington, DC. \u003ccite>(Win McNamee/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The bill was proposed by Attorney General Rob Bonta and Orinda Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, and is headed to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk for signing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A second bill, AB1064, would ban AI chatbots from manipulating children into forming emotional attachments or harvesting their personal and biometric data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Sen. Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park) also introduced an AI bill to protect vulnerable users from chatbots’ harmful effects: \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>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whether Newsom will support the bills, along with a flurry of other proposed AI-safety laws in Sacramento, remains to be seen. The governor told reporters in early August that he is trying to establish a middle ground that provides public safety guardrails without suppressing business: “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>As Newsom eyes higher office, and the California governor’s race heats up, there’s been a surge in AI lobbying and political action committees from the industry, with a \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/politics/silicon-valley-launches-pro-ai-pacs-to-defend-industry-in-midterm-elections-287905b3?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=ASWzDAjaxxFIzEaiCnLuxtt5FYul1NMFgXzDPGeVaH0VKZedvoSLexjk_j2Gr_Q0ZKQ%3D&gaa_ts=68b063e0&gaa_sig=V93Si4VVkqKsN1H-aEXHbbUoyVrGdS9GECVqYESgBE7WTq_dVBNLHw5VIyH41lRNW0pQQRB3N7d0mV9v_EaR4Q%3D%3D\">report \u003c/a>last week from the \u003cem>Wall Street Journal\u003c/em> that Silicon Valley plans to pour $100 million into a network of organizations opposing AI regulation ahead of next year’s midterm elections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it may take more to convince Californians: seven in 10 state residents favor “strong laws to make AI fair” and believe voluntary rules “simply don’t go far enough,” according to recent\u003ca href=\"https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/o-vjCADmygFVBPLwtGfgtGPCKp?domain=email.commoncause.org\"> polling by Tech Equity\u003c/a>. Meanwhile, 59% think “AI will most likely benefit the wealthiest households and corporations, not working people and the middle class.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/rachael-myrow\">Rachael Myrow\u003c/a> contributed to this report. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"title": "Child Safety Groups Demand Mental Health Guardrails, After California Teen’s Suicide Using ChatGPT | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, you can dial or text 988 and be connected to help.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nWith its quick, often personable responses, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/chatgpt\">ChatGPT\u003c/a> can feel to some children more like an available friend than a language model engineered to guess its next word.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These blurred lines allow kids to go down “roads they should never go,” warn child safety advocates and tech policy groups, who have called for companies that design chatbots and artificial intelligence companions to take more responsibility for their program’s influence on youth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This week, tech giant \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/building-more-helpful-chatgpt-experiences-for-everyone/\">OpenAI\u003c/a> announced new safety measures for kids. The post didn’t mention 16-year-old Adam Raine, who, according to his parents, killed himself after discussing both his loneliness and plans to harm himself with ChatGPT.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to a lawsuit filed in San Francisco on Aug. 26, Maria and Matt Raine allege that ChatGPT-4o cultivated a psychological dependence in their son by continually encouraging and validating “whatever [he] expressed, including his most harmful and self-destructive thoughts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is an area that calls out for thoughtful common-sense regulation and guardrails. And quite frankly, that the leaders of all the major AI companies need to address,” said Jim Steyer, founder and CEO of Common Sense Media, which advocates safe media use for children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With more than \u003ca href=\"https://mashable.com/article/openai-how-many-people-use-chatgpt\">500 million\u003c/a> weekly ChatGPT users and more than 2.5 billion prompts per day, users are increasingly turning to the large language model for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12049674/from-god-to-grief-people-are-asking-ai-the-big-questions-once-reserved-for-clergy\">emotional support.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both digital assistants like ChatGPT, as well as AI companions like Character.Ai and Replika, told researchers posing as 13-year-olds about drinking and drug use, instructed them on how to conceal eating disorders and even composed a suicide letter to their parents if asked, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12038154/kids-talking-ai-companion-chatbots-stanford-researchers-say-thats-bad-idea\">research from Stanford University\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Steyer said OpenAI has partnered with Common Sense Media and has taken the issue more seriously than Meta AI or X’s Grok. But he still recommended that young people under 18 — “AI natives” — be restricted from using chatbots for companionship or therapy, suggesting that enhanced controls may not go far enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can’t just think that parental controls are a be-all end-all solution. They’re hard to use, very easy to bypass for young people, and they put the burden on parents when, honestly, it should be on the tech companies to prevent these kinds of tragic situations,” Steyer said. “It’s more like a bandaid when what we need is a long-term cure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a blog post on Tuesday, the company shared plans to make the chatbot safer for young people to use in recognition of the fact that “people turn to it in the most difficult of moments.” The changes are set to roll out within the next month, OpenAI said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the planned updates promise to link parents’ and teens’ accounts, reroute sensitive conversations with youth and alert parents “when the system detects their teen is in a moment of acute distress.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If a user expresses suicidal ideation, ChatGPT is trained to direct people to seek professional help, OpenAI stated in a\u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/helping-people-when-they-need-it-most/\"> post\u003c/a> last week. ChatGPT refers people to 988, the suicide and crisis hotline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The program does not escalate reports of self-harm to law enforcement, “given the uniquely private nature of ChatGPT interactions.” Licensed psychotherapists aren’t universally mandated to report self-harm either, but they must intervene if the client is at immediate risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Common Sense Media is supporting legislation in California that would establish limits protecting children from AI and social media abuse. AB 56 would implement \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12017249/california-bill-would-put-tobacco-like-warnings-social-media-apps\">social media warning labels \u003c/a>that clearly state the risks to children, not unlike the labels pasted on tobacco products.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12054564\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12054564 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/Sam-Altman_chatpgt.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/Sam-Altman_chatpgt.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/Sam-Altman_chatpgt-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/Sam-Altman_chatpgt-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Samuel Altman, CEO of OpenAI, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law May 16, 2023 in Washington, DC. \u003ccite>(Win McNamee/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The bill was proposed by Attorney General Rob Bonta and Orinda Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, and is headed to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk for signing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A second bill, AB1064, would ban AI chatbots from manipulating children into forming emotional attachments or harvesting their personal and biometric data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Sen. Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park) also introduced an AI bill to protect vulnerable users from chatbots’ harmful effects: \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>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whether Newsom will support the bills, along with a flurry of other proposed AI-safety laws in Sacramento, remains to be seen. The governor told reporters in early August that he is trying to establish a middle ground that provides public safety guardrails without suppressing business: “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>As Newsom eyes higher office, and the California governor’s race heats up, there’s been a surge in AI lobbying and political action committees from the industry, with a \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/politics/silicon-valley-launches-pro-ai-pacs-to-defend-industry-in-midterm-elections-287905b3?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=ASWzDAjaxxFIzEaiCnLuxtt5FYul1NMFgXzDPGeVaH0VKZedvoSLexjk_j2Gr_Q0ZKQ%3D&gaa_ts=68b063e0&gaa_sig=V93Si4VVkqKsN1H-aEXHbbUoyVrGdS9GECVqYESgBE7WTq_dVBNLHw5VIyH41lRNW0pQQRB3N7d0mV9v_EaR4Q%3D%3D\">report \u003c/a>last week from the \u003cem>Wall Street Journal\u003c/em> that Silicon Valley plans to pour $100 million into a network of organizations opposing AI regulation ahead of next year’s midterm elections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it may take more to convince Californians: seven in 10 state residents favor “strong laws to make AI fair” and believe voluntary rules “simply don’t go far enough,” according to recent\u003ca href=\"https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/o-vjCADmygFVBPLwtGfgtGPCKp?domain=email.commoncause.org\"> polling by Tech Equity\u003c/a>. Meanwhile, 59% think “AI will most likely benefit the wealthiest households and corporations, not working people and the middle class.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/rachael-myrow\">Rachael Myrow\u003c/a> contributed to this report. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "we-have-to-and-are-proud-to-big-tech-embraces-the-u-s-military",
"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>\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>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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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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"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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"content": "\u003cp>Elon Musk and X Corp., formally known as Twitter, reached \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12025826/what-happens-after-the-fork-in-the-road-a-lawyer-for-ex-twitter-employees-weighs-in\">a settlement with former employees\u003c/a> in a San Francisco court on Wednesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A court filing released Wednesday shows both parties reached an agreement for an undisclosed amount in principle, and requested that a Sept. 17 hearing be postponed while they worked out a deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The class-action lawsuit was led by two former Twitter employees, Courtney McMillian and Ronald Cooper, who requested $500 million on behalf of their colleagues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Musk \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11930570/he-wants-attention-as-elon-musk-takes-over-twitter-this-tech-insider-has-some-thoughts\">bought Twitter\u003c/a> for $44 billion in 2002, he fired 6,000 employees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The class-action lawsuit stems from that turnover, after former Twitter employees say they did not receive their severance benefits or information about their severance package.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twitter’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000119312522120474/d310843ddefa14a.htm\">merger agreement\u003c/a> states that severance, among other former employee benefits, would be honored for up to a year after the merger. The lawsuit claims that those promises were made to prevent a mass resignation that would threaten the merger deal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11998863\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11998863\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/XSFGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1172\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/XSFGetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/XSFGetty-800x469.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/XSFGetty-1020x598.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/XSFGetty-160x94.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/XSFGetty-1536x900.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/XSFGetty-1920x1125.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An aerial view of X headquarters is seen on July 28, 2023, in San Francisco, California. \u003ccite>(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The severance package included at least two months’ salary, six months’ pay plus one week for each year of service for senior employees and a cash contribution for continued health care, according to the suit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McMillian’s severance package included six-and-a-half months’ pay, six months of continued health insurance coverage and any bonuses. She was offered severance equal to one month’s pay, according to the suit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Copper’s severance allegedly included six months and one week of pay, six months of health insurance coverage, and any bonuses. He was also offered severance equal to one month’s pay.[aside postID=news_12018617 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/12/NedSegalGetty-1020x680.jpg']Some employees received nothing, the suit said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McMillian said in the suit that she was informed that Musk and the company decided to deny employees their severance after reviewing how much it would cost the company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The suit also stated that after the merger, Twitter would shut down Slack and emails to prevent employees from seeking information or communicating amongst themselves about their benefits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When employees asked about the severance plan or other work policies, the company would refer them to view Musk’s personal X account and listen to the “All In” podcast, hosted by his friends Jason Calacanis and David Sacks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lawsuit claimed the fired employees were entitled to no less than $500 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A federal judge dismissed the class action lawsuit in 2024, but McMillian and Cooper appealed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Attorneys representing the former employees and Elon Musk did not yet respond to a request for comment about the settlement. The CEO has yet to post about the settlement on X.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thousands of writers in Kenya make their living ghostwriting academic papers for wealthy Western students. It’s an industry known as “contract cheating” or “essay mills,” and is the subject of a new documentary, “The Shadow Scholars.” Directed by Eloise King, the film follows Kenyan-born Oxford Professor Patricia Kingori as she investigates this hidden industry and seeks to understand the essay writers working in the shadows of the educational system. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan talks with Patricia and Eloise about the world of academic cheating, and how these writers are adapting to a world in which AI-generated essays are just a click away. \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=KQINC1401351139\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.some.ox.ac.uk/our-people/patricia-kingori/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Patricia Kingori\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, professor of global health ethics at the University of Oxford\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/challenge/?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.instagram.com%2Felloweezee%2F%3Fhl%3Den%26__coig_challenged%3D1#\">Eloise King\u003c/a>, director of “The Shadow Scholars”\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://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLZCTERhImw\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Shadow Scholars \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— Directed by Eloise King \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354713537_Kenya's_Fake_Essay_Writers_and_the_Light_they_Shine_on_Assumptions_of_Shadows_in_Knowledge_Production/citation/download\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kenya’s “Fake Essay” Writers and the Light they Shine on Assumptions of Shadows in Knowledge Production\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Patricia Kingori, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Journal of African Cultural Studies \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/ghostwriting-essays-american-college-students-lucrative-profession-kenya-a9096461.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How writing essays for American students has become a lucrative profession overseas\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Farah Stockman, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Independent \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereknewton/2025/05/14/georgia-bans-commercial-cheating-services/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Georgia Bans Commercial Cheating Services\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Derek Newton, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Forbes \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.fastcompany.com/90951343/ai-essays-advertising-on-meta-and-tiktok\">Companies that use AI to help you cheat at school are thriving on TikTok and Meta\u003c/a> — Chris Stokel-Walker, \u003ci>Fast Company\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\">Imagine you’re a college student. The end of the semester is just around the corner. It’s the middle of finals week and you have to study for an exam, finish a presentation and turn in a research paper all within the next 12 hours. Unfortunately, you’ve been procrastinating and you only have time to finish two of those three things. You could use a tool like Chat GPT, but you don’t wanna get caught using AI. So you open a new tab. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the search bar, you type, essay… writer… fast. Enter. Dozens of results pop up. Websites with generic-sounding names, but sleek, friendly designs. They promise high-quality, custom essays delivered in days, or even hours. All you have to do is run through a few drop-down menus and pick what you need, and then enter your credit card number. You’ve just stepped into an industry known as “contract cheating,” better known as essay mills. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s the subject of a new documentary, The Shadow Scholars, which just had its North American premiere at Tribeca Film Festival. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Shadow Scholars Trailer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ve all grown up being told that education empowers us. And if you study at school, then you’re going to get the rewards. I’m going to shine a light on the world’s billion-dollar secret. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It looks at who the people are on the other side of that screen. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One day I was invited to go along to a lecture at the Oxford Internet Institute and they were talking about these online laborers. And then they started talking about different parts of the world and where different people in different parts of the worlds use the internet for work. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Patricia Kingori, a Kenyan-born UK-based sociologist. In 2021, she became the youngest Black professor at the University of Oxford. She’s also one of the main subjects of the film. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So then they described Kenya and said, you know, there is this writing and translation work, which is a kind of euphemism for the fake essay industry. And I just became really interested in, well, who are these people? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This topic is personal for Patricia. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think if you have had your thesis stolen, as I have had the ideas from my thesis stolen, you immediately start to believe that an industry where people do benefit from the intellect of others exists, right? I think really allowed me to start from a presumption of the fact that they exist rather than I think where many people have not had this experience might start, which is, well, how can that be? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just after attending the lecture, Patricia caught up with filmmaker Eloise King, who ended up directing the documentary. They had known each other for years, and Patricia casually mentioned the so-called fake essay industry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My immediate reaction was how do real people write fake essays? And I was immediately obsessed. I think one of the things that we share is a kind of an inquisitiveness that goes really deep once it’s sort of implanted. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so, Eloise and Patricia, dug deeper. What they found was a booming, but mostly hidden industry of writers centered in Kenya, who are paid to produce academic work for others. Patricia wrote about it in 2021 in the Journal of African Culture Studies. The name “shadow scholars” comes from author Dave Tomar, who wrote about his own experience as an academic ghostwriter in his 2012 memoir. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The film, “The Shadow Scholars”, is less about the ethics of cheating and more about the unseen labor involved. The documentary focuses on the shadow scholars based in Kenya, which is a major hub for the fake essay industry. They’re often hired by students in the US, the UK, and Australia. Here’s Patricia in the film. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So of all of the online labor work that’s going on in Kenya, 72% of that… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Professor Vili Lehdonvirta: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Is engaged in writing and translation work. Actually, we know it’s just writing essays for students in global North universities. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so, Patricia presenting these findings really turned on a light for me because what we had was this really difficult to prove, you know, lived experience of like global majority but like marginalized communities within education. And so I just became really excited with the idea that we could ask more questions and find out if this flow of information was really kind of fueling institutions around the world. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it’s not just undergrad essays. Shadow scholars are also hired to write entire PhD dissertations. They do all of the work, but someone else gets the credit, the qualifications, and eventually the jobs. The shadow scholars, meanwhile, aren’t afforded the same opportunities. So who are these shadow scholars? How does this exchange work? And what is the generative AI boom doing to this industry that relies on human intellectual labor? \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\">We sat down with Patricia and Eloise to learn about how this industry works and shine some light on the people at the center of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Time for a new tab. Who are the shadow scholars? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even the word fake essay, like that’s such a loaded phrase where, you know, the premise may be fake, but the person writing it is real, the content is real, it is a real academic work. Why frame this as shadow scholars? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Think it really forces us to think about something that we often don’t think about. So in relation to Africa, the word shadow is the most common analogy that’s used to describe Africa, “in the shadow of”, “the shadows of this.” It’s always in the shadows. And I think that I became really interested in this concept of the shadow, because in Swahili there is no word for shadow is something that doesn’t exist. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So from the moment you say that something is a shadow, basically what you’re saying is that it doesn’t exist in the world. And as the writers in Kenya themselves do, you could say it’s a support agency. You could use any number of different words for it, but to use it and to say that they’re shadow scholars, I think is something that’s forcing us to say, are these people real? Are they visible from whose perspective? And use the words to really question their position in the world and how they want to be seen in the world. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here’s Eloise again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You just look at what media are saying about these people and how they’re discussing it and how it’s being discussed in the mainstream, right? And, you know, they’re being called these cancers that are brick by brick, breaking down um the sort of legitimacy of education. Like, the language is so xenophobic. Their identity was being hijacked and used in these really derogatory terms. And so that was something as well that really mindful throughout, like, how do we engage with them directly and have this story told from their perspective, but also like very much more on their terms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A review of studies found that nearly 16% of students admitted to contract cheating between 2014 and 2018. Extrapolated globally, that’s over 30 million students. The stats that we do have about contract cheating are likely skewed because they rely on students to self-report on their own cheating habits. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Altogether, Eloise said it’s a $15 billion industry. There are about 40,000 writers just in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital. That number fluctuates based on demand. Patricia said that during the end of the semester, when students are scrambling to turn in work, the number of writers might double. And is this an industry concentrated in Kenya, is it unique to Kenya, or does it manifest elsewhere in the Global South? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah it definitely does. When we talk to other academics who are looking into this, Dr Thomas Lancaster, who appears in the film, he specifically said there isn’t a country or university in the world where we don’t think that this is going on. It just so happens that Kenya is the hot spot, the global hot spot, where the greatest number of people are doing this work. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kenya is a hotspot, because it’s an English speaking country with a strong education system and a high adult literacy rate. But at the same time, there aren’t many career opportunities for young people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think it’s really worth saying that this industry has always existed. It’s actually nothing new insofar as there has always been people who have benefited from having other people write their work and do their work for them. What’s new now is the scale of the industry and the geography of the industry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But for example, we know that increasingly we’re getting so many of these kind of hidden figures stories. We’re hearing about, you know, women, we’re hearing about African-American, we’re hearing about gay and queer people who have propped up other people who’ve gone on to claim qualifications or claim inventions on their behalf because they were marginalized in history. What’s happened is as this has become harder and harder to actually do without scrutiny in the Global North, it’s shifted to locations that have been made invisible and that we were all invested in making this place as invisible, and also, because of technology, we can have this happen on a scale it’s never happened before. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok. Let’s recap how this process works from students’ perspectives. A lot of these essay writing services advertise all over Instagram and TikTok. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Influencer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I actually paid someone, I paid three people to write my essays. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Or they have excellent SEO. So if you Google “write a paper fast”, they’ll be at the very top of your results. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Influencer 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the fastest ways to meet your essay deadline while using a paper writing service is to choose one that offers a quick turnaround time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Once you settle on a site, you pick your subject and the grade you want and a page count. These sites might charge something like $8 per page, but charge more for more specialized topics like engineering or medicine. An undergrad literature essay, for example, will be significantly cheaper than a doctorate-level thesis. When you put your order in, you set a deadline, which could be anything from six months to six hours. For the shadow scholars in Kenya, the writers behind these papers, it’s all about response time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The thing that really fascinated me about the writers were there was a level of psychology that was involved actually. Um, you know, they would often set their alarms and their clocks to be up at certain times because they knew that’s when students would start to panic, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So they know that, you know, in the UK, if I have a deadline for tomorrow, I might maybe have a look at it, but by about 10 o’clock, I’m starting to get tired. I know I’m not going to get this thing done. That’s when I’m starting to look online for help. So they know, okay, around, you know, one o’clock, two o’ clock in the morning Kenya time, I need to be up because that’s when somebody’s gonna be jumping in online to get help. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some of the students who hire these services are very privileged. They’re even wealthy enough to hire shadow scholars for every university assignment up until graduation. And they develop relationships with the writers too. One of the Kenyan writers profiled in the documentary, Chege, had worked for the same student for years and through that was able to buy a car and pay for his sister to attend university. These dynamics are complex. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think it’s really easy to imagine a world where the writers are quite derogatory about the students or they think badly of them or they speak about them in negative terms. I think one of the things that was really surprising for me was how much empathy sometimes they had with the students right and how they really genuinely saw themselves as trying to help these students. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think their empathy was really important in terms of how we then managed the story because it’s really easy to paint a picture of good guys and bad guys and those guys are terrible and these guys are great, but actually we needed a much more nuanced story about the students themselves as people who we wouldn’t necessarily use the word victims, but certainly weren’t necessarily always winning in this system. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The students hiring these writers have to have a certain level of access to resources to be able to do it at all. But the majority of them are not that rich. They’ll do most of their semester’s work by themselves and will hire shadow scholars as a last resort. Here’s Eloise again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So there’s a student who appears in the film called Kate, who talks about just how incredibly competitive it is at university. And once you understand that everyone’s cheating, it becomes almost like a zero sum game where if you aren’t cheating, then are you gonna be left behind if you aren’t getting someone else to do the work for you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The film shows Kate, overwhelmed, turning to an essay writing agency. But she doesn’t have the $300 to pay for her final paper. So she turns to the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Everyone is so entwined by technology. Like we had Kate, who cannot afford to pay for the essay and then sells nudes online. But the fact is that in this kind of mechanism of like progress, like she’s both someone who was like a consumer and a trader in it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Can you describe any of the essay writers you profiled? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The shadows that we profiled were um young students who had then got on to graduate. So the point at which we met them and we spent four years filming with them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Most of the writers in the film are in their early to late 20s. There’s Mercy, a single mother who has a day job, but stays up late writing essays as a side gig. There’s Atticus, who specializes in technical writing for math and engineering classes. And then there’s Chege, the writer who was able to send his sister to university while being forced to put his own educational dreams on hold. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> One of the things I suppose I was really interested in focusing on was that after university life, like what is that kind of moment where everything should be great, you get the job of your dreams and actually what we found were a number of people who then ended up finding themselves in this industry for a long time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Eloise said that writers only get about 30% of the fee. The agency takes the rest. Not only are they underpaid, but they also can’t claim any credit for the work that they’re doing. They can’t use any of this experience to apply to universities themselves, especially not graduate programs, because they’re helping students cheat. This industry keeps ghost writers in the shadows. Let’s talk about the cost of anonymity in a new tab. After this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open a new tab. The cost of anonymity. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of this work is uncredited. Can you talk about how that anonymity puts the writers at a disadvantage? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What you just see is that the writers are doing all of this work, they’re gaining the knowledge, they were really proud to be acquiring so much knowledge, they really saw that as a value to them, you know. But it doesn’t mean that they’re able to add it to their CV, it doesn’t mean that they are able to get into overseas universities to do a master’s degree, even though they might have been supplying the work for years to students who are going to those institutions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like presently there’s not a single university in Australia, for example, who would accept an undergraduate degree from Kenya to enter into a master’s program. And yet, they are probably third on the list as recipients of academic writing work from authors in Kenya who have been paid to do it on behalf of the students who are there. They are the ghosts in the cyber wars of these institutions, but they’re never being allowed in through the front door. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Patricia, I’m hoping you could answer this next question, but is there any stigma against being a fake essay writer? I mean, how do academic institutions see the role of the shadow scholar? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There isn’t a world that they can be in at the moment as themselves that would give them credit for all of the things that they’ve done. And so the film is really a kind of way to try to ensure that some level of that happens for them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s another complication here, too. These academic cheating services are illegal in the UK, New Zealand, Australia, and some American states. In the UK, offering these services is actually a criminal offense. Because of that, the documentary uses deepfake technology on some of its interview subjects to conceal their identities and avoid criminalizing them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But while the film has taken steps to anonymize these writers, essay mill sites themselves aren’t exactly secure. The writers’ legal names and photo IDs, the students’ final papers. All of this can be accessed fairly easily by bad actors. This digital paper trail could come back to haunt both students and writers, especially as more governments move to ban these services. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think for the writers, we’re not sure how it’s going to affect their future careers, but actually they’ve got very short to medium term needs that there’s no other way for them to meet them, you know. So they have to do this writing really and many of them actually try at the same time to do other work. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For example, as we’ve mentioned with Australia, if they continue to see them as criminals and one of these writers, for example, wants to take up qualifications or have an opportunity in Australia, I don’t know what that will mean in terms of their identity being leaked or something like that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, I just think on like an emotional level and a kind of lived experience level, like having this digital footprint where you made a decision when you were hard up and you were like in your 20s maybe or in your late teens, being there and being like on record and traceable when you have absolutely no idea, it’s just not something that anyone would want and anyone would sign up for. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The idea that like you’re susceptible to any kind of blackmail, like should you find yourself in like public office. And I think that’s on both sides. I think like a very real possibility. And so I think anyone who’s like holding large swathes of data, you know, they might not be nefarious themselves but they might be selling it on. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Patricia and Eloise have been following these shadow scholars for over four years. In that time, generative AI tools have rapidly become more sophisticated and accessible. Academic cheating is now as easy as a single click and it costs next to nothing. So is anyone still using essay writing services? What happens to the shadow scholars, whose livelihoods depend on essay writing, if students don’t have to pay a human to cheat? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open one last tab. Shadow Scholars and AI. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Over the years that the artificial intelligence industry was exploding, Eloise had been keeping tabs on a Facebook group for shadow scholars from all over the world. When she first started working on the film in 2020, it had about 60,000 members. By the time production was over, three years later, that number had roughly tripled. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So you could see how this industry was growing. But that acted as this kind of like town crier, like forum for understanding what people were feeling. And what people felt was in the first instance, like, “Oh God, we are totally over. Like this is the end of the industry. We were already being made invisible and now people are gonna go to this service that’s cheaper and we’re gonna be totally wiped out.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And by the end, as always, again, what is totally part of this kind of liberatory ideology that seems to sit within it is that people saying, “Well, actually, no, it’s not. It’s not perfect. We have this knowledge, we’ve been doing this for a long time.” And whilst their incomes were definitely and have definitely been impacted by the advent of AI, there was really this pushback that was happening that said, “Actually when you have the knowledge at the source, and you’re able to check it, the quality will be superior.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I wonder if Patricia, you can talk much more about like testing and the way that algorithms are like totally detectable by universities. And I think we’ve all become really accustomed to like the long dash. Like when I see that in a reply from someone…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Which is tragic for me as a writer. I love the em dash. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There isn’t a uniform position by universities, right? So some universities are like, okay, if you’ve got particular needs, you can use AI. Other people are like under no circumstances do you use AI, and so the writers have been really able to exploit that lack of uniform position as part of a sales tactic to say, “Look, if use AI send your work to us, we will humanize it. We will remove all traces that you’ve had AI and we’ll send it back to you at a cost. It’ll cost you more because actually it requires more expertise to be able to spot all the falsifications, to spot the ways that AI hallucinates, to check all the references. We will do that detailed work and we will send it to you if you want to use AI. Or we can continue to do something bespoke for you.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think it has definitely shaped the way that they work because they’re getting many more students who are sending them things that they’ve used AI and said, “Can you make this look like I haven’t used AI,” and are charging them for that. Yet again, we’re in this world where we would rather think that AI has absolutely no human involvement than actually acknowledge the fact that it requires enormous amounts of human capital to make it happen in the first place. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that was the most interesting takeaway for me being a tech reporter watching the film was seeing the way that this industry of people adapted. Like Patricia said, this work is even more specialized than just writing the essay to make it sound human and to spot these kind of inconsistencies that only exist with AI. But at the same time, it seems to push them further into the shadows. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think it really does. I think you’ve kind of hit on something that we found in this film. There was this perpetual loop that would happen where just at the moment you think there is a shift or reckoning that allows them to be seen and to be acknowledged, like there is another systemic move that further pushes them into the background. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think AI is kind of coalesces into two things, doesn’t it? It’s like, one, people would rather think that like robots and computers are going to like take over the world and they’re like so smart. But what it does is it comes up against an innate prejudice where people for years have thought that the “Africans” need to, and I use that like term because you know that’s how people use it in this sweeping term, like that they need to be educated, they need be taught how to be civilized, and actually what too many imaginations cannot hold is the reality that there are millions of educated people in the fastest growing youth population on the planet who are having access to technology that allows them to share their education. That was an inheritance of colonial settlements and imposed education systems. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so all of these things are totally intertwined. The prejudice that people think that they couldn’t be that smart to begin with and the prejudice that then denies when proof is beyond needing any more evidence that it still finds a way to deny them of this. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many shadow scholars have pivoted to editing and humanizing AI-generated writing. But AI itself keeps advancing. There are now countless AI tools that claim to be able to humanize other AI-generated text in order to bypass AI detection tools. Right now, those tools still don’t compare to actual human-written work. But at some point in the future, will shadow scholars become redundant? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think they will continue to adapt in ways that we haven’t even thought about yet, because we haven t been able to predict how they’ve lasted this long in the face of all of these different challenges. So, as long as there is demand, there will be these writers and I think there will continue be demand because institutions need to find ways to judge who is good or who isn’t good. And so I think that’s an important thing for us to think about. Is it possible that we can have a world where these qualifications start to mean something different, right, and who is good or not?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Shadow scholars have been fighting for recognition long before AI was a problem. Even though the documentary conceals individual writers’ identities, Eloise hopes that it at least makes more people aware of the industry. It’s not mysterious criminals powering essay mills, but real writers who are forced into the shadows because they don’t have the same opportunities as students in the global North.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This documentary is also a kind of reckoning for academia. What does it mean for these institutions, if they’re awarding degrees and certifications to people who didn’t actually do the work to get them? And the people who did do the work are prevented from entering those very institutions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Next week, we’ll look at how this is playing out with younger students as we dive into how teachers are handling AI in their classrooms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The documentary, “The Shadow Scholars,” hits UK theaters on September 18th. For updates on this and further screenings, follow @ShadowScholarsFilm on Instagram. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For now, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Maya Cueva, and edited by Chris Egusa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Close All Tabs producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Additional editing by Chris Hambrick and Jen Chien, who is KQED’s Director of Podcasts. Our audio engineer is Brendan Willard. Original music, including our theme song and credits, by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager and Ethan Toven-Lindsay is our Editor in Chief.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>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/p>\n\u003cp>Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dustsilver K-84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron Red switches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>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 \u003cem>unprecedented times\u003c/em>. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to Donate.KQED.org/podcasts!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also! We want to hear from you! Email us CloseAllTabs@kqed.org. Follow us on instagram at “close all tabs pod.” Or TikTok at “close all tabs.” And join our Discord — we’re in the Close All Tabs channel at Discord.gg/KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thanks for listening!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thousands of writers in Kenya make their living ghostwriting academic papers for wealthy Western students. It’s an industry known as “contract cheating” or “essay mills,” and is the subject of a new documentary, “The Shadow Scholars.” Directed by Eloise King, the film follows Kenyan-born Oxford Professor Patricia Kingori as she investigates this hidden industry and seeks to understand the essay writers working in the shadows of the educational system. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan talks with Patricia and Eloise about the world of academic cheating, and how these writers are adapting to a world in which AI-generated essays are just a click away. \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=KQINC1401351139\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Guests: \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.some.ox.ac.uk/our-people/patricia-kingori/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Patricia Kingori\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, professor of global health ethics at the University of Oxford\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/challenge/?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.instagram.com%2Felloweezee%2F%3Fhl%3Den%26__coig_challenged%3D1#\">Eloise King\u003c/a>, director of “The Shadow Scholars”\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://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLZCTERhImw\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Shadow Scholars \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— Directed by Eloise King \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354713537_Kenya's_Fake_Essay_Writers_and_the_Light_they_Shine_on_Assumptions_of_Shadows_in_Knowledge_Production/citation/download\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kenya’s “Fake Essay” Writers and the Light they Shine on Assumptions of Shadows in Knowledge Production\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Patricia Kingori, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Journal of African Cultural Studies \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/ghostwriting-essays-american-college-students-lucrative-profession-kenya-a9096461.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How writing essays for American students has become a lucrative profession overseas\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Farah Stockman, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Independent \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereknewton/2025/05/14/georgia-bans-commercial-cheating-services/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Georgia Bans Commercial Cheating Services\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Derek Newton, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Forbes \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.fastcompany.com/90951343/ai-essays-advertising-on-meta-and-tiktok\">Companies that use AI to help you cheat at school are thriving on TikTok and Meta\u003c/a> — Chris Stokel-Walker, \u003ci>Fast Company\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\">Imagine you’re a college student. The end of the semester is just around the corner. It’s the middle of finals week and you have to study for an exam, finish a presentation and turn in a research paper all within the next 12 hours. Unfortunately, you’ve been procrastinating and you only have time to finish two of those three things. You could use a tool like Chat GPT, but you don’t wanna get caught using AI. So you open a new tab. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the search bar, you type, essay… writer… fast. Enter. Dozens of results pop up. Websites with generic-sounding names, but sleek, friendly designs. They promise high-quality, custom essays delivered in days, or even hours. All you have to do is run through a few drop-down menus and pick what you need, and then enter your credit card number. You’ve just stepped into an industry known as “contract cheating,” better known as essay mills. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s the subject of a new documentary, The Shadow Scholars, which just had its North American premiere at Tribeca Film Festival. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Shadow Scholars Trailer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ve all grown up being told that education empowers us. And if you study at school, then you’re going to get the rewards. I’m going to shine a light on the world’s billion-dollar secret. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It looks at who the people are on the other side of that screen. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One day I was invited to go along to a lecture at the Oxford Internet Institute and they were talking about these online laborers. And then they started talking about different parts of the world and where different people in different parts of the worlds use the internet for work. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Patricia Kingori, a Kenyan-born UK-based sociologist. In 2021, she became the youngest Black professor at the University of Oxford. She’s also one of the main subjects of the film. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So then they described Kenya and said, you know, there is this writing and translation work, which is a kind of euphemism for the fake essay industry. And I just became really interested in, well, who are these people? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This topic is personal for Patricia. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think if you have had your thesis stolen, as I have had the ideas from my thesis stolen, you immediately start to believe that an industry where people do benefit from the intellect of others exists, right? I think really allowed me to start from a presumption of the fact that they exist rather than I think where many people have not had this experience might start, which is, well, how can that be? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just after attending the lecture, Patricia caught up with filmmaker Eloise King, who ended up directing the documentary. They had known each other for years, and Patricia casually mentioned the so-called fake essay industry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My immediate reaction was how do real people write fake essays? And I was immediately obsessed. I think one of the things that we share is a kind of an inquisitiveness that goes really deep once it’s sort of implanted. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so, Eloise and Patricia, dug deeper. What they found was a booming, but mostly hidden industry of writers centered in Kenya, who are paid to produce academic work for others. Patricia wrote about it in 2021 in the Journal of African Culture Studies. The name “shadow scholars” comes from author Dave Tomar, who wrote about his own experience as an academic ghostwriter in his 2012 memoir. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The film, “The Shadow Scholars”, is less about the ethics of cheating and more about the unseen labor involved. The documentary focuses on the shadow scholars based in Kenya, which is a major hub for the fake essay industry. They’re often hired by students in the US, the UK, and Australia. Here’s Patricia in the film. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So of all of the online labor work that’s going on in Kenya, 72% of that… \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Professor Vili Lehdonvirta: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Is engaged in writing and translation work. Actually, we know it’s just writing essays for students in global North universities. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so, Patricia presenting these findings really turned on a light for me because what we had was this really difficult to prove, you know, lived experience of like global majority but like marginalized communities within education. And so I just became really excited with the idea that we could ask more questions and find out if this flow of information was really kind of fueling institutions around the world. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it’s not just undergrad essays. Shadow scholars are also hired to write entire PhD dissertations. They do all of the work, but someone else gets the credit, the qualifications, and eventually the jobs. The shadow scholars, meanwhile, aren’t afforded the same opportunities. So who are these shadow scholars? How does this exchange work? And what is the generative AI boom doing to this industry that relies on human intellectual labor? \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\">We sat down with Patricia and Eloise to learn about how this industry works and shine some light on the people at the center of it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Time for a new tab. Who are the shadow scholars? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even the word fake essay, like that’s such a loaded phrase where, you know, the premise may be fake, but the person writing it is real, the content is real, it is a real academic work. Why frame this as shadow scholars? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Think it really forces us to think about something that we often don’t think about. So in relation to Africa, the word shadow is the most common analogy that’s used to describe Africa, “in the shadow of”, “the shadows of this.” It’s always in the shadows. And I think that I became really interested in this concept of the shadow, because in Swahili there is no word for shadow is something that doesn’t exist. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So from the moment you say that something is a shadow, basically what you’re saying is that it doesn’t exist in the world. And as the writers in Kenya themselves do, you could say it’s a support agency. You could use any number of different words for it, but to use it and to say that they’re shadow scholars, I think is something that’s forcing us to say, are these people real? Are they visible from whose perspective? And use the words to really question their position in the world and how they want to be seen in the world. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here’s Eloise again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You just look at what media are saying about these people and how they’re discussing it and how it’s being discussed in the mainstream, right? And, you know, they’re being called these cancers that are brick by brick, breaking down um the sort of legitimacy of education. Like, the language is so xenophobic. Their identity was being hijacked and used in these really derogatory terms. And so that was something as well that really mindful throughout, like, how do we engage with them directly and have this story told from their perspective, but also like very much more on their terms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A review of studies found that nearly 16% of students admitted to contract cheating between 2014 and 2018. Extrapolated globally, that’s over 30 million students. The stats that we do have about contract cheating are likely skewed because they rely on students to self-report on their own cheating habits. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Altogether, Eloise said it’s a $15 billion industry. There are about 40,000 writers just in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital. That number fluctuates based on demand. Patricia said that during the end of the semester, when students are scrambling to turn in work, the number of writers might double. And is this an industry concentrated in Kenya, is it unique to Kenya, or does it manifest elsewhere in the Global South? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah it definitely does. When we talk to other academics who are looking into this, Dr Thomas Lancaster, who appears in the film, he specifically said there isn’t a country or university in the world where we don’t think that this is going on. It just so happens that Kenya is the hot spot, the global hot spot, where the greatest number of people are doing this work. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kenya is a hotspot, because it’s an English speaking country with a strong education system and a high adult literacy rate. But at the same time, there aren’t many career opportunities for young people. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think it’s really worth saying that this industry has always existed. It’s actually nothing new insofar as there has always been people who have benefited from having other people write their work and do their work for them. What’s new now is the scale of the industry and the geography of the industry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But for example, we know that increasingly we’re getting so many of these kind of hidden figures stories. We’re hearing about, you know, women, we’re hearing about African-American, we’re hearing about gay and queer people who have propped up other people who’ve gone on to claim qualifications or claim inventions on their behalf because they were marginalized in history. What’s happened is as this has become harder and harder to actually do without scrutiny in the Global North, it’s shifted to locations that have been made invisible and that we were all invested in making this place as invisible, and also, because of technology, we can have this happen on a scale it’s never happened before. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok. Let’s recap how this process works from students’ perspectives. A lot of these essay writing services advertise all over Instagram and TikTok. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Influencer: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I actually paid someone, I paid three people to write my essays. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Or they have excellent SEO. So if you Google “write a paper fast”, they’ll be at the very top of your results. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Influencer 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the fastest ways to meet your essay deadline while using a paper writing service is to choose one that offers a quick turnaround time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Once you settle on a site, you pick your subject and the grade you want and a page count. These sites might charge something like $8 per page, but charge more for more specialized topics like engineering or medicine. An undergrad literature essay, for example, will be significantly cheaper than a doctorate-level thesis. When you put your order in, you set a deadline, which could be anything from six months to six hours. For the shadow scholars in Kenya, the writers behind these papers, it’s all about response time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The thing that really fascinated me about the writers were there was a level of psychology that was involved actually. Um, you know, they would often set their alarms and their clocks to be up at certain times because they knew that’s when students would start to panic, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So they know that, you know, in the UK, if I have a deadline for tomorrow, I might maybe have a look at it, but by about 10 o’clock, I’m starting to get tired. I know I’m not going to get this thing done. That’s when I’m starting to look online for help. So they know, okay, around, you know, one o’clock, two o’ clock in the morning Kenya time, I need to be up because that’s when somebody’s gonna be jumping in online to get help. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some of the students who hire these services are very privileged. They’re even wealthy enough to hire shadow scholars for every university assignment up until graduation. And they develop relationships with the writers too. One of the Kenyan writers profiled in the documentary, Chege, had worked for the same student for years and through that was able to buy a car and pay for his sister to attend university. These dynamics are complex. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think it’s really easy to imagine a world where the writers are quite derogatory about the students or they think badly of them or they speak about them in negative terms. I think one of the things that was really surprising for me was how much empathy sometimes they had with the students right and how they really genuinely saw themselves as trying to help these students. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think their empathy was really important in terms of how we then managed the story because it’s really easy to paint a picture of good guys and bad guys and those guys are terrible and these guys are great, but actually we needed a much more nuanced story about the students themselves as people who we wouldn’t necessarily use the word victims, but certainly weren’t necessarily always winning in this system. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The students hiring these writers have to have a certain level of access to resources to be able to do it at all. But the majority of them are not that rich. They’ll do most of their semester’s work by themselves and will hire shadow scholars as a last resort. Here’s Eloise again. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So there’s a student who appears in the film called Kate, who talks about just how incredibly competitive it is at university. And once you understand that everyone’s cheating, it becomes almost like a zero sum game where if you aren’t cheating, then are you gonna be left behind if you aren’t getting someone else to do the work for you. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The film shows Kate, overwhelmed, turning to an essay writing agency. But she doesn’t have the $300 to pay for her final paper. So she turns to the internet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Everyone is so entwined by technology. Like we had Kate, who cannot afford to pay for the essay and then sells nudes online. But the fact is that in this kind of mechanism of like progress, like she’s both someone who was like a consumer and a trader in it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Can you describe any of the essay writers you profiled? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The shadows that we profiled were um young students who had then got on to graduate. So the point at which we met them and we spent four years filming with them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Most of the writers in the film are in their early to late 20s. There’s Mercy, a single mother who has a day job, but stays up late writing essays as a side gig. There’s Atticus, who specializes in technical writing for math and engineering classes. And then there’s Chege, the writer who was able to send his sister to university while being forced to put his own educational dreams on hold. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> One of the things I suppose I was really interested in focusing on was that after university life, like what is that kind of moment where everything should be great, you get the job of your dreams and actually what we found were a number of people who then ended up finding themselves in this industry for a long time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Eloise said that writers only get about 30% of the fee. The agency takes the rest. Not only are they underpaid, but they also can’t claim any credit for the work that they’re doing. They can’t use any of this experience to apply to universities themselves, especially not graduate programs, because they’re helping students cheat. This industry keeps ghost writers in the shadows. Let’s talk about the cost of anonymity in a new tab. After this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open a new tab. The cost of anonymity. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of this work is uncredited. Can you talk about how that anonymity puts the writers at a disadvantage? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What you just see is that the writers are doing all of this work, they’re gaining the knowledge, they were really proud to be acquiring so much knowledge, they really saw that as a value to them, you know. But it doesn’t mean that they’re able to add it to their CV, it doesn’t mean that they are able to get into overseas universities to do a master’s degree, even though they might have been supplying the work for years to students who are going to those institutions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like presently there’s not a single university in Australia, for example, who would accept an undergraduate degree from Kenya to enter into a master’s program. And yet, they are probably third on the list as recipients of academic writing work from authors in Kenya who have been paid to do it on behalf of the students who are there. They are the ghosts in the cyber wars of these institutions, but they’re never being allowed in through the front door. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Patricia, I’m hoping you could answer this next question, but is there any stigma against being a fake essay writer? I mean, how do academic institutions see the role of the shadow scholar? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There isn’t a world that they can be in at the moment as themselves that would give them credit for all of the things that they’ve done. And so the film is really a kind of way to try to ensure that some level of that happens for them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s another complication here, too. These academic cheating services are illegal in the UK, New Zealand, Australia, and some American states. In the UK, offering these services is actually a criminal offense. Because of that, the documentary uses deepfake technology on some of its interview subjects to conceal their identities and avoid criminalizing them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But while the film has taken steps to anonymize these writers, essay mill sites themselves aren’t exactly secure. The writers’ legal names and photo IDs, the students’ final papers. All of this can be accessed fairly easily by bad actors. This digital paper trail could come back to haunt both students and writers, especially as more governments move to ban these services. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think for the writers, we’re not sure how it’s going to affect their future careers, but actually they’ve got very short to medium term needs that there’s no other way for them to meet them, you know. So they have to do this writing really and many of them actually try at the same time to do other work. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For example, as we’ve mentioned with Australia, if they continue to see them as criminals and one of these writers, for example, wants to take up qualifications or have an opportunity in Australia, I don’t know what that will mean in terms of their identity being leaked or something like that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, I just think on like an emotional level and a kind of lived experience level, like having this digital footprint where you made a decision when you were hard up and you were like in your 20s maybe or in your late teens, being there and being like on record and traceable when you have absolutely no idea, it’s just not something that anyone would want and anyone would sign up for. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The idea that like you’re susceptible to any kind of blackmail, like should you find yourself in like public office. And I think that’s on both sides. I think like a very real possibility. And so I think anyone who’s like holding large swathes of data, you know, they might not be nefarious themselves but they might be selling it on. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Patricia and Eloise have been following these shadow scholars for over four years. In that time, generative AI tools have rapidly become more sophisticated and accessible. Academic cheating is now as easy as a single click and it costs next to nothing. So is anyone still using essay writing services? What happens to the shadow scholars, whose livelihoods depend on essay writing, if students don’t have to pay a human to cheat? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open one last tab. Shadow Scholars and AI. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Over the years that the artificial intelligence industry was exploding, Eloise had been keeping tabs on a Facebook group for shadow scholars from all over the world. When she first started working on the film in 2020, it had about 60,000 members. By the time production was over, three years later, that number had roughly tripled. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So you could see how this industry was growing. But that acted as this kind of like town crier, like forum for understanding what people were feeling. And what people felt was in the first instance, like, “Oh God, we are totally over. Like this is the end of the industry. We were already being made invisible and now people are gonna go to this service that’s cheaper and we’re gonna be totally wiped out.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And by the end, as always, again, what is totally part of this kind of liberatory ideology that seems to sit within it is that people saying, “Well, actually, no, it’s not. It’s not perfect. We have this knowledge, we’ve been doing this for a long time.” And whilst their incomes were definitely and have definitely been impacted by the advent of AI, there was really this pushback that was happening that said, “Actually when you have the knowledge at the source, and you’re able to check it, the quality will be superior.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I wonder if Patricia, you can talk much more about like testing and the way that algorithms are like totally detectable by universities. And I think we’ve all become really accustomed to like the long dash. Like when I see that in a reply from someone…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Which is tragic for me as a writer. I love the em dash. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There isn’t a uniform position by universities, right? So some universities are like, okay, if you’ve got particular needs, you can use AI. Other people are like under no circumstances do you use AI, and so the writers have been really able to exploit that lack of uniform position as part of a sales tactic to say, “Look, if use AI send your work to us, we will humanize it. We will remove all traces that you’ve had AI and we’ll send it back to you at a cost. It’ll cost you more because actually it requires more expertise to be able to spot all the falsifications, to spot the ways that AI hallucinates, to check all the references. We will do that detailed work and we will send it to you if you want to use AI. Or we can continue to do something bespoke for you.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think it has definitely shaped the way that they work because they’re getting many more students who are sending them things that they’ve used AI and said, “Can you make this look like I haven’t used AI,” and are charging them for that. Yet again, we’re in this world where we would rather think that AI has absolutely no human involvement than actually acknowledge the fact that it requires enormous amounts of human capital to make it happen in the first place. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that was the most interesting takeaway for me being a tech reporter watching the film was seeing the way that this industry of people adapted. Like Patricia said, this work is even more specialized than just writing the essay to make it sound human and to spot these kind of inconsistencies that only exist with AI. But at the same time, it seems to push them further into the shadows. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eloise King:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think it really does. I think you’ve kind of hit on something that we found in this film. There was this perpetual loop that would happen where just at the moment you think there is a shift or reckoning that allows them to be seen and to be acknowledged, like there is another systemic move that further pushes them into the background. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think AI is kind of coalesces into two things, doesn’t it? It’s like, one, people would rather think that like robots and computers are going to like take over the world and they’re like so smart. But what it does is it comes up against an innate prejudice where people for years have thought that the “Africans” need to, and I use that like term because you know that’s how people use it in this sweeping term, like that they need to be educated, they need be taught how to be civilized, and actually what too many imaginations cannot hold is the reality that there are millions of educated people in the fastest growing youth population on the planet who are having access to technology that allows them to share their education. That was an inheritance of colonial settlements and imposed education systems. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so all of these things are totally intertwined. The prejudice that people think that they couldn’t be that smart to begin with and the prejudice that then denies when proof is beyond needing any more evidence that it still finds a way to deny them of this. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many shadow scholars have pivoted to editing and humanizing AI-generated writing. But AI itself keeps advancing. There are now countless AI tools that claim to be able to humanize other AI-generated text in order to bypass AI detection tools. Right now, those tools still don’t compare to actual human-written work. But at some point in the future, will shadow scholars become redundant? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Patricia Kingori:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think they will continue to adapt in ways that we haven’t even thought about yet, because we haven t been able to predict how they’ve lasted this long in the face of all of these different challenges. So, as long as there is demand, there will be these writers and I think there will continue be demand because institutions need to find ways to judge who is good or who isn’t good. And so I think that’s an important thing for us to think about. Is it possible that we can have a world where these qualifications start to mean something different, right, and who is good or not?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Shadow scholars have been fighting for recognition long before AI was a problem. Even though the documentary conceals individual writers’ identities, Eloise hopes that it at least makes more people aware of the industry. It’s not mysterious criminals powering essay mills, but real writers who are forced into the shadows because they don’t have the same opportunities as students in the global North.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> This documentary is also a kind of reckoning for academia. What does it mean for these institutions, if they’re awarding degrees and certifications to people who didn’t actually do the work to get them? And the people who did do the work are prevented from entering those very institutions. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Next week, we’ll look at how this is playing out with younger students as we dive into how teachers are handling AI in their classrooms. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The documentary, “The Shadow Scholars,” hits UK theaters on September 18th. For updates on this and further screenings, follow @ShadowScholarsFilm on Instagram. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For now, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Maya Cueva, and edited by Chris Egusa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Close All Tabs producer is Maya Cueva. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Additional editing by Chris Hambrick and Jen Chien, who is KQED’s Director of Podcasts. Our audio engineer is Brendan Willard. Original music, including our theme song and credits, by Chris Egusa. Additional music by APM.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager and Ethan Toven-Lindsay is our Editor in Chief.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Support for this program comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>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/p>\n\u003cp>Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dustsilver K-84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron Red switches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>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 \u003cem>unprecedented times\u003c/em>. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to Donate.KQED.org/podcasts!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also! We want to hear from you! Email us CloseAllTabs@kqed.org. Follow us on instagram at “close all tabs pod.” Or TikTok at “close all tabs.” And join our Discord — we’re in the Close All Tabs channel at Discord.gg/KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thanks for listening!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"soldout": {
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