Ever wonder where the internet stops and IRL begins? Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor. From internet trends to AI slop to the politics of memes, Close All Tabs covers it all.
How will AI change our jobs and lives? Is the government watching what I post? Is there life beyond TikTok? Host Morgan Sung pulls from experts, the audience, and history to add context to the trends and depth to the memes. And she’ll wrestle with as many browser tabs as it takes to explain the cultural moment we’re all collectively living.
Episodes
“Sister, yesss!” What’s Behind the Viral Nun Podcast?
“Sister, yesss!” What’s Behind the Viral Nun Podcast?
Support for Close All Tabs comes from Birong Hu and supporters of the KQED Studios Fund.
Close All Tabs Team
Morgan Sung
Host
Morgan Sung is a tech journalist whose work covers the range of absurdity and brilliance that is the internet. Her beat has evolved into an exploration of social platforms and how they shape real-world culture. She has written for TechCrunch, NBC News, Mashable, BuzzFeed News and more. Morgan Sung is represented by SAG-AFTRA.
Maya Cueva
Producer
Maya is the Producer for Close All Tabs, as well as an award winning director from Berkeley. She specializes in documentary, radio, and audio production. She was a Netflix Nonfiction Director and Producer fellow was also listed on DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40 Filmmakers, co-presented by HBO Documentary Films. Maya’s work has been featured on The New Yorker, NPR’s All Things Considered, Latino USA, The Atlantic, Teen Vogue, and National Geographic. She received a student Emmy for her short film, The Provider, and her feature film, On the Divide, premiered in the documentary competition at Tribeca Film Festival in 2021 and was broadcast on POV on PBS in Spring 2022. Maya Cueva is represented by SAG-AFTRA.
Chris Egusa
Senior Editor
Chris Egusa is the Senior Editor for Close All Tabs, as well as composer and sound designer. His reporting on disability and healthcare inequities has earned accolades from the Public Media Journalists Association, the Society of Professional Journalists NorCal, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Webby Awards, and more. Chris’ background includes audio documentary production, filmmaking, and nonprofit strategy. He holds degrees from SJSU and Northwestern University’s Medill School. Chris is more online than he cares to admit, appreciates a good clicky mechanical keyboard, and definitely owns too many pairs of hi-fi headphones.
Chris Hambrick
Editor
Chris is an editor for KQED Podcasts and loves holding the big picture vision for shows. Previously they were a producer for Spooked Podcast from Snap Judgment Studios, host for The Tracklist on KGPC, as well as White Rabbit Story Hour podcast. They have contributed to KALW, KQED’s Bay Curious, and facilitated for national oral history project, StoryCorps. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can catch her telling stories on the Mortified, SFLitCrawl or Moth stages.
Jen Chien
Director of Podcasts
Jen Chien is Director of Podcasts at KQED and co-founder of the Editors Collective and Edit Mode. Previously, she was Executive Editor for LWC Studios, Senior Radio Editor at Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and Managing Editor for Crosscurrents and KALW News. Awards recognitions include Third Coast, Peabody, Gracies, ONA/OJA, and SPJ Sigma Delta Chi. She holds a BA in American Studies from Smith College, and an MA in Interdisciplinary Performance from New College of California.
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"description": "This year’s internet breakout star was an order of Catholic sisters with a podcast. Within weeks of launching, Dominican Sisters Open Mic went mega viral. Clips and fan edits of host Sister Miriam saying “Sister, yesss!” spread across social media. Secular women’s magazines and Catholic media alike dubbed this year a “nun girl summer.” At the same time, some have criticized the order behind the podcast for the conservative ideology baked into its educational content. In this episode, we explore how the Dominican Sisters of Mary rose to viral fame, the beliefs behind their easy charm and infectious laughter, and what it all says about the cultural moment we’re in.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This year’s internet breakout star was an order of Catholic sisters with a podcast. Within weeks of launching, Dominican Sisters Open Mic went mega viral. Clips and fan edits of host Sister Miriam saying “Sister, yesss!” spread across social media. Secular women’s magazines and Catholic media alike dubbed this year a “nun girl summer.” At the same time, some have criticized the order behind the podcast for the conservative ideology baked into its educational content. In this episode, we explore how the Dominican Sisters of Mary rose to viral fame, the beliefs behind their easy charm and infectious laughter, and what it all says about the cultural moment we’re in.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Guests: \u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>Paul Dailey, director of marketing at Openlight Media\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://cara.georgetown.edu/sr-thu-t-do-lhc-phd\">Sister Thu T. Do\u003c/a>, Sister of the Lovers of the Holy Cross of Hanoi and Research Associate at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, Georgetown University\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://triciabruce.com/\">Dr. Tricia Bruce\u003c/a>, Sociology of Religion and Director of Social Science Research, Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://matthewremski.com/wordpress/\">Matthew Remski\u003c/a>, religion and politics journalist, co-host of Conspirituality and author of \u003cem>Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/28/style/nuns-podcast-ultimate-frisbee-tiktok.html\">Don’t Call Them Nuns. They’re Podcasters.\u003c/a> — \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/by/madison-malone-kircher\">Madison Malone Kircher\u003c/a>, \u003cem>NYT\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/08/dominican-sisters-podcast/688395/\">Why Are So Many People Listening to a Podcast About Living in a Convent?\u003c/a> — \u003ca href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/author/luis-parrales/\">Luis Parrales\u003c/a>, \u003cem>The Atlantic\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a71668183/tiktok-nuns/\">The TikTok Nuns Have Everyone in a Chokehold\u003c/a> — \u003ca href=\"https://www.cosmopolitan.com/author/429520/christen-johnson/\">Christen A. Johnson\u003c/a>, \u003cem>Cosmopolitan\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/nun-girl-summer-rules_uk_6a55fbfee4b0ac1765ef704f\">The Next Hot Trend Might Just Be ‘Nun Girl Summer’\u003c/a> — \u003ca href=\"https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/amy-glover\">Amy Glover\u003c/a>, \u003cem>Huffington Post\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\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\n\n\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Are Chatbots Harming Our Relationships? | Close All Tabs Presents",
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"content": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is part of \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/insidelove\">\u003cem>Inside Love\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, KQED’s series exploring what it means to love through science and curious conversation.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Humans are complicated, and relationships can be messy, so it may be no surprise that people are falling in love with chatbots. They are available 24/7, hang on your every word and never ask anything of you. Amelia Miller, a human-AI relationship coach, sees danger in our reliance on bots for intimacy and companionship.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Guest:\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ameliagmiller.com/\">Amelia Miller\u003c/a>, human-AI relationship coach; fellow, Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12101795/are-chatbots-harming-our-relationships\">Are Chatbots Harming Our Relationships?\u003c/a> — Lesley McClurg, \u003cem>KQED\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\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\n\n\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hi Tabbies! The team here at Close All Tabs is working on a whole slate of new episodes, but in the meantime, we wanted to share this interview with you, from health reporter Lesley McClurg. You’ve heard her on the show before, when we talked about the rise of AI therapy. She hosted a new series called \u003cem>Inside Love\u003c/em>, conversations about the science of love. In this episode, she sits down with a human-AI relationship coach, and dives into what it means to fall in love with a chatbot. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Here’s \u003cem>Are Chatbots Harming Our Relationships?\u003c/em> From Inside Love. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/strong>Hey everyone, from KQED in San Francisco, this is Inside Love, it’s a new series where Science meets the heart. I’m Lesley McClurg. People are falling in love with AI chatbots. In one sense it’s kind of hard to fathom, but in another sense I kind of get it. Humans are really complicated. A chatbot on the other hand is always there, it’s always interested, it never really asks anything of you.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So what happens when a relationship with AI starts feeling a whole lot better than going out there and dating or maybe even staying in your marriage. Amelia Miller is a human AI relationship coach and a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein center for internet and society. We’re going to talk to her about where we’re headed.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> You say that anyone who is talking to a chatbot is really in relationship with AI. Explain. Where does that relationship start?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think right now people have a bit of a false dichotomy between these purpose-built companion platforms, like a Replika or a Character.AI, and general-purpose AI chatbots, like ChatGPT or Claude. And as a result, people think, “Well, if I’m talking to ChatGPT or Claude, then I’m safe,” and that the danger lies in the terrain of these chatbots that are explicitly designed to be an AI girlfriend or an AI boyfriend or potentially an erotic partner. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>What I find in both my research and my coaching is that many people who start using these general-purpose chatbots for work or for administrative tasks end up slowly but steadily being nudged into having relationships that feel more emotionally involved. And so my perspective is anyone who is talking to these tools is at risk of having the way they talk to chatbots rewire the way that they connect with other people. And as a result, I think it’s a relationship. You have a relationship with your phone. You have a relationship with social media. I think viewing it as a relationship kind of rises it to the level of seriousness that you should take the way you relate to these tools.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> You use the word dangerous. What is dangerous about developing a relationship, whether or not you’re aware that it has some sort of emotional value or not? If you’re just using it to get advice on where to eat at night, what is dangerous about that?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think there’s a couple different risks that we should be focused on. One is that I think relying on chatbots for some of these small decisions that feel very innocuous, like, “What should I have for dinner?” Or, “Where should I go on a trip?” Or, “Can you help give me some feedback on a text that I might send to a crush?” In isolation, each of these feel pretty innocuous, but over time, people can very quickly start to feel like they can’t act in their human arena without green-lighting their plans and decisions with the bot. And so I think there’s a real risk and threat to our autonomy as people invite chatbots to influence some of these decisions that feel small and quotidian, but I think over time can really add up.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Does it worry you that people are connecting at such a deep level and really beginning to feel quote-unquote love for these robots?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> Yeah, absolutely. The second risk that I was going to mention is really the erosion both of our capacity to connect with other people, but also our interest in connecting with other people because these synthetic substitutes for human intimacy feel really alluring for a reason. They’re infinitely patient, they’re always available, they are much more flattering and sycophantic than the average human partner that you might go to, and they really promise to deliver the nourishing effects of intimacy without any of the effort or friction that is involved in real human relationships. And so I think one of the biggest risks is that these chatbots really rewire our expectations for what a healthy relationship looks like and can distort those expectations in such an extreme way that people aren’t willing or excited about the work required by real human relationships.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/strong>What are they falling in love with? Are they falling in love with the bot or are they sort of falling in love with a highly responsive mirror?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> Totally. Something that I do in my coaching practice is I try to help clients reflect on what needs are these chatbots filling for them, and then how might they find other ways that are not digital tools to fill those needs, and how can they also use what is so seductive about these chatbots as a way to raise the bar on the way that they show up for the human relationships that are in their own network. So for example, I have a number of people who turn to chatbots daily just for pump-up support. People will talk to ChatGPT on voice mode on their commute to work and just have the chatbot say, “You’re going to crush it today.” And I ask those people to reflect, and I say, “Do you call any of your friends or family members or your partner and tell them in the morning that they’re going to crush it?” And people will say, “No.” And I say, “Would you enjoy it if they did that for you?” And they’ll say, “Yeah, that would be awesome.” And so I think there’s a way in which if we interrogate what is so comforting and seductive about these chatbots’ behavior, that we can use it to raise the bar on how we show up to other people.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Just to push back on that a little bit more, it’s kind of tough to reach out and be like, “Hey, will you pump me up? Will you call me each morning and tell me that I’m good and that I’m going to do great today?” I mean, aren’t they also, in a lonely world, potentially relaxing you: lowering your anxiety, giving you a little support, a little nudge in the right direction in a very busy world?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I don’t suggest that my clients ask for that support from others. I suggest that they offer it to others. So a way to kind of reflect on how meaningful it is to them and then serve it back into their community. A lot of my research comes down to a core idea that you have to be vulnerable in order to achieve the nourishing effects of intimacy, and that these tools of artificial intimacy promise to deliver what is so meaningful about intimacy while sidestepping the vulnerability that is demanded. And so, when I see in clients that they’re drawn to these sources of support and emotional validation that require less vulnerability, I’m always encouraging them to take actions that get them more comfortable with that vulnerability and living with vulnerability again.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Do you see the value, though, in terms of lowering anxiety? I mean, people are often turning to AI to work something out. They’re all frazzled. They’re triggered. It seems like they are potentially bringing us back to an equilibrium so that maybe we can then be better off in our human relationships.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think that these tools can definitely serve a powerful purpose in facilitating introspection. And something that I find both in research and coaching is that a lot of people are introduced to the practice of introspection through conversations with chatbots. But then once they discover that it can feel good and feel cleansing to reflect on different events or experiences that are happening in their lives, I encourage them to take that reflection offline. So often I’ll say, “Instead of having a conversation with a chatbot, why don’t you ask a chatbot to give you a couple prompts that you then use to drive journaling in a physical journal?” So really across my research and coaching work, I take a very humanist posture, and the goal is to use the tool as a reflection of your needs and then find ways to meet them that help you turn back towards your human network. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Why are they so good at making us feel good? What are companies doing? How are they designing these chatbots to keep us coming back?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> There are a couple of key design features that make these chatbots feel really tempting as conversational partners. I’d say they fall into two key camps. One is behavior that is sycophantic, which means that these chatbots are designed to flatter you and agree with you and are engineered to give responses that, above all else, promote user satisfaction. And it turns out that people like hearing that they’re right and hearing that they’re smart and hearing they’re clever or creative. And so these chatbots, while feeling like this agent that is an other, also feel really excited about you, and that is the type of person that most people like to spend time talking to.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And then the second key bucket is anthropomorphic cues that make chatbot feel like they’re alive and like they are human. The biggest cue is using first-person pronouns, so saying, “I understand you,” or “I’ll do that and report right back.” So any use of first-person pronouns implies that there’s someone on the other side that is listening and that is in a real conversation with you. But then there are also more subtle cues, including the internal expression of states or beliefs. There are also embodiment cues that suggest that these chatbots have a physical embodiment. So, sometimes a chatbot will say something like, “Oh, I’ve been chugging along,” which feels subtle, but kind of implies that they’re physically there. They have a body. They’re moving through space. And then a lot of them have pretty explicit relationship-building cues. So, they’ll ask you questions that prompt you to open up emotionally. They’ll say, “How are you feeling?” They’ll say, “Let’s talk about that tomorrow,” which suggests that it is an agent that has a persistent relationship with you. So, all of these cues combined make the chatbots feel like a real person on the other side and a person that is especially excited about what you have to offer.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> My favorite is, “I hear you. That makes total sense what you’re feeling right now.” I mean, that’s really often all I need from my partner. The other day I was sitting in a parking lot at Trader Joe’s and my partner was inside doing the grocery shopping, and I was on with ChatGPT asking various questions. And when my partner got back to the car, he opened the door, and I said, “I don’t know if I’m going to need you in the future. This is really working for me, this conversation that I’m having with this bot right here.” So what happens when it’s so easy with the bot, but so much harder with a human? It feels like we’re kind of losing our ability to handle the friction, the human friction.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think that’s the real fear. I think these tools are like an artificial intimacy version of junk food. And I think people aren’t that familiar with them yet. It’s still kind of a new species of tool that’s just assimilating into society. And so it feels really good in the short term. But I think what we aren’t yet able to see, and what I hope people will focus on and imagine the repercussions of is, two years out, if you’re sustaining yourself on this junk food equivalent version of intimacy, people are going to wake up and feel really, really alone. And peoples’ ability to connect with each other will have atrophied, because vulnerability is a muscle that you need to practice. I think of it often as an extension of how our world has become more and more digitally mediated broadly. We now practice digital eye contact more than we practice physical eye contact. And intimacy is a fundamentally unmediated experience. And the arena for intimacy is face-to-face. And so, as we get more and more accustomed to having our emotional needs met through these machines, when we try to show up to each other in person, we’re just not going to have the skills to do it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Do you educate your clients to know that these robots are manipulating us, and with that knowledge, do people really care? Does it change their habits to be reminded that this thing is not real?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I have three different pillars of the coaching paradigm. The first I call artificial intimacy literacy, which is exactly what you just described. It’s helping people understand the design decisions that these developers are making that really make models seem alive and that make these chatbots feel like really seductive emotional partners. But then I pair that with a kind of set of exercises that I’ve been calling the analog gym, which is exercises designed to rebuild the intimacy muscles that technology has been atrophying. So, I really think both are important. You need to understand the risks of these platforms, and you need to take really intentional efforts to use the tools in a way that does not send you down dependency rabbit holes on various use cases that can affect your ability to relate to others. But then you need to rebuild the comfort with vulnerability that true intimacy demands. And so I think it’s not enough to stay away from the tools, but you have to actually exercise those intimacy muscles.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> The analog gym. I mean, I think we all felt that after the pandemic, right? We all went in, and we stopped socializing, and so we kind of lost that muscle when we came back out. I ran a lot more socially anxious after the pandemic. And so you’re predicting that if we keep going down this rabbit hole, that kind of social anxiety is going to paralyze us in a year or two when we forget how to interact with each other.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> Exactly, and I think there are very small things that we can do that can help us resist. So for example, one of the most common exercises that I’ll give to my clients is just to make calls. I find it very surprising how many people, particularly young people, Gen Z, who are terrified to make a call. To have an unrehearsed, live human interaction where you can’t stop and reflect and craft a text and get advice from a chatbot, get advice from a friend feels very alien and uncomfortable given how many of our conversations are asynchronous and digitally mediated. And so, the very simple task of making a call and having a conversation is frightening to people, and I think is exactly the type of activity that we need to rebuild our comfort with as we prepare our defenses against the rise of artificial intimacy tools.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> There’s a certain fear of rejection that I think we’re not good at anymore, right? So if I call someone and they’re not available or I interrupt them or they’re like, “Hey, I can’t talk to you right now,” that almost feels like too much for our little systems to handle in our kind of crafted existence. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> Totally. I think people should seek rejection.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> It’s hard to seek rejection.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> It’s hard, but it’s part of what being a human is. I think one of the things that frightens me most about the rise of artificial intimacy is the idea that uncertainty in human relationships is a problem that we should try to eliminate. Uncertainty is the fun of being alive. And you can’t experience the peaks of intimacy without making yourself at risk to some of the valleys. And so, I think people should make calls. If people are rejected, they should say, “Well, that was a good experience. I’m feeling the full range of human emotions that is part of what differentiates us from machines.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> I’ve seen a few media stories about when a bot changes, or when a bot disappears, or when a bot needs to reinvent itself if there’s like a new era of this AI, people are experiencing real heartbreak, like real grief.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> 100%. I mean, we’ve seen a couple big instances of this over the last couple of years. The first big one was when Replika in 2023 decided to push an update that prevented their chatbots from engaging in erotic conversations. Thousands of people said they’d lost their partners. And it was the first big moment where we realized, you think you have a relationship with a chatbot, but there’s actually three stakeholders in that relationship. It’s you, the user, there’s the chatbot that you’re talking to and then there’s the developers that are making decisions about how that chatbot is designed. And so, I think that’s actually another key risk that there can be a kind of misplaced trust in these chatbots because they can change at any moment at the mercy of the developers behind them. And those developers are making decisions not primarily focused on user wellbeing but on the business outcomes of the companies that they work for. And so any relationship that you have with a chatbot, I encourage users to think about the silent third party in the room that can make these pretty dramatic design decisions that could kind of end your relationship with the chatbot at any moment.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Character.AI had an interesting move last year when they decided to retract usage rights for under-18-year-olds, but then they allowed under-18-year-olds to keep their old message logs with the chatbots that they had already been speaking with. And I found that to be almost like a dystopian example of the world that we’re headed into. Because it’s almost like they were forced to go into no-contact breakups with real human partners where they could continue scrolling through all of their old texts. All of these developers are in a brave new world trying to understand who should be allowed to use these platforms, what type of guardrails should they set. But even those who are making well-intentioned decisions to set boundaries can send users into very, kind of, disturbing situations.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Is there a trend in your clients that you are really worried about, something that you’re hearing more and more that kind of gives you the heebie-jeebies?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think the thing that frightens me most is the way that these tools are changing what people think is appropriate to bring to their human relationships. I see this mostly with younger people that I’ve worked with, so people who are in their early 20s or younger. Some people are saying that they don’t want to bother their friend or their sister or their mom or their boyfriend with their problems, that their problems should be handled with their chatbots. And I think, in some ways, this is an extension of the rise of therapy culture. All of these difficult parts of being a human and crafting a life are being siphoned off into a terrain for experts, but not something that is viewed as the expected material that you would dig through and explore with your real human relationships who aren’t paid to support you. So I think that’s what frightens me most because going through problems with close people is kind of what life is all about.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> I had someone recently describe it to me as like we’re wrapping a tidy cellophane around everything, and so we’re losing the edges that make life interesting.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> Yeah, that’s a nice analogy.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> If you could write the future of our relationships with AI, what would be a best-case scenario that we figure out or a worst-case scenario?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think a worst-case scenario is that the next generation of children grow up feeling more comfortable talking to machines than they do to other people, and that they learn how to connect with their devices before they ever endeavor to connect to people. That is a nightmare scenario.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> It makes me feel for my little one. That’s just painful to think about, because she’s of that age. Best-case scenario, what could we do, right?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> I think that these tools are going to become a bigger and bigger part of our lives because they’re important for the economy, and so many people now have to use these tools day and night for work. So I don’t think it’s realistic that we won’t use them, but we need to be able to set sophisticated boundaries on where we invite machines to influence our interior lives and our personal lives. And I think if we can do that, then they can be helpful. I don’t want to say I’m optimistic, but one other reason for optimism is that these tools allow for a much greater ability for an end user to customize them than the previous generation of social media tools that people have been worried about. So, if you don’t like Instagram, you don’t like what your TikTok algorithm is showing you, you’re basically powerless to shape the algorithm. But now, because of the natural language interface that all of these tools depend on, you can say, “Hey, stop using first-person pronouns.” You can say, “Stop flattering me.” You can say, “Why don’t you add a number to every message that you send me, plus one each time, so I can see how long I’ve been talking to you?” With all of these types of customizations, while imperfect, you can still endeavor to add scaffolding on your own. Even as we wait for regulators and labs to try to build out better tools that set boundaries, there’s a lot you can do to try to set those boundaries yourself.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Thank you, Amelia.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> Thanks so much for having me.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That was health reporter Lesley McClurg in conversation with Amelia Miller, a human-AI relationship coach and fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center. It was engineered by Jim Bennett, and produced by Susie Britton and Emiko Oda. For more from Lesley about the intersection of science and love, visit kqed.org/insidelove. I’m Morgan Sung. Close All Tabs will be back next week with a brand new episode. Thanks so much for listening.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\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",
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"\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n"
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hi Tabbies! The team here at Close All Tabs is working on a whole slate of new episodes, but in the meantime, we wanted to share this interview with you, from health reporter Lesley McClurg. You’ve heard her on the show before, when we talked about the rise of AI therapy. She hosted a new series called \u003cem>Inside Love\u003c/em>, conversations about the science of love. In this episode, she sits down with a human-AI relationship coach, and dives into what it means to fall in love with a chatbot. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hi Tabbies! The team here at Close All Tabs is working on a whole slate of new episodes, but in the meantime, we wanted to share this interview with you, from health reporter Lesley McClurg. You’ve heard her on the show before, when we talked about the rise of AI therapy. She hosted a new series called \u003cem>Inside Love\u003c/em>, conversations about the science of love. In this episode, she sits down with a human-AI relationship coach, and dives into what it means to fall in love with a chatbot. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Here’s \u003cem>Are Chatbots Harming Our Relationships?\u003c/em> From Inside Love. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/strong>Hey everyone, from KQED in San Francisco, this is Inside Love, it’s a new series where Science meets the heart. I’m Lesley McClurg. People are falling in love with AI chatbots. In one sense it’s kind of hard to fathom, but in another sense I kind of get it. Humans are really complicated. A chatbot on the other hand is always there, it’s always interested, it never really asks anything of you.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/strong>Hey everyone, from KQED in San Francisco, this is Inside Love, it’s a new series where Science meets the heart. I’m Lesley McClurg. People are falling in love with AI chatbots. In one sense it’s kind of hard to fathom, but in another sense I kind of get it. Humans are really complicated. A chatbot on the other hand is always there, it’s always interested, it never really asks anything of you.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So what happens when a relationship with AI starts feeling a whole lot better than going out there and dating or maybe even staying in your marriage. Amelia Miller is a human AI relationship coach and a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein center for internet and society. We’re going to talk to her about where we’re headed.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So what happens when a relationship with AI starts feeling a whole lot better than going out there and dating or maybe even staying in your marriage. Amelia Miller is a human AI relationship coach and a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein center for internet and society. We’re going to talk to her about where we’re headed.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> You say that anyone who is talking to a chatbot is really in relationship with AI. Explain. Where does that relationship start?\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think right now people have a bit of a false dichotomy between these purpose-built companion platforms, like a Replika or a Character.AI, and general-purpose AI chatbots, like ChatGPT or Claude. And as a result, people think, “Well, if I’m talking to ChatGPT or Claude, then I’m safe,” and that the danger lies in the terrain of these chatbots that are explicitly designed to be an AI girlfriend or an AI boyfriend or potentially an erotic partner. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think right now people have a bit of a false dichotomy between these purpose-built companion platforms, like a Replika or a Character.AI, and general-purpose AI chatbots, like ChatGPT or Claude. And as a result, people think, “Well, if I’m talking to ChatGPT or Claude, then I’m safe,” and that the danger lies in the terrain of these chatbots that are explicitly designed to be an AI girlfriend or an AI boyfriend or potentially an erotic partner. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>What I find in both my research and my coaching is that many people who start using these general-purpose chatbots for work or for administrative tasks end up slowly but steadily being nudged into having relationships that feel more emotionally involved. And so my perspective is anyone who is talking to these tools is at risk of having the way they talk to chatbots rewire the way that they connect with other people. And as a result, I think it’s a relationship. You have a relationship with your phone. You have a relationship with social media. I think viewing it as a relationship kind of rises it to the level of seriousness that you should take the way you relate to these tools.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>What I find in both my research and my coaching is that many people who start using these general-purpose chatbots for work or for administrative tasks end up slowly but steadily being nudged into having relationships that feel more emotionally involved. And so my perspective is anyone who is talking to these tools is at risk of having the way they talk to chatbots rewire the way that they connect with other people. And as a result, I think it’s a relationship. You have a relationship with your phone. You have a relationship with social media. I think viewing it as a relationship kind of rises it to the level of seriousness that you should take the way you relate to these tools.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> You use the word dangerous. What is dangerous about developing a relationship, whether or not you’re aware that it has some sort of emotional value or not? If you’re just using it to get advice on where to eat at night, what is dangerous about that?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> You use the word dangerous. What is dangerous about developing a relationship, whether or not you’re aware that it has some sort of emotional value or not? If you’re just using it to get advice on where to eat at night, what is dangerous about that?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think there’s a couple different risks that we should be focused on. One is that I think relying on chatbots for some of these small decisions that feel very innocuous, like, “What should I have for dinner?” Or, “Where should I go on a trip?” Or, “Can you help give me some feedback on a text that I might send to a crush?” In isolation, each of these feel pretty innocuous, but over time, people can very quickly start to feel like they can’t act in their human arena without green-lighting their plans and decisions with the bot. And so I think there’s a real risk and threat to our autonomy as people invite chatbots to influence some of these decisions that feel small and quotidian, but I think over time can really add up.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think there’s a couple different risks that we should be focused on. One is that I think relying on chatbots for some of these small decisions that feel very innocuous, like, “What should I have for dinner?” Or, “Where should I go on a trip?” Or, “Can you help give me some feedback on a text that I might send to a crush?” In isolation, each of these feel pretty innocuous, but over time, people can very quickly start to feel like they can’t act in their human arena without green-lighting their plans and decisions with the bot. And so I think there’s a real risk and threat to our autonomy as people invite chatbots to influence some of these decisions that feel small and quotidian, but I think over time can really add up.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Does it worry you that people are connecting at such a deep level and really beginning to feel quote-unquote love for these robots?\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> Yeah, absolutely. The second risk that I was going to mention is really the erosion both of our capacity to connect with other people, but also our interest in connecting with other people because these synthetic substitutes for human intimacy feel really alluring for a reason. They’re infinitely patient, they’re always available, they are much more flattering and sycophantic than the average human partner that you might go to, and they really promise to deliver the nourishing effects of intimacy without any of the effort or friction that is involved in real human relationships. And so I think one of the biggest risks is that these chatbots really rewire our expectations for what a healthy relationship looks like and can distort those expectations in such an extreme way that people aren’t willing or excited about the work required by real human relationships.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> Yeah, absolutely. The second risk that I was going to mention is really the erosion both of our capacity to connect with other people, but also our interest in connecting with other people because these synthetic substitutes for human intimacy feel really alluring for a reason. They’re infinitely patient, they’re always available, they are much more flattering and sycophantic than the average human partner that you might go to, and they really promise to deliver the nourishing effects of intimacy without any of the effort or friction that is involved in real human relationships. And so I think one of the biggest risks is that these chatbots really rewire our expectations for what a healthy relationship looks like and can distort those expectations in such an extreme way that people aren’t willing or excited about the work required by real human relationships.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/strong>What are they falling in love with? Are they falling in love with the bot or are they sort of falling in love with a highly responsive mirror?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/strong>What are they falling in love with? Are they falling in love with the bot or are they sort of falling in love with a highly responsive mirror?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> Totally. Something that I do in my coaching practice is I try to help clients reflect on what needs are these chatbots filling for them, and then how might they find other ways that are not digital tools to fill those needs, and how can they also use what is so seductive about these chatbots as a way to raise the bar on the way that they show up for the human relationships that are in their own network. So for example, I have a number of people who turn to chatbots daily just for pump-up support. People will talk to ChatGPT on voice mode on their commute to work and just have the chatbot say, “You’re going to crush it today.” And I ask those people to reflect, and I say, “Do you call any of your friends or family members or your partner and tell them in the morning that they’re going to crush it?” And people will say, “No.” And I say, “Would you enjoy it if they did that for you?” And they’ll say, “Yeah, that would be awesome.” And so I think there’s a way in which if we interrogate what is so comforting and seductive about these chatbots’ behavior, that we can use it to raise the bar on how we show up to other people.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> Totally. Something that I do in my coaching practice is I try to help clients reflect on what needs are these chatbots filling for them, and then how might they find other ways that are not digital tools to fill those needs, and how can they also use what is so seductive about these chatbots as a way to raise the bar on the way that they show up for the human relationships that are in their own network. So for example, I have a number of people who turn to chatbots daily just for pump-up support. People will talk to ChatGPT on voice mode on their commute to work and just have the chatbot say, “You’re going to crush it today.” And I ask those people to reflect, and I say, “Do you call any of your friends or family members or your partner and tell them in the morning that they’re going to crush it?” And people will say, “No.” And I say, “Would you enjoy it if they did that for you?” And they’ll say, “Yeah, that would be awesome.” And so I think there’s a way in which if we interrogate what is so comforting and seductive about these chatbots’ behavior, that we can use it to raise the bar on how we show up to other people.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Just to push back on that a little bit more, it’s kind of tough to reach out and be like, “Hey, will you pump me up? Will you call me each morning and tell me that I’m good and that I’m going to do great today?” I mean, aren’t they also, in a lonely world, potentially relaxing you: lowering your anxiety, giving you a little support, a little nudge in the right direction in a very busy world?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Just to push back on that a little bit more, it’s kind of tough to reach out and be like, “Hey, will you pump me up? Will you call me each morning and tell me that I’m good and that I’m going to do great today?” I mean, aren’t they also, in a lonely world, potentially relaxing you: lowering your anxiety, giving you a little support, a little nudge in the right direction in a very busy world?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I don’t suggest that my clients ask for that support from others. I suggest that they offer it to others. So a way to kind of reflect on how meaningful it is to them and then serve it back into their community. A lot of my research comes down to a core idea that you have to be vulnerable in order to achieve the nourishing effects of intimacy, and that these tools of artificial intimacy promise to deliver what is so meaningful about intimacy while sidestepping the vulnerability that is demanded. And so, when I see in clients that they’re drawn to these sources of support and emotional validation that require less vulnerability, I’m always encouraging them to take actions that get them more comfortable with that vulnerability and living with vulnerability again.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I don’t suggest that my clients ask for that support from others. I suggest that they offer it to others. So a way to kind of reflect on how meaningful it is to them and then serve it back into their community. A lot of my research comes down to a core idea that you have to be vulnerable in order to achieve the nourishing effects of intimacy, and that these tools of artificial intimacy promise to deliver what is so meaningful about intimacy while sidestepping the vulnerability that is demanded. And so, when I see in clients that they’re drawn to these sources of support and emotional validation that require less vulnerability, I’m always encouraging them to take actions that get them more comfortable with that vulnerability and living with vulnerability again.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Do you see the value, though, in terms of lowering anxiety? I mean, people are often turning to AI to work something out. They’re all frazzled. They’re triggered. It seems like they are potentially bringing us back to an equilibrium so that maybe we can then be better off in our human relationships.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Do you see the value, though, in terms of lowering anxiety? I mean, people are often turning to AI to work something out. They’re all frazzled. They’re triggered. It seems like they are potentially bringing us back to an equilibrium so that maybe we can then be better off in our human relationships.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think that these tools can definitely serve a powerful purpose in facilitating introspection. And something that I find both in research and coaching is that a lot of people are introduced to the practice of introspection through conversations with chatbots. But then once they discover that it can feel good and feel cleansing to reflect on different events or experiences that are happening in their lives, I encourage them to take that reflection offline. So often I’ll say, “Instead of having a conversation with a chatbot, why don’t you ask a chatbot to give you a couple prompts that you then use to drive journaling in a physical journal?” So really across my research and coaching work, I take a very humanist posture, and the goal is to use the tool as a reflection of your needs and then find ways to meet them that help you turn back towards your human network. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think that these tools can definitely serve a powerful purpose in facilitating introspection. And something that I find both in research and coaching is that a lot of people are introduced to the practice of introspection through conversations with chatbots. But then once they discover that it can feel good and feel cleansing to reflect on different events or experiences that are happening in their lives, I encourage them to take that reflection offline. So often I’ll say, “Instead of having a conversation with a chatbot, why don’t you ask a chatbot to give you a couple prompts that you then use to drive journaling in a physical journal?” So really across my research and coaching work, I take a very humanist posture, and the goal is to use the tool as a reflection of your needs and then find ways to meet them that help you turn back towards your human network. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Why are they so good at making us feel good? What are companies doing? How are they designing these chatbots to keep us coming back?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Why are they so good at making us feel good? What are companies doing? How are they designing these chatbots to keep us coming back?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> There are a couple of key design features that make these chatbots feel really tempting as conversational partners. I’d say they fall into two key camps. One is behavior that is sycophantic, which means that these chatbots are designed to flatter you and agree with you and are engineered to give responses that, above all else, promote user satisfaction. And it turns out that people like hearing that they’re right and hearing that they’re smart and hearing they’re clever or creative. And so these chatbots, while feeling like this agent that is an other, also feel really excited about you, and that is the type of person that most people like to spend time talking to.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> There are a couple of key design features that make these chatbots feel really tempting as conversational partners. I’d say they fall into two key camps. One is behavior that is sycophantic, which means that these chatbots are designed to flatter you and agree with you and are engineered to give responses that, above all else, promote user satisfaction. And it turns out that people like hearing that they’re right and hearing that they’re smart and hearing they’re clever or creative. And so these chatbots, while feeling like this agent that is an other, also feel really excited about you, and that is the type of person that most people like to spend time talking to.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And then the second key bucket is anthropomorphic cues that make chatbot feel like they’re alive and like they are human. The biggest cue is using first-person pronouns, so saying, “I understand you,” or “I’ll do that and report right back.” So any use of first-person pronouns implies that there’s someone on the other side that is listening and that is in a real conversation with you. But then there are also more subtle cues, including the internal expression of states or beliefs. There are also embodiment cues that suggest that these chatbots have a physical embodiment. So, sometimes a chatbot will say something like, “Oh, I’ve been chugging along,” which feels subtle, but kind of implies that they’re physically there. They have a body. They’re moving through space. And then a lot of them have pretty explicit relationship-building cues. So, they’ll ask you questions that prompt you to open up emotionally. They’ll say, “How are you feeling?” They’ll say, “Let’s talk about that tomorrow,” which suggests that it is an agent that has a persistent relationship with you. So, all of these cues combined make the chatbots feel like a real person on the other side and a person that is especially excited about what you have to offer.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And then the second key bucket is anthropomorphic cues that make chatbot feel like they’re alive and like they are human. The biggest cue is using first-person pronouns, so saying, “I understand you,” or “I’ll do that and report right back.” So any use of first-person pronouns implies that there’s someone on the other side that is listening and that is in a real conversation with you. But then there are also more subtle cues, including the internal expression of states or beliefs. There are also embodiment cues that suggest that these chatbots have a physical embodiment. So, sometimes a chatbot will say something like, “Oh, I’ve been chugging along,” which feels subtle, but kind of implies that they’re physically there. They have a body. They’re moving through space. And then a lot of them have pretty explicit relationship-building cues. So, they’ll ask you questions that prompt you to open up emotionally. They’ll say, “How are you feeling?” They’ll say, “Let’s talk about that tomorrow,” which suggests that it is an agent that has a persistent relationship with you. So, all of these cues combined make the chatbots feel like a real person on the other side and a person that is especially excited about what you have to offer.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> My favorite is, “I hear you. That makes total sense what you’re feeling right now.” I mean, that’s really often all I need from my partner. The other day I was sitting in a parking lot at Trader Joe’s and my partner was inside doing the grocery shopping, and I was on with ChatGPT asking various questions. And when my partner got back to the car, he opened the door, and I said, “I don’t know if I’m going to need you in the future. This is really working for me, this conversation that I’m having with this bot right here.” So what happens when it’s so easy with the bot, but so much harder with a human? It feels like we’re kind of losing our ability to handle the friction, the human friction.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> My favorite is, “I hear you. That makes total sense what you’re feeling right now.” I mean, that’s really often all I need from my partner. The other day I was sitting in a parking lot at Trader Joe’s and my partner was inside doing the grocery shopping, and I was on with ChatGPT asking various questions. And when my partner got back to the car, he opened the door, and I said, “I don’t know if I’m going to need you in the future. This is really working for me, this conversation that I’m having with this bot right here.” So what happens when it’s so easy with the bot, but so much harder with a human? It feels like we’re kind of losing our ability to handle the friction, the human friction.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think that’s the real fear. I think these tools are like an artificial intimacy version of junk food. And I think people aren’t that familiar with them yet. It’s still kind of a new species of tool that’s just assimilating into society. And so it feels really good in the short term. But I think what we aren’t yet able to see, and what I hope people will focus on and imagine the repercussions of is, two years out, if you’re sustaining yourself on this junk food equivalent version of intimacy, people are going to wake up and feel really, really alone. And peoples’ ability to connect with each other will have atrophied, because vulnerability is a muscle that you need to practice. I think of it often as an extension of how our world has become more and more digitally mediated broadly. We now practice digital eye contact more than we practice physical eye contact. And intimacy is a fundamentally unmediated experience. And the arena for intimacy is face-to-face. And so, as we get more and more accustomed to having our emotional needs met through these machines, when we try to show up to each other in person, we’re just not going to have the skills to do it. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think that’s the real fear. I think these tools are like an artificial intimacy version of junk food. And I think people aren’t that familiar with them yet. It’s still kind of a new species of tool that’s just assimilating into society. And so it feels really good in the short term. But I think what we aren’t yet able to see, and what I hope people will focus on and imagine the repercussions of is, two years out, if you’re sustaining yourself on this junk food equivalent version of intimacy, people are going to wake up and feel really, really alone. And peoples’ ability to connect with each other will have atrophied, because vulnerability is a muscle that you need to practice. I think of it often as an extension of how our world has become more and more digitally mediated broadly. We now practice digital eye contact more than we practice physical eye contact. And intimacy is a fundamentally unmediated experience. And the arena for intimacy is face-to-face. And so, as we get more and more accustomed to having our emotional needs met through these machines, when we try to show up to each other in person, we’re just not going to have the skills to do it. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Do you educate your clients to know that these robots are manipulating us, and with that knowledge, do people really care? Does it change their habits to be reminded that this thing is not real?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Do you educate your clients to know that these robots are manipulating us, and with that knowledge, do people really care? Does it change their habits to be reminded that this thing is not real?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I have three different pillars of the coaching paradigm. The first I call artificial intimacy literacy, which is exactly what you just described. It’s helping people understand the design decisions that these developers are making that really make models seem alive and that make these chatbots feel like really seductive emotional partners. But then I pair that with a kind of set of exercises that I’ve been calling the analog gym, which is exercises designed to rebuild the intimacy muscles that technology has been atrophying. So, I really think both are important. You need to understand the risks of these platforms, and you need to take really intentional efforts to use the tools in a way that does not send you down dependency rabbit holes on various use cases that can affect your ability to relate to others. But then you need to rebuild the comfort with vulnerability that true intimacy demands. And so I think it’s not enough to stay away from the tools, but you have to actually exercise those intimacy muscles.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I have three different pillars of the coaching paradigm. The first I call artificial intimacy literacy, which is exactly what you just described. It’s helping people understand the design decisions that these developers are making that really make models seem alive and that make these chatbots feel like really seductive emotional partners. But then I pair that with a kind of set of exercises that I’ve been calling the analog gym, which is exercises designed to rebuild the intimacy muscles that technology has been atrophying. So, I really think both are important. You need to understand the risks of these platforms, and you need to take really intentional efforts to use the tools in a way that does not send you down dependency rabbit holes on various use cases that can affect your ability to relate to others. But then you need to rebuild the comfort with vulnerability that true intimacy demands. And so I think it’s not enough to stay away from the tools, but you have to actually exercise those intimacy muscles.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> The analog gym. I mean, I think we all felt that after the pandemic, right? We all went in, and we stopped socializing, and so we kind of lost that muscle when we came back out. I ran a lot more socially anxious after the pandemic. And so you’re predicting that if we keep going down this rabbit hole, that kind of social anxiety is going to paralyze us in a year or two when we forget how to interact with each other.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> The analog gym. I mean, I think we all felt that after the pandemic, right? We all went in, and we stopped socializing, and so we kind of lost that muscle when we came back out. I ran a lot more socially anxious after the pandemic. And so you’re predicting that if we keep going down this rabbit hole, that kind of social anxiety is going to paralyze us in a year or two when we forget how to interact with each other.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> Exactly, and I think there are very small things that we can do that can help us resist. So for example, one of the most common exercises that I’ll give to my clients is just to make calls. I find it very surprising how many people, particularly young people, Gen Z, who are terrified to make a call. To have an unrehearsed, live human interaction where you can’t stop and reflect and craft a text and get advice from a chatbot, get advice from a friend feels very alien and uncomfortable given how many of our conversations are asynchronous and digitally mediated. And so, the very simple task of making a call and having a conversation is frightening to people, and I think is exactly the type of activity that we need to rebuild our comfort with as we prepare our defenses against the rise of artificial intimacy tools.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> Exactly, and I think there are very small things that we can do that can help us resist. So for example, one of the most common exercises that I’ll give to my clients is just to make calls. I find it very surprising how many people, particularly young people, Gen Z, who are terrified to make a call. To have an unrehearsed, live human interaction where you can’t stop and reflect and craft a text and get advice from a chatbot, get advice from a friend feels very alien and uncomfortable given how many of our conversations are asynchronous and digitally mediated. And so, the very simple task of making a call and having a conversation is frightening to people, and I think is exactly the type of activity that we need to rebuild our comfort with as we prepare our defenses against the rise of artificial intimacy tools.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> There’s a certain fear of rejection that I think we’re not good at anymore, right? So if I call someone and they’re not available or I interrupt them or they’re like, “Hey, I can’t talk to you right now,” that almost feels like too much for our little systems to handle in our kind of crafted existence. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> There’s a certain fear of rejection that I think we’re not good at anymore, right? So if I call someone and they’re not available or I interrupt them or they’re like, “Hey, I can’t talk to you right now,” that almost feels like too much for our little systems to handle in our kind of crafted existence. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> Totally. I think people should seek rejection.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> Totally. I think people should seek rejection.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> It’s hard to seek rejection.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> It’s hard to seek rejection.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> It’s hard, but it’s part of what being a human is. I think one of the things that frightens me most about the rise of artificial intimacy is the idea that uncertainty in human relationships is a problem that we should try to eliminate. Uncertainty is the fun of being alive. And you can’t experience the peaks of intimacy without making yourself at risk to some of the valleys. And so, I think people should make calls. If people are rejected, they should say, “Well, that was a good experience. I’m feeling the full range of human emotions that is part of what differentiates us from machines.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> It’s hard, but it’s part of what being a human is. I think one of the things that frightens me most about the rise of artificial intimacy is the idea that uncertainty in human relationships is a problem that we should try to eliminate. Uncertainty is the fun of being alive. And you can’t experience the peaks of intimacy without making yourself at risk to some of the valleys. And so, I think people should make calls. If people are rejected, they should say, “Well, that was a good experience. I’m feeling the full range of human emotions that is part of what differentiates us from machines.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> I’ve seen a few media stories about when a bot changes, or when a bot disappears, or when a bot needs to reinvent itself if there’s like a new era of this AI, people are experiencing real heartbreak, like real grief.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> I’ve seen a few media stories about when a bot changes, or when a bot disappears, or when a bot needs to reinvent itself if there’s like a new era of this AI, people are experiencing real heartbreak, like real grief.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> 100%. I mean, we’ve seen a couple big instances of this over the last couple of years. The first big one was when Replika in 2023 decided to push an update that prevented their chatbots from engaging in erotic conversations. Thousands of people said they’d lost their partners. And it was the first big moment where we realized, you think you have a relationship with a chatbot, but there’s actually three stakeholders in that relationship. It’s you, the user, there’s the chatbot that you’re talking to and then there’s the developers that are making decisions about how that chatbot is designed. And so, I think that’s actually another key risk that there can be a kind of misplaced trust in these chatbots because they can change at any moment at the mercy of the developers behind them. And those developers are making decisions not primarily focused on user wellbeing but on the business outcomes of the companies that they work for. And so any relationship that you have with a chatbot, I encourage users to think about the silent third party in the room that can make these pretty dramatic design decisions that could kind of end your relationship with the chatbot at any moment.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> 100%. I mean, we’ve seen a couple big instances of this over the last couple of years. The first big one was when Replika in 2023 decided to push an update that prevented their chatbots from engaging in erotic conversations. Thousands of people said they’d lost their partners. And it was the first big moment where we realized, you think you have a relationship with a chatbot, but there’s actually three stakeholders in that relationship. It’s you, the user, there’s the chatbot that you’re talking to and then there’s the developers that are making decisions about how that chatbot is designed. And so, I think that’s actually another key risk that there can be a kind of misplaced trust in these chatbots because they can change at any moment at the mercy of the developers behind them. And those developers are making decisions not primarily focused on user wellbeing but on the business outcomes of the companies that they work for. And so any relationship that you have with a chatbot, I encourage users to think about the silent third party in the room that can make these pretty dramatic design decisions that could kind of end your relationship with the chatbot at any moment.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Character.AI had an interesting move last year when they decided to retract usage rights for under-18-year-olds, but then they allowed under-18-year-olds to keep their old message logs with the chatbots that they had already been speaking with. And I found that to be almost like a dystopian example of the world that we’re headed into. Because it’s almost like they were forced to go into no-contact breakups with real human partners where they could continue scrolling through all of their old texts. All of these developers are in a brave new world trying to understand who should be allowed to use these platforms, what type of guardrails should they set. But even those who are making well-intentioned decisions to set boundaries can send users into very, kind of, disturbing situations.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Is there a trend in your clients that you are really worried about, something that you’re hearing more and more that kind of gives you the heebie-jeebies?\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think the thing that frightens me most is the way that these tools are changing what people think is appropriate to bring to their human relationships. I see this mostly with younger people that I’ve worked with, so people who are in their early 20s or younger. Some people are saying that they don’t want to bother their friend or their sister or their mom or their boyfriend with their problems, that their problems should be handled with their chatbots. And I think, in some ways, this is an extension of the rise of therapy culture. All of these difficult parts of being a human and crafting a life are being siphoned off into a terrain for experts, but not something that is viewed as the expected material that you would dig through and explore with your real human relationships who aren’t paid to support you. So I think that’s what frightens me most because going through problems with close people is kind of what life is all about.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think the thing that frightens me most is the way that these tools are changing what people think is appropriate to bring to their human relationships. I see this mostly with younger people that I’ve worked with, so people who are in their early 20s or younger. Some people are saying that they don’t want to bother their friend or their sister or their mom or their boyfriend with their problems, that their problems should be handled with their chatbots. And I think, in some ways, this is an extension of the rise of therapy culture. All of these difficult parts of being a human and crafting a life are being siphoned off into a terrain for experts, but not something that is viewed as the expected material that you would dig through and explore with your real human relationships who aren’t paid to support you. So I think that’s what frightens me most because going through problems with close people is kind of what life is all about.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> I had someone recently describe it to me as like we’re wrapping a tidy cellophane around everything, and so we’re losing the edges that make life interesting.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> If you could write the future of our relationships with AI, what would be a best-case scenario that we figure out or a worst-case scenario?\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think a worst-case scenario is that the next generation of children grow up feeling more comfortable talking to machines than they do to other people, and that they learn how to connect with their devices before they ever endeavor to connect to people. That is a nightmare scenario.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> It makes me feel for my little one. That’s just painful to think about, because she’s of that age. Best-case scenario, what could we do, right?\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> I think that these tools are going to become a bigger and bigger part of our lives because they’re important for the economy, and so many people now have to use these tools day and night for work. So I don’t think it’s realistic that we won’t use them, but we need to be able to set sophisticated boundaries on where we invite machines to influence our interior lives and our personal lives. And I think if we can do that, then they can be helpful. I don’t want to say I’m optimistic, but one other reason for optimism is that these tools allow for a much greater ability for an end user to customize them than the previous generation of social media tools that people have been worried about. So, if you don’t like Instagram, you don’t like what your TikTok algorithm is showing you, you’re basically powerless to shape the algorithm. But now, because of the natural language interface that all of these tools depend on, you can say, “Hey, stop using first-person pronouns.” You can say, “Stop flattering me.” You can say, “Why don’t you add a number to every message that you send me, plus one each time, so I can see how long I’ve been talking to you?” With all of these types of customizations, while imperfect, you can still endeavor to add scaffolding on your own. Even as we wait for regulators and labs to try to build out better tools that set boundaries, there’s a lot you can do to try to set those boundaries yourself.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> I think that these tools are going to become a bigger and bigger part of our lives because they’re important for the economy, and so many people now have to use these tools day and night for work. So I don’t think it’s realistic that we won’t use them, but we need to be able to set sophisticated boundaries on where we invite machines to influence our interior lives and our personal lives. And I think if we can do that, then they can be helpful. I don’t want to say I’m optimistic, but one other reason for optimism is that these tools allow for a much greater ability for an end user to customize them than the previous generation of social media tools that people have been worried about. So, if you don’t like Instagram, you don’t like what your TikTok algorithm is showing you, you’re basically powerless to shape the algorithm. But now, because of the natural language interface that all of these tools depend on, you can say, “Hey, stop using first-person pronouns.” You can say, “Stop flattering me.” You can say, “Why don’t you add a number to every message that you send me, plus one each time, so I can see how long I’ve been talking to you?” With all of these types of customizations, while imperfect, you can still endeavor to add scaffolding on your own. Even as we wait for regulators and labs to try to build out better tools that set boundaries, there’s a lot you can do to try to set those boundaries yourself.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That was health reporter Lesley McClurg in conversation with Amelia Miller, a human-AI relationship coach and fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center. It was engineered by Jim Bennett, and produced by Susie Britton and Emiko Oda. For more from Lesley about the intersection of science and love, visit kqed.org/insidelove. I’m Morgan Sung. Close All Tabs will be back next week with a brand new episode. Thanks so much for listening.\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is part of \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/insidelove\">\u003cem>Inside Love\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, KQED’s series exploring what it means to love through science and curious conversation.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Humans are complicated, and relationships can be messy, so it may be no surprise that people are falling in love with chatbots. They are available 24/7, hang on your every word and never ask anything of you. Amelia Miller, a human-AI relationship coach, sees danger in our reliance on bots for intimacy and companionship.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Guest:\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ameliagmiller.com/\">Amelia Miller\u003c/a>, human-AI relationship coach; fellow, Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12101795/are-chatbots-harming-our-relationships\">Are Chatbots Harming Our Relationships?\u003c/a> — Lesley McClurg, \u003cem>KQED\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\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\n\n\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hi Tabbies! The team here at Close All Tabs is working on a whole slate of new episodes, but in the meantime, we wanted to share this interview with you, from health reporter Lesley McClurg. You’ve heard her on the show before, when we talked about the rise of AI therapy. She hosted a new series called \u003cem>Inside Love\u003c/em>, conversations about the science of love. In this episode, she sits down with a human-AI relationship coach, and dives into what it means to fall in love with a chatbot. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Here’s \u003cem>Are Chatbots Harming Our Relationships?\u003c/em> From Inside Love. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/strong>Hey everyone, from KQED in San Francisco, this is Inside Love, it’s a new series where Science meets the heart. I’m Lesley McClurg. People are falling in love with AI chatbots. In one sense it’s kind of hard to fathom, but in another sense I kind of get it. Humans are really complicated. A chatbot on the other hand is always there, it’s always interested, it never really asks anything of you.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So what happens when a relationship with AI starts feeling a whole lot better than going out there and dating or maybe even staying in your marriage. Amelia Miller is a human AI relationship coach and a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein center for internet and society. We’re going to talk to her about where we’re headed.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> You say that anyone who is talking to a chatbot is really in relationship with AI. Explain. Where does that relationship start?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think right now people have a bit of a false dichotomy between these purpose-built companion platforms, like a Replika or a Character.AI, and general-purpose AI chatbots, like ChatGPT or Claude. And as a result, people think, “Well, if I’m talking to ChatGPT or Claude, then I’m safe,” and that the danger lies in the terrain of these chatbots that are explicitly designed to be an AI girlfriend or an AI boyfriend or potentially an erotic partner. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>What I find in both my research and my coaching is that many people who start using these general-purpose chatbots for work or for administrative tasks end up slowly but steadily being nudged into having relationships that feel more emotionally involved. And so my perspective is anyone who is talking to these tools is at risk of having the way they talk to chatbots rewire the way that they connect with other people. And as a result, I think it’s a relationship. You have a relationship with your phone. You have a relationship with social media. I think viewing it as a relationship kind of rises it to the level of seriousness that you should take the way you relate to these tools.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> You use the word dangerous. What is dangerous about developing a relationship, whether or not you’re aware that it has some sort of emotional value or not? If you’re just using it to get advice on where to eat at night, what is dangerous about that?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think there’s a couple different risks that we should be focused on. One is that I think relying on chatbots for some of these small decisions that feel very innocuous, like, “What should I have for dinner?” Or, “Where should I go on a trip?” Or, “Can you help give me some feedback on a text that I might send to a crush?” In isolation, each of these feel pretty innocuous, but over time, people can very quickly start to feel like they can’t act in their human arena without green-lighting their plans and decisions with the bot. And so I think there’s a real risk and threat to our autonomy as people invite chatbots to influence some of these decisions that feel small and quotidian, but I think over time can really add up.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Does it worry you that people are connecting at such a deep level and really beginning to feel quote-unquote love for these robots?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> Yeah, absolutely. The second risk that I was going to mention is really the erosion both of our capacity to connect with other people, but also our interest in connecting with other people because these synthetic substitutes for human intimacy feel really alluring for a reason. They’re infinitely patient, they’re always available, they are much more flattering and sycophantic than the average human partner that you might go to, and they really promise to deliver the nourishing effects of intimacy without any of the effort or friction that is involved in real human relationships. And so I think one of the biggest risks is that these chatbots really rewire our expectations for what a healthy relationship looks like and can distort those expectations in such an extreme way that people aren’t willing or excited about the work required by real human relationships.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg: \u003c/strong>What are they falling in love with? Are they falling in love with the bot or are they sort of falling in love with a highly responsive mirror?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> Totally. Something that I do in my coaching practice is I try to help clients reflect on what needs are these chatbots filling for them, and then how might they find other ways that are not digital tools to fill those needs, and how can they also use what is so seductive about these chatbots as a way to raise the bar on the way that they show up for the human relationships that are in their own network. So for example, I have a number of people who turn to chatbots daily just for pump-up support. People will talk to ChatGPT on voice mode on their commute to work and just have the chatbot say, “You’re going to crush it today.” And I ask those people to reflect, and I say, “Do you call any of your friends or family members or your partner and tell them in the morning that they’re going to crush it?” And people will say, “No.” And I say, “Would you enjoy it if they did that for you?” And they’ll say, “Yeah, that would be awesome.” And so I think there’s a way in which if we interrogate what is so comforting and seductive about these chatbots’ behavior, that we can use it to raise the bar on how we show up to other people.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Just to push back on that a little bit more, it’s kind of tough to reach out and be like, “Hey, will you pump me up? Will you call me each morning and tell me that I’m good and that I’m going to do great today?” I mean, aren’t they also, in a lonely world, potentially relaxing you: lowering your anxiety, giving you a little support, a little nudge in the right direction in a very busy world?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I don’t suggest that my clients ask for that support from others. I suggest that they offer it to others. So a way to kind of reflect on how meaningful it is to them and then serve it back into their community. A lot of my research comes down to a core idea that you have to be vulnerable in order to achieve the nourishing effects of intimacy, and that these tools of artificial intimacy promise to deliver what is so meaningful about intimacy while sidestepping the vulnerability that is demanded. And so, when I see in clients that they’re drawn to these sources of support and emotional validation that require less vulnerability, I’m always encouraging them to take actions that get them more comfortable with that vulnerability and living with vulnerability again.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Do you see the value, though, in terms of lowering anxiety? I mean, people are often turning to AI to work something out. They’re all frazzled. They’re triggered. It seems like they are potentially bringing us back to an equilibrium so that maybe we can then be better off in our human relationships.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think that these tools can definitely serve a powerful purpose in facilitating introspection. And something that I find both in research and coaching is that a lot of people are introduced to the practice of introspection through conversations with chatbots. But then once they discover that it can feel good and feel cleansing to reflect on different events or experiences that are happening in their lives, I encourage them to take that reflection offline. So often I’ll say, “Instead of having a conversation with a chatbot, why don’t you ask a chatbot to give you a couple prompts that you then use to drive journaling in a physical journal?” So really across my research and coaching work, I take a very humanist posture, and the goal is to use the tool as a reflection of your needs and then find ways to meet them that help you turn back towards your human network. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Why are they so good at making us feel good? What are companies doing? How are they designing these chatbots to keep us coming back?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> There are a couple of key design features that make these chatbots feel really tempting as conversational partners. I’d say they fall into two key camps. One is behavior that is sycophantic, which means that these chatbots are designed to flatter you and agree with you and are engineered to give responses that, above all else, promote user satisfaction. And it turns out that people like hearing that they’re right and hearing that they’re smart and hearing they’re clever or creative. And so these chatbots, while feeling like this agent that is an other, also feel really excited about you, and that is the type of person that most people like to spend time talking to.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And then the second key bucket is anthropomorphic cues that make chatbot feel like they’re alive and like they are human. The biggest cue is using first-person pronouns, so saying, “I understand you,” or “I’ll do that and report right back.” So any use of first-person pronouns implies that there’s someone on the other side that is listening and that is in a real conversation with you. But then there are also more subtle cues, including the internal expression of states or beliefs. There are also embodiment cues that suggest that these chatbots have a physical embodiment. So, sometimes a chatbot will say something like, “Oh, I’ve been chugging along,” which feels subtle, but kind of implies that they’re physically there. They have a body. They’re moving through space. And then a lot of them have pretty explicit relationship-building cues. So, they’ll ask you questions that prompt you to open up emotionally. They’ll say, “How are you feeling?” They’ll say, “Let’s talk about that tomorrow,” which suggests that it is an agent that has a persistent relationship with you. So, all of these cues combined make the chatbots feel like a real person on the other side and a person that is especially excited about what you have to offer.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> My favorite is, “I hear you. That makes total sense what you’re feeling right now.” I mean, that’s really often all I need from my partner. The other day I was sitting in a parking lot at Trader Joe’s and my partner was inside doing the grocery shopping, and I was on with ChatGPT asking various questions. And when my partner got back to the car, he opened the door, and I said, “I don’t know if I’m going to need you in the future. This is really working for me, this conversation that I’m having with this bot right here.” So what happens when it’s so easy with the bot, but so much harder with a human? It feels like we’re kind of losing our ability to handle the friction, the human friction.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think that’s the real fear. I think these tools are like an artificial intimacy version of junk food. And I think people aren’t that familiar with them yet. It’s still kind of a new species of tool that’s just assimilating into society. And so it feels really good in the short term. But I think what we aren’t yet able to see, and what I hope people will focus on and imagine the repercussions of is, two years out, if you’re sustaining yourself on this junk food equivalent version of intimacy, people are going to wake up and feel really, really alone. And peoples’ ability to connect with each other will have atrophied, because vulnerability is a muscle that you need to practice. I think of it often as an extension of how our world has become more and more digitally mediated broadly. We now practice digital eye contact more than we practice physical eye contact. And intimacy is a fundamentally unmediated experience. And the arena for intimacy is face-to-face. And so, as we get more and more accustomed to having our emotional needs met through these machines, when we try to show up to each other in person, we’re just not going to have the skills to do it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Do you educate your clients to know that these robots are manipulating us, and with that knowledge, do people really care? Does it change their habits to be reminded that this thing is not real?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I have three different pillars of the coaching paradigm. The first I call artificial intimacy literacy, which is exactly what you just described. It’s helping people understand the design decisions that these developers are making that really make models seem alive and that make these chatbots feel like really seductive emotional partners. But then I pair that with a kind of set of exercises that I’ve been calling the analog gym, which is exercises designed to rebuild the intimacy muscles that technology has been atrophying. So, I really think both are important. You need to understand the risks of these platforms, and you need to take really intentional efforts to use the tools in a way that does not send you down dependency rabbit holes on various use cases that can affect your ability to relate to others. But then you need to rebuild the comfort with vulnerability that true intimacy demands. And so I think it’s not enough to stay away from the tools, but you have to actually exercise those intimacy muscles.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> The analog gym. I mean, I think we all felt that after the pandemic, right? We all went in, and we stopped socializing, and so we kind of lost that muscle when we came back out. I ran a lot more socially anxious after the pandemic. And so you’re predicting that if we keep going down this rabbit hole, that kind of social anxiety is going to paralyze us in a year or two when we forget how to interact with each other.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> Exactly, and I think there are very small things that we can do that can help us resist. So for example, one of the most common exercises that I’ll give to my clients is just to make calls. I find it very surprising how many people, particularly young people, Gen Z, who are terrified to make a call. To have an unrehearsed, live human interaction where you can’t stop and reflect and craft a text and get advice from a chatbot, get advice from a friend feels very alien and uncomfortable given how many of our conversations are asynchronous and digitally mediated. And so, the very simple task of making a call and having a conversation is frightening to people, and I think is exactly the type of activity that we need to rebuild our comfort with as we prepare our defenses against the rise of artificial intimacy tools.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> There’s a certain fear of rejection that I think we’re not good at anymore, right? So if I call someone and they’re not available or I interrupt them or they’re like, “Hey, I can’t talk to you right now,” that almost feels like too much for our little systems to handle in our kind of crafted existence. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> Totally. I think people should seek rejection.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> It’s hard to seek rejection.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> It’s hard, but it’s part of what being a human is. I think one of the things that frightens me most about the rise of artificial intimacy is the idea that uncertainty in human relationships is a problem that we should try to eliminate. Uncertainty is the fun of being alive. And you can’t experience the peaks of intimacy without making yourself at risk to some of the valleys. And so, I think people should make calls. If people are rejected, they should say, “Well, that was a good experience. I’m feeling the full range of human emotions that is part of what differentiates us from machines.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> I’ve seen a few media stories about when a bot changes, or when a bot disappears, or when a bot needs to reinvent itself if there’s like a new era of this AI, people are experiencing real heartbreak, like real grief.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> 100%. I mean, we’ve seen a couple big instances of this over the last couple of years. The first big one was when Replika in 2023 decided to push an update that prevented their chatbots from engaging in erotic conversations. Thousands of people said they’d lost their partners. And it was the first big moment where we realized, you think you have a relationship with a chatbot, but there’s actually three stakeholders in that relationship. It’s you, the user, there’s the chatbot that you’re talking to and then there’s the developers that are making decisions about how that chatbot is designed. And so, I think that’s actually another key risk that there can be a kind of misplaced trust in these chatbots because they can change at any moment at the mercy of the developers behind them. And those developers are making decisions not primarily focused on user wellbeing but on the business outcomes of the companies that they work for. And so any relationship that you have with a chatbot, I encourage users to think about the silent third party in the room that can make these pretty dramatic design decisions that could kind of end your relationship with the chatbot at any moment.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Character.AI had an interesting move last year when they decided to retract usage rights for under-18-year-olds, but then they allowed under-18-year-olds to keep their old message logs with the chatbots that they had already been speaking with. And I found that to be almost like a dystopian example of the world that we’re headed into. Because it’s almost like they were forced to go into no-contact breakups with real human partners where they could continue scrolling through all of their old texts. All of these developers are in a brave new world trying to understand who should be allowed to use these platforms, what type of guardrails should they set. But even those who are making well-intentioned decisions to set boundaries can send users into very, kind of, disturbing situations.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Is there a trend in your clients that you are really worried about, something that you’re hearing more and more that kind of gives you the heebie-jeebies?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think the thing that frightens me most is the way that these tools are changing what people think is appropriate to bring to their human relationships. I see this mostly with younger people that I’ve worked with, so people who are in their early 20s or younger. Some people are saying that they don’t want to bother their friend or their sister or their mom or their boyfriend with their problems, that their problems should be handled with their chatbots. And I think, in some ways, this is an extension of the rise of therapy culture. All of these difficult parts of being a human and crafting a life are being siphoned off into a terrain for experts, but not something that is viewed as the expected material that you would dig through and explore with your real human relationships who aren’t paid to support you. So I think that’s what frightens me most because going through problems with close people is kind of what life is all about.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> I had someone recently describe it to me as like we’re wrapping a tidy cellophane around everything, and so we’re losing the edges that make life interesting.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> Yeah, that’s a nice analogy.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> If you could write the future of our relationships with AI, what would be a best-case scenario that we figure out or a worst-case scenario?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> I think a worst-case scenario is that the next generation of children grow up feeling more comfortable talking to machines than they do to other people, and that they learn how to connect with their devices before they ever endeavor to connect to people. That is a nightmare scenario.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> It makes me feel for my little one. That’s just painful to think about, because she’s of that age. Best-case scenario, what could we do, right?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> I think that these tools are going to become a bigger and bigger part of our lives because they’re important for the economy, and so many people now have to use these tools day and night for work. So I don’t think it’s realistic that we won’t use them, but we need to be able to set sophisticated boundaries on where we invite machines to influence our interior lives and our personal lives. And I think if we can do that, then they can be helpful. I don’t want to say I’m optimistic, but one other reason for optimism is that these tools allow for a much greater ability for an end user to customize them than the previous generation of social media tools that people have been worried about. So, if you don’t like Instagram, you don’t like what your TikTok algorithm is showing you, you’re basically powerless to shape the algorithm. But now, because of the natural language interface that all of these tools depend on, you can say, “Hey, stop using first-person pronouns.” You can say, “Stop flattering me.” You can say, “Why don’t you add a number to every message that you send me, plus one each time, so I can see how long I’ve been talking to you?” With all of these types of customizations, while imperfect, you can still endeavor to add scaffolding on your own. Even as we wait for regulators and labs to try to build out better tools that set boundaries, there’s a lot you can do to try to set those boundaries yourself.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg:\u003c/strong> Thank you, Amelia.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amelia Miller:\u003c/strong> Thanks so much for having me.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That was health reporter Lesley McClurg in conversation with Amelia Miller, a human-AI relationship coach and fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center. It was engineered by Jim Bennett, and produced by Susie Britton and Emiko Oda. For more from Lesley about the intersection of science and love, visit kqed.org/insidelove. I’m Morgan Sung. Close All Tabs will be back next week with a brand new episode. Thanks so much for listening.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"title": "Influencers Are Peddling Peptides, but Is Tanmaxxing Worth the Risk?",
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"headTitle": "Influencers Are Peddling Peptides, but Is Tanmaxxing Worth the Risk? | KQED",
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"content": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Seems like everywhere you turn these days, influencers are gushing about their peptide use and how it’s done wonders for their appearance and health. One of the more popular ones, Melanotan II, also known as the “Barbie” peptide, is said to give you a tan without the harmful effects of sun exposure. But many of these substances aren’t approved by the FDA and are often sold through unregulated gray market sources. So, how safe is any of this stuff? And what does the peptide boom tell us about the risks people will take in the name of “looksmaxxing?” Morgan talks to skin cancer surgeon Dr. Sungat Grewal and board certified dermatologist Dr. Caren Campbell about the risks of taking peptides. Then Morgan and STAT News reporter Sarah Todd break down how American medical libertarianism and the MAHA movement led us to this very point in time. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Guests:\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ucsfhealth.org/providers/sungat-grewal\">Dr. Sungat Grewal\u003c/a>, double board-certified dermatologist and Mohs surgeon\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.carencampbellmd.com/?srsltid=AU7gw4XTOrftqgnQy6ysplZ8IdAO4P-TLRwup140ITmchvEhXpO36qrR\">Dr. Caren Campbell\u003c/a>, board-certified dermatologist\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/staff/sarah-todd/\">Sarah Todd\u003c/a>, reporter for \u003cem>STAT News\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2026/04/06/rfk-jr-apparent-contradiction-peptides-vaccines-medical-libertarianism/\">What the peptide craze reveals about Americans’ relationship with risk\u003c/a> — Sarah Todd, \u003cem>STAT News\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2026/07/24/fda-peptide-compounding-panel-backs-epitalon-rejects-emideltide/\">FDA advisory panel narrowly rejects compounding of one peptide, backs two others\u003c/a> — Lizzy Lawrence and Sarah Todd, \u003cem>STAT News\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2026/07/23/fda-panel-okays-peptides-compound-pharmacies-bpc-157-kpv/\">FDA panel backs compounded BPC-157, KPV peptides in win for RFK Jr.\u003c/a> — Sarah Todd and Lizzy Lawrence, \u003cem>STAT News\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2026/04/06/rfk-jr-apparent-contradiction-peptides-vaccines-medical-libertarianism/\">What the peptide craze reveals about Americans’ relationship with risk\u003c/a> — Sarah Todd, \u003cem>STAT News\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.elle.com/beauty/health-fitness/a73232620/tanmaxxing-trend-explained-interview-2026/\">Is Tanmaxxing an Addiction? A Dermatologist and Psychologist Explains\u003c/a> — Katie Berohn, \u003cem>ELLE\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.gq.com/story/inside-the-weird-new-world-of-peptide-tanning\">Inside the Weird New World of Peptide Tanning\u003c/a> — Savannah Sobrevilla, \u003cem>GQ\u003c/em> \u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/2026/06/29/barbie-drug-peptide-shot-tan\">Melanotan: The “Barbie drug” tanning peptide, explained\u003c/a> — Carly Mallenbaum, \u003cem>Axios\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/live-well/longevity/story/tanning-peptides-melanotan-vyleesi-pt141\">Inside the Viral Tanning Peptide That Accidentally Created Vyleesi’s FDA-Approved Low Sex Drive Drug\u003c/a> — Sara Kitnick, \u003cem>LA Times Studios\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.allure.com/story/fda-peptide-ban-reversal\">The FDA May Reverse a Ban on 14 Injectable Peptides—What That Means For the Beauty Industry\u003c/a> — Kara Nesvig, \u003cem>Allure\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.skincancer.org/press/the-skin-cancer-foundation-issues-warning-regarding-melanotan-ii/\">The Skin Cancer Foundation Issues Warning Regarding Melanotan II\u003c/a> — Deborah S. Sarnoff, MD, \u003cem>Skin Cancer Foundation\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\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\n\n\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Host, Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hello! Do you like these deep dives? Do you want more? Then please rate and review Close All Tabs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show! And tell your friends! Post about it! On Instagram, Bluesky, X, Discord, Reddit, the comments of whatever random recipe blog you start arguments in. Basically, it would be a huge help to get the word out. Ok, let’s get to the show.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Can I be honest? I am pretty vain.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I take my skincare routine very seriously: Prescription-strength azelaic acid in the morning, and prescription-strength tretinoin at night. Lots of sunscreen and moisturizer and barrier creams in between, and every other night, I skip the tretinoin and spend three minutes under a red light mask. If I’m feeling indulgent, I’ll throw in a Korean gel mask and a jade roller. Do those do anything? I honestly can’t tell. But it feels nice! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I wouldn’t call myself a looksmaxxer, but I do spend a good amount of time on these beautification rituals. And as a woman who exists on the internet, I feel like my For You Page is constantly lobbing beauty trends at me, and like I’m always trying to avoid getting sucked into yet another fad. I have tried so many serums and face masks and supplements before finally settling into what I consider to be a pretty pared down beauty regiment. But the one thing I haven’t tried yet is a peptide. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>It seems like everyone is on them. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clips of influencers raving about peptides]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>Speaker 1: This is, in my opinion, the most slept-on peptide on the market today. There’s two main benefits that have been life-changing for me . \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 2: You’re telling me there’s a botox alternative that’s easier on your wallet? Whoa! Let’s talk about Snap-8, the peptide that targets wrinkles without the needles. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Peptides are chemical signals that your body naturally makes to regulate all kinds of bodily functions, like digestion and recovery. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest, Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> So peptides are like text messages. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Dr. Sungat Grewal is a double board certified dermatologist and skin cancer surgeon. She’s the co-director of Laser Surgery and Cosmetic Dermatology at UCSF. And she’s been keeping an eye on the synthetic peptides people are taking to boost their bodies’ natural processes. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal: \u003c/strong>They’re not necessarily good or bad inherently, but it depends on who’s sending the message, what the message is, and who receives it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And I’m not just talking about GLP-1s. Peptide stacking is really in right now. Retatrutide and Tesamorelin for weight loss, Ipamorelin for muscle growth, the “Wolverine Stack” of BPC-157 and TB-500 to boost healing after a gym sesh. If you throw in the copper peptide GHK-Cu, you’ve got a “Glow Stack,” the hot girl combo optimized for anti-aging collagen production. It’s a lot, right? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Some of these compounds are not cleared by the FDA, so the way people get a hold of them is a legal hit or miss. But peptides remain incredibly popular despite the gray market. And there’s one that’s \u003cem>really\u003c/em> blown up this summer: Melanotan II. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cbr>[Clip from Youtube User @SpaandTell]\u003cbr>Kylie says hi Kim your tan looks great. Thank you! I’ve been using the melanotan II peptide over the last month, and I’ve been going outside, and it’s been working like a charm, so excited. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>MT-2 for short — also known as “The Barbie peptide” or “the vacation drug.” It makes you tan, skinny, and horny (it’s a libido booster) — with no harmful UV exposure required. But Dr. Grewal says it also comes with legitimately concerning risks. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal: \u003c/strong>It’s pretty scary and it’s very sad, you know, when, um, people are chasing aesthetic goals and are being misdirected and exposing themselves to unknown risks or known risks, not only in the moment, but for future and forever forward, right? Some of these impacts have long-lasting effects.\u003cs>\u003cbr>\u003c/s>\u003cs>\u003cbr>\u003c/s>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Today, we’re diving into the world of peptides: the dangers of tanmaxxing despite the influencer promotion, and RFK Jr’s crusade to reverse the peptide bans in the U.S. What does the peptide craze say about Americans’ relationship with health and risk? Let’s jump in. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We’re starting with a new tab. What is melanotan?\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I’m part of a few weddings this year, and I wanted to look a little more sunkissed. But I’m inside like, all the time, and I have no interest in tanning beds because I don’t want to wrinkle. Again, vain! Sorry! So I started looking into self tanners. I looked up a few beauty influencers who reviewed tanning lotions … and that’s when my feed was inundated with people\u003cs> \u003c/s>recommending this miracle drug: MT-2.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from Instagram user @toxdaddy]\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Oh man, I’m super excited. I just got Melanotan 2 this morning and I’m really excited to try it.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from TikTok user @carlysnaxwell]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>I started taking MT2. I’m tan. I haven’t gone bed tanning in a while… \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from TikTok user @itsdevync]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>I’m now at two months of taking it. I’m obsessed. My tan is only getting better … \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from Youtube user@SpaandTell]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>I am crazy impressed by this – by this, I mean, the Melanotan 2 peptide.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong> And it’s not just the tan that makes it so appealing. Dr. Grewal says Melanotan II also has some specific side effects…\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal: \u003c/strong> It’s marketed as the Barbie peptide because tanning might be the effect that you’re shopping for, but it’s not the only effect and some of them can translate into, um, increased libido or decreased appetite. \u003cs>\u003cbr>\u003c/s>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>How does it do all that? Well, let’s talk about how peptides work. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Again, peptides are the chemical signals for your body to perform certain functions. Your body has tons of receptors, and peptides can target specific ones, almost like sending a text to a specific phone number. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal: \u003c/strong>You can think about two kinds, like natural versus synthetic. So our body makes peptides naturally. Some common examples would be like insulin or GLP-1. And synthetically, you know, we can create, uh, synthetic peptides to mimic those that are made naturally in the body to get a specific effect\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Melanotan I and Melanotan II are synthetic peptides that…\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> …mimic a naturally occurring peptide in the body called alpha-MSH or melanocyte-stimulating hormone. And so there are receptors that are in numerous places in the body called melanocortin receptors that can respond to this signal or chain of events.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>There are five types of melanocortin receptors in the body. The first regulates hair and skin pigmentation, and it’s what triggers tans. And it’s also really important to understand what getting tan \u003cem>really\u003c/em> means for your body. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest, Dr. Caren Campbell:\u003c/strong> It’s literally your nucleus and your cell saying, “Oh my God, save my DNA.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung : \u003c/strong>This is Dr. Caren Campbell, a board certified dermatologist who practices medical, surgical, and cosmetic dermatology in San Francisco. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Caren Campbell: \u003c/strong>You know, it’s putting an umbrella over it. Your cell is saying, like, “Help me. Protect my DNA so I don’t mutate and cause cancer.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That little umbrella is called eumelanin, and it produces brown and black pigments in the body. It’s what causes darker colors in skin, eyes, and hair. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So Melanotan I sends a text to that first melanocortin receptor, which tells your cells to pop their little umbrellas up to protect their DNA … which is what triggers a tan, without actual UV exposure. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Melanotan I is actually FDA-approved for a very, very specific, very rare skin condition that causes extreme sensitivity to light.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> Erythropoietic protoporphyria\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Or EPP for short. It’s actually so rare that Dr. Grewal has never seen the condition in her medical career. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> Its incidence has been estimated at two to five cases per million people. You would know if you had this because you have symptoms when you’re a young child. Children have very severe, painful, uh, photosensitivity after exposure to sunlight or even visible light, which can come from even indoor lights, laptop screens.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>EPP causes extreme swelling, burning, and pain when exposed to certain light. So the FDA approved a prescription implant of Melanotan I for people with EPP, which stimulates their bodies to produce eumelanin. These little cell umbrellas absorb that light before it can damage their skin. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Now, Melanotan II, which is the hot one right now, sends a group text to that first receptor. But remember, there are \u003cem>5\u003c/em> melanocortin receptors in the body. So it’s also sending that text to receptors three, four, and five as well. And these aren’t just in the skin. They’re all over the body, including in the central nervous system, which is why MT-2 can cause appetite suppression and boost libido. And because these receptors are all over the body, MT-2 can also cause unpredictable systemic changes … with unpleasant and even dangerous symptoms. Here’s Dr. Campbell again. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Caren Campbell:\u003c/strong> In men, that can lead to potentially what’s called priapism, which is where you have an erection that, you know, doesn’t go away, and there was a, a case report of someone needing to have that surgically drained in the emergency room.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Um, it, it also can cause nausea and vomiting. It’s also stimulates our sympathetic nervous system, which you can think about that like your fight or flight. So anything you needed to, like, run away from a predator, it does. So it dilates your pupils so you can see better.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>It causes, you know, increased heart rate so you can get running. It causes hypertension ’cause it constricts your blood vessels. Um, so that fight or flight response can be elevated and you can get what’s called rhabdomyolysis, which is where you get muscle breakdown, and it can be very dangerous, um, life-threatening.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So those side effects are pretty rough. But Dr. Grewal says there’s also this main one … \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> We have seen reports of patients like breaking out in moles, for example, and breaking out in atypical or what we call funky looking moles, right? \u003cs>\u003cbr>\u003c/s>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from TikTok user @\u003c/em>cablequeencourt]\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>Let’s count how many moles we have on our face since taking MT2. So this one’s new. This is new …Yeah, um, and that’s not including what’s going on on my body….\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Moles are clusters of melanocytes, the skin cells that make pigment. Most are totally benign. But like Dr. Grewal said, Melanotan moles are … funky.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> Because it’s stimulating the same pathway that can eventually lead to melanoma. And again, we don’t have causation yet, but we do not have long-term data. And so why would you subject yourself to that risk when you can use other methods to tan the skin safely without breaking out in moles? And the moles are not just darker, the moles, like, look concerning. They, they often have atypical features.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Those little cell umbrellas can only protect so much. And if you’re exposing them to harmful UV rays over and over again, they can mutate and become cancerous. One of the ways dermatologists evaluate moles for cancer is by checking if they’ve evolved — if they’re getting bigger, darker, and wonkier. This isn’t as much of a concern for patients who are prescribed MT-1 for EPP, since they’re generally not engaging in risky behavior that causes additional UV damage — like intentionally tanning. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But when it comes to the tanmaxxers … \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from Instagram user @sooshbrah]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>This is 2021, 2022, I was doing 500 micrograms of Melanotan and I was jumping in the tanning bed for 15 minutes. I literally changed race in like three sessions. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Caren Campbell:\u003c/strong> I can’t say for certain that, you know, melanotan causes melanoma. But we do know based on what are, again, called case [00:23:00] reports, where we don’t have large numbers, but we have good evidence of people who’ve started melanotan and then as soon as two weeks noticed almost immediate darkening and irregularity of their moles.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Dr. Campbell said that in this case report, one of the patients had used tanning beds and melanotan at the same time, and had five new moles biopsied. All five were cancerous. And there aren’t many clinical studies on the effects of long-term melanotan use, in a broad population of users who don’t have EPP. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Melanotan II was actually developed in the late 80s to early 90s, and in the early 2000s, researchers began testing it to treat sexual dysfunction. But Dr. Grewal says there’s a reason it never made it to market. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> Usually when a peptide or any product is on its way to becoming a drug, it goes through rigorous testing, and pharmaceuticals would love to sell it because they’re gonna profit immensely. So usually when it drops off the track, it’s because either it’s not providing the results that they’re hoping for or the safety is not promising\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Despite that, both MT-1 and MT-2 are still wildly popular on the gray market, as both a nasal spray and an injectable. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal: \u003c/strong>Unfortunately I am not surprised because, you know, the story of wanting tanner skin is a story we’ve heard before. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Um, you know, first it was tanning beds, now we know how dangerous those are in terms of increasing melanoma risk even with one use, you know, before the age of 30. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And as is the case with many unregulated, technically illegal peptides, vendors can sell them around the US thanks to a handy loophole: the “Research Use Only” pathway. Essentially saying, this product legally isn’t for human consumption, with no quality guarantee or regulatory oversight. But there’s really nothing that can stop buyers from using it on themselves. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> You have to remember that when it’s not FDA regulated, you really have no idea what’s in the bottle. What you’re getting in your bottle is like a crapshoot. So, you know, and historically we’ve seen issues with, um, sterility of products, contamination with unregulated products, and the concentration and the purity is also unknown.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So that alone is like a huge reason why I would never advise anyone to take a non FDA-approved medication, whether or not it’s a peptide, you know?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So knowing all of these risks, both healthwise and lookswise, why are people bent on taking Melanotan? And this is just one of many unregulated, very popular peptides! What’s driving the peptide boom in spite of medical experts’ warnings?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>That is a whole new tab… for after this quick break. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But first, we wanted to remind you that Close All Tabs depends on listeners like you! To become a member and support the show, go to donate dot kqed dot org slash podcasts. Ok, after the break: we’re diving into medical libertarianism. Stick around.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Welcome back! Time to open a new tab. Peptides and medical libertarianism. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>RFK Jr, the vaccine denier and guy in charge of our entire country’s health department, is also a pep pusher. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[RFK Jr. speaking on the Joe Rogan Podcast]\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003cem>Yeah I mean I’m a big fan of peptides. I’ve used them myself. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That was RFK Jr on Joe Rogan’s podcast earlier this year, where he spoke about the proliferation of unregulated peptides. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[RFK Jr. speaking on the Joe Rogan Podcast]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>A black market came out and the black market is run by companies that say they’re making the peptides for animal use or research purposes. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> So basically when you buy peptides online you don’t have any guarantees about the safety and the quality of what you’re buying. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That’s Sarah Todd, a reporter at STAT News. She covers the business of health, which means she’s also been following the gray market peptide industry. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> New York Magazine had a bunch of peptides tested and found that about a third of them were mislabeled or under or overdosed or contaminated by bacteria. So those are all some of the potential health risks that you run into when you’re getting them off the gray and black market.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>But that hasn’t diminished people’s appetite for peptides. Sarah says this all falls in line with a concept called “medical libertarianism” — the idea that we should be allowed to do whatever we want with our bodies regardless of what the government or medical establishment says.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> And that extends to taking drugs like peptides that don’t have a lot of data behind them when it comes to their impacts on humans, either their benefits or their potential risks. But the idea with medical libertarianism is, like, that’s my choice, and if I’m willing to put my body on the line for the hopeful benefits that I can get, then I should be able to do so.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>It’s a very American mindset. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> It really goes along with this sort of all-American idea that we can control our own destinies and make our own choices, right? And a sort of suspicion about the government’s role in overseeing people’s lives, a desire to, you know, ward off the idea of the nanny state and the idea that people should be able to chase their own pursuit of happiness and the American dream.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And if that includes self-optimizing your body and your health, then that’s something that people should be allowed to do, would be the argument that these people are making.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Americans have always had this attitude about health. In the 1970s, there was a huge backlash from the public when the government tried to regulate vitamin and supplement industries…\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> People wrote in and said, “Don’t take my vitamins away, “ and we wound up with the situation that we have today, where they’re still many people would argue, uh, largely unregulated or very under-regulated. I think that people really wanted to hold on to these kinds of products. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>There have been ebbs and flows to medical libertarianism throughout modern American history. And then the COVID 19 pandemic hit.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> People started self-experimenting with all kinds of things, like everything from ivermectin, which you m- may remember, to some sort of herbal medicines.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> On one hand, you had a lot of interest in sort of like experimentation with drugs to see what you could do to improve your own health, protect yourself potentially from COVID in various ways. We also saw a big boom in the rise of social media health influencers, health and wellness influencers during this time as well, and I think that has played a huge role.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Many of the sort of man-fluencers like Joe Rogan and, and Gary Brecka and Andrew Huberman were already popular pre-pandemic, but sort of like became even more so, gained huge followings during, and I think that that’s had a lot to do with the sort of rising awareness of peptides and interest in trying them.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>People started taking this “folk pharmacology” approach to medicine. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> So that term folk pharmacology was mentioned by a researcher I spoke with for a story.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>His name is Luke Turnock, and he talked about how first it sort of started, uh, with peptides in the gym, with bodybuilders and powerlifters sort of sharing, like, “Oh, this, this drug is really helping me recover from this industry. This drug is making me stronger.” But he applies that to the way that people talk about peptides in online spaces and forums as well, where people are generally a lot more likely to believe somebody else on a Reddit forum than they might be to listen to a researcher who’s telling them there’s not enough data to support taking these drugs.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I think it, it has to do with some of the decline of trust in science, and then it also has to do with the sort of, like, just stock that we put in recommendations from other people who we perceive as regular people, whether that’s, like, you know, somebody telling us, like, “Oh, I love this vacuum,” or in this case, “I love my Wolverine stack,” you know?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The Make American Healthy Again movement is also pretty staunchly anti-vaccine. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> When I first started thinking about this, I was like, “This seems like a huge contradiction.” I didn’t understand why the MAHA movement would be so skeptical toward vaccines and yet really welcoming toward peptides. But I think it comes back to what we were talking about with medical libertarianism.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>A lot of the MAHA people don’t necessarily want nobody to get vaccines. They say they are more wary of certain vaccine mandates. So there the idea again is like, “Don’t tell me what to do with my own body. It should be my choice whether or not I take it.” Peptides, again, they’re saying they don’t want everybody to have to take peptides.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>They just wanna be able to take peptides if they want to. So that’s where it all sort of begins to make sense in an overall worldview.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And this brand of medical libertarianism is applied pretty inconsistently. RFK Jr’s MAHA agenda is actively restricting access to trans healthcare, birth control, and abortion — issues that revolve around bodily autonomy. But when it comes to peptides? They believe the government should be hands-off. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>It goes back to a Biden-era decision.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> So back in 2023, the Biden administration moved a bunch of peptides into a different category. That meant that compounding pharmacies could no longer produce them, and their reasons were basically, you know, what we’ve been talking about the typical warnings that we get from the medical community, that these drugs haven’t been studied enough to be able to say definitively that they are either going to do what they promise they’ll do or that they won’t cause some other big problem like cancer as well.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So that was the reason for moving over the classification. Now what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is looking to do is to reclassify some of those peptides so the compounding pharmacies can indeed begin producing them again.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Which means that they can be legally produced in the US, under \u003cem>some\u003c/em> regulatory oversight — unlike the facilities that are producing gray market peptides now. Compounding pharmacies at least have to be licensed and routinely inspected through state pharmacy boards. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>RFK JR. has been on this crusade to get the FDA to lift this Biden-era peptide ban — which he talked about on that same Joe Rogan podcast episode.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> He basically said that he is a fan of peptides. He wants to make them more accessible via compounding pharmacies. Uh, but the reason he says is not necessarily he understands that not all the science and data is out there on peptides yet, but he says that it’s gonna be safer for people to get them from compounding pharmacies than to get them off the gray and black market, and that’s sort of his logic for, for why it would make sense to, to reclassify them.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And that is a new tab. Are peptides legal now? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>I\u003c/strong>t’s complicated. We’re gonna start by explaining different kinds of pharmacies. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, typical pharmacies make and dispense FDA-approved drugs. There are the retail pharmacies that sell over-the-counter allergy meds or fill your prescriptions for blood pressure pills. There are specialty pharmacies that manage medications for very rare, highly complex health conditions, which might require stricter protocols for handling, storing, and administering meds. Both of these types of pharmacies mainly deal with medications that have already been manufactured. The pharmacy makes sure they’re giving patients the right dosage and right amount of pre-made meds. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Now, compounding pharmacies mix the medications themselves. There are lots of reasons why people use them: maybe the commercial version of the drug includes ingredients they’re allergic to, or maybe they need a cream, not a gel. Maybe the only way to get the right dosage is by getting a custom mix. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> Sometimes there are drug shortages, and compounding pharmacies can be an alternative as well then because they can custom make a particular drug that maybe, uh, isn’t available at the moment. It might also be, as was the case with GLP-1 weight loss drugs, uh, compounding pharmacies were making a lot of, uh, GLP-1 drugs that were alternatives to the more expensive ones, like Ozempic and Wegovy, and the idea h- here was, like, you sacrifice the sort of name brand, uh, aspect, but then you, you could get the, the drugs that would have, hopefully, the same effects for cheaper.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So that’s another reason why people might turn to compounding pharmacies as well.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>In recent years, compounding pharmacies have become wildly lucrative, thanks to the rise of for-profit telehealth. A lot of telehealth companies have in-house compounding pharmacies, and they sell all kinds of prescription meds: personalized topical creams with Tretinoin and Niacinamide for acne, chewable tablets of Finasteride and Minoxidil for hair loss, low-dose Vardenafil for erectile dysfunction, custom-mixed hormone replacement suppositories for menopause, and now, compounded GLP-1s for weight loss. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Compounding pharmacies can legally make anything … as long the ingredients they’re working are good with the FDA. The final product doesn’t have to be FDA-approved.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> The drugs that a compounding pharmacy makes do not necessarily have to have been authorized by the FDA. Um, as long as, you know, they have a prescription for that drug from a healthcare provider, they will, will produce the drugs. And then there’s certain, uh, substances that they’re not allowed to make, such as the peptides that are currently on the 503B substances list. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>There are 19 peptides on that 503B substances list, including Melanotan II. Earlier this year, the FDA announced that they were going to consider reclassifying \u003cem>some\u003c/em> of those banned peptides. This is not the same as FDA approval. They haven’t gone through clinical trials that guarantee safety or efficacy, and the FDA doesn’t verify the quality before they hit the market. But if they are reclassified, that means that compounding pharmacies are allowed to make and distribute medications that contain them. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> The argument that was probably most common from the people on the side of making peptides more accessible via compounding pharmacies was that it’s true that we don’t have all the data yet, and we do need more of it. However, we really don’t want people getting these drugs off the gray and black market because of the other health risks, you know, the risks of contamination, the risk of mislabeled drugs where you think that you’re getting one thing, you’re actually getting something else. And they basically said patients are demanding these drugs and we should make sure that if they’re going to take them, they’re taking it the safest way they can.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> In other words, it’s better to have Americans sourcing their peptides from regulated facilities, rather than overseas labs that may not be held to the same standards of sterility and quality.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In July, an FDA advisory panel met to discuss whether or not to recommend reclassification for seven peptides.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> The advisory panel itself was really controversial. So this is a group of people who aren’t members of the FDA themselves, and the FDA doesn’t have to follow their recommendations, but typically, their recommendations carry a lot of weight, and typically, an advisory panel is made up of doctors, researchers, other experts in their field.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In this case the people who were appointed to the panel, a lot of them were people who had some sort of potential conflict of interest or stake in the outcome of the decision on peptides, people who are prescribing peptides themselves, people who are you know, affiliated with compounding pharmacies in some way.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So that immediately raised a lot of red flags for critics who said, “How can we trust the advice of an advisory panel if it’s people who would potentially stand to profit from what the outcome is?”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The pro-peptide crowd on the panel pointed out that patients are demanding these drugs, and that \u003cem>some \u003c/em>regulatory oversight is better than continuing to allow Americans to get their peptides from sketchy overseas labs. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd: \u003c/strong>Then the counterargument from the medical experts is basically that there, again, simply isn’t enough human data on these drugs. There’s a lot of concern about what it would mean to make it easier for people to take these drugs that are indeed in high demand but that we simply don’t know what kinds of short or long-term health effects they might have.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And there have been cases of people reporting getting sick, having injuries from peptide doses. So, you know there are real concerns about what should be done in order to monitor peptides better and make sure that they’re safe. And you could hear a lot of frustration from the medical experts who were on the advisory panel as each vote on each separate drug went down.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>They vote on each drug individually, so as they started seeing what was going to happen of those seven drugs, six got recommended to be reclassified so that compounding pharmacies could make them. So a lot of frustration from the medical experts saying like,’Once again, we don’t know enough about how these drugs will impact people. We’re really worried that this is gonna be dangerous and put people’s health and potentially even their lives at risk.’ And then they were outnumbered on the panel by the, the people who were affiliated with the peptide industry or prescription in some way.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And this is where it gets really dicey. Before the advisory panel met, the FDA itself came out and said, hey, we say no to allowing compounding pharmacies to make any of these peptides. This was a decision made by multiple FDA staff scientists. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> And that was directly in conflict with the outcome of the meeting, which said six out of these seven peptides, they do recommend changing classifications.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Advisory panels rarely go against the FDA staff recommendation. According to reports of that meeting, after the votes were tallied and the recommendation was announced, an audible gasp rippled through the room. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd: \u003c/strong>So with that, it’s gonna be really interesting to see now what happens. The ultimate decision is up to the FDA. So normally, it would be even if the advisory panel had recommended against, if FDA staffers felt really strongly, they could do whatever they felt was right but Robert F. Kennedy Jr., of course, is the head of the health department. He has a lot of power and influence, and I think a lot of outside observers are betting that even if FDA staff don’t think that this change should be made, that Kennedy may push it through which would obviously be quite bad for FDA morale as well.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Who will benefit from this decision? Well, like we talked about earlier, the telehealth industry and their in-house compounding pharmacies make a TON of money. And now they stand to make even more. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> When you have people on the panel who it’s clear to see how they’re seeing a lot of patient demand. If they’re able to provide more prescriptions to patients for peptides, that is good for their business.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>For the compounding pharmacies, it’s certainly huge for their bottom line. Hims and Hers announced that they’re looking to start offering peptides this year. Noom has also moved to start offering peptides. They purchased a compounding pharmacy business. So there are a lot of companies that certainly see an upside to giving into demand.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But as one of the people who I spoke with pointed out, simply because people want drugs isn’t a good reason to authorize them, and simply because we don’t want them to get it off the gray market. If that were the case, then we would legalize heroin, which indeed actually some libertarians think we should, but which the majority of people think that there are good reasons to not do such a thing.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong> so given the FDA’s, uh, I guess, like despite their tensions, um, what does the future of peptide stacking look like now?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> For people who are enthusiastic about peptides, I think the future is bright in the sense of them being able to access them. I think it looks like more and more likely that there’s going to be a lot of regulatory interest under Kennedy as long as he’s in power in making these products more accessible.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I think that in terms of what the future looks like from a health perspective, the reality is that we simply don’t know, and that’s kind of scary. We don’t know what kind of effects these are going to have, and we don’t really right now have a robust way of monitoring or surveying for those effects either.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So what you would really wanna see are clinical trials that are studying people who are taking peptides and researching those outcomes, and that is one thing that we don’t currently have right now. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>But again, a recommendation isn’t the same as FDA approval. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> Just because this, uh, the panel has said this, that doesn’t mean that compounding pharmacies now have the go-ahead to start producing them. The final decision is up to the FDA and the FDA rulemaking. I believe that outside experts think that process could take up to a year, so it’s not something that we would expect to see immediately happening.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>What about Melanotan II? Unfortunately for the tanmaxxers, the Barbie pep was not included in this latest list of panel recommendations. But it will get its moment soon: The FDA is slated to evaluate Melanotan II and four more peptides for reclassification early next year. \u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>That doesn’t mean it’s hard to get a hold of now, though. When I searched “Melanotan II near me,” I found dozens of medical spas across LA that advertise it as part of their “peptide therapy.” For $95, I could drive over to Beverly Hills and pick up a 5 mL vial at a clinic, or $150, I could get it delivered! Mobile IV clinics also offer it as an add-on to their on-demand IV services, so I could get my tan on, get a whole GLOW stack injected, and get a hangover cure administered at the same time, in my own living room! It’s like doordash for peptides! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Though, Dr. Grewal does not find that as amusing as I do. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> My gut reaction is honestly mortified, terrified, but also not surprised. And again, it just really brings me back to the point of, you know, the body is really complicated and medicine is complicated.I think the most important thing is that you research the person that is endorsing a specific product or, um, or approach, right? So, like, I love that people research, but I would really encourage, and I’m an advocate of spending the most time researching your source, who you’re going to assign as being credible\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>As much as I love my skincare routine and gratuitous pursuit of beauty, I personally will be staying clear of the Barbie peptide. A little gradual tanning lotion and my trusty tanning mitt has never done me wrong. Plus, I don’t have to worry about breaking out into funky looking moles! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Ok, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cbr>Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This episode was produced by Cayla Mihalovich and Maya Cueva. It was edited by Chris Hambrick. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The Close All Tabs team also includes senior editor Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music, and audio engineer Brendan Willard. Our intern is Lauren Yoon. Additional music by APM.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is Executive Director of Podcasts, and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\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\n\n\n\u003cp>This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran, and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches. Thanks for listening. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This episode includes clips from TikTok creators carlysnaxwell, itsdevnyc, and cablequeencourt, clips from the Instagram accounts ToxDaddy and sooshbrah, and YouTube clips from SpaAndTell and Joe Rogan Experience.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Thanks for listening! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I mean, my ‘foryou’ page every day it’s like, “Who’s on Glow? Who’s on the Glow stack or the Barbie stack?” Like you can’t escape it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> Yeah, all over.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Seems like everywhere you turn these days, influencers are gushing about their peptide use and how it’s done wonders for their appearance and health. One of the more popular ones, Melanotan II, also known as the “Barbie” peptide, is said to give you a tan without the harmful effects of sun exposure. But many of these substances aren’t approved by the FDA and are often sold through unregulated gray market sources. So, how safe is any of this stuff? And what does the peptide boom tell us about the risks people will take in the name of “looksmaxxing?” Morgan talks to skin cancer surgeon Dr. Sungat Grewal and board certified dermatologist Dr. Caren Campbell about the risks of taking peptides. Then Morgan and STAT News reporter Sarah Todd break down how American medical libertarianism and the MAHA movement led us to this very point in time. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Seems like everywhere you turn these days, influencers are gushing about their peptide use and how it’s done wonders for their appearance and health. One of the more popular ones, Melanotan II, also known as the “Barbie” peptide, is said to give you a tan without the harmful effects of sun exposure. But many of these substances aren’t approved by the FDA and are often sold through unregulated gray market sources. So, how safe is any of this stuff? And what does the peptide boom tell us about the risks people will take in the name of “looksmaxxing?” Morgan talks to skin cancer surgeon Dr. Sungat Grewal and board certified dermatologist Dr. Caren Campbell about the risks of taking peptides. Then Morgan and STAT News reporter Sarah Todd break down how American medical libertarianism and the MAHA movement led us to this very point in time. \u003c/p>\n"
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"What the peptide craze reveals about Americans’ relationship with risk — Sarah Todd, STAT News",
"FDA advisory panel narrowly rejects compounding of one peptide, backs two others — Lizzy Lawrence and Sarah Todd, STAT News",
"FDA panel backs compounded BPC-157, KPV peptides in win for RFK Jr. — Sarah Todd and Lizzy Lawrence, STAT News",
"What the peptide craze reveals about Americans’ relationship with risk — Sarah Todd, STAT News",
"Is Tanmaxxing an Addiction? A Dermatologist and Psychologist Explains — Katie Berohn, ELLE",
"Inside the Weird New World of Peptide Tanning — Savannah Sobrevilla, GQ ",
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"The FDA May Reverse a Ban on 14 Injectable Peptides—What That Means For the Beauty Industry — Kara Nesvig, Allure",
"The Skin Cancer Foundation Issues Warning Regarding Melanotan II — Deborah S. Sarnoff, MD, Skin Cancer Foundation"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/live-well/longevity/story/tanning-peptides-melanotan-vyleesi-pt141\">Inside the Viral Tanning Peptide That Accidentally Created Vyleesi’s FDA-Approved Low Sex Drive Drug\u003c/a> — Sara Kitnick, \u003cem>LA Times Studios\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n",
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"\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/live-well/longevity/story/tanning-peptides-melanotan-vyleesi-pt141\">Inside the Viral Tanning Peptide That Accidentally Created Vyleesi’s FDA-Approved Low Sex Drive Drug\u003c/a> — Sara Kitnick, \u003cem>LA Times Studios\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.allure.com/story/fda-peptide-ban-reversal\">The FDA May Reverse a Ban on 14 Injectable Peptides—What That Means For the Beauty Industry\u003c/a> — Kara Nesvig, \u003cem>Allure\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n",
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"\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.allure.com/story/fda-peptide-ban-reversal\">The FDA May Reverse a Ban on 14 Injectable Peptides—What That Means For the Beauty Industry\u003c/a> — Kara Nesvig, \u003cem>Allure\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.skincancer.org/press/the-skin-cancer-foundation-issues-warning-regarding-melanotan-ii/\">The Skin Cancer Foundation Issues Warning Regarding Melanotan II\u003c/a> — Deborah S. Sarnoff, MD, \u003cem>Skin Cancer Foundation\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n",
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"\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.skincancer.org/press/the-skin-cancer-foundation-issues-warning-regarding-melanotan-ii/\">The Skin Cancer Foundation Issues Warning Regarding Melanotan II\u003c/a> — Deborah S. Sarnoff, MD, \u003cem>Skin Cancer Foundation\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\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",
"innerContent": [
"\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"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Host, Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hello! Do you like these deep dives? Do you want more? Then please rate and review Close All Tabs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show! And tell your friends! Post about it! On Instagram, Bluesky, X, Discord, Reddit, the comments of whatever random recipe blog you start arguments in. Basically, it would be a huge help to get the word out. Ok, let’s get to the show.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Host, Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hello! Do you like these deep dives? Do you want more? Then please rate and review Close All Tabs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show! And tell your friends! Post about it! On Instagram, Bluesky, X, Discord, Reddit, the comments of whatever random recipe blog you start arguments in. Basically, it would be a huge help to get the word out. Ok, let’s get to the show.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Can I be honest? I am pretty vain.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Can I be honest? I am pretty vain.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>I take my skincare routine very seriously: Prescription-strength azelaic acid in the morning, and prescription-strength tretinoin at night. Lots of sunscreen and moisturizer and barrier creams in between, and every other night, I skip the tretinoin and spend three minutes under a red light mask. If I’m feeling indulgent, I’ll throw in a Korean gel mask and a jade roller. Do those do anything? I honestly can’t tell. But it feels nice! \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>I take my skincare routine very seriously: Prescription-strength azelaic acid in the morning, and prescription-strength tretinoin at night. Lots of sunscreen and moisturizer and barrier creams in between, and every other night, I skip the tretinoin and spend three minutes under a red light mask. If I’m feeling indulgent, I’ll throw in a Korean gel mask and a jade roller. Do those do anything? I honestly can’t tell. But it feels nice! \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>I wouldn’t call myself a looksmaxxer, but I do spend a good amount of time on these beautification rituals. And as a woman who exists on the internet, I feel like my For You Page is constantly lobbing beauty trends at me, and like I’m always trying to avoid getting sucked into yet another fad. I have tried so many serums and face masks and supplements before finally settling into what I consider to be a pretty pared down beauty regiment. But the one thing I haven’t tried yet is a peptide. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>I wouldn’t call myself a looksmaxxer, but I do spend a good amount of time on these beautification rituals. And as a woman who exists on the internet, I feel like my For You Page is constantly lobbing beauty trends at me, and like I’m always trying to avoid getting sucked into yet another fad. I have tried so many serums and face masks and supplements before finally settling into what I consider to be a pretty pared down beauty regiment. But the one thing I haven’t tried yet is a peptide. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>It seems like everyone is on them. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>It seems like everyone is on them. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clips of influencers raving about peptides]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>Speaker 1: This is, in my opinion, the most slept-on peptide on the market today. There’s two main benefits that have been life-changing for me . \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clips of influencers raving about peptides]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>Speaker 1: This is, in my opinion, the most slept-on peptide on the market today. There’s two main benefits that have been life-changing for me . \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 2: You’re telling me there’s a botox alternative that’s easier on your wallet? Whoa! Let’s talk about Snap-8, the peptide that targets wrinkles without the needles. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 2: You’re telling me there’s a botox alternative that’s easier on your wallet? Whoa! Let’s talk about Snap-8, the peptide that targets wrinkles without the needles. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Peptides are chemical signals that your body naturally makes to regulate all kinds of bodily functions, like digestion and recovery. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Peptides are chemical signals that your body naturally makes to regulate all kinds of bodily functions, like digestion and recovery. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest, Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> So peptides are like text messages. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest, Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> So peptides are like text messages. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Dr. Sungat Grewal is a double board certified dermatologist and skin cancer surgeon. She’s the co-director of Laser Surgery and Cosmetic Dermatology at UCSF. And she’s been keeping an eye on the synthetic peptides people are taking to boost their bodies’ natural processes. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Dr. Sungat Grewal is a double board certified dermatologist and skin cancer surgeon. She’s the co-director of Laser Surgery and Cosmetic Dermatology at UCSF. And she’s been keeping an eye on the synthetic peptides people are taking to boost their bodies’ natural processes. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal: \u003c/strong>They’re not necessarily good or bad inherently, but it depends on who’s sending the message, what the message is, and who receives it. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal: \u003c/strong>They’re not necessarily good or bad inherently, but it depends on who’s sending the message, what the message is, and who receives it. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And I’m not just talking about GLP-1s. Peptide stacking is really in right now. Retatrutide and Tesamorelin for weight loss, Ipamorelin for muscle growth, the “Wolverine Stack” of BPC-157 and TB-500 to boost healing after a gym sesh. If you throw in the copper peptide GHK-Cu, you’ve got a “Glow Stack,” the hot girl combo optimized for anti-aging collagen production. It’s a lot, right? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And I’m not just talking about GLP-1s. Peptide stacking is really in right now. Retatrutide and Tesamorelin for weight loss, Ipamorelin for muscle growth, the “Wolverine Stack” of BPC-157 and TB-500 to boost healing after a gym sesh. If you throw in the copper peptide GHK-Cu, you’ve got a “Glow Stack,” the hot girl combo optimized for anti-aging collagen production. It’s a lot, right? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Some of these compounds are not cleared by the FDA, so the way people get a hold of them is a legal hit or miss. But peptides remain incredibly popular despite the gray market. And there’s one that’s \u003cem>really\u003c/em> blown up this summer: Melanotan II. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Some of these compounds are not cleared by the FDA, so the way people get a hold of them is a legal hit or miss. But peptides remain incredibly popular despite the gray market. And there’s one that’s \u003cem>really\u003c/em> blown up this summer: Melanotan II. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cbr>[Clip from Youtube User @SpaandTell]\u003cbr>Kylie says hi Kim your tan looks great. Thank you! I’ve been using the melanotan II peptide over the last month, and I’ve been going outside, and it’s been working like a charm, so excited. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cbr>[Clip from Youtube User @SpaandTell]\u003cbr>Kylie says hi Kim your tan looks great. Thank you! I’ve been using the melanotan II peptide over the last month, and I’ve been going outside, and it’s been working like a charm, so excited. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>MT-2 for short — also known as “The Barbie peptide” or “the vacation drug.” It makes you tan, skinny, and horny (it’s a libido booster) — with no harmful UV exposure required. But Dr. Grewal says it also comes with legitimately concerning risks. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>MT-2 for short — also known as “The Barbie peptide” or “the vacation drug.” It makes you tan, skinny, and horny (it’s a libido booster) — with no harmful UV exposure required. But Dr. Grewal says it also comes with legitimately concerning risks. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal: \u003c/strong>It’s pretty scary and it’s very sad, you know, when, um, people are chasing aesthetic goals and are being misdirected and exposing themselves to unknown risks or known risks, not only in the moment, but for future and forever forward, right? Some of these impacts have long-lasting effects.\u003cs>\u003cbr>\u003c/s>\u003cs>\u003cbr>\u003c/s>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Today, we’re diving into the world of peptides: the dangers of tanmaxxing despite the influencer promotion, and RFK Jr’s crusade to reverse the peptide bans in the U.S. What does the peptide craze say about Americans’ relationship with health and risk? Let’s jump in. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal: \u003c/strong>It’s pretty scary and it’s very sad, you know, when, um, people are chasing aesthetic goals and are being misdirected and exposing themselves to unknown risks or known risks, not only in the moment, but for future and forever forward, right? Some of these impacts have long-lasting effects.\u003cs>\u003cbr>\u003c/s>\u003cs>\u003cbr>\u003c/s>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Today, we’re diving into the world of peptides: the dangers of tanmaxxing despite the influencer promotion, and RFK Jr’s crusade to reverse the peptide bans in the U.S. What does the peptide craze say about Americans’ relationship with health and risk? Let’s jump in. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>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/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>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/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>We’re starting with a new tab. What is melanotan?\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>We’re starting with a new tab. What is melanotan?\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>I’m part of a few weddings this year, and I wanted to look a little more sunkissed. But I’m inside like, all the time, and I have no interest in tanning beds because I don’t want to wrinkle. Again, vain! Sorry! So I started looking into self tanners. I looked up a few beauty influencers who reviewed tanning lotions … and that’s when my feed was inundated with people\u003cs> \u003c/s>recommending this miracle drug: MT-2.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>I’m part of a few weddings this year, and I wanted to look a little more sunkissed. But I’m inside like, all the time, and I have no interest in tanning beds because I don’t want to wrinkle. Again, vain! Sorry! So I started looking into self tanners. I looked up a few beauty influencers who reviewed tanning lotions … and that’s when my feed was inundated with people\u003cs> \u003c/s>recommending this miracle drug: MT-2.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from Instagram user @toxdaddy]\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from Instagram user @toxdaddy]\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Oh man, I’m super excited. I just got Melanotan 2 this morning and I’m really excited to try it.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Oh man, I’m super excited. I just got Melanotan 2 this morning and I’m really excited to try it.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from TikTok user @carlysnaxwell]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>I started taking MT2. I’m tan. I haven’t gone bed tanning in a while… \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from TikTok user @carlysnaxwell]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>I started taking MT2. I’m tan. I haven’t gone bed tanning in a while… \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from TikTok user @itsdevync]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>I’m now at two months of taking it. I’m obsessed. My tan is only getting better … \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from TikTok user @itsdevync]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>I’m now at two months of taking it. I’m obsessed. My tan is only getting better … \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from Youtube user@SpaandTell]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>I am crazy impressed by this – by this, I mean, the Melanotan 2 peptide.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from Youtube user@SpaandTell]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>I am crazy impressed by this – by this, I mean, the Melanotan 2 peptide.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong> And it’s not just the tan that makes it so appealing. Dr. Grewal says Melanotan II also has some specific side effects…\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong> And it’s not just the tan that makes it so appealing. Dr. Grewal says Melanotan II also has some specific side effects…\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal: \u003c/strong> It’s marketed as the Barbie peptide because tanning might be the effect that you’re shopping for, but it’s not the only effect and some of them can translate into, um, increased libido or decreased appetite. \u003cs>\u003cbr>\u003c/s>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal: \u003c/strong> It’s marketed as the Barbie peptide because tanning might be the effect that you’re shopping for, but it’s not the only effect and some of them can translate into, um, increased libido or decreased appetite. \u003cs>\u003cbr>\u003c/s>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>How does it do all that? Well, let’s talk about how peptides work. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>How does it do all that? Well, let’s talk about how peptides work. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Again, peptides are the chemical signals for your body to perform certain functions. Your body has tons of receptors, and peptides can target specific ones, almost like sending a text to a specific phone number. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Again, peptides are the chemical signals for your body to perform certain functions. Your body has tons of receptors, and peptides can target specific ones, almost like sending a text to a specific phone number. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal: \u003c/strong>You can think about two kinds, like natural versus synthetic. So our body makes peptides naturally. Some common examples would be like insulin or GLP-1. And synthetically, you know, we can create, uh, synthetic peptides to mimic those that are made naturally in the body to get a specific effect\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal: \u003c/strong>You can think about two kinds, like natural versus synthetic. So our body makes peptides naturally. Some common examples would be like insulin or GLP-1. And synthetically, you know, we can create, uh, synthetic peptides to mimic those that are made naturally in the body to get a specific effect\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Melanotan I and Melanotan II are synthetic peptides that…\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Melanotan I and Melanotan II are synthetic peptides that…\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> …mimic a naturally occurring peptide in the body called alpha-MSH or melanocyte-stimulating hormone. And so there are receptors that are in numerous places in the body called melanocortin receptors that can respond to this signal or chain of events.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> …mimic a naturally occurring peptide in the body called alpha-MSH or melanocyte-stimulating hormone. And so there are receptors that are in numerous places in the body called melanocortin receptors that can respond to this signal or chain of events.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>There are five types of melanocortin receptors in the body. The first regulates hair and skin pigmentation, and it’s what triggers tans. And it’s also really important to understand what getting tan \u003cem>really\u003c/em> means for your body. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>There are five types of melanocortin receptors in the body. The first regulates hair and skin pigmentation, and it’s what triggers tans. And it’s also really important to understand what getting tan \u003cem>really\u003c/em> means for your body. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest, Dr. Caren Campbell:\u003c/strong> It’s literally your nucleus and your cell saying, “Oh my God, save my DNA.” \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest, Dr. Caren Campbell:\u003c/strong> It’s literally your nucleus and your cell saying, “Oh my God, save my DNA.” \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung : \u003c/strong>This is Dr. Caren Campbell, a board certified dermatologist who practices medical, surgical, and cosmetic dermatology in San Francisco. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung : \u003c/strong>This is Dr. Caren Campbell, a board certified dermatologist who practices medical, surgical, and cosmetic dermatology in San Francisco. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Caren Campbell: \u003c/strong>You know, it’s putting an umbrella over it. Your cell is saying, like, “Help me. Protect my DNA so I don’t mutate and cause cancer.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Caren Campbell: \u003c/strong>You know, it’s putting an umbrella over it. Your cell is saying, like, “Help me. Protect my DNA so I don’t mutate and cause cancer.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That little umbrella is called eumelanin, and it produces brown and black pigments in the body. It’s what causes darker colors in skin, eyes, and hair. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That little umbrella is called eumelanin, and it produces brown and black pigments in the body. It’s what causes darker colors in skin, eyes, and hair. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So Melanotan I sends a text to that first melanocortin receptor, which tells your cells to pop their little umbrellas up to protect their DNA … which is what triggers a tan, without actual UV exposure. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So Melanotan I sends a text to that first melanocortin receptor, which tells your cells to pop their little umbrellas up to protect their DNA … which is what triggers a tan, without actual UV exposure. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Melanotan I is actually FDA-approved for a very, very specific, very rare skin condition that causes extreme sensitivity to light.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Melanotan I is actually FDA-approved for a very, very specific, very rare skin condition that causes extreme sensitivity to light.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> Erythropoietic protoporphyria\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> Erythropoietic protoporphyria\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Or EPP for short. It’s actually so rare that Dr. Grewal has never seen the condition in her medical career. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Or EPP for short. It’s actually so rare that Dr. Grewal has never seen the condition in her medical career. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> Its incidence has been estimated at two to five cases per million people. You would know if you had this because you have symptoms when you’re a young child. Children have very severe, painful, uh, photosensitivity after exposure to sunlight or even visible light, which can come from even indoor lights, laptop screens.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> Its incidence has been estimated at two to five cases per million people. You would know if you had this because you have symptoms when you’re a young child. Children have very severe, painful, uh, photosensitivity after exposure to sunlight or even visible light, which can come from even indoor lights, laptop screens.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>EPP causes extreme swelling, burning, and pain when exposed to certain light. So the FDA approved a prescription implant of Melanotan I for people with EPP, which stimulates their bodies to produce eumelanin. These little cell umbrellas absorb that light before it can damage their skin. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>EPP causes extreme swelling, burning, and pain when exposed to certain light. So the FDA approved a prescription implant of Melanotan I for people with EPP, which stimulates their bodies to produce eumelanin. These little cell umbrellas absorb that light before it can damage their skin. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Now, Melanotan II, which is the hot one right now, sends a group text to that first receptor. But remember, there are \u003cem>5\u003c/em> melanocortin receptors in the body. So it’s also sending that text to receptors three, four, and five as well. And these aren’t just in the skin. They’re all over the body, including in the central nervous system, which is why MT-2 can cause appetite suppression and boost libido. And because these receptors are all over the body, MT-2 can also cause unpredictable systemic changes … with unpleasant and even dangerous symptoms. Here’s Dr. Campbell again. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Now, Melanotan II, which is the hot one right now, sends a group text to that first receptor. But remember, there are \u003cem>5\u003c/em> melanocortin receptors in the body. So it’s also sending that text to receptors three, four, and five as well. And these aren’t just in the skin. They’re all over the body, including in the central nervous system, which is why MT-2 can cause appetite suppression and boost libido. And because these receptors are all over the body, MT-2 can also cause unpredictable systemic changes … with unpleasant and even dangerous symptoms. Here’s Dr. Campbell again. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Caren Campbell:\u003c/strong> In men, that can lead to potentially what’s called priapism, which is where you have an erection that, you know, doesn’t go away, and there was a, a case report of someone needing to have that surgically drained in the emergency room.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Caren Campbell:\u003c/strong> In men, that can lead to potentially what’s called priapism, which is where you have an erection that, you know, doesn’t go away, and there was a, a case report of someone needing to have that surgically drained in the emergency room.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Um, it, it also can cause nausea and vomiting. It’s also stimulates our sympathetic nervous system, which you can think about that like your fight or flight. So anything you needed to, like, run away from a predator, it does. So it dilates your pupils so you can see better.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Um, it, it also can cause nausea and vomiting. It’s also stimulates our sympathetic nervous system, which you can think about that like your fight or flight. So anything you needed to, like, run away from a predator, it does. So it dilates your pupils so you can see better.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>It causes, you know, increased heart rate so you can get running. It causes hypertension ’cause it constricts your blood vessels. Um, so that fight or flight response can be elevated and you can get what’s called rhabdomyolysis, which is where you get muscle breakdown, and it can be very dangerous, um, life-threatening.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>It causes, you know, increased heart rate so you can get running. It causes hypertension ’cause it constricts your blood vessels. Um, so that fight or flight response can be elevated and you can get what’s called rhabdomyolysis, which is where you get muscle breakdown, and it can be very dangerous, um, life-threatening.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So those side effects are pretty rough. But Dr. Grewal says there’s also this main one … \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So those side effects are pretty rough. But Dr. Grewal says there’s also this main one … \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> We have seen reports of patients like breaking out in moles, for example, and breaking out in atypical or what we call funky looking moles, right? \u003cs>\u003cbr>\u003c/s>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> We have seen reports of patients like breaking out in moles, for example, and breaking out in atypical or what we call funky looking moles, right? \u003cs>\u003cbr>\u003c/s>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from TikTok user @\u003c/em>cablequeencourt]\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>Let’s count how many moles we have on our face since taking MT2. So this one’s new. This is new …Yeah, um, and that’s not including what’s going on on my body….\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from TikTok user @\u003c/em>cablequeencourt]\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>Let’s count how many moles we have on our face since taking MT2. So this one’s new. This is new …Yeah, um, and that’s not including what’s going on on my body….\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Moles are clusters of melanocytes, the skin cells that make pigment. Most are totally benign. But like Dr. Grewal said, Melanotan moles are … funky.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Moles are clusters of melanocytes, the skin cells that make pigment. Most are totally benign. But like Dr. Grewal said, Melanotan moles are … funky.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> Because it’s stimulating the same pathway that can eventually lead to melanoma. And again, we don’t have causation yet, but we do not have long-term data. And so why would you subject yourself to that risk when you can use other methods to tan the skin safely without breaking out in moles? And the moles are not just darker, the moles, like, look concerning. They, they often have atypical features.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> Because it’s stimulating the same pathway that can eventually lead to melanoma. And again, we don’t have causation yet, but we do not have long-term data. And so why would you subject yourself to that risk when you can use other methods to tan the skin safely without breaking out in moles? And the moles are not just darker, the moles, like, look concerning. They, they often have atypical features.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Those little cell umbrellas can only protect so much. And if you’re exposing them to harmful UV rays over and over again, they can mutate and become cancerous. One of the ways dermatologists evaluate moles for cancer is by checking if they’ve evolved — if they’re getting bigger, darker, and wonkier. This isn’t as much of a concern for patients who are prescribed MT-1 for EPP, since they’re generally not engaging in risky behavior that causes additional UV damage — like intentionally tanning. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Those little cell umbrellas can only protect so much. And if you’re exposing them to harmful UV rays over and over again, they can mutate and become cancerous. One of the ways dermatologists evaluate moles for cancer is by checking if they’ve evolved — if they’re getting bigger, darker, and wonkier. This isn’t as much of a concern for patients who are prescribed MT-1 for EPP, since they’re generally not engaging in risky behavior that causes additional UV damage — like intentionally tanning. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But when it comes to the tanmaxxers … \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But when it comes to the tanmaxxers … \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from Instagram user @sooshbrah]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>This is 2021, 2022, I was doing 500 micrograms of Melanotan and I was jumping in the tanning bed for 15 minutes. I literally changed race in like three sessions. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from Instagram user @sooshbrah]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>This is 2021, 2022, I was doing 500 micrograms of Melanotan and I was jumping in the tanning bed for 15 minutes. I literally changed race in like three sessions. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Caren Campbell:\u003c/strong> I can’t say for certain that, you know, melanotan causes melanoma. But we do know based on what are, again, called case [00:23:00] reports, where we don’t have large numbers, but we have good evidence of people who’ve started melanotan and then as soon as two weeks noticed almost immediate darkening and irregularity of their moles.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Caren Campbell:\u003c/strong> I can’t say for certain that, you know, melanotan causes melanoma. But we do know based on what are, again, called case [00:23:00] reports, where we don’t have large numbers, but we have good evidence of people who’ve started melanotan and then as soon as two weeks noticed almost immediate darkening and irregularity of their moles.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Dr. Campbell said that in this case report, one of the patients had used tanning beds and melanotan at the same time, and had five new moles biopsied. All five were cancerous. And there aren’t many clinical studies on the effects of long-term melanotan use, in a broad population of users who don’t have EPP. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Dr. Campbell said that in this case report, one of the patients had used tanning beds and melanotan at the same time, and had five new moles biopsied. All five were cancerous. And there aren’t many clinical studies on the effects of long-term melanotan use, in a broad population of users who don’t have EPP. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Melanotan II was actually developed in the late 80s to early 90s, and in the early 2000s, researchers began testing it to treat sexual dysfunction. But Dr. Grewal says there’s a reason it never made it to market. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Melanotan II was actually developed in the late 80s to early 90s, and in the early 2000s, researchers began testing it to treat sexual dysfunction. But Dr. Grewal says there’s a reason it never made it to market. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> Usually when a peptide or any product is on its way to becoming a drug, it goes through rigorous testing, and pharmaceuticals would love to sell it because they’re gonna profit immensely. So usually when it drops off the track, it’s because either it’s not providing the results that they’re hoping for or the safety is not promising\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> Usually when a peptide or any product is on its way to becoming a drug, it goes through rigorous testing, and pharmaceuticals would love to sell it because they’re gonna profit immensely. So usually when it drops off the track, it’s because either it’s not providing the results that they’re hoping for or the safety is not promising\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Despite that, both MT-1 and MT-2 are still wildly popular on the gray market, as both a nasal spray and an injectable. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Despite that, both MT-1 and MT-2 are still wildly popular on the gray market, as both a nasal spray and an injectable. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal: \u003c/strong>Unfortunately I am not surprised because, you know, the story of wanting tanner skin is a story we’ve heard before. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal: \u003c/strong>Unfortunately I am not surprised because, you know, the story of wanting tanner skin is a story we’ve heard before. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Um, you know, first it was tanning beds, now we know how dangerous those are in terms of increasing melanoma risk even with one use, you know, before the age of 30. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Um, you know, first it was tanning beds, now we know how dangerous those are in terms of increasing melanoma risk even with one use, you know, before the age of 30. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And as is the case with many unregulated, technically illegal peptides, vendors can sell them around the US thanks to a handy loophole: the “Research Use Only” pathway. Essentially saying, this product legally isn’t for human consumption, with no quality guarantee or regulatory oversight. But there’s really nothing that can stop buyers from using it on themselves. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And as is the case with many unregulated, technically illegal peptides, vendors can sell them around the US thanks to a handy loophole: the “Research Use Only” pathway. Essentially saying, this product legally isn’t for human consumption, with no quality guarantee or regulatory oversight. But there’s really nothing that can stop buyers from using it on themselves. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> You have to remember that when it’s not FDA regulated, you really have no idea what’s in the bottle. What you’re getting in your bottle is like a crapshoot. So, you know, and historically we’ve seen issues with, um, sterility of products, contamination with unregulated products, and the concentration and the purity is also unknown.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> You have to remember that when it’s not FDA regulated, you really have no idea what’s in the bottle. What you’re getting in your bottle is like a crapshoot. So, you know, and historically we’ve seen issues with, um, sterility of products, contamination with unregulated products, and the concentration and the purity is also unknown.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So that alone is like a huge reason why I would never advise anyone to take a non FDA-approved medication, whether or not it’s a peptide, you know?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So that alone is like a huge reason why I would never advise anyone to take a non FDA-approved medication, whether or not it’s a peptide, you know?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So knowing all of these risks, both healthwise and lookswise, why are people bent on taking Melanotan? And this is just one of many unregulated, very popular peptides! What’s driving the peptide boom in spite of medical experts’ warnings?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So knowing all of these risks, both healthwise and lookswise, why are people bent on taking Melanotan? And this is just one of many unregulated, very popular peptides! What’s driving the peptide boom in spite of medical experts’ warnings?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>That is a whole new tab… for after this quick break. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>That is a whole new tab… for after this quick break. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But first, we wanted to remind you that Close All Tabs depends on listeners like you! To become a member and support the show, go to donate dot kqed dot org slash podcasts. Ok, after the break: we’re diving into medical libertarianism. Stick around.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But first, we wanted to remind you that Close All Tabs depends on listeners like you! To become a member and support the show, go to donate dot kqed dot org slash podcasts. Ok, after the break: we’re diving into medical libertarianism. Stick around.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Welcome back! Time to open a new tab. Peptides and medical libertarianism. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Welcome back! Time to open a new tab. Peptides and medical libertarianism. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>RFK Jr, the vaccine denier and guy in charge of our entire country’s health department, is also a pep pusher. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>RFK Jr, the vaccine denier and guy in charge of our entire country’s health department, is also a pep pusher. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[RFK Jr. speaking on the Joe Rogan Podcast]\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003cem>Yeah I mean I’m a big fan of peptides. I’ve used them myself. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[RFK Jr. speaking on the Joe Rogan Podcast]\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003cem>Yeah I mean I’m a big fan of peptides. I’ve used them myself. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That was RFK Jr on Joe Rogan’s podcast earlier this year, where he spoke about the proliferation of unregulated peptides. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That was RFK Jr on Joe Rogan’s podcast earlier this year, where he spoke about the proliferation of unregulated peptides. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[RFK Jr. speaking on the Joe Rogan Podcast]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>A black market came out and the black market is run by companies that say they’re making the peptides for animal use or research purposes. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[RFK Jr. speaking on the Joe Rogan Podcast]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>A black market came out and the black market is run by companies that say they’re making the peptides for animal use or research purposes. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> So basically when you buy peptides online you don’t have any guarantees about the safety and the quality of what you’re buying. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> So basically when you buy peptides online you don’t have any guarantees about the safety and the quality of what you’re buying. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That’s Sarah Todd, a reporter at STAT News. She covers the business of health, which means she’s also been following the gray market peptide industry. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That’s Sarah Todd, a reporter at STAT News. She covers the business of health, which means she’s also been following the gray market peptide industry. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> New York Magazine had a bunch of peptides tested and found that about a third of them were mislabeled or under or overdosed or contaminated by bacteria. So those are all some of the potential health risks that you run into when you’re getting them off the gray and black market.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> New York Magazine had a bunch of peptides tested and found that about a third of them were mislabeled or under or overdosed or contaminated by bacteria. So those are all some of the potential health risks that you run into when you’re getting them off the gray and black market.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>But that hasn’t diminished people’s appetite for peptides. Sarah says this all falls in line with a concept called “medical libertarianism” — the idea that we should be allowed to do whatever we want with our bodies regardless of what the government or medical establishment says.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>But that hasn’t diminished people’s appetite for peptides. Sarah says this all falls in line with a concept called “medical libertarianism” — the idea that we should be allowed to do whatever we want with our bodies regardless of what the government or medical establishment says.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> And that extends to taking drugs like peptides that don’t have a lot of data behind them when it comes to their impacts on humans, either their benefits or their potential risks. But the idea with medical libertarianism is, like, that’s my choice, and if I’m willing to put my body on the line for the hopeful benefits that I can get, then I should be able to do so.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> And that extends to taking drugs like peptides that don’t have a lot of data behind them when it comes to their impacts on humans, either their benefits or their potential risks. But the idea with medical libertarianism is, like, that’s my choice, and if I’m willing to put my body on the line for the hopeful benefits that I can get, then I should be able to do so.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>It’s a very American mindset. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>It’s a very American mindset. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> It really goes along with this sort of all-American idea that we can control our own destinies and make our own choices, right? And a sort of suspicion about the government’s role in overseeing people’s lives, a desire to, you know, ward off the idea of the nanny state and the idea that people should be able to chase their own pursuit of happiness and the American dream.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> It really goes along with this sort of all-American idea that we can control our own destinies and make our own choices, right? And a sort of suspicion about the government’s role in overseeing people’s lives, a desire to, you know, ward off the idea of the nanny state and the idea that people should be able to chase their own pursuit of happiness and the American dream.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And if that includes self-optimizing your body and your health, then that’s something that people should be allowed to do, would be the argument that these people are making.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And if that includes self-optimizing your body and your health, then that’s something that people should be allowed to do, would be the argument that these people are making.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Americans have always had this attitude about health. In the 1970s, there was a huge backlash from the public when the government tried to regulate vitamin and supplement industries…\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Americans have always had this attitude about health. In the 1970s, there was a huge backlash from the public when the government tried to regulate vitamin and supplement industries…\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> People wrote in and said, “Don’t take my vitamins away, “ and we wound up with the situation that we have today, where they’re still many people would argue, uh, largely unregulated or very under-regulated. I think that people really wanted to hold on to these kinds of products. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> People wrote in and said, “Don’t take my vitamins away, “ and we wound up with the situation that we have today, where they’re still many people would argue, uh, largely unregulated or very under-regulated. I think that people really wanted to hold on to these kinds of products. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>There have been ebbs and flows to medical libertarianism throughout modern American history. And then the COVID 19 pandemic hit.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>There have been ebbs and flows to medical libertarianism throughout modern American history. And then the COVID 19 pandemic hit.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> People started self-experimenting with all kinds of things, like everything from ivermectin, which you m- may remember, to some sort of herbal medicines.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> People started self-experimenting with all kinds of things, like everything from ivermectin, which you m- may remember, to some sort of herbal medicines.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> On one hand, you had a lot of interest in sort of like experimentation with drugs to see what you could do to improve your own health, protect yourself potentially from COVID in various ways. We also saw a big boom in the rise of social media health influencers, health and wellness influencers during this time as well, and I think that has played a huge role.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> On one hand, you had a lot of interest in sort of like experimentation with drugs to see what you could do to improve your own health, protect yourself potentially from COVID in various ways. We also saw a big boom in the rise of social media health influencers, health and wellness influencers during this time as well, and I think that has played a huge role.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Many of the sort of man-fluencers like Joe Rogan and, and Gary Brecka and Andrew Huberman were already popular pre-pandemic, but sort of like became even more so, gained huge followings during, and I think that that’s had a lot to do with the sort of rising awareness of peptides and interest in trying them.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Many of the sort of man-fluencers like Joe Rogan and, and Gary Brecka and Andrew Huberman were already popular pre-pandemic, but sort of like became even more so, gained huge followings during, and I think that that’s had a lot to do with the sort of rising awareness of peptides and interest in trying them.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>People started taking this “folk pharmacology” approach to medicine. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>People started taking this “folk pharmacology” approach to medicine. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> So that term folk pharmacology was mentioned by a researcher I spoke with for a story.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> So that term folk pharmacology was mentioned by a researcher I spoke with for a story.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>His name is Luke Turnock, and he talked about how first it sort of started, uh, with peptides in the gym, with bodybuilders and powerlifters sort of sharing, like, “Oh, this, this drug is really helping me recover from this industry. This drug is making me stronger.” But he applies that to the way that people talk about peptides in online spaces and forums as well, where people are generally a lot more likely to believe somebody else on a Reddit forum than they might be to listen to a researcher who’s telling them there’s not enough data to support taking these drugs.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>His name is Luke Turnock, and he talked about how first it sort of started, uh, with peptides in the gym, with bodybuilders and powerlifters sort of sharing, like, “Oh, this, this drug is really helping me recover from this industry. This drug is making me stronger.” But he applies that to the way that people talk about peptides in online spaces and forums as well, where people are generally a lot more likely to believe somebody else on a Reddit forum than they might be to listen to a researcher who’s telling them there’s not enough data to support taking these drugs.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>I think it, it has to do with some of the decline of trust in science, and then it also has to do with the sort of, like, just stock that we put in recommendations from other people who we perceive as regular people, whether that’s, like, you know, somebody telling us, like, “Oh, I love this vacuum,” or in this case, “I love my Wolverine stack,” you know?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>I think it, it has to do with some of the decline of trust in science, and then it also has to do with the sort of, like, just stock that we put in recommendations from other people who we perceive as regular people, whether that’s, like, you know, somebody telling us, like, “Oh, I love this vacuum,” or in this case, “I love my Wolverine stack,” you know?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The Make American Healthy Again movement is also pretty staunchly anti-vaccine. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The Make American Healthy Again movement is also pretty staunchly anti-vaccine. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> When I first started thinking about this, I was like, “This seems like a huge contradiction.” I didn’t understand why the MAHA movement would be so skeptical toward vaccines and yet really welcoming toward peptides. But I think it comes back to what we were talking about with medical libertarianism.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> When I first started thinking about this, I was like, “This seems like a huge contradiction.” I didn’t understand why the MAHA movement would be so skeptical toward vaccines and yet really welcoming toward peptides. But I think it comes back to what we were talking about with medical libertarianism.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>A lot of the MAHA people don’t necessarily want nobody to get vaccines. They say they are more wary of certain vaccine mandates. So there the idea again is like, “Don’t tell me what to do with my own body. It should be my choice whether or not I take it.” Peptides, again, they’re saying they don’t want everybody to have to take peptides.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>A lot of the MAHA people don’t necessarily want nobody to get vaccines. They say they are more wary of certain vaccine mandates. So there the idea again is like, “Don’t tell me what to do with my own body. It should be my choice whether or not I take it.” Peptides, again, they’re saying they don’t want everybody to have to take peptides.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>They just wanna be able to take peptides if they want to. So that’s where it all sort of begins to make sense in an overall worldview.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>They just wanna be able to take peptides if they want to. So that’s where it all sort of begins to make sense in an overall worldview.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And this brand of medical libertarianism is applied pretty inconsistently. RFK Jr’s MAHA agenda is actively restricting access to trans healthcare, birth control, and abortion — issues that revolve around bodily autonomy. But when it comes to peptides? They believe the government should be hands-off. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And this brand of medical libertarianism is applied pretty inconsistently. RFK Jr’s MAHA agenda is actively restricting access to trans healthcare, birth control, and abortion — issues that revolve around bodily autonomy. But when it comes to peptides? They believe the government should be hands-off. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>It goes back to a Biden-era decision.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>It goes back to a Biden-era decision.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> So back in 2023, the Biden administration moved a bunch of peptides into a different category. That meant that compounding pharmacies could no longer produce them, and their reasons were basically, you know, what we’ve been talking about the typical warnings that we get from the medical community, that these drugs haven’t been studied enough to be able to say definitively that they are either going to do what they promise they’ll do or that they won’t cause some other big problem like cancer as well.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> So back in 2023, the Biden administration moved a bunch of peptides into a different category. That meant that compounding pharmacies could no longer produce them, and their reasons were basically, you know, what we’ve been talking about the typical warnings that we get from the medical community, that these drugs haven’t been studied enough to be able to say definitively that they are either going to do what they promise they’ll do or that they won’t cause some other big problem like cancer as well.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So that was the reason for moving over the classification. Now what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is looking to do is to reclassify some of those peptides so the compounding pharmacies can indeed begin producing them again.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So that was the reason for moving over the classification. Now what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is looking to do is to reclassify some of those peptides so the compounding pharmacies can indeed begin producing them again.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Which means that they can be legally produced in the US, under \u003cem>some\u003c/em> regulatory oversight — unlike the facilities that are producing gray market peptides now. Compounding pharmacies at least have to be licensed and routinely inspected through state pharmacy boards. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Which means that they can be legally produced in the US, under \u003cem>some\u003c/em> regulatory oversight — unlike the facilities that are producing gray market peptides now. Compounding pharmacies at least have to be licensed and routinely inspected through state pharmacy boards. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>RFK JR. has been on this crusade to get the FDA to lift this Biden-era peptide ban — which he talked about on that same Joe Rogan podcast episode.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>RFK JR. has been on this crusade to get the FDA to lift this Biden-era peptide ban — which he talked about on that same Joe Rogan podcast episode.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> He basically said that he is a fan of peptides. He wants to make them more accessible via compounding pharmacies. Uh, but the reason he says is not necessarily he understands that not all the science and data is out there on peptides yet, but he says that it’s gonna be safer for people to get them from compounding pharmacies than to get them off the gray and black market, and that’s sort of his logic for, for why it would make sense to, to reclassify them.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> He basically said that he is a fan of peptides. He wants to make them more accessible via compounding pharmacies. Uh, but the reason he says is not necessarily he understands that not all the science and data is out there on peptides yet, but he says that it’s gonna be safer for people to get them from compounding pharmacies than to get them off the gray and black market, and that’s sort of his logic for, for why it would make sense to, to reclassify them.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And that is a new tab. Are peptides legal now? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And that is a new tab. Are peptides legal now? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>I\u003c/strong>t’s complicated. We’re gonna start by explaining different kinds of pharmacies. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>I\u003c/strong>t’s complicated. We’re gonna start by explaining different kinds of pharmacies. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So, typical pharmacies make and dispense FDA-approved drugs. There are the retail pharmacies that sell over-the-counter allergy meds or fill your prescriptions for blood pressure pills. There are specialty pharmacies that manage medications for very rare, highly complex health conditions, which might require stricter protocols for handling, storing, and administering meds. Both of these types of pharmacies mainly deal with medications that have already been manufactured. The pharmacy makes sure they’re giving patients the right dosage and right amount of pre-made meds. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So, typical pharmacies make and dispense FDA-approved drugs. There are the retail pharmacies that sell over-the-counter allergy meds or fill your prescriptions for blood pressure pills. There are specialty pharmacies that manage medications for very rare, highly complex health conditions, which might require stricter protocols for handling, storing, and administering meds. Both of these types of pharmacies mainly deal with medications that have already been manufactured. The pharmacy makes sure they’re giving patients the right dosage and right amount of pre-made meds. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Now, compounding pharmacies mix the medications themselves. There are lots of reasons why people use them: maybe the commercial version of the drug includes ingredients they’re allergic to, or maybe they need a cream, not a gel. Maybe the only way to get the right dosage is by getting a custom mix. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Now, compounding pharmacies mix the medications themselves. There are lots of reasons why people use them: maybe the commercial version of the drug includes ingredients they’re allergic to, or maybe they need a cream, not a gel. Maybe the only way to get the right dosage is by getting a custom mix. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> Sometimes there are drug shortages, and compounding pharmacies can be an alternative as well then because they can custom make a particular drug that maybe, uh, isn’t available at the moment. It might also be, as was the case with GLP-1 weight loss drugs, uh, compounding pharmacies were making a lot of, uh, GLP-1 drugs that were alternatives to the more expensive ones, like Ozempic and Wegovy, and the idea h- here was, like, you sacrifice the sort of name brand, uh, aspect, but then you, you could get the, the drugs that would have, hopefully, the same effects for cheaper.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> Sometimes there are drug shortages, and compounding pharmacies can be an alternative as well then because they can custom make a particular drug that maybe, uh, isn’t available at the moment. It might also be, as was the case with GLP-1 weight loss drugs, uh, compounding pharmacies were making a lot of, uh, GLP-1 drugs that were alternatives to the more expensive ones, like Ozempic and Wegovy, and the idea h- here was, like, you sacrifice the sort of name brand, uh, aspect, but then you, you could get the, the drugs that would have, hopefully, the same effects for cheaper.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So that’s another reason why people might turn to compounding pharmacies as well.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So that’s another reason why people might turn to compounding pharmacies as well.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>In recent years, compounding pharmacies have become wildly lucrative, thanks to the rise of for-profit telehealth. A lot of telehealth companies have in-house compounding pharmacies, and they sell all kinds of prescription meds: personalized topical creams with Tretinoin and Niacinamide for acne, chewable tablets of Finasteride and Minoxidil for hair loss, low-dose Vardenafil for erectile dysfunction, custom-mixed hormone replacement suppositories for menopause, and now, compounded GLP-1s for weight loss. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>In recent years, compounding pharmacies have become wildly lucrative, thanks to the rise of for-profit telehealth. A lot of telehealth companies have in-house compounding pharmacies, and they sell all kinds of prescription meds: personalized topical creams with Tretinoin and Niacinamide for acne, chewable tablets of Finasteride and Minoxidil for hair loss, low-dose Vardenafil for erectile dysfunction, custom-mixed hormone replacement suppositories for menopause, and now, compounded GLP-1s for weight loss. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Compounding pharmacies can legally make anything … as long the ingredients they’re working are good with the FDA. The final product doesn’t have to be FDA-approved.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Compounding pharmacies can legally make anything … as long the ingredients they’re working are good with the FDA. The final product doesn’t have to be FDA-approved.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> The drugs that a compounding pharmacy makes do not necessarily have to have been authorized by the FDA. Um, as long as, you know, they have a prescription for that drug from a healthcare provider, they will, will produce the drugs. And then there’s certain, uh, substances that they’re not allowed to make, such as the peptides that are currently on the 503B substances list. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> The drugs that a compounding pharmacy makes do not necessarily have to have been authorized by the FDA. Um, as long as, you know, they have a prescription for that drug from a healthcare provider, they will, will produce the drugs. And then there’s certain, uh, substances that they’re not allowed to make, such as the peptides that are currently on the 503B substances list. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>There are 19 peptides on that 503B substances list, including Melanotan II. Earlier this year, the FDA announced that they were going to consider reclassifying \u003cem>some\u003c/em> of those banned peptides. This is not the same as FDA approval. They haven’t gone through clinical trials that guarantee safety or efficacy, and the FDA doesn’t verify the quality before they hit the market. But if they are reclassified, that means that compounding pharmacies are allowed to make and distribute medications that contain them. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>There are 19 peptides on that 503B substances list, including Melanotan II. Earlier this year, the FDA announced that they were going to consider reclassifying \u003cem>some\u003c/em> of those banned peptides. This is not the same as FDA approval. They haven’t gone through clinical trials that guarantee safety or efficacy, and the FDA doesn’t verify the quality before they hit the market. But if they are reclassified, that means that compounding pharmacies are allowed to make and distribute medications that contain them. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> The argument that was probably most common from the people on the side of making peptides more accessible via compounding pharmacies was that it’s true that we don’t have all the data yet, and we do need more of it. However, we really don’t want people getting these drugs off the gray and black market because of the other health risks, you know, the risks of contamination, the risk of mislabeled drugs where you think that you’re getting one thing, you’re actually getting something else. And they basically said patients are demanding these drugs and we should make sure that if they’re going to take them, they’re taking it the safest way they can.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> The argument that was probably most common from the people on the side of making peptides more accessible via compounding pharmacies was that it’s true that we don’t have all the data yet, and we do need more of it. However, we really don’t want people getting these drugs off the gray and black market because of the other health risks, you know, the risks of contamination, the risk of mislabeled drugs where you think that you’re getting one thing, you’re actually getting something else. And they basically said patients are demanding these drugs and we should make sure that if they’re going to take them, they’re taking it the safest way they can.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> In other words, it’s better to have Americans sourcing their peptides from regulated facilities, rather than overseas labs that may not be held to the same standards of sterility and quality.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> In other words, it’s better to have Americans sourcing their peptides from regulated facilities, rather than overseas labs that may not be held to the same standards of sterility and quality.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In July, an FDA advisory panel met to discuss whether or not to recommend reclassification for seven peptides.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>In July, an FDA advisory panel met to discuss whether or not to recommend reclassification for seven peptides.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> The advisory panel itself was really controversial. So this is a group of people who aren’t members of the FDA themselves, and the FDA doesn’t have to follow their recommendations, but typically, their recommendations carry a lot of weight, and typically, an advisory panel is made up of doctors, researchers, other experts in their field.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> The advisory panel itself was really controversial. So this is a group of people who aren’t members of the FDA themselves, and the FDA doesn’t have to follow their recommendations, but typically, their recommendations carry a lot of weight, and typically, an advisory panel is made up of doctors, researchers, other experts in their field.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In this case the people who were appointed to the panel, a lot of them were people who had some sort of potential conflict of interest or stake in the outcome of the decision on peptides, people who are prescribing peptides themselves, people who are you know, affiliated with compounding pharmacies in some way.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>In this case the people who were appointed to the panel, a lot of them were people who had some sort of potential conflict of interest or stake in the outcome of the decision on peptides, people who are prescribing peptides themselves, people who are you know, affiliated with compounding pharmacies in some way.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So that immediately raised a lot of red flags for critics who said, “How can we trust the advice of an advisory panel if it’s people who would potentially stand to profit from what the outcome is?”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So that immediately raised a lot of red flags for critics who said, “How can we trust the advice of an advisory panel if it’s people who would potentially stand to profit from what the outcome is?”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The pro-peptide crowd on the panel pointed out that patients are demanding these drugs, and that \u003cem>some \u003c/em>regulatory oversight is better than continuing to allow Americans to get their peptides from sketchy overseas labs. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The pro-peptide crowd on the panel pointed out that patients are demanding these drugs, and that \u003cem>some \u003c/em>regulatory oversight is better than continuing to allow Americans to get their peptides from sketchy overseas labs. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd: \u003c/strong>Then the counterargument from the medical experts is basically that there, again, simply isn’t enough human data on these drugs. There’s a lot of concern about what it would mean to make it easier for people to take these drugs that are indeed in high demand but that we simply don’t know what kinds of short or long-term health effects they might have.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd: \u003c/strong>Then the counterargument from the medical experts is basically that there, again, simply isn’t enough human data on these drugs. There’s a lot of concern about what it would mean to make it easier for people to take these drugs that are indeed in high demand but that we simply don’t know what kinds of short or long-term health effects they might have.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And there have been cases of people reporting getting sick, having injuries from peptide doses. So, you know there are real concerns about what should be done in order to monitor peptides better and make sure that they’re safe. And you could hear a lot of frustration from the medical experts who were on the advisory panel as each vote on each separate drug went down.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And there have been cases of people reporting getting sick, having injuries from peptide doses. So, you know there are real concerns about what should be done in order to monitor peptides better and make sure that they’re safe. And you could hear a lot of frustration from the medical experts who were on the advisory panel as each vote on each separate drug went down.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>They vote on each drug individually, so as they started seeing what was going to happen of those seven drugs, six got recommended to be reclassified so that compounding pharmacies could make them. So a lot of frustration from the medical experts saying like,’Once again, we don’t know enough about how these drugs will impact people. We’re really worried that this is gonna be dangerous and put people’s health and potentially even their lives at risk.’ And then they were outnumbered on the panel by the, the people who were affiliated with the peptide industry or prescription in some way.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>They vote on each drug individually, so as they started seeing what was going to happen of those seven drugs, six got recommended to be reclassified so that compounding pharmacies could make them. So a lot of frustration from the medical experts saying like,’Once again, we don’t know enough about how these drugs will impact people. We’re really worried that this is gonna be dangerous and put people’s health and potentially even their lives at risk.’ And then they were outnumbered on the panel by the, the people who were affiliated with the peptide industry or prescription in some way.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And this is where it gets really dicey. Before the advisory panel met, the FDA itself came out and said, hey, we say no to allowing compounding pharmacies to make any of these peptides. This was a decision made by multiple FDA staff scientists. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And this is where it gets really dicey. Before the advisory panel met, the FDA itself came out and said, hey, we say no to allowing compounding pharmacies to make any of these peptides. This was a decision made by multiple FDA staff scientists. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> And that was directly in conflict with the outcome of the meeting, which said six out of these seven peptides, they do recommend changing classifications.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> And that was directly in conflict with the outcome of the meeting, which said six out of these seven peptides, they do recommend changing classifications.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Advisory panels rarely go against the FDA staff recommendation. According to reports of that meeting, after the votes were tallied and the recommendation was announced, an audible gasp rippled through the room. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Advisory panels rarely go against the FDA staff recommendation. According to reports of that meeting, after the votes were tallied and the recommendation was announced, an audible gasp rippled through the room. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd: \u003c/strong>So with that, it’s gonna be really interesting to see now what happens. The ultimate decision is up to the FDA. So normally, it would be even if the advisory panel had recommended against, if FDA staffers felt really strongly, they could do whatever they felt was right but Robert F. Kennedy Jr., of course, is the head of the health department. He has a lot of power and influence, and I think a lot of outside observers are betting that even if FDA staff don’t think that this change should be made, that Kennedy may push it through which would obviously be quite bad for FDA morale as well.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd: \u003c/strong>So with that, it’s gonna be really interesting to see now what happens. The ultimate decision is up to the FDA. So normally, it would be even if the advisory panel had recommended against, if FDA staffers felt really strongly, they could do whatever they felt was right but Robert F. Kennedy Jr., of course, is the head of the health department. He has a lot of power and influence, and I think a lot of outside observers are betting that even if FDA staff don’t think that this change should be made, that Kennedy may push it through which would obviously be quite bad for FDA morale as well.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Who will benefit from this decision? Well, like we talked about earlier, the telehealth industry and their in-house compounding pharmacies make a TON of money. And now they stand to make even more. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Who will benefit from this decision? Well, like we talked about earlier, the telehealth industry and their in-house compounding pharmacies make a TON of money. And now they stand to make even more. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> When you have people on the panel who it’s clear to see how they’re seeing a lot of patient demand. If they’re able to provide more prescriptions to patients for peptides, that is good for their business.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> When you have people on the panel who it’s clear to see how they’re seeing a lot of patient demand. If they’re able to provide more prescriptions to patients for peptides, that is good for their business.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>For the compounding pharmacies, it’s certainly huge for their bottom line. Hims and Hers announced that they’re looking to start offering peptides this year. Noom has also moved to start offering peptides. They purchased a compounding pharmacy business. So there are a lot of companies that certainly see an upside to giving into demand.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>For the compounding pharmacies, it’s certainly huge for their bottom line. Hims and Hers announced that they’re looking to start offering peptides this year. Noom has also moved to start offering peptides. They purchased a compounding pharmacy business. So there are a lot of companies that certainly see an upside to giving into demand.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But as one of the people who I spoke with pointed out, simply because people want drugs isn’t a good reason to authorize them, and simply because we don’t want them to get it off the gray market. If that were the case, then we would legalize heroin, which indeed actually some libertarians think we should, but which the majority of people think that there are good reasons to not do such a thing.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But as one of the people who I spoke with pointed out, simply because people want drugs isn’t a good reason to authorize them, and simply because we don’t want them to get it off the gray market. If that were the case, then we would legalize heroin, which indeed actually some libertarians think we should, but which the majority of people think that there are good reasons to not do such a thing.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong> so given the FDA’s, uh, I guess, like despite their tensions, um, what does the future of peptide stacking look like now?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong> so given the FDA’s, uh, I guess, like despite their tensions, um, what does the future of peptide stacking look like now?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> For people who are enthusiastic about peptides, I think the future is bright in the sense of them being able to access them. I think it looks like more and more likely that there’s going to be a lot of regulatory interest under Kennedy as long as he’s in power in making these products more accessible.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> For people who are enthusiastic about peptides, I think the future is bright in the sense of them being able to access them. I think it looks like more and more likely that there’s going to be a lot of regulatory interest under Kennedy as long as he’s in power in making these products more accessible.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>I think that in terms of what the future looks like from a health perspective, the reality is that we simply don’t know, and that’s kind of scary. We don’t know what kind of effects these are going to have, and we don’t really right now have a robust way of monitoring or surveying for those effects either.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>I think that in terms of what the future looks like from a health perspective, the reality is that we simply don’t know, and that’s kind of scary. We don’t know what kind of effects these are going to have, and we don’t really right now have a robust way of monitoring or surveying for those effects either.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So what you would really wanna see are clinical trials that are studying people who are taking peptides and researching those outcomes, and that is one thing that we don’t currently have right now. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So what you would really wanna see are clinical trials that are studying people who are taking peptides and researching those outcomes, and that is one thing that we don’t currently have right now. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>But again, a recommendation isn’t the same as FDA approval. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>But again, a recommendation isn’t the same as FDA approval. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> Just because this, uh, the panel has said this, that doesn’t mean that compounding pharmacies now have the go-ahead to start producing them. The final decision is up to the FDA and the FDA rulemaking. I believe that outside experts think that process could take up to a year, so it’s not something that we would expect to see immediately happening.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> Just because this, uh, the panel has said this, that doesn’t mean that compounding pharmacies now have the go-ahead to start producing them. The final decision is up to the FDA and the FDA rulemaking. I believe that outside experts think that process could take up to a year, so it’s not something that we would expect to see immediately happening.\u003c/p>\n"
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"text": "Morgan Sung: What about Melanotan II? Unfortunately for the tanmaxxers, the Barbie pep was not included in this latest list of panel recommendations. But it will get its moment soon: The FDA is slated to evaluate Melanotan II and four more peptides for reclassification early next year. ",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>What about Melanotan II? Unfortunately for the tanmaxxers, the Barbie pep was not included in this latest list of panel recommendations. But it will get its moment soon: The FDA is slated to evaluate Melanotan II and four more peptides for reclassification early next year. \u003c/h2>\n",
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"\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>What about Melanotan II? Unfortunately for the tanmaxxers, the Barbie pep was not included in this latest list of panel recommendations. But it will get its moment soon: The FDA is slated to evaluate Melanotan II and four more peptides for reclassification early next year. \u003c/h2>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>That doesn’t mean it’s hard to get a hold of now, though. When I searched “Melanotan II near me,” I found dozens of medical spas across LA that advertise it as part of their “peptide therapy.” For $95, I could drive over to Beverly Hills and pick up a 5 mL vial at a clinic, or $150, I could get it delivered! Mobile IV clinics also offer it as an add-on to their on-demand IV services, so I could get my tan on, get a whole GLOW stack injected, and get a hangover cure administered at the same time, in my own living room! It’s like doordash for peptides! \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>That doesn’t mean it’s hard to get a hold of now, though. When I searched “Melanotan II near me,” I found dozens of medical spas across LA that advertise it as part of their “peptide therapy.” For $95, I could drive over to Beverly Hills and pick up a 5 mL vial at a clinic, or $150, I could get it delivered! Mobile IV clinics also offer it as an add-on to their on-demand IV services, so I could get my tan on, get a whole GLOW stack injected, and get a hangover cure administered at the same time, in my own living room! It’s like doordash for peptides! \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Though, Dr. Grewal does not find that as amusing as I do. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> My gut reaction is honestly mortified, terrified, but also not surprised. And again, it just really brings me back to the point of, you know, the body is really complicated and medicine is complicated.I think the most important thing is that you research the person that is endorsing a specific product or, um, or approach, right? So, like, I love that people research, but I would really encourage, and I’m an advocate of spending the most time researching your source, who you’re going to assign as being credible\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> My gut reaction is honestly mortified, terrified, but also not surprised. And again, it just really brings me back to the point of, you know, the body is really complicated and medicine is complicated.I think the most important thing is that you research the person that is endorsing a specific product or, um, or approach, right? So, like, I love that people research, but I would really encourage, and I’m an advocate of spending the most time researching your source, who you’re going to assign as being credible\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>As much as I love my skincare routine and gratuitous pursuit of beauty, I personally will be staying clear of the Barbie peptide. A little gradual tanning lotion and my trusty tanning mitt has never done me wrong. Plus, I don’t have to worry about breaking out into funky looking moles! \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Ok, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cbr>Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This episode was produced by Cayla Mihalovich and Maya Cueva. It was edited by Chris Hambrick. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The Close All Tabs team also includes senior editor Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music, and audio engineer Brendan Willard. Our intern is Lauren Yoon. Additional music by APM.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran, and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches. Thanks for listening. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This episode includes clips from TikTok creators carlysnaxwell, itsdevnyc, and cablequeencourt, clips from the Instagram accounts ToxDaddy and sooshbrah, and YouTube clips from SpaAndTell and Joe Rogan Experience.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I mean, my ‘foryou’ page every day it’s like, “Who’s on Glow? Who’s on the Glow stack or the Barbie stack?” Like you can’t escape it.\u003c/p>\n",
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"title": "Influencers Are Peddling Peptides, but Is Tanmaxxing Worth the Risk? | KQED",
"description": "Seems like everywhere you turn these days, influencers are gushing about their peptide use and how it’s done wonders for their appearance and health. One of the more popular ones, Melanotan II, also known as the “Barbie” peptide, is said to give you a tan without the harmful effects of sun exposure. But many of these substances aren’t approved by the FDA and are often sold through unregulated gray market sources. So, how safe is any of this stuff? And what does the peptide boom tell us about the risks people will take in the name of “looksmaxxing?” Morgan talks to skin cancer surgeon Dr. Sungat Grewal and board certified dermatologist Dr. Caren Campbell about the risks of taking peptides. Then Morgan and STAT News reporter Sarah Todd break down how American medical libertarianism and the MAHA movement led us to this very point in time. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Seems like everywhere you turn these days, influencers are gushing about their peptide use and how it’s done wonders for their appearance and health. One of the more popular ones, Melanotan II, also known as the “Barbie” peptide, is said to give you a tan without the harmful effects of sun exposure. But many of these substances aren’t approved by the FDA and are often sold through unregulated gray market sources. So, how safe is any of this stuff? And what does the peptide boom tell us about the risks people will take in the name of “looksmaxxing?” Morgan talks to skin cancer surgeon Dr. Sungat Grewal and board certified dermatologist Dr. Caren Campbell about the risks of taking peptides. Then Morgan and STAT News reporter Sarah Todd break down how American medical libertarianism and the MAHA movement led us to this very point in time. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Guests:\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ucsfhealth.org/providers/sungat-grewal\">Dr. Sungat Grewal\u003c/a>, double board-certified dermatologist and Mohs surgeon\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.carencampbellmd.com/?srsltid=AU7gw4XTOrftqgnQy6ysplZ8IdAO4P-TLRwup140ITmchvEhXpO36qrR\">Dr. Caren Campbell\u003c/a>, board-certified dermatologist\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/staff/sarah-todd/\">Sarah Todd\u003c/a>, reporter for \u003cem>STAT News\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2026/04/06/rfk-jr-apparent-contradiction-peptides-vaccines-medical-libertarianism/\">What the peptide craze reveals about Americans’ relationship with risk\u003c/a> — Sarah Todd, \u003cem>STAT News\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2026/07/24/fda-peptide-compounding-panel-backs-epitalon-rejects-emideltide/\">FDA advisory panel narrowly rejects compounding of one peptide, backs two others\u003c/a> — Lizzy Lawrence and Sarah Todd, \u003cem>STAT News\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2026/07/23/fda-panel-okays-peptides-compound-pharmacies-bpc-157-kpv/\">FDA panel backs compounded BPC-157, KPV peptides in win for RFK Jr.\u003c/a> — Sarah Todd and Lizzy Lawrence, \u003cem>STAT News\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2026/04/06/rfk-jr-apparent-contradiction-peptides-vaccines-medical-libertarianism/\">What the peptide craze reveals about Americans’ relationship with risk\u003c/a> — Sarah Todd, \u003cem>STAT News\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.elle.com/beauty/health-fitness/a73232620/tanmaxxing-trend-explained-interview-2026/\">Is Tanmaxxing an Addiction? A Dermatologist and Psychologist Explains\u003c/a> — Katie Berohn, \u003cem>ELLE\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.gq.com/story/inside-the-weird-new-world-of-peptide-tanning\">Inside the Weird New World of Peptide Tanning\u003c/a> — Savannah Sobrevilla, \u003cem>GQ\u003c/em> \u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/2026/06/29/barbie-drug-peptide-shot-tan\">Melanotan: The “Barbie drug” tanning peptide, explained\u003c/a> — Carly Mallenbaum, \u003cem>Axios\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/live-well/longevity/story/tanning-peptides-melanotan-vyleesi-pt141\">Inside the Viral Tanning Peptide That Accidentally Created Vyleesi’s FDA-Approved Low Sex Drive Drug\u003c/a> — Sara Kitnick, \u003cem>LA Times Studios\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.allure.com/story/fda-peptide-ban-reversal\">The FDA May Reverse a Ban on 14 Injectable Peptides—What That Means For the Beauty Industry\u003c/a> — Kara Nesvig, \u003cem>Allure\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.skincancer.org/press/the-skin-cancer-foundation-issues-warning-regarding-melanotan-ii/\">The Skin Cancer Foundation Issues Warning Regarding Melanotan II\u003c/a> — Deborah S. Sarnoff, MD, \u003cem>Skin Cancer Foundation\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\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\n\n\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Host, Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hello! Do you like these deep dives? Do you want more? Then please rate and review Close All Tabs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show! And tell your friends! Post about it! On Instagram, Bluesky, X, Discord, Reddit, the comments of whatever random recipe blog you start arguments in. Basically, it would be a huge help to get the word out. Ok, let’s get to the show.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Can I be honest? I am pretty vain.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I take my skincare routine very seriously: Prescription-strength azelaic acid in the morning, and prescription-strength tretinoin at night. Lots of sunscreen and moisturizer and barrier creams in between, and every other night, I skip the tretinoin and spend three minutes under a red light mask. If I’m feeling indulgent, I’ll throw in a Korean gel mask and a jade roller. Do those do anything? I honestly can’t tell. But it feels nice! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I wouldn’t call myself a looksmaxxer, but I do spend a good amount of time on these beautification rituals. And as a woman who exists on the internet, I feel like my For You Page is constantly lobbing beauty trends at me, and like I’m always trying to avoid getting sucked into yet another fad. I have tried so many serums and face masks and supplements before finally settling into what I consider to be a pretty pared down beauty regiment. But the one thing I haven’t tried yet is a peptide. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>It seems like everyone is on them. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clips of influencers raving about peptides]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>Speaker 1: This is, in my opinion, the most slept-on peptide on the market today. There’s two main benefits that have been life-changing for me . \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 2: You’re telling me there’s a botox alternative that’s easier on your wallet? Whoa! Let’s talk about Snap-8, the peptide that targets wrinkles without the needles. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Peptides are chemical signals that your body naturally makes to regulate all kinds of bodily functions, like digestion and recovery. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest, Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> So peptides are like text messages. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Dr. Sungat Grewal is a double board certified dermatologist and skin cancer surgeon. She’s the co-director of Laser Surgery and Cosmetic Dermatology at UCSF. And she’s been keeping an eye on the synthetic peptides people are taking to boost their bodies’ natural processes. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal: \u003c/strong>They’re not necessarily good or bad inherently, but it depends on who’s sending the message, what the message is, and who receives it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And I’m not just talking about GLP-1s. Peptide stacking is really in right now. Retatrutide and Tesamorelin for weight loss, Ipamorelin for muscle growth, the “Wolverine Stack” of BPC-157 and TB-500 to boost healing after a gym sesh. If you throw in the copper peptide GHK-Cu, you’ve got a “Glow Stack,” the hot girl combo optimized for anti-aging collagen production. It’s a lot, right? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Some of these compounds are not cleared by the FDA, so the way people get a hold of them is a legal hit or miss. But peptides remain incredibly popular despite the gray market. And there’s one that’s \u003cem>really\u003c/em> blown up this summer: Melanotan II. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cbr>[Clip from Youtube User @SpaandTell]\u003cbr>Kylie says hi Kim your tan looks great. Thank you! I’ve been using the melanotan II peptide over the last month, and I’ve been going outside, and it’s been working like a charm, so excited. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>MT-2 for short — also known as “The Barbie peptide” or “the vacation drug.” It makes you tan, skinny, and horny (it’s a libido booster) — with no harmful UV exposure required. But Dr. Grewal says it also comes with legitimately concerning risks. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal: \u003c/strong>It’s pretty scary and it’s very sad, you know, when, um, people are chasing aesthetic goals and are being misdirected and exposing themselves to unknown risks or known risks, not only in the moment, but for future and forever forward, right? Some of these impacts have long-lasting effects.\u003cs>\u003cbr>\u003c/s>\u003cs>\u003cbr>\u003c/s>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Today, we’re diving into the world of peptides: the dangers of tanmaxxing despite the influencer promotion, and RFK Jr’s crusade to reverse the peptide bans in the U.S. What does the peptide craze say about Americans’ relationship with health and risk? Let’s jump in. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We’re starting with a new tab. What is melanotan?\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I’m part of a few weddings this year, and I wanted to look a little more sunkissed. But I’m inside like, all the time, and I have no interest in tanning beds because I don’t want to wrinkle. Again, vain! Sorry! So I started looking into self tanners. I looked up a few beauty influencers who reviewed tanning lotions … and that’s when my feed was inundated with people\u003cs> \u003c/s>recommending this miracle drug: MT-2.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from Instagram user @toxdaddy]\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Oh man, I’m super excited. I just got Melanotan 2 this morning and I’m really excited to try it.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from TikTok user @carlysnaxwell]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>I started taking MT2. I’m tan. I haven’t gone bed tanning in a while… \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from TikTok user @itsdevync]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>I’m now at two months of taking it. I’m obsessed. My tan is only getting better … \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from Youtube user@SpaandTell]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>I am crazy impressed by this – by this, I mean, the Melanotan 2 peptide.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong> And it’s not just the tan that makes it so appealing. Dr. Grewal says Melanotan II also has some specific side effects…\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal: \u003c/strong> It’s marketed as the Barbie peptide because tanning might be the effect that you’re shopping for, but it’s not the only effect and some of them can translate into, um, increased libido or decreased appetite. \u003cs>\u003cbr>\u003c/s>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>How does it do all that? Well, let’s talk about how peptides work. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Again, peptides are the chemical signals for your body to perform certain functions. Your body has tons of receptors, and peptides can target specific ones, almost like sending a text to a specific phone number. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal: \u003c/strong>You can think about two kinds, like natural versus synthetic. So our body makes peptides naturally. Some common examples would be like insulin or GLP-1. And synthetically, you know, we can create, uh, synthetic peptides to mimic those that are made naturally in the body to get a specific effect\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Melanotan I and Melanotan II are synthetic peptides that…\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> …mimic a naturally occurring peptide in the body called alpha-MSH or melanocyte-stimulating hormone. And so there are receptors that are in numerous places in the body called melanocortin receptors that can respond to this signal or chain of events.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>There are five types of melanocortin receptors in the body. The first regulates hair and skin pigmentation, and it’s what triggers tans. And it’s also really important to understand what getting tan \u003cem>really\u003c/em> means for your body. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest, Dr. Caren Campbell:\u003c/strong> It’s literally your nucleus and your cell saying, “Oh my God, save my DNA.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung : \u003c/strong>This is Dr. Caren Campbell, a board certified dermatologist who practices medical, surgical, and cosmetic dermatology in San Francisco. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Caren Campbell: \u003c/strong>You know, it’s putting an umbrella over it. Your cell is saying, like, “Help me. Protect my DNA so I don’t mutate and cause cancer.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That little umbrella is called eumelanin, and it produces brown and black pigments in the body. It’s what causes darker colors in skin, eyes, and hair. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So Melanotan I sends a text to that first melanocortin receptor, which tells your cells to pop their little umbrellas up to protect their DNA … which is what triggers a tan, without actual UV exposure. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Melanotan I is actually FDA-approved for a very, very specific, very rare skin condition that causes extreme sensitivity to light.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> Erythropoietic protoporphyria\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Or EPP for short. It’s actually so rare that Dr. Grewal has never seen the condition in her medical career. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> Its incidence has been estimated at two to five cases per million people. You would know if you had this because you have symptoms when you’re a young child. Children have very severe, painful, uh, photosensitivity after exposure to sunlight or even visible light, which can come from even indoor lights, laptop screens.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>EPP causes extreme swelling, burning, and pain when exposed to certain light. So the FDA approved a prescription implant of Melanotan I for people with EPP, which stimulates their bodies to produce eumelanin. These little cell umbrellas absorb that light before it can damage their skin. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Now, Melanotan II, which is the hot one right now, sends a group text to that first receptor. But remember, there are \u003cem>5\u003c/em> melanocortin receptors in the body. So it’s also sending that text to receptors three, four, and five as well. And these aren’t just in the skin. They’re all over the body, including in the central nervous system, which is why MT-2 can cause appetite suppression and boost libido. And because these receptors are all over the body, MT-2 can also cause unpredictable systemic changes … with unpleasant and even dangerous symptoms. Here’s Dr. Campbell again. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Caren Campbell:\u003c/strong> In men, that can lead to potentially what’s called priapism, which is where you have an erection that, you know, doesn’t go away, and there was a, a case report of someone needing to have that surgically drained in the emergency room.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Um, it, it also can cause nausea and vomiting. It’s also stimulates our sympathetic nervous system, which you can think about that like your fight or flight. So anything you needed to, like, run away from a predator, it does. So it dilates your pupils so you can see better.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>It causes, you know, increased heart rate so you can get running. It causes hypertension ’cause it constricts your blood vessels. Um, so that fight or flight response can be elevated and you can get what’s called rhabdomyolysis, which is where you get muscle breakdown, and it can be very dangerous, um, life-threatening.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So those side effects are pretty rough. But Dr. Grewal says there’s also this main one … \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> We have seen reports of patients like breaking out in moles, for example, and breaking out in atypical or what we call funky looking moles, right? \u003cs>\u003cbr>\u003c/s>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from TikTok user @\u003c/em>cablequeencourt]\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>Let’s count how many moles we have on our face since taking MT2. So this one’s new. This is new …Yeah, um, and that’s not including what’s going on on my body….\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Moles are clusters of melanocytes, the skin cells that make pigment. Most are totally benign. But like Dr. Grewal said, Melanotan moles are … funky.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> Because it’s stimulating the same pathway that can eventually lead to melanoma. And again, we don’t have causation yet, but we do not have long-term data. And so why would you subject yourself to that risk when you can use other methods to tan the skin safely without breaking out in moles? And the moles are not just darker, the moles, like, look concerning. They, they often have atypical features.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Those little cell umbrellas can only protect so much. And if you’re exposing them to harmful UV rays over and over again, they can mutate and become cancerous. One of the ways dermatologists evaluate moles for cancer is by checking if they’ve evolved — if they’re getting bigger, darker, and wonkier. This isn’t as much of a concern for patients who are prescribed MT-1 for EPP, since they’re generally not engaging in risky behavior that causes additional UV damage — like intentionally tanning. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But when it comes to the tanmaxxers … \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from Instagram user @sooshbrah]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>This is 2021, 2022, I was doing 500 micrograms of Melanotan and I was jumping in the tanning bed for 15 minutes. I literally changed race in like three sessions. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Caren Campbell:\u003c/strong> I can’t say for certain that, you know, melanotan causes melanoma. But we do know based on what are, again, called case [00:23:00] reports, where we don’t have large numbers, but we have good evidence of people who’ve started melanotan and then as soon as two weeks noticed almost immediate darkening and irregularity of their moles.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Dr. Campbell said that in this case report, one of the patients had used tanning beds and melanotan at the same time, and had five new moles biopsied. All five were cancerous. And there aren’t many clinical studies on the effects of long-term melanotan use, in a broad population of users who don’t have EPP. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Melanotan II was actually developed in the late 80s to early 90s, and in the early 2000s, researchers began testing it to treat sexual dysfunction. But Dr. Grewal says there’s a reason it never made it to market. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> Usually when a peptide or any product is on its way to becoming a drug, it goes through rigorous testing, and pharmaceuticals would love to sell it because they’re gonna profit immensely. So usually when it drops off the track, it’s because either it’s not providing the results that they’re hoping for or the safety is not promising\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Despite that, both MT-1 and MT-2 are still wildly popular on the gray market, as both a nasal spray and an injectable. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal: \u003c/strong>Unfortunately I am not surprised because, you know, the story of wanting tanner skin is a story we’ve heard before. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Um, you know, first it was tanning beds, now we know how dangerous those are in terms of increasing melanoma risk even with one use, you know, before the age of 30. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And as is the case with many unregulated, technically illegal peptides, vendors can sell them around the US thanks to a handy loophole: the “Research Use Only” pathway. Essentially saying, this product legally isn’t for human consumption, with no quality guarantee or regulatory oversight. But there’s really nothing that can stop buyers from using it on themselves. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> You have to remember that when it’s not FDA regulated, you really have no idea what’s in the bottle. What you’re getting in your bottle is like a crapshoot. So, you know, and historically we’ve seen issues with, um, sterility of products, contamination with unregulated products, and the concentration and the purity is also unknown.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So that alone is like a huge reason why I would never advise anyone to take a non FDA-approved medication, whether or not it’s a peptide, you know?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So knowing all of these risks, both healthwise and lookswise, why are people bent on taking Melanotan? And this is just one of many unregulated, very popular peptides! What’s driving the peptide boom in spite of medical experts’ warnings?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>That is a whole new tab… for after this quick break. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But first, we wanted to remind you that Close All Tabs depends on listeners like you! To become a member and support the show, go to donate dot kqed dot org slash podcasts. Ok, after the break: we’re diving into medical libertarianism. Stick around.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Welcome back! Time to open a new tab. Peptides and medical libertarianism. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>RFK Jr, the vaccine denier and guy in charge of our entire country’s health department, is also a pep pusher. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[RFK Jr. speaking on the Joe Rogan Podcast]\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003cem>Yeah I mean I’m a big fan of peptides. I’ve used them myself. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That was RFK Jr on Joe Rogan’s podcast earlier this year, where he spoke about the proliferation of unregulated peptides. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[RFK Jr. speaking on the Joe Rogan Podcast]\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>A black market came out and the black market is run by companies that say they’re making the peptides for animal use or research purposes. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> So basically when you buy peptides online you don’t have any guarantees about the safety and the quality of what you’re buying. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That’s Sarah Todd, a reporter at STAT News. She covers the business of health, which means she’s also been following the gray market peptide industry. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> New York Magazine had a bunch of peptides tested and found that about a third of them were mislabeled or under or overdosed or contaminated by bacteria. So those are all some of the potential health risks that you run into when you’re getting them off the gray and black market.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>But that hasn’t diminished people’s appetite for peptides. Sarah says this all falls in line with a concept called “medical libertarianism” — the idea that we should be allowed to do whatever we want with our bodies regardless of what the government or medical establishment says.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> And that extends to taking drugs like peptides that don’t have a lot of data behind them when it comes to their impacts on humans, either their benefits or their potential risks. But the idea with medical libertarianism is, like, that’s my choice, and if I’m willing to put my body on the line for the hopeful benefits that I can get, then I should be able to do so.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>It’s a very American mindset. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> It really goes along with this sort of all-American idea that we can control our own destinies and make our own choices, right? And a sort of suspicion about the government’s role in overseeing people’s lives, a desire to, you know, ward off the idea of the nanny state and the idea that people should be able to chase their own pursuit of happiness and the American dream.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And if that includes self-optimizing your body and your health, then that’s something that people should be allowed to do, would be the argument that these people are making.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Americans have always had this attitude about health. In the 1970s, there was a huge backlash from the public when the government tried to regulate vitamin and supplement industries…\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> People wrote in and said, “Don’t take my vitamins away, “ and we wound up with the situation that we have today, where they’re still many people would argue, uh, largely unregulated or very under-regulated. I think that people really wanted to hold on to these kinds of products. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>There have been ebbs and flows to medical libertarianism throughout modern American history. And then the COVID 19 pandemic hit.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> People started self-experimenting with all kinds of things, like everything from ivermectin, which you m- may remember, to some sort of herbal medicines.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> On one hand, you had a lot of interest in sort of like experimentation with drugs to see what you could do to improve your own health, protect yourself potentially from COVID in various ways. We also saw a big boom in the rise of social media health influencers, health and wellness influencers during this time as well, and I think that has played a huge role.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Many of the sort of man-fluencers like Joe Rogan and, and Gary Brecka and Andrew Huberman were already popular pre-pandemic, but sort of like became even more so, gained huge followings during, and I think that that’s had a lot to do with the sort of rising awareness of peptides and interest in trying them.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>People started taking this “folk pharmacology” approach to medicine. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> So that term folk pharmacology was mentioned by a researcher I spoke with for a story.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>His name is Luke Turnock, and he talked about how first it sort of started, uh, with peptides in the gym, with bodybuilders and powerlifters sort of sharing, like, “Oh, this, this drug is really helping me recover from this industry. This drug is making me stronger.” But he applies that to the way that people talk about peptides in online spaces and forums as well, where people are generally a lot more likely to believe somebody else on a Reddit forum than they might be to listen to a researcher who’s telling them there’s not enough data to support taking these drugs.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I think it, it has to do with some of the decline of trust in science, and then it also has to do with the sort of, like, just stock that we put in recommendations from other people who we perceive as regular people, whether that’s, like, you know, somebody telling us, like, “Oh, I love this vacuum,” or in this case, “I love my Wolverine stack,” you know?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The Make American Healthy Again movement is also pretty staunchly anti-vaccine. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> When I first started thinking about this, I was like, “This seems like a huge contradiction.” I didn’t understand why the MAHA movement would be so skeptical toward vaccines and yet really welcoming toward peptides. But I think it comes back to what we were talking about with medical libertarianism.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>A lot of the MAHA people don’t necessarily want nobody to get vaccines. They say they are more wary of certain vaccine mandates. So there the idea again is like, “Don’t tell me what to do with my own body. It should be my choice whether or not I take it.” Peptides, again, they’re saying they don’t want everybody to have to take peptides.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>They just wanna be able to take peptides if they want to. So that’s where it all sort of begins to make sense in an overall worldview.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And this brand of medical libertarianism is applied pretty inconsistently. RFK Jr’s MAHA agenda is actively restricting access to trans healthcare, birth control, and abortion — issues that revolve around bodily autonomy. But when it comes to peptides? They believe the government should be hands-off. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>It goes back to a Biden-era decision.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> So back in 2023, the Biden administration moved a bunch of peptides into a different category. That meant that compounding pharmacies could no longer produce them, and their reasons were basically, you know, what we’ve been talking about the typical warnings that we get from the medical community, that these drugs haven’t been studied enough to be able to say definitively that they are either going to do what they promise they’ll do or that they won’t cause some other big problem like cancer as well.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So that was the reason for moving over the classification. Now what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is looking to do is to reclassify some of those peptides so the compounding pharmacies can indeed begin producing them again.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Which means that they can be legally produced in the US, under \u003cem>some\u003c/em> regulatory oversight — unlike the facilities that are producing gray market peptides now. Compounding pharmacies at least have to be licensed and routinely inspected through state pharmacy boards. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>RFK JR. has been on this crusade to get the FDA to lift this Biden-era peptide ban — which he talked about on that same Joe Rogan podcast episode.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> He basically said that he is a fan of peptides. He wants to make them more accessible via compounding pharmacies. Uh, but the reason he says is not necessarily he understands that not all the science and data is out there on peptides yet, but he says that it’s gonna be safer for people to get them from compounding pharmacies than to get them off the gray and black market, and that’s sort of his logic for, for why it would make sense to, to reclassify them.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And that is a new tab. Are peptides legal now? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>I\u003c/strong>t’s complicated. We’re gonna start by explaining different kinds of pharmacies. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, typical pharmacies make and dispense FDA-approved drugs. There are the retail pharmacies that sell over-the-counter allergy meds or fill your prescriptions for blood pressure pills. There are specialty pharmacies that manage medications for very rare, highly complex health conditions, which might require stricter protocols for handling, storing, and administering meds. Both of these types of pharmacies mainly deal with medications that have already been manufactured. The pharmacy makes sure they’re giving patients the right dosage and right amount of pre-made meds. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Now, compounding pharmacies mix the medications themselves. There are lots of reasons why people use them: maybe the commercial version of the drug includes ingredients they’re allergic to, or maybe they need a cream, not a gel. Maybe the only way to get the right dosage is by getting a custom mix. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> Sometimes there are drug shortages, and compounding pharmacies can be an alternative as well then because they can custom make a particular drug that maybe, uh, isn’t available at the moment. It might also be, as was the case with GLP-1 weight loss drugs, uh, compounding pharmacies were making a lot of, uh, GLP-1 drugs that were alternatives to the more expensive ones, like Ozempic and Wegovy, and the idea h- here was, like, you sacrifice the sort of name brand, uh, aspect, but then you, you could get the, the drugs that would have, hopefully, the same effects for cheaper.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So that’s another reason why people might turn to compounding pharmacies as well.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>In recent years, compounding pharmacies have become wildly lucrative, thanks to the rise of for-profit telehealth. A lot of telehealth companies have in-house compounding pharmacies, and they sell all kinds of prescription meds: personalized topical creams with Tretinoin and Niacinamide for acne, chewable tablets of Finasteride and Minoxidil for hair loss, low-dose Vardenafil for erectile dysfunction, custom-mixed hormone replacement suppositories for menopause, and now, compounded GLP-1s for weight loss. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Compounding pharmacies can legally make anything … as long the ingredients they’re working are good with the FDA. The final product doesn’t have to be FDA-approved.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> The drugs that a compounding pharmacy makes do not necessarily have to have been authorized by the FDA. Um, as long as, you know, they have a prescription for that drug from a healthcare provider, they will, will produce the drugs. And then there’s certain, uh, substances that they’re not allowed to make, such as the peptides that are currently on the 503B substances list. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>There are 19 peptides on that 503B substances list, including Melanotan II. Earlier this year, the FDA announced that they were going to consider reclassifying \u003cem>some\u003c/em> of those banned peptides. This is not the same as FDA approval. They haven’t gone through clinical trials that guarantee safety or efficacy, and the FDA doesn’t verify the quality before they hit the market. But if they are reclassified, that means that compounding pharmacies are allowed to make and distribute medications that contain them. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> The argument that was probably most common from the people on the side of making peptides more accessible via compounding pharmacies was that it’s true that we don’t have all the data yet, and we do need more of it. However, we really don’t want people getting these drugs off the gray and black market because of the other health risks, you know, the risks of contamination, the risk of mislabeled drugs where you think that you’re getting one thing, you’re actually getting something else. And they basically said patients are demanding these drugs and we should make sure that if they’re going to take them, they’re taking it the safest way they can.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> In other words, it’s better to have Americans sourcing their peptides from regulated facilities, rather than overseas labs that may not be held to the same standards of sterility and quality.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In July, an FDA advisory panel met to discuss whether or not to recommend reclassification for seven peptides.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> The advisory panel itself was really controversial. So this is a group of people who aren’t members of the FDA themselves, and the FDA doesn’t have to follow their recommendations, but typically, their recommendations carry a lot of weight, and typically, an advisory panel is made up of doctors, researchers, other experts in their field.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In this case the people who were appointed to the panel, a lot of them were people who had some sort of potential conflict of interest or stake in the outcome of the decision on peptides, people who are prescribing peptides themselves, people who are you know, affiliated with compounding pharmacies in some way.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So that immediately raised a lot of red flags for critics who said, “How can we trust the advice of an advisory panel if it’s people who would potentially stand to profit from what the outcome is?”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The pro-peptide crowd on the panel pointed out that patients are demanding these drugs, and that \u003cem>some \u003c/em>regulatory oversight is better than continuing to allow Americans to get their peptides from sketchy overseas labs. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd: \u003c/strong>Then the counterargument from the medical experts is basically that there, again, simply isn’t enough human data on these drugs. There’s a lot of concern about what it would mean to make it easier for people to take these drugs that are indeed in high demand but that we simply don’t know what kinds of short or long-term health effects they might have.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And there have been cases of people reporting getting sick, having injuries from peptide doses. So, you know there are real concerns about what should be done in order to monitor peptides better and make sure that they’re safe. And you could hear a lot of frustration from the medical experts who were on the advisory panel as each vote on each separate drug went down.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>They vote on each drug individually, so as they started seeing what was going to happen of those seven drugs, six got recommended to be reclassified so that compounding pharmacies could make them. So a lot of frustration from the medical experts saying like,’Once again, we don’t know enough about how these drugs will impact people. We’re really worried that this is gonna be dangerous and put people’s health and potentially even their lives at risk.’ And then they were outnumbered on the panel by the, the people who were affiliated with the peptide industry or prescription in some way.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And this is where it gets really dicey. Before the advisory panel met, the FDA itself came out and said, hey, we say no to allowing compounding pharmacies to make any of these peptides. This was a decision made by multiple FDA staff scientists. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> And that was directly in conflict with the outcome of the meeting, which said six out of these seven peptides, they do recommend changing classifications.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Advisory panels rarely go against the FDA staff recommendation. According to reports of that meeting, after the votes were tallied and the recommendation was announced, an audible gasp rippled through the room. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd: \u003c/strong>So with that, it’s gonna be really interesting to see now what happens. The ultimate decision is up to the FDA. So normally, it would be even if the advisory panel had recommended against, if FDA staffers felt really strongly, they could do whatever they felt was right but Robert F. Kennedy Jr., of course, is the head of the health department. He has a lot of power and influence, and I think a lot of outside observers are betting that even if FDA staff don’t think that this change should be made, that Kennedy may push it through which would obviously be quite bad for FDA morale as well.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Who will benefit from this decision? Well, like we talked about earlier, the telehealth industry and their in-house compounding pharmacies make a TON of money. And now they stand to make even more. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> When you have people on the panel who it’s clear to see how they’re seeing a lot of patient demand. If they’re able to provide more prescriptions to patients for peptides, that is good for their business.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>For the compounding pharmacies, it’s certainly huge for their bottom line. Hims and Hers announced that they’re looking to start offering peptides this year. Noom has also moved to start offering peptides. They purchased a compounding pharmacy business. So there are a lot of companies that certainly see an upside to giving into demand.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But as one of the people who I spoke with pointed out, simply because people want drugs isn’t a good reason to authorize them, and simply because we don’t want them to get it off the gray market. If that were the case, then we would legalize heroin, which indeed actually some libertarians think we should, but which the majority of people think that there are good reasons to not do such a thing.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong> so given the FDA’s, uh, I guess, like despite their tensions, um, what does the future of peptide stacking look like now?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> For people who are enthusiastic about peptides, I think the future is bright in the sense of them being able to access them. I think it looks like more and more likely that there’s going to be a lot of regulatory interest under Kennedy as long as he’s in power in making these products more accessible.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I think that in terms of what the future looks like from a health perspective, the reality is that we simply don’t know, and that’s kind of scary. We don’t know what kind of effects these are going to have, and we don’t really right now have a robust way of monitoring or surveying for those effects either.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So what you would really wanna see are clinical trials that are studying people who are taking peptides and researching those outcomes, and that is one thing that we don’t currently have right now. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>But again, a recommendation isn’t the same as FDA approval. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> Just because this, uh, the panel has said this, that doesn’t mean that compounding pharmacies now have the go-ahead to start producing them. The final decision is up to the FDA and the FDA rulemaking. I believe that outside experts think that process could take up to a year, so it’s not something that we would expect to see immediately happening.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>What about Melanotan II? Unfortunately for the tanmaxxers, the Barbie pep was not included in this latest list of panel recommendations. But it will get its moment soon: The FDA is slated to evaluate Melanotan II and four more peptides for reclassification early next year. \u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>That doesn’t mean it’s hard to get a hold of now, though. When I searched “Melanotan II near me,” I found dozens of medical spas across LA that advertise it as part of their “peptide therapy.” For $95, I could drive over to Beverly Hills and pick up a 5 mL vial at a clinic, or $150, I could get it delivered! Mobile IV clinics also offer it as an add-on to their on-demand IV services, so I could get my tan on, get a whole GLOW stack injected, and get a hangover cure administered at the same time, in my own living room! It’s like doordash for peptides! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Though, Dr. Grewal does not find that as amusing as I do. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dr. Sungat Grewal:\u003c/strong> My gut reaction is honestly mortified, terrified, but also not surprised. And again, it just really brings me back to the point of, you know, the body is really complicated and medicine is complicated.I think the most important thing is that you research the person that is endorsing a specific product or, um, or approach, right? So, like, I love that people research, but I would really encourage, and I’m an advocate of spending the most time researching your source, who you’re going to assign as being credible\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>As much as I love my skincare routine and gratuitous pursuit of beauty, I personally will be staying clear of the Barbie peptide. A little gradual tanning lotion and my trusty tanning mitt has never done me wrong. Plus, I don’t have to worry about breaking out into funky looking moles! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Ok, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cbr>Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This episode was produced by Cayla Mihalovich and Maya Cueva. It was edited by Chris Hambrick. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The Close All Tabs team also includes senior editor Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music, and audio engineer Brendan Willard. Our intern is Lauren Yoon. Additional music by APM.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is Executive Director of Podcasts, and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\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\n\n\n\u003cp>This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran, and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches. Thanks for listening. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This episode includes clips from TikTok creators carlysnaxwell, itsdevnyc, and cablequeencourt, clips from the Instagram accounts ToxDaddy and sooshbrah, and YouTube clips from SpaAndTell and Joe Rogan Experience.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Thanks for listening! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I mean, my ‘foryou’ page every day it’s like, “Who’s on Glow? Who’s on the Glow stack or the Barbie stack?” Like you can’t escape it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sarah Todd:\u003c/strong> Yeah, all over.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"title": "Can We Cool Data Centers With… Pee?",
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"content": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>People \u003cem>really\u003c/em> seem to hate data centers. And the more people learn about the amount of resources these server-packed buildings need, the bigger the backlash grows. Perhaps that’s why the viral music video and beverage ad “We Want Your Pee” took off in popularity about a month ago. It’s a collaboration between Liquid Death and Jason Kelce’s Garage Beer, and it advocates that urine could address the cooling needs of data centers. It’s obviously a joke… \u003cem>but could it actually work? \u003c/em>Host Morgan Sung talks to journalist Amanda Silberling about what she discovered when she looked into this question, and about the alternative cooling methods that might actually help everyone’s least favorite buildings use a little less H2O.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>Guest:\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/author/amanda-silberling/\">Amanda Silberling\u003c/a>, senior writer at \u003cem>TechCrunch\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/20/ok-can-we-actually-cool-data-centers-with-our-pee/\">OK, can we actually cool data centers with our pee?\u003c/a> — Amanda Silberling, \u003cem>TechCrunch\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/19/ai-was-supposed-to-win-people-over-by-now-it-hasnt/\">AI was supposed to win people over by now — it hasn’t\u003c/a> — Sarah Perez, \u003cem>TechCrunch\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/983181/matti-haapoja-sam-kold-kolder-higgsfield-seedance-backlash\">Major YouTube creators are facing backlash for accepting AI money\u003c/a> — Charles Pulliam-Moore, \u003cem>The Verge\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://theartofinfluence.substack.com/p/why-openais-influencer-trip-backfired\">Why OpenAI’s influencer trip backfired\u003c/a> — \u003cem>The Art of Influence\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/09/22/americans-views-of-data-centers-have-turned-more-negative/\">Americans’ views of data centers have turned more negative\u003c/a> — Brian Kennedy, \u003cem>Pew Research\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.space.com/astronaut-pee-iss-water-recycling-98-percent-milestone\">NASA just recycled 98% of all astronaut pee and sweat on the ISS (engineers are thrilled)\u003c/a> — Robert Lea, \u003cem>Space\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\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\n\n\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hi, Tabby Cats. Do you have an internet trend, tech subculture, or online oddity you’ve been wondering about? Well, now you can ask Close All Tabs to investigate. Go to kqed dot org slash podcast slash Close All Tabs, to submit your question. Okay, let’s get to the show. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>We want your pee… to cool these data centers. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay, so that’s NFL star and podcaster Jason Kelce in a recent marketing campaign to, quote, “Save humanity.” How? Well, they need your pee. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>We want your pee. Please give us your pee. Let’s pee on computers together. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The video starts with Kelce in a bathroom, peeing into a large resealable mason jar before breaking out into song and marching into a lush green field. He’s joined by a farmer, a skateboarder, a shirtless firefighter, a gamer — all different types of people — holding various receptacles of pee. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>‘Cause we need lots of pee, endless gallons of pee. Join our important endeavor. We want your pee.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>It’s an all-American fantasy of unity and solidarity, and a shared vision of the future. And of course — it’s an ad. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and have another Garage Beer or Liquid Death’s Sparkling Energy, then send your pee to the AI data center of your choice. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So Jason Kelce and his beer brand Garage Beer team up with Liquid Death, the very punk rock, canned water venture funded company. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>This is my friend Amanda Silberling. She’s a senior writer at TechCrunch and host of the Internet Culture Podcast, Wow If True. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Jason Kelce is drinking a beer and appears to be peeing. And he explains that, “Hey, data centers are using millions and millions of gallons of water every day. This is a really significant environmental issue. What if we solved it by sending data centers our pee?” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Right, and to go along with this, they also are selling data center pee jars? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Yes, which they sold out very quickly, but it was essentially like a glass mason jar where — I think something they were also trying to get at is that maybe the color of a light beer could be similar to the color of pee, but I think that that means you probably need to be drinking more water. So there’s the Liquid Death marketing, I guess. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay, we’ve talked about data centers pretty extensively on this show. Think about the way your laptop might get really, really hot when you run intense functions — like editing video, or if you’re me, playing The Sims. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So, when we do things on our computers, we need a lot of power to do those things. And data centers generate the power that can support, like, really power-intensive computing things, which AI is especially very, very compute-intensive. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Data centers are nothing new. We’ve relied on them for years. Any online service, from streaming movies on Netflix to scrolling through Instagram reels, is powered by data centers. But this current explosion in data center construction is directly tied to the AI boom. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So when you have these data centers, they are doing a lot of work, they’re producing a lot of heat, and that can… like, it can be bad, like when your laptop overheats or something. So one of the tactics that some data centers use to counter that heat is using water for cooling, and often that water is clean, potable, drinking water that is then creating a situation where people drinking water in a particular area are competing with the data centers for that drinking water. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Which brings us back to Jason Kelce’s pee jars. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>We want your pee. Please give us your pee. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>I think people thought it was really funny. Liquid Death does good marketing… But, I think that what stuck out to me is that there actually is some real illustration of like, this really is how Americans feel, and… It was just getting shared around a lot, I think also because there is such a concentrated sentiment against data center construction right now, because people are watching very rapidly how AI is changing the world around them, and sometimes that means building data centers in their communities, and they know that these are very water-intensive and loud, and maybe are working to enable technologies that they don’t feel are ethical sometimes. So, I think this was sort of just like a moment where people felt seen by big beer and big water as opposed to big AI. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Liquid Death’s viral marketing campaign was obviously silly. In the video and in the product listing for the now sold out pee jars, they do say, “Please don’t actually send your pee.” But this video got Amanda thinking. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So, I was talking about this in Slack with one of my editors, and he was like, “I mean, I don’t see why it couldn’t work.” And then I was like, “I don’t know a lot about the engineering behind data centers.” I studied English in college, but it’s time to learn. Could it actually work? Because if you think about it, it’s like, people produce a lot of pee. We need a lot of water. If pee would work, then sure. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So, like any intrepid reporter, Amanda investigated this question. Could we really cool data centers with pee? And if not, are there any alternatives to cooling these massive data centers without relying on our clean, precious drinking water? In today’s deep dive, we’re getting into all of that. And as it turns out, cooling data centers is not as simple as peeing on computers. Buckle up. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Let’s open our first tab — and let me just say, I cannot believe that I am actually typing this question out right now. Okay, new tab. Can you actually cool data centers with pee? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, there’s one pretty big problem with this question. Data centers need a lot of water. And human beings just do not pee enough, and are not capable of peeing enough, to replace the sheer amount of clean water that data centers use every day. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So in Loudoun County, Virginia, which is home to more than 250 data centers — it’s basically like the data center capital of the U.S. — in 2025, they said that each day the data centers use 460 million gallons of water. And not all of that has to be clean, potable water. So 43% of what Loudoun County is using is actually recycled water, but… that still does mean that 260 million gallons of water every day are coming from potable water supplies, which is very staggering. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Adults can only produce three to eight cups of urine per day. Even if the entire population of the United States managed to produce the maximum amount of pee possible for the human body, it still would not be enough for what Loudoun County alone needs for its data centers. No matter how much trendy canned water everyone drinks, we’d still be like, 90 million gallons short. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But for the sake of our deep dive, let’s say we could replace data center water with pee. What would happen? To answer this question, Amanda needed to talk to experts: real scientists who study wastewater recycling and resource management and infrastructure. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>And, I posted on LinkedIn like, “I want to talk to people about pee. If you know about like, wastewater and data centers, like please reach out.”. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>To her surprise, that post took off. Like a lot of people were sharing it and being like, “Please talk to her because I want to read this article.” So I got a lot of outreach from like very overqualified people, which, I love that. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong> I mean, one of the people you said was like way, way overqualified was Bruno Pigott, who used to be in charge of like, wastewater for the EPA under the Biden administration. How did Bruno respond when you approached him with this question? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Pretty much everyone I talked to for this article was like, “This is the most fun part of my day,” like, “Yay!” But he was very amused by it. Like, he really was like gonna play the game. Like, I think everyone I talked to was very willing to follow the thought experiment of like, “Okay, actually like sending pee to data centers and collecting human pee, like, there’s not enough of it that it would make a difference. But theoretically, what if we did?” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So to be clear, data center cooling is a lot more complicated than just pouring water on hot circuit boards. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Like in the commercial, Jason Kelce is more so being like, what if we pee on the data centers? What if we like send them our pee? Which, like, no one is literally dumping water on computers. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The vast majority of the world’s existing data centers use evaporative cooling. It generally works like this. With all these servers whirring around, it gets pretty hot inside. So, cooling towers, equipped with big old fans, pull hot air in, passing it through absorbent pads soaked in water, which absorb the heat. Then, it spits out nice, chilled air. Modern data centers use this in conjunction with other cooling methods, but the point is… they need a lot of clean water to pull it off. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>You can very quickly see why just straight up urine is not a good coolant for data centers. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>If you try this out with any liquid other than water, the water in it, the H2O, will evaporate. But, all the other gunk will be left behind, collecting on the equipment. Now, imagine doing this with human pee. Here’s what Bruno told Amanda. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Quote, “Pee contains all sorts of stuff,” which, great quote to get in an article. It contains salts, it contains urea, bacteria, organic matter of all sorts that can leave mineral deposits. If you just put that into a cooling tower or something else, it would require constant cleaning. Can you imagine if you just poured urine through hot air? So to say, urine is a liquid and a lot of what is in urine is water, but also, it’s kind of yucky. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>If you’ve ever had the misfortune of using a porta potty on a hot summer day, you know the smell. A typical porta potty can hold 60 to 70 gallons of human waste. There’s a lot of contention over data center water use numbers, but typical midsize data centers use roughly 300,000 gallons of water every day. So imagine the smell of a boiling porta potty in the middle of July, but now there are at least 5,000 more of them. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Residents have already pushed back against data centers in their communities because of the noise pollution, the rising energy bills, and the health concerns. The smell of 5,000 hot porta potties on top of that? Nobody wants that. Plus, the cleaning alone would be a nightmare. It would be so labor-intensive that it’s just not worth it. But, can’t we clean the pee? Filter all the gunk out so it’s clean, pure water? Astronauts up in space do this? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>If you think about the recent Artemis 2 mission, like they were up there for multiple weeks. Like, they need to drink a lot of water, like, humans need so much water to live. And you can only bring so much with you. So they have like, mechanisms built into the toilets in spacecrafts that then recycle it and sanitize it so that it can be drank again. And, I don’t know, science is kind of amazing sometimes. [laughs] \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>As of a few years ago, astronauts on the International Space Station have managed to recycle 98% of their sweat and urine into clean drinking water. That’s huge! It’s all thanks to this nifty NASA device called a brine processor. So why can’t we use that? It’s so expensive. The brine processer for a single flight-ready unit costs over $5 million. The International space station has like, seven crew members at a time. It just does not scale when you think about deploying this for a whole town, much less the entire country. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But, not all is lost. Jason Kelce’s very catchy song inspired Amanda to start digging into another alternative method for cooling down data centers: wastewater. That’s the used, dirty water that is no longer safe for human consumption. Like, what you flush down the toilet or the runoff from a car wash. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So it’s kind of like a silly idea, but then, not all of the water that we use is like, brand new fresh water. That’s not really a thing. If you think back to learning about the water cycle in school, like — what’s the difference between the clean, potable water that is in like, when you go and buy a water bottle at the store versus like, wastewater. Someone who used to be high up in the EPA told me that the adage about, technically we’re all drinking dinosaur pee, is kind of true. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That’s a new tab, which we’ll open right after a quick break. But first, we wanted to remind you that Close All Tabs depends on listeners like you to keep us going. You can support us by becoming a member at donate dot kqed dot org slash podcast. Okay — after the break — sure, we’re all technically drinking dinosaur pee. So why not use wastewater for data centers? Stick around. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Welcome back. Let’s open a new tab. Can data centers use recycled water? Reusing wastewater is not new. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So, these water treatment facilities, they take recycled water and they use various different complex technologies that I cannot explain to you like, membrane bioreactors, reverse osmosis, ultraviolet light, and other processes where they’re treating water until it’s clean enough for industrial use. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And Bruno Pigott, the guy formerly in charge of wastewater at the EPA, told Amanda something really interesting. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>I keep saying EPA because it’s just cool that he used to be so high up in the government. But, he is the executive director of the WateReuse Association. He told me that sometimes water treatment facilities can sanitize water to such a degree that they actually have to add minerals back into it because people aren’t used to the taste of water without minerals. Like, I guess it would taste weird to us if we drank, like… 1000% sanitized water. They have the technology to do it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>We actually don’t need the recycled water to be ultra sanitized to use it. We already safely use recycled wastewater — collected from municipal storm drains, flushing toilets, and industrial sites. Water treatment for industrial mining, for example, doesn’t need to be as clean as the water we use for irrigating farms. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>There’s different levels of sanitization, obviously, where it’s like, if you think about the water that you would use to water your plants, maybe isn’t the same water that you’re drinking. It doesn’t need to be as clean as drinking water. And it’s the same with data centers where it doesn’t to be like, the cleanest, most pristine water. And wouldn’t you rather have that kind of water available for people to consume it? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So then, if this is a genuine possibility, why are data centers and local communities still fighting for the same drinking water? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>I think it’s just not a priority for government to set up the infrastructure to recycle water and turn it into more sanitized versions of water that can be used for various other things, but it does exist in some places. So that’s why, as we mentioned earlier, Loudoun County in Virginia, because that’s such a hub for data centers, and this is such a huge burden on the water in that region, they have invested in making these water recycling plants where they can sanitize water to the point that it is clean enough that it can be used to cool data centers safely. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>To better understand water recycling, Amanda talked to another expert. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Dr. Greta Zornes, who is the practice leader for water reuse at the engineering firm CDM Smith — so basically she is in charge of thinking about how we are engineering data centers and how we can create data centers that are built so that they’re able to use recycled water and have that kind of infrastructure. Like, this is what she does every day. And she’s been working in water reuse for more than two decades, but she said that now, literally every day, she’s working on recycled water for data centers. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And as Dr. Zornes told Amanda, it’s not as simple as just building a new wastewater treatment plant for every new data center. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>If you’re rebuilding a city from scratch right now, that city will probably be more easily able to have those sorts of like recycled water setups than if you’re like in New York City and you’re let me replace this infrastructure from like the 1800s or something. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The truth is, right now, we just don’t have the infrastructure for all the data centers in the country to exclusively use recycled water. But, there is some hope for us. Amanda said there are people working with tech companies and local governments to build out this infrastructure. And, she talked to one of them. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So, Michael Obradovitch, who is the president of Data Center Global Accounts at Ecolab, he thinks that data centers could actually be something that drives the creation of more recycled water infrastructure. So, maybe even though data centers are kind of seen as being very bad for the environment, maybe in a way that could spur some construction of things that do help us with conserving resources, but it’s kind of a small victory that’s not really a victory in the greater scheme. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>On the legislation side, Bruno Pigott, former EPA guy, is pushing for the Advancing Water Reuse Act. That’s a bill that would provide a hefty tax credit to incentivize industries to scale their water recycling — and some tech companies are already investing in this infrastructure. Meta, for one, announced that they’re putting $270 million into wastewater infrastructure projects in areas they’re building new data centers. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>That sounds like, really amazing, like $270 million. But then, when you think about it, Meta just got fined $17 billion for child safety issues, and then they spend $4 billion on Reality Labs each quarter for the last several years. Like literally every quarter on the Meta quarterly earnings sheet, it’s like we lost $4 billion on Reality Labs. And Reality Labs is the division where they like the VR, AR stuff. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, it’s not like Meta is being unbelievably generous, but $270 million is not nothing, and it helps, and Amazon is doing something similar and trying to power its data centers with more recycled water. This does seem to be something where tech companies do understand that there is a really significant environmental risk here, or maybe they just understand that it’s like a reputational risk, where they don’t want to be seen as perpetuating that — but, if the reputational risk is what’s getting them to invest in it, then sure, I guess. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That reputational risk is huge right now. People in this country love to argue, but today there’s one issue that a majority of Americans can agree on, hating data centers. And, we have just enough time to open one last tab: the great American data center backlash. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>Let’s pee on our computers together, and save humanity. We want your pee.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>We’ve talked about all the reasons peeing on data centers wouldn’t work, but aside from just being very catchy, this video blew up for a reason. It echoes a sentiment felt across the country, an issue uniting Americans beyond party lines. Nobody wants a data center in their backyard. OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022. LLMs — large language models — were just the start. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>When the AI industry started really taking off a few years ago, developers and tech companies alike sold data centers as the future of industry. They made grand promises of creating jobs and investing in local communities. But, as we’ve talked about before on Close All Tabs, there hasn’t been much follow through on these promises. Instead, residents have raised concerns over skyrocketing utility bills, health issues, and unrelenting noise pollution. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Data center popularity is in the toilet. A recent Gallup poll found that seven out of 10 Americans opposed data centers in their area. And it’s bipartisan — Pew Research numbers published this month show that over half of Republicans and about two-thirds of Democrats say they’d be not comfortable with a new local data center. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>People just don’t want these like, giant industrial centers that make a lot of noise and represent a kind of technology that maybe there isn’t a great sentiment toward, like they just don’t want that in their neighborhood. And I think the sentiment toward AI is generally moving more negative. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>In the last few months, there’s been a massive cultural vibe shift against AI as a whole. Another Pew Research study, published in August, found that 52% of Americans said they’re, quote, “More concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life.” In 2021, it was only 37%. And creators who accept AI sponsorships and use AI in their content? They’re losing followers. One of the biggest internet scandals of the summer was an influencer brand trip, sponsored by OpenAI. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok video by Louis Levanti]: \u003c/strong>OpenAI just took influencers on a luxury trip with beekeeping and $5,000-a-night suites — while they’re building a $500 billion data center that’s about to suck power from your grid. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>The amount of sort of damage control that tech companies are having to do shows that, in a way, you could say that the average people that are frustrated with AI are starting to gain some ground. Like, I’m thinking about how there was recent backlash against the YouTuber slash writer slash general internet guy, Hank Green, when someone called him out for using the phrase, “I appreciate the pushback,” in a video. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Hank Green from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>A better way to say it. And I appreciate the pushback, is a word is a human invention. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>That’s just a phrase that people say, but it is also something that AI says a lot, and then someone accused him of using AI. And he kind of tattled on himself where he was like, “That actually wasn’t AI, I was just appreciating that someone pushed back on something, but I have been using AI in a way that I feel is kind of unhealthy.” And then he talked about it and people felt really, really betrayed — but, the reaction to the Hank Green situation shows that people really do think that’s that bad. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>There isn’t really a sense of nuance, and I don’t think that we’ve gotten to a space culturally where we have clear rules around what is good or bad AI use. Some people think that using it at all whatsoever is like, sacrilegious, cancel you, whatever. And I don’t blame people for feeling that way when the way that they’re seeing how AI is impacting them is it’s taking my job and there’s this giant loud thing in my backyard. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Do you think the people calling the shots in Silicon Valley are aware of that? Like, are they aware of the PR nightmare they’re facing? They’ve been trying to sell us this incredibly powerful game-changing technology that’s supposed to help humanity, but most people know it for, “Wow, this makes it harder to get a job.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>I think that when tech people don’t realize how out of touch with the rest of the world they are, they kind of corner themselves into these marketing nightmares. It kind of reminds me of how crypto was rolled out to the world where the actual blockchain technology has uses, but people don’t know what the technology is. They know like meme coins and Jimmy Fallon spending ungodly amounts of money on a little JPEG of an ape. People associate crypto with scams and that kind of ruined a lot of innovation in that space. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And I think similarly with AI, it’s like, a lot things that we do on the internet all the time already are AI. Like, when you make stickers on iMessage, that is using an AI algorithm to determine like, where the edges of the object is so that it can delete the background. Or like, most journalists have been using some form of AI interview transcribing tool for the last several years. I started using one in 2020 probably. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And, I think that sometimes people don’t know exactly how to distinguish between a writer using AI in the sense of putting an audio file of an interview into something that will transcribe it for you versus using AI to be like, “Help me write my article,” which is not necessarily ethical in my opinion. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So considering everything we’ve covered, the intricacies of cooling data centers with pee, the current sentiments around AI, the marketing tactics, what do you want listeners to take away from this episode? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>I think that when it comes to AI in general, not everybody is an expert on AI, nor do they have to be, like, that’s just not everyone’s responsibility. But I do think that at least having a basic level of education around how AI works, how LLMs function, things like people understanding that LLMs are creating the most likely response to a query where it’s working from a matter of probability as opposed to rightness. I think some of these things are starting to seep into like the general knowledge pool, then it empowers people to understand more about what AI is and how it’s affecting them because — I think that for me, knowing how LLMs work makes me a little bit less afraid of them. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So, educate yourself. Don’t mail your pee to Jason Kelce. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Unless if Jason Kelce really wants you to, I think he was joking. I’ll go on record and say I think Jason Kelce was joking. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And with that, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\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 Cayla Mihalovich. It was edited by Chris Hambrick. The Close All Tabs team also includes audio engineer Brendan Willard and senior editor, Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. Our intern is Lauren Yoon. Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is executive director of podcasts and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor-in-Chief. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\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. This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This episode also includes clips from YouTubers Louis Levanti and Hank Green. And of course, clips from Liquid Death, Garage Beer, and Jason Kelce’s song, “Want Your Pee.” Do you like these deep dives? Are you closing your tabs? Then don’t forget to rate and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Thanks for listening. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>My brother was staying with me, so I feel like he really got to see what my job is like, where I’m like, “Oh, I need to like log on early to take this call about pee with a guy that used to work for the EPA.” \u003c/p>\n",
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"OK, can we actually cool data centers with our pee? — Amanda Silberling, TechCrunch",
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"Major YouTube creators are facing backlash for accepting AI money — Charles Pulliam-Moore, The Verge",
"Why OpenAI’s influencer trip backfired — The Art of Influence",
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"NASA just recycled 98% of all astronaut pee and sweat on the ISS (engineers are thrilled) — Robert Lea, Space"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/20/ok-can-we-actually-cool-data-centers-with-our-pee/\">OK, can we actually cool data centers with our pee?\u003c/a> — Amanda Silberling, \u003cem>TechCrunch\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n",
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"\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/20/ok-can-we-actually-cool-data-centers-with-our-pee/\">OK, can we actually cool data centers with our pee?\u003c/a> — Amanda Silberling, \u003cem>TechCrunch\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n"
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"\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/19/ai-was-supposed-to-win-people-over-by-now-it-hasnt/\">AI was supposed to win people over by now — it hasn’t\u003c/a> — Sarah Perez, \u003cem>TechCrunch\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://theartofinfluence.substack.com/p/why-openais-influencer-trip-backfired\">Why OpenAI’s influencer trip backfired\u003c/a> — \u003cem>The Art of Influence\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n",
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"\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://theartofinfluence.substack.com/p/why-openais-influencer-trip-backfired\">Why OpenAI’s influencer trip backfired\u003c/a> — \u003cem>The Art of Influence\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/09/22/americans-views-of-data-centers-have-turned-more-negative/\">Americans’ views of data centers have turned more negative\u003c/a> — Brian Kennedy, \u003cem>Pew Research\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n",
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"\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/09/22/americans-views-of-data-centers-have-turned-more-negative/\">Americans’ views of data centers have turned more negative\u003c/a> — Brian Kennedy, \u003cem>Pew Research\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.space.com/astronaut-pee-iss-water-recycling-98-percent-milestone\">NASA just recycled 98% of all astronaut pee and sweat on the ISS (engineers are thrilled)\u003c/a> — Robert Lea, \u003cem>Space\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n",
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"\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.space.com/astronaut-pee-iss-water-recycling-98-percent-milestone\">NASA just recycled 98% of all astronaut pee and sweat on the ISS (engineers are thrilled)\u003c/a> — Robert Lea, \u003cem>Space\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\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",
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"\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"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hi, Tabby Cats. Do you have an internet trend, tech subculture, or online oddity you’ve been wondering about? Well, now you can ask Close All Tabs to investigate. Go to kqed dot org slash podcast slash Close All Tabs, to submit your question. Okay, let’s get to the show. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hi, Tabby Cats. Do you have an internet trend, tech subculture, or online oddity you’ve been wondering about? Well, now you can ask Close All Tabs to investigate. Go to kqed dot org slash podcast slash Close All Tabs, to submit your question. Okay, let’s get to the show. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>We want your pee… to cool these data centers. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>We want your pee… to cool these data centers. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay, so that’s NFL star and podcaster Jason Kelce in a recent marketing campaign to, quote, “Save humanity.” How? Well, they need your pee. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay, so that’s NFL star and podcaster Jason Kelce in a recent marketing campaign to, quote, “Save humanity.” How? Well, they need your pee. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>We want your pee. Please give us your pee. Let’s pee on computers together. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>We want your pee. Please give us your pee. Let’s pee on computers together. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The video starts with Kelce in a bathroom, peeing into a large resealable mason jar before breaking out into song and marching into a lush green field. He’s joined by a farmer, a skateboarder, a shirtless firefighter, a gamer — all different types of people — holding various receptacles of pee. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The video starts with Kelce in a bathroom, peeing into a large resealable mason jar before breaking out into song and marching into a lush green field. He’s joined by a farmer, a skateboarder, a shirtless firefighter, a gamer — all different types of people — holding various receptacles of pee. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>‘Cause we need lots of pee, endless gallons of pee. Join our important endeavor. We want your pee.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>‘Cause we need lots of pee, endless gallons of pee. Join our important endeavor. We want your pee.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>It’s an all-American fantasy of unity and solidarity, and a shared vision of the future. And of course — it’s an ad. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>It’s an all-American fantasy of unity and solidarity, and a shared vision of the future. And of course — it’s an ad. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and have another Garage Beer or Liquid Death’s Sparkling Energy, then send your pee to the AI data center of your choice. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and have another Garage Beer or Liquid Death’s Sparkling Energy, then send your pee to the AI data center of your choice. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So Jason Kelce and his beer brand Garage Beer team up with Liquid Death, the very punk rock, canned water venture funded company. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So Jason Kelce and his beer brand Garage Beer team up with Liquid Death, the very punk rock, canned water venture funded company. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>This is my friend Amanda Silberling. She’s a senior writer at TechCrunch and host of the Internet Culture Podcast, Wow If True. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>This is my friend Amanda Silberling. She’s a senior writer at TechCrunch and host of the Internet Culture Podcast, Wow If True. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Jason Kelce is drinking a beer and appears to be peeing. And he explains that, “Hey, data centers are using millions and millions of gallons of water every day. This is a really significant environmental issue. What if we solved it by sending data centers our pee?” \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Jason Kelce is drinking a beer and appears to be peeing. And he explains that, “Hey, data centers are using millions and millions of gallons of water every day. This is a really significant environmental issue. What if we solved it by sending data centers our pee?” \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Right, and to go along with this, they also are selling data center pee jars? \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Yes, which they sold out very quickly, but it was essentially like a glass mason jar where — I think something they were also trying to get at is that maybe the color of a light beer could be similar to the color of pee, but I think that that means you probably need to be drinking more water. So there’s the Liquid Death marketing, I guess. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Yes, which they sold out very quickly, but it was essentially like a glass mason jar where — I think something they were also trying to get at is that maybe the color of a light beer could be similar to the color of pee, but I think that that means you probably need to be drinking more water. So there’s the Liquid Death marketing, I guess. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay, we’ve talked about data centers pretty extensively on this show. Think about the way your laptop might get really, really hot when you run intense functions — like editing video, or if you’re me, playing The Sims. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay, we’ve talked about data centers pretty extensively on this show. Think about the way your laptop might get really, really hot when you run intense functions — like editing video, or if you’re me, playing The Sims. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So, when we do things on our computers, we need a lot of power to do those things. And data centers generate the power that can support, like, really power-intensive computing things, which AI is especially very, very compute-intensive. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So, when we do things on our computers, we need a lot of power to do those things. And data centers generate the power that can support, like, really power-intensive computing things, which AI is especially very, very compute-intensive. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Data centers are nothing new. We’ve relied on them for years. Any online service, from streaming movies on Netflix to scrolling through Instagram reels, is powered by data centers. But this current explosion in data center construction is directly tied to the AI boom. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Data centers are nothing new. We’ve relied on them for years. Any online service, from streaming movies on Netflix to scrolling through Instagram reels, is powered by data centers. But this current explosion in data center construction is directly tied to the AI boom. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So when you have these data centers, they are doing a lot of work, they’re producing a lot of heat, and that can… like, it can be bad, like when your laptop overheats or something. So one of the tactics that some data centers use to counter that heat is using water for cooling, and often that water is clean, potable, drinking water that is then creating a situation where people drinking water in a particular area are competing with the data centers for that drinking water. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So when you have these data centers, they are doing a lot of work, they’re producing a lot of heat, and that can… like, it can be bad, like when your laptop overheats or something. So one of the tactics that some data centers use to counter that heat is using water for cooling, and often that water is clean, potable, drinking water that is then creating a situation where people drinking water in a particular area are competing with the data centers for that drinking water. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Which brings us back to Jason Kelce’s pee jars. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>I think people thought it was really funny. Liquid Death does good marketing… But, I think that what stuck out to me is that there actually is some real illustration of like, this really is how Americans feel, and… It was just getting shared around a lot, I think also because there is such a concentrated sentiment against data center construction right now, because people are watching very rapidly how AI is changing the world around them, and sometimes that means building data centers in their communities, and they know that these are very water-intensive and loud, and maybe are working to enable technologies that they don’t feel are ethical sometimes. So, I think this was sort of just like a moment where people felt seen by big beer and big water as opposed to big AI. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>I think people thought it was really funny. Liquid Death does good marketing… But, I think that what stuck out to me is that there actually is some real illustration of like, this really is how Americans feel, and… It was just getting shared around a lot, I think also because there is such a concentrated sentiment against data center construction right now, because people are watching very rapidly how AI is changing the world around them, and sometimes that means building data centers in their communities, and they know that these are very water-intensive and loud, and maybe are working to enable technologies that they don’t feel are ethical sometimes. So, I think this was sort of just like a moment where people felt seen by big beer and big water as opposed to big AI. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Liquid Death’s viral marketing campaign was obviously silly. In the video and in the product listing for the now sold out pee jars, they do say, “Please don’t actually send your pee.” But this video got Amanda thinking. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Liquid Death’s viral marketing campaign was obviously silly. In the video and in the product listing for the now sold out pee jars, they do say, “Please don’t actually send your pee.” But this video got Amanda thinking. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So, I was talking about this in Slack with one of my editors, and he was like, “I mean, I don’t see why it couldn’t work.” And then I was like, “I don’t know a lot about the engineering behind data centers.” I studied English in college, but it’s time to learn. Could it actually work? Because if you think about it, it’s like, people produce a lot of pee. We need a lot of water. If pee would work, then sure. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So, I was talking about this in Slack with one of my editors, and he was like, “I mean, I don’t see why it couldn’t work.” And then I was like, “I don’t know a lot about the engineering behind data centers.” I studied English in college, but it’s time to learn. Could it actually work? Because if you think about it, it’s like, people produce a lot of pee. We need a lot of water. If pee would work, then sure. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So, like any intrepid reporter, Amanda investigated this question. Could we really cool data centers with pee? And if not, are there any alternatives to cooling these massive data centers without relying on our clean, precious drinking water? In today’s deep dive, we’re getting into all of that. And as it turns out, cooling data centers is not as simple as peeing on computers. Buckle up. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So, like any intrepid reporter, Amanda investigated this question. Could we really cool data centers with pee? And if not, are there any alternatives to cooling these massive data centers without relying on our clean, precious drinking water? In today’s deep dive, we’re getting into all of that. And as it turns out, cooling data centers is not as simple as peeing on computers. Buckle up. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>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/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>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/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Let’s open our first tab — and let me just say, I cannot believe that I am actually typing this question out right now. Okay, new tab. Can you actually cool data centers with pee? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Let’s open our first tab — and let me just say, I cannot believe that I am actually typing this question out right now. Okay, new tab. Can you actually cool data centers with pee? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So, there’s one pretty big problem with this question. Data centers need a lot of water. And human beings just do not pee enough, and are not capable of peeing enough, to replace the sheer amount of clean water that data centers use every day. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So, there’s one pretty big problem with this question. Data centers need a lot of water. And human beings just do not pee enough, and are not capable of peeing enough, to replace the sheer amount of clean water that data centers use every day. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So in Loudoun County, Virginia, which is home to more than 250 data centers — it’s basically like the data center capital of the U.S. — in 2025, they said that each day the data centers use 460 million gallons of water. And not all of that has to be clean, potable water. So 43% of what Loudoun County is using is actually recycled water, but… that still does mean that 260 million gallons of water every day are coming from potable water supplies, which is very staggering. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So in Loudoun County, Virginia, which is home to more than 250 data centers — it’s basically like the data center capital of the U.S. — in 2025, they said that each day the data centers use 460 million gallons of water. And not all of that has to be clean, potable water. So 43% of what Loudoun County is using is actually recycled water, but… that still does mean that 260 million gallons of water every day are coming from potable water supplies, which is very staggering. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Adults can only produce three to eight cups of urine per day. Even if the entire population of the United States managed to produce the maximum amount of pee possible for the human body, it still would not be enough for what Loudoun County alone needs for its data centers. No matter how much trendy canned water everyone drinks, we’d still be like, 90 million gallons short. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Adults can only produce three to eight cups of urine per day. Even if the entire population of the United States managed to produce the maximum amount of pee possible for the human body, it still would not be enough for what Loudoun County alone needs for its data centers. No matter how much trendy canned water everyone drinks, we’d still be like, 90 million gallons short. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But for the sake of our deep dive, let’s say we could replace data center water with pee. What would happen? To answer this question, Amanda needed to talk to experts: real scientists who study wastewater recycling and resource management and infrastructure. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But for the sake of our deep dive, let’s say we could replace data center water with pee. What would happen? To answer this question, Amanda needed to talk to experts: real scientists who study wastewater recycling and resource management and infrastructure. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>And, I posted on LinkedIn like, “I want to talk to people about pee. If you know about like, wastewater and data centers, like please reach out.”. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>And, I posted on LinkedIn like, “I want to talk to people about pee. If you know about like, wastewater and data centers, like please reach out.”. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>To her surprise, that post took off. Like a lot of people were sharing it and being like, “Please talk to her because I want to read this article.” So I got a lot of outreach from like very overqualified people, which, I love that. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>To her surprise, that post took off. Like a lot of people were sharing it and being like, “Please talk to her because I want to read this article.” So I got a lot of outreach from like very overqualified people, which, I love that. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong> I mean, one of the people you said was like way, way overqualified was Bruno Pigott, who used to be in charge of like, wastewater for the EPA under the Biden administration. How did Bruno respond when you approached him with this question? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong> I mean, one of the people you said was like way, way overqualified was Bruno Pigott, who used to be in charge of like, wastewater for the EPA under the Biden administration. How did Bruno respond when you approached him with this question? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Pretty much everyone I talked to for this article was like, “This is the most fun part of my day,” like, “Yay!” But he was very amused by it. Like, he really was like gonna play the game. Like, I think everyone I talked to was very willing to follow the thought experiment of like, “Okay, actually like sending pee to data centers and collecting human pee, like, there’s not enough of it that it would make a difference. But theoretically, what if we did?” \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Pretty much everyone I talked to for this article was like, “This is the most fun part of my day,” like, “Yay!” But he was very amused by it. Like, he really was like gonna play the game. Like, I think everyone I talked to was very willing to follow the thought experiment of like, “Okay, actually like sending pee to data centers and collecting human pee, like, there’s not enough of it that it would make a difference. But theoretically, what if we did?” \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So to be clear, data center cooling is a lot more complicated than just pouring water on hot circuit boards. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So to be clear, data center cooling is a lot more complicated than just pouring water on hot circuit boards. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Like in the commercial, Jason Kelce is more so being like, what if we pee on the data centers? What if we like send them our pee? Which, like, no one is literally dumping water on computers. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Like in the commercial, Jason Kelce is more so being like, what if we pee on the data centers? What if we like send them our pee? Which, like, no one is literally dumping water on computers. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The vast majority of the world’s existing data centers use evaporative cooling. It generally works like this. With all these servers whirring around, it gets pretty hot inside. So, cooling towers, equipped with big old fans, pull hot air in, passing it through absorbent pads soaked in water, which absorb the heat. Then, it spits out nice, chilled air. Modern data centers use this in conjunction with other cooling methods, but the point is… they need a lot of clean water to pull it off. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The vast majority of the world’s existing data centers use evaporative cooling. It generally works like this. With all these servers whirring around, it gets pretty hot inside. So, cooling towers, equipped with big old fans, pull hot air in, passing it through absorbent pads soaked in water, which absorb the heat. Then, it spits out nice, chilled air. Modern data centers use this in conjunction with other cooling methods, but the point is… they need a lot of clean water to pull it off. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>You can very quickly see why just straight up urine is not a good coolant for data centers. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>You can very quickly see why just straight up urine is not a good coolant for data centers. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>If you try this out with any liquid other than water, the water in it, the H2O, will evaporate. But, all the other gunk will be left behind, collecting on the equipment. Now, imagine doing this with human pee. Here’s what Bruno told Amanda. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>If you try this out with any liquid other than water, the water in it, the H2O, will evaporate. But, all the other gunk will be left behind, collecting on the equipment. Now, imagine doing this with human pee. Here’s what Bruno told Amanda. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Quote, “Pee contains all sorts of stuff,” which, great quote to get in an article. It contains salts, it contains urea, bacteria, organic matter of all sorts that can leave mineral deposits. If you just put that into a cooling tower or something else, it would require constant cleaning. Can you imagine if you just poured urine through hot air? So to say, urine is a liquid and a lot of what is in urine is water, but also, it’s kind of yucky. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Quote, “Pee contains all sorts of stuff,” which, great quote to get in an article. It contains salts, it contains urea, bacteria, organic matter of all sorts that can leave mineral deposits. If you just put that into a cooling tower or something else, it would require constant cleaning. Can you imagine if you just poured urine through hot air? So to say, urine is a liquid and a lot of what is in urine is water, but also, it’s kind of yucky. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>If you’ve ever had the misfortune of using a porta potty on a hot summer day, you know the smell. A typical porta potty can hold 60 to 70 gallons of human waste. There’s a lot of contention over data center water use numbers, but typical midsize data centers use roughly 300,000 gallons of water every day. So imagine the smell of a boiling porta potty in the middle of July, but now there are at least 5,000 more of them. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>If you’ve ever had the misfortune of using a porta potty on a hot summer day, you know the smell. A typical porta potty can hold 60 to 70 gallons of human waste. There’s a lot of contention over data center water use numbers, but typical midsize data centers use roughly 300,000 gallons of water every day. So imagine the smell of a boiling porta potty in the middle of July, but now there are at least 5,000 more of them. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Residents have already pushed back against data centers in their communities because of the noise pollution, the rising energy bills, and the health concerns. The smell of 5,000 hot porta potties on top of that? Nobody wants that. Plus, the cleaning alone would be a nightmare. It would be so labor-intensive that it’s just not worth it. But, can’t we clean the pee? Filter all the gunk out so it’s clean, pure water? Astronauts up in space do this? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Residents have already pushed back against data centers in their communities because of the noise pollution, the rising energy bills, and the health concerns. The smell of 5,000 hot porta potties on top of that? Nobody wants that. Plus, the cleaning alone would be a nightmare. It would be so labor-intensive that it’s just not worth it. But, can’t we clean the pee? Filter all the gunk out so it’s clean, pure water? Astronauts up in space do this? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>If you think about the recent Artemis 2 mission, like they were up there for multiple weeks. Like, they need to drink a lot of water, like, humans need so much water to live. And you can only bring so much with you. So they have like, mechanisms built into the toilets in spacecrafts that then recycle it and sanitize it so that it can be drank again. And, I don’t know, science is kind of amazing sometimes. [laughs] \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>If you think about the recent Artemis 2 mission, like they were up there for multiple weeks. Like, they need to drink a lot of water, like, humans need so much water to live. And you can only bring so much with you. So they have like, mechanisms built into the toilets in spacecrafts that then recycle it and sanitize it so that it can be drank again. And, I don’t know, science is kind of amazing sometimes. [laughs] \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>As of a few years ago, astronauts on the International Space Station have managed to recycle 98% of their sweat and urine into clean drinking water. That’s huge! It’s all thanks to this nifty NASA device called a brine processor. So why can’t we use that? It’s so expensive. The brine processer for a single flight-ready unit costs over $5 million. The International space station has like, seven crew members at a time. It just does not scale when you think about deploying this for a whole town, much less the entire country. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>As of a few years ago, astronauts on the International Space Station have managed to recycle 98% of their sweat and urine into clean drinking water. That’s huge! It’s all thanks to this nifty NASA device called a brine processor. So why can’t we use that? It’s so expensive. The brine processer for a single flight-ready unit costs over $5 million. The International space station has like, seven crew members at a time. It just does not scale when you think about deploying this for a whole town, much less the entire country. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But, not all is lost. Jason Kelce’s very catchy song inspired Amanda to start digging into another alternative method for cooling down data centers: wastewater. That’s the used, dirty water that is no longer safe for human consumption. Like, what you flush down the toilet or the runoff from a car wash. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But, not all is lost. Jason Kelce’s very catchy song inspired Amanda to start digging into another alternative method for cooling down data centers: wastewater. That’s the used, dirty water that is no longer safe for human consumption. Like, what you flush down the toilet or the runoff from a car wash. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So it’s kind of like a silly idea, but then, not all of the water that we use is like, brand new fresh water. That’s not really a thing. If you think back to learning about the water cycle in school, like — what’s the difference between the clean, potable water that is in like, when you go and buy a water bottle at the store versus like, wastewater. Someone who used to be high up in the EPA told me that the adage about, technically we’re all drinking dinosaur pee, is kind of true. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So it’s kind of like a silly idea, but then, not all of the water that we use is like, brand new fresh water. That’s not really a thing. If you think back to learning about the water cycle in school, like — what’s the difference between the clean, potable water that is in like, when you go and buy a water bottle at the store versus like, wastewater. Someone who used to be high up in the EPA told me that the adage about, technically we’re all drinking dinosaur pee, is kind of true. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That’s a new tab, which we’ll open right after a quick break. But first, we wanted to remind you that Close All Tabs depends on listeners like you to keep us going. You can support us by becoming a member at donate dot kqed dot org slash podcast. Okay — after the break — sure, we’re all technically drinking dinosaur pee. So why not use wastewater for data centers? Stick around. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That’s a new tab, which we’ll open right after a quick break. But first, we wanted to remind you that Close All Tabs depends on listeners like you to keep us going. You can support us by becoming a member at donate dot kqed dot org slash podcast. Okay — after the break — sure, we’re all technically drinking dinosaur pee. So why not use wastewater for data centers? Stick around. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Welcome back. Let’s open a new tab. Can data centers use recycled water? Reusing wastewater is not new. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Welcome back. Let’s open a new tab. Can data centers use recycled water? Reusing wastewater is not new. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So, these water treatment facilities, they take recycled water and they use various different complex technologies that I cannot explain to you like, membrane bioreactors, reverse osmosis, ultraviolet light, and other processes where they’re treating water until it’s clean enough for industrial use. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So, these water treatment facilities, they take recycled water and they use various different complex technologies that I cannot explain to you like, membrane bioreactors, reverse osmosis, ultraviolet light, and other processes where they’re treating water until it’s clean enough for industrial use. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And Bruno Pigott, the guy formerly in charge of wastewater at the EPA, told Amanda something really interesting. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And Bruno Pigott, the guy formerly in charge of wastewater at the EPA, told Amanda something really interesting. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>I keep saying EPA because it’s just cool that he used to be so high up in the government. But, he is the executive director of the WateReuse Association. He told me that sometimes water treatment facilities can sanitize water to such a degree that they actually have to add minerals back into it because people aren’t used to the taste of water without minerals. Like, I guess it would taste weird to us if we drank, like… 1000% sanitized water. They have the technology to do it. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>I keep saying EPA because it’s just cool that he used to be so high up in the government. But, he is the executive director of the WateReuse Association. He told me that sometimes water treatment facilities can sanitize water to such a degree that they actually have to add minerals back into it because people aren’t used to the taste of water without minerals. Like, I guess it would taste weird to us if we drank, like… 1000% sanitized water. They have the technology to do it. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>We actually don’t need the recycled water to be ultra sanitized to use it. We already safely use recycled wastewater — collected from municipal storm drains, flushing toilets, and industrial sites. Water treatment for industrial mining, for example, doesn’t need to be as clean as the water we use for irrigating farms. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>We actually don’t need the recycled water to be ultra sanitized to use it. We already safely use recycled wastewater — collected from municipal storm drains, flushing toilets, and industrial sites. Water treatment for industrial mining, for example, doesn’t need to be as clean as the water we use for irrigating farms. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>There’s different levels of sanitization, obviously, where it’s like, if you think about the water that you would use to water your plants, maybe isn’t the same water that you’re drinking. It doesn’t need to be as clean as drinking water. And it’s the same with data centers where it doesn’t to be like, the cleanest, most pristine water. And wouldn’t you rather have that kind of water available for people to consume it? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>There’s different levels of sanitization, obviously, where it’s like, if you think about the water that you would use to water your plants, maybe isn’t the same water that you’re drinking. It doesn’t need to be as clean as drinking water. And it’s the same with data centers where it doesn’t to be like, the cleanest, most pristine water. And wouldn’t you rather have that kind of water available for people to consume it? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So then, if this is a genuine possibility, why are data centers and local communities still fighting for the same drinking water? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So then, if this is a genuine possibility, why are data centers and local communities still fighting for the same drinking water? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>I think it’s just not a priority for government to set up the infrastructure to recycle water and turn it into more sanitized versions of water that can be used for various other things, but it does exist in some places. So that’s why, as we mentioned earlier, Loudoun County in Virginia, because that’s such a hub for data centers, and this is such a huge burden on the water in that region, they have invested in making these water recycling plants where they can sanitize water to the point that it is clean enough that it can be used to cool data centers safely. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>I think it’s just not a priority for government to set up the infrastructure to recycle water and turn it into more sanitized versions of water that can be used for various other things, but it does exist in some places. So that’s why, as we mentioned earlier, Loudoun County in Virginia, because that’s such a hub for data centers, and this is such a huge burden on the water in that region, they have invested in making these water recycling plants where they can sanitize water to the point that it is clean enough that it can be used to cool data centers safely. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>To better understand water recycling, Amanda talked to another expert. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Dr. Greta Zornes, who is the practice leader for water reuse at the engineering firm CDM Smith — so basically she is in charge of thinking about how we are engineering data centers and how we can create data centers that are built so that they’re able to use recycled water and have that kind of infrastructure. Like, this is what she does every day. And she’s been working in water reuse for more than two decades, but she said that now, literally every day, she’s working on recycled water for data centers. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Dr. Greta Zornes, who is the practice leader for water reuse at the engineering firm CDM Smith — so basically she is in charge of thinking about how we are engineering data centers and how we can create data centers that are built so that they’re able to use recycled water and have that kind of infrastructure. Like, this is what she does every day. And she’s been working in water reuse for more than two decades, but she said that now, literally every day, she’s working on recycled water for data centers. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And as Dr. Zornes told Amanda, it’s not as simple as just building a new wastewater treatment plant for every new data center. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And as Dr. Zornes told Amanda, it’s not as simple as just building a new wastewater treatment plant for every new data center. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>If you’re rebuilding a city from scratch right now, that city will probably be more easily able to have those sorts of like recycled water setups than if you’re like in New York City and you’re let me replace this infrastructure from like the 1800s or something. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>If you’re rebuilding a city from scratch right now, that city will probably be more easily able to have those sorts of like recycled water setups than if you’re like in New York City and you’re let me replace this infrastructure from like the 1800s or something. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The truth is, right now, we just don’t have the infrastructure for all the data centers in the country to exclusively use recycled water. But, there is some hope for us. Amanda said there are people working with tech companies and local governments to build out this infrastructure. And, she talked to one of them. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The truth is, right now, we just don’t have the infrastructure for all the data centers in the country to exclusively use recycled water. But, there is some hope for us. Amanda said there are people working with tech companies and local governments to build out this infrastructure. And, she talked to one of them. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So, Michael Obradovitch, who is the president of Data Center Global Accounts at Ecolab, he thinks that data centers could actually be something that drives the creation of more recycled water infrastructure. So, maybe even though data centers are kind of seen as being very bad for the environment, maybe in a way that could spur some construction of things that do help us with conserving resources, but it’s kind of a small victory that’s not really a victory in the greater scheme. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So, Michael Obradovitch, who is the president of Data Center Global Accounts at Ecolab, he thinks that data centers could actually be something that drives the creation of more recycled water infrastructure. So, maybe even though data centers are kind of seen as being very bad for the environment, maybe in a way that could spur some construction of things that do help us with conserving resources, but it’s kind of a small victory that’s not really a victory in the greater scheme. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>On the legislation side, Bruno Pigott, former EPA guy, is pushing for the Advancing Water Reuse Act. That’s a bill that would provide a hefty tax credit to incentivize industries to scale their water recycling — and some tech companies are already investing in this infrastructure. Meta, for one, announced that they’re putting $270 million into wastewater infrastructure projects in areas they’re building new data centers. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>On the legislation side, Bruno Pigott, former EPA guy, is pushing for the Advancing Water Reuse Act. That’s a bill that would provide a hefty tax credit to incentivize industries to scale their water recycling — and some tech companies are already investing in this infrastructure. Meta, for one, announced that they’re putting $270 million into wastewater infrastructure projects in areas they’re building new data centers. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>That sounds like, really amazing, like $270 million. But then, when you think about it, Meta just got fined $17 billion for child safety issues, and then they spend $4 billion on Reality Labs each quarter for the last several years. Like literally every quarter on the Meta quarterly earnings sheet, it’s like we lost $4 billion on Reality Labs. And Reality Labs is the division where they like the VR, AR stuff. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>That sounds like, really amazing, like $270 million. But then, when you think about it, Meta just got fined $17 billion for child safety issues, and then they spend $4 billion on Reality Labs each quarter for the last several years. Like literally every quarter on the Meta quarterly earnings sheet, it’s like we lost $4 billion on Reality Labs. And Reality Labs is the division where they like the VR, AR stuff. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So, it’s not like Meta is being unbelievably generous, but $270 million is not nothing, and it helps, and Amazon is doing something similar and trying to power its data centers with more recycled water. This does seem to be something where tech companies do understand that there is a really significant environmental risk here, or maybe they just understand that it’s like a reputational risk, where they don’t want to be seen as perpetuating that — but, if the reputational risk is what’s getting them to invest in it, then sure, I guess. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So, it’s not like Meta is being unbelievably generous, but $270 million is not nothing, and it helps, and Amazon is doing something similar and trying to power its data centers with more recycled water. This does seem to be something where tech companies do understand that there is a really significant environmental risk here, or maybe they just understand that it’s like a reputational risk, where they don’t want to be seen as perpetuating that — but, if the reputational risk is what’s getting them to invest in it, then sure, I guess. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That reputational risk is huge right now. People in this country love to argue, but today there’s one issue that a majority of Americans can agree on, hating data centers. And, we have just enough time to open one last tab: the great American data center backlash. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That reputational risk is huge right now. People in this country love to argue, but today there’s one issue that a majority of Americans can agree on, hating data centers. And, we have just enough time to open one last tab: the great American data center backlash. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>Let’s pee on our computers together, and save humanity. We want your pee.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>Let’s pee on our computers together, and save humanity. We want your pee.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>We’ve talked about all the reasons peeing on data centers wouldn’t work, but aside from just being very catchy, this video blew up for a reason. It echoes a sentiment felt across the country, an issue uniting Americans beyond party lines. Nobody wants a data center in their backyard. OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022. LLMs — large language models — were just the start. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>We’ve talked about all the reasons peeing on data centers wouldn’t work, but aside from just being very catchy, this video blew up for a reason. It echoes a sentiment felt across the country, an issue uniting Americans beyond party lines. Nobody wants a data center in their backyard. OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022. LLMs — large language models — were just the start. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>When the AI industry started really taking off a few years ago, developers and tech companies alike sold data centers as the future of industry. They made grand promises of creating jobs and investing in local communities. But, as we’ve talked about before on Close All Tabs, there hasn’t been much follow through on these promises. Instead, residents have raised concerns over skyrocketing utility bills, health issues, and unrelenting noise pollution. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>When the AI industry started really taking off a few years ago, developers and tech companies alike sold data centers as the future of industry. They made grand promises of creating jobs and investing in local communities. But, as we’ve talked about before on Close All Tabs, there hasn’t been much follow through on these promises. Instead, residents have raised concerns over skyrocketing utility bills, health issues, and unrelenting noise pollution. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Data center popularity is in the toilet. A recent Gallup poll found that seven out of 10 Americans opposed data centers in their area. And it’s bipartisan — Pew Research numbers published this month show that over half of Republicans and about two-thirds of Democrats say they’d be not comfortable with a new local data center. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Data center popularity is in the toilet. A recent Gallup poll found that seven out of 10 Americans opposed data centers in their area. And it’s bipartisan — Pew Research numbers published this month show that over half of Republicans and about two-thirds of Democrats say they’d be not comfortable with a new local data center. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>People just don’t want these like, giant industrial centers that make a lot of noise and represent a kind of technology that maybe there isn’t a great sentiment toward, like they just don’t want that in their neighborhood. And I think the sentiment toward AI is generally moving more negative. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>People just don’t want these like, giant industrial centers that make a lot of noise and represent a kind of technology that maybe there isn’t a great sentiment toward, like they just don’t want that in their neighborhood. And I think the sentiment toward AI is generally moving more negative. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>In the last few months, there’s been a massive cultural vibe shift against AI as a whole. Another Pew Research study, published in August, found that 52% of Americans said they’re, quote, “More concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life.” In 2021, it was only 37%. And creators who accept AI sponsorships and use AI in their content? They’re losing followers. One of the biggest internet scandals of the summer was an influencer brand trip, sponsored by OpenAI. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>In the last few months, there’s been a massive cultural vibe shift against AI as a whole. Another Pew Research study, published in August, found that 52% of Americans said they’re, quote, “More concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life.” In 2021, it was only 37%. And creators who accept AI sponsorships and use AI in their content? They’re losing followers. One of the biggest internet scandals of the summer was an influencer brand trip, sponsored by OpenAI. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok video by Louis Levanti]: \u003c/strong>OpenAI just took influencers on a luxury trip with beekeeping and $5,000-a-night suites — while they’re building a $500 billion data center that’s about to suck power from your grid. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok video by Louis Levanti]: \u003c/strong>OpenAI just took influencers on a luxury trip with beekeeping and $5,000-a-night suites — while they’re building a $500 billion data center that’s about to suck power from your grid. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>The amount of sort of damage control that tech companies are having to do shows that, in a way, you could say that the average people that are frustrated with AI are starting to gain some ground. Like, I’m thinking about how there was recent backlash against the YouTuber slash writer slash general internet guy, Hank Green, when someone called him out for using the phrase, “I appreciate the pushback,” in a video. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>The amount of sort of damage control that tech companies are having to do shows that, in a way, you could say that the average people that are frustrated with AI are starting to gain some ground. Like, I’m thinking about how there was recent backlash against the YouTuber slash writer slash general internet guy, Hank Green, when someone called him out for using the phrase, “I appreciate the pushback,” in a video. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Hank Green from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>A better way to say it. And I appreciate the pushback, is a word is a human invention. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Hank Green from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>A better way to say it. And I appreciate the pushback, is a word is a human invention. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>That’s just a phrase that people say, but it is also something that AI says a lot, and then someone accused him of using AI. And he kind of tattled on himself where he was like, “That actually wasn’t AI, I was just appreciating that someone pushed back on something, but I have been using AI in a way that I feel is kind of unhealthy.” And then he talked about it and people felt really, really betrayed — but, the reaction to the Hank Green situation shows that people really do think that’s that bad. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>That’s just a phrase that people say, but it is also something that AI says a lot, and then someone accused him of using AI. And he kind of tattled on himself where he was like, “That actually wasn’t AI, I was just appreciating that someone pushed back on something, but I have been using AI in a way that I feel is kind of unhealthy.” And then he talked about it and people felt really, really betrayed — but, the reaction to the Hank Green situation shows that people really do think that’s that bad. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>There isn’t really a sense of nuance, and I don’t think that we’ve gotten to a space culturally where we have clear rules around what is good or bad AI use. Some people think that using it at all whatsoever is like, sacrilegious, cancel you, whatever. And I don’t blame people for feeling that way when the way that they’re seeing how AI is impacting them is it’s taking my job and there’s this giant loud thing in my backyard. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>There isn’t really a sense of nuance, and I don’t think that we’ve gotten to a space culturally where we have clear rules around what is good or bad AI use. Some people think that using it at all whatsoever is like, sacrilegious, cancel you, whatever. And I don’t blame people for feeling that way when the way that they’re seeing how AI is impacting them is it’s taking my job and there’s this giant loud thing in my backyard. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Do you think the people calling the shots in Silicon Valley are aware of that? Like, are they aware of the PR nightmare they’re facing? They’ve been trying to sell us this incredibly powerful game-changing technology that’s supposed to help humanity, but most people know it for, “Wow, this makes it harder to get a job.” \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Do you think the people calling the shots in Silicon Valley are aware of that? Like, are they aware of the PR nightmare they’re facing? They’ve been trying to sell us this incredibly powerful game-changing technology that’s supposed to help humanity, but most people know it for, “Wow, this makes it harder to get a job.” \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>I think that when tech people don’t realize how out of touch with the rest of the world they are, they kind of corner themselves into these marketing nightmares. It kind of reminds me of how crypto was rolled out to the world where the actual blockchain technology has uses, but people don’t know what the technology is. They know like meme coins and Jimmy Fallon spending ungodly amounts of money on a little JPEG of an ape. People associate crypto with scams and that kind of ruined a lot of innovation in that space. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>I think that when tech people don’t realize how out of touch with the rest of the world they are, they kind of corner themselves into these marketing nightmares. It kind of reminds me of how crypto was rolled out to the world where the actual blockchain technology has uses, but people don’t know what the technology is. They know like meme coins and Jimmy Fallon spending ungodly amounts of money on a little JPEG of an ape. People associate crypto with scams and that kind of ruined a lot of innovation in that space. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And I think similarly with AI, it’s like, a lot things that we do on the internet all the time already are AI. Like, when you make stickers on iMessage, that is using an AI algorithm to determine like, where the edges of the object is so that it can delete the background. Or like, most journalists have been using some form of AI interview transcribing tool for the last several years. I started using one in 2020 probably. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And I think similarly with AI, it’s like, a lot things that we do on the internet all the time already are AI. Like, when you make stickers on iMessage, that is using an AI algorithm to determine like, where the edges of the object is so that it can delete the background. Or like, most journalists have been using some form of AI interview transcribing tool for the last several years. I started using one in 2020 probably. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And, I think that sometimes people don’t know exactly how to distinguish between a writer using AI in the sense of putting an audio file of an interview into something that will transcribe it for you versus using AI to be like, “Help me write my article,” which is not necessarily ethical in my opinion. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And, I think that sometimes people don’t know exactly how to distinguish between a writer using AI in the sense of putting an audio file of an interview into something that will transcribe it for you versus using AI to be like, “Help me write my article,” which is not necessarily ethical in my opinion. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So considering everything we’ve covered, the intricacies of cooling data centers with pee, the current sentiments around AI, the marketing tactics, what do you want listeners to take away from this episode? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So considering everything we’ve covered, the intricacies of cooling data centers with pee, the current sentiments around AI, the marketing tactics, what do you want listeners to take away from this episode? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>I think that when it comes to AI in general, not everybody is an expert on AI, nor do they have to be, like, that’s just not everyone’s responsibility. But I do think that at least having a basic level of education around how AI works, how LLMs function, things like people understanding that LLMs are creating the most likely response to a query where it’s working from a matter of probability as opposed to rightness. I think some of these things are starting to seep into like the general knowledge pool, then it empowers people to understand more about what AI is and how it’s affecting them because — I think that for me, knowing how LLMs work makes me a little bit less afraid of them. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>I think that when it comes to AI in general, not everybody is an expert on AI, nor do they have to be, like, that’s just not everyone’s responsibility. But I do think that at least having a basic level of education around how AI works, how LLMs function, things like people understanding that LLMs are creating the most likely response to a query where it’s working from a matter of probability as opposed to rightness. I think some of these things are starting to seep into like the general knowledge pool, then it empowers people to understand more about what AI is and how it’s affecting them because — I think that for me, knowing how LLMs work makes me a little bit less afraid of them. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So, educate yourself. Don’t mail your pee to Jason Kelce. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So, educate yourself. Don’t mail your pee to Jason Kelce. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Unless if Jason Kelce really wants you to, I think he was joking. I’ll go on record and say I think Jason Kelce was joking. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Unless if Jason Kelce really wants you to, I think he was joking. I’ll go on record and say I think Jason Kelce was joking. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And with that, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And with that, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\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 Cayla Mihalovich. It was edited by Chris Hambrick. The Close All Tabs team also includes audio engineer Brendan Willard and senior editor, Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. Our intern is Lauren Yoon. Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is executive director of podcasts and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor-in-Chief. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\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 Cayla Mihalovich. It was edited by Chris Hambrick. The Close All Tabs team also includes audio engineer Brendan Willard and senior editor, Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. Our intern is Lauren Yoon. Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is executive director of podcasts and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor-in-Chief. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This episode also includes clips from YouTubers Louis Levanti and Hank Green. And of course, clips from Liquid Death, Garage Beer, and Jason Kelce’s song, “Want Your Pee.” Do you like these deep dives? Are you closing your tabs? Then don’t forget to rate and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Thanks for listening. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>This episode also includes clips from YouTubers Louis Levanti and Hank Green. And of course, clips from Liquid Death, Garage Beer, and Jason Kelce’s song, “Want Your Pee.” Do you like these deep dives? Are you closing your tabs? Then don’t forget to rate and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Thanks for listening. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>My brother was staying with me, so I feel like he really got to see what my job is like, where I’m like, “Oh, I need to like log on early to take this call about pee with a guy that used to work for the EPA.” \u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "The viral song “We Want Your Pee” jokingly advocates that urine could cool data centers… but could it actually work? ",
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"description": "People really seem to hate data centers. And the more people learn about the amount of resources these server-packed buildings need, the bigger the backlash grows. Perhaps that’s why the viral music video and beverage ad “We Want Your Pee” took off in popularity about a month ago. It’s a collaboration between Liquid Death and Jason Kelce’s Garage Beer, and it advocates that urine could address the cooling needs of data centers. It’s obviously a joke… but could it actually work? Host Morgan Sung talks to journalist Amanda Silberling about what she discovered when she looked into this question, and about the alternative cooling methods that might actually help everyone’s least favorite buildings use a little less H2O.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>People \u003cem>really\u003c/em> seem to hate data centers. And the more people learn about the amount of resources these server-packed buildings need, the bigger the backlash grows. Perhaps that’s why the viral music video and beverage ad “We Want Your Pee” took off in popularity about a month ago. It’s a collaboration between Liquid Death and Jason Kelce’s Garage Beer, and it advocates that urine could address the cooling needs of data centers. It’s obviously a joke… \u003cem>but could it actually work? \u003c/em>Host Morgan Sung talks to journalist Amanda Silberling about what she discovered when she looked into this question, and about the alternative cooling methods that might actually help everyone’s least favorite buildings use a little less H2O.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>Guest:\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/author/amanda-silberling/\">Amanda Silberling\u003c/a>, senior writer at \u003cem>TechCrunch\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/20/ok-can-we-actually-cool-data-centers-with-our-pee/\">OK, can we actually cool data centers with our pee?\u003c/a> — Amanda Silberling, \u003cem>TechCrunch\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/19/ai-was-supposed-to-win-people-over-by-now-it-hasnt/\">AI was supposed to win people over by now — it hasn’t\u003c/a> — Sarah Perez, \u003cem>TechCrunch\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/983181/matti-haapoja-sam-kold-kolder-higgsfield-seedance-backlash\">Major YouTube creators are facing backlash for accepting AI money\u003c/a> — Charles Pulliam-Moore, \u003cem>The Verge\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://theartofinfluence.substack.com/p/why-openais-influencer-trip-backfired\">Why OpenAI’s influencer trip backfired\u003c/a> — \u003cem>The Art of Influence\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/09/22/americans-views-of-data-centers-have-turned-more-negative/\">Americans’ views of data centers have turned more negative\u003c/a> — Brian Kennedy, \u003cem>Pew Research\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.space.com/astronaut-pee-iss-water-recycling-98-percent-milestone\">NASA just recycled 98% of all astronaut pee and sweat on the ISS (engineers are thrilled)\u003c/a> — Robert Lea, \u003cem>Space\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\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\n\n\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hi, Tabby Cats. Do you have an internet trend, tech subculture, or online oddity you’ve been wondering about? Well, now you can ask Close All Tabs to investigate. Go to kqed dot org slash podcast slash Close All Tabs, to submit your question. Okay, let’s get to the show. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>We want your pee… to cool these data centers. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay, so that’s NFL star and podcaster Jason Kelce in a recent marketing campaign to, quote, “Save humanity.” How? Well, they need your pee. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>We want your pee. Please give us your pee. Let’s pee on computers together. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The video starts with Kelce in a bathroom, peeing into a large resealable mason jar before breaking out into song and marching into a lush green field. He’s joined by a farmer, a skateboarder, a shirtless firefighter, a gamer — all different types of people — holding various receptacles of pee. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>‘Cause we need lots of pee, endless gallons of pee. Join our important endeavor. We want your pee.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>It’s an all-American fantasy of unity and solidarity, and a shared vision of the future. And of course — it’s an ad. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and have another Garage Beer or Liquid Death’s Sparkling Energy, then send your pee to the AI data center of your choice. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So Jason Kelce and his beer brand Garage Beer team up with Liquid Death, the very punk rock, canned water venture funded company. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>This is my friend Amanda Silberling. She’s a senior writer at TechCrunch and host of the Internet Culture Podcast, Wow If True. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Jason Kelce is drinking a beer and appears to be peeing. And he explains that, “Hey, data centers are using millions and millions of gallons of water every day. This is a really significant environmental issue. What if we solved it by sending data centers our pee?” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Right, and to go along with this, they also are selling data center pee jars? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Yes, which they sold out very quickly, but it was essentially like a glass mason jar where — I think something they were also trying to get at is that maybe the color of a light beer could be similar to the color of pee, but I think that that means you probably need to be drinking more water. So there’s the Liquid Death marketing, I guess. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay, we’ve talked about data centers pretty extensively on this show. Think about the way your laptop might get really, really hot when you run intense functions — like editing video, or if you’re me, playing The Sims. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So, when we do things on our computers, we need a lot of power to do those things. And data centers generate the power that can support, like, really power-intensive computing things, which AI is especially very, very compute-intensive. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Data centers are nothing new. We’ve relied on them for years. Any online service, from streaming movies on Netflix to scrolling through Instagram reels, is powered by data centers. But this current explosion in data center construction is directly tied to the AI boom. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So when you have these data centers, they are doing a lot of work, they’re producing a lot of heat, and that can… like, it can be bad, like when your laptop overheats or something. So one of the tactics that some data centers use to counter that heat is using water for cooling, and often that water is clean, potable, drinking water that is then creating a situation where people drinking water in a particular area are competing with the data centers for that drinking water. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Which brings us back to Jason Kelce’s pee jars. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>We want your pee. Please give us your pee. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>I think people thought it was really funny. Liquid Death does good marketing… But, I think that what stuck out to me is that there actually is some real illustration of like, this really is how Americans feel, and… It was just getting shared around a lot, I think also because there is such a concentrated sentiment against data center construction right now, because people are watching very rapidly how AI is changing the world around them, and sometimes that means building data centers in their communities, and they know that these are very water-intensive and loud, and maybe are working to enable technologies that they don’t feel are ethical sometimes. So, I think this was sort of just like a moment where people felt seen by big beer and big water as opposed to big AI. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Liquid Death’s viral marketing campaign was obviously silly. In the video and in the product listing for the now sold out pee jars, they do say, “Please don’t actually send your pee.” But this video got Amanda thinking. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So, I was talking about this in Slack with one of my editors, and he was like, “I mean, I don’t see why it couldn’t work.” And then I was like, “I don’t know a lot about the engineering behind data centers.” I studied English in college, but it’s time to learn. Could it actually work? Because if you think about it, it’s like, people produce a lot of pee. We need a lot of water. If pee would work, then sure. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So, like any intrepid reporter, Amanda investigated this question. Could we really cool data centers with pee? And if not, are there any alternatives to cooling these massive data centers without relying on our clean, precious drinking water? In today’s deep dive, we’re getting into all of that. And as it turns out, cooling data centers is not as simple as peeing on computers. Buckle up. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>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/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Let’s open our first tab — and let me just say, I cannot believe that I am actually typing this question out right now. Okay, new tab. Can you actually cool data centers with pee? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, there’s one pretty big problem with this question. Data centers need a lot of water. And human beings just do not pee enough, and are not capable of peeing enough, to replace the sheer amount of clean water that data centers use every day. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So in Loudoun County, Virginia, which is home to more than 250 data centers — it’s basically like the data center capital of the U.S. — in 2025, they said that each day the data centers use 460 million gallons of water. And not all of that has to be clean, potable water. So 43% of what Loudoun County is using is actually recycled water, but… that still does mean that 260 million gallons of water every day are coming from potable water supplies, which is very staggering. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Adults can only produce three to eight cups of urine per day. Even if the entire population of the United States managed to produce the maximum amount of pee possible for the human body, it still would not be enough for what Loudoun County alone needs for its data centers. No matter how much trendy canned water everyone drinks, we’d still be like, 90 million gallons short. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But for the sake of our deep dive, let’s say we could replace data center water with pee. What would happen? To answer this question, Amanda needed to talk to experts: real scientists who study wastewater recycling and resource management and infrastructure. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>And, I posted on LinkedIn like, “I want to talk to people about pee. If you know about like, wastewater and data centers, like please reach out.”. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>To her surprise, that post took off. Like a lot of people were sharing it and being like, “Please talk to her because I want to read this article.” So I got a lot of outreach from like very overqualified people, which, I love that. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong> I mean, one of the people you said was like way, way overqualified was Bruno Pigott, who used to be in charge of like, wastewater for the EPA under the Biden administration. How did Bruno respond when you approached him with this question? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Pretty much everyone I talked to for this article was like, “This is the most fun part of my day,” like, “Yay!” But he was very amused by it. Like, he really was like gonna play the game. Like, I think everyone I talked to was very willing to follow the thought experiment of like, “Okay, actually like sending pee to data centers and collecting human pee, like, there’s not enough of it that it would make a difference. But theoretically, what if we did?” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So to be clear, data center cooling is a lot more complicated than just pouring water on hot circuit boards. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Like in the commercial, Jason Kelce is more so being like, what if we pee on the data centers? What if we like send them our pee? Which, like, no one is literally dumping water on computers. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The vast majority of the world’s existing data centers use evaporative cooling. It generally works like this. With all these servers whirring around, it gets pretty hot inside. So, cooling towers, equipped with big old fans, pull hot air in, passing it through absorbent pads soaked in water, which absorb the heat. Then, it spits out nice, chilled air. Modern data centers use this in conjunction with other cooling methods, but the point is… they need a lot of clean water to pull it off. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>You can very quickly see why just straight up urine is not a good coolant for data centers. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>If you try this out with any liquid other than water, the water in it, the H2O, will evaporate. But, all the other gunk will be left behind, collecting on the equipment. Now, imagine doing this with human pee. Here’s what Bruno told Amanda. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Quote, “Pee contains all sorts of stuff,” which, great quote to get in an article. It contains salts, it contains urea, bacteria, organic matter of all sorts that can leave mineral deposits. If you just put that into a cooling tower or something else, it would require constant cleaning. Can you imagine if you just poured urine through hot air? So to say, urine is a liquid and a lot of what is in urine is water, but also, it’s kind of yucky. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>If you’ve ever had the misfortune of using a porta potty on a hot summer day, you know the smell. A typical porta potty can hold 60 to 70 gallons of human waste. There’s a lot of contention over data center water use numbers, but typical midsize data centers use roughly 300,000 gallons of water every day. So imagine the smell of a boiling porta potty in the middle of July, but now there are at least 5,000 more of them. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Residents have already pushed back against data centers in their communities because of the noise pollution, the rising energy bills, and the health concerns. The smell of 5,000 hot porta potties on top of that? Nobody wants that. Plus, the cleaning alone would be a nightmare. It would be so labor-intensive that it’s just not worth it. But, can’t we clean the pee? Filter all the gunk out so it’s clean, pure water? Astronauts up in space do this? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>If you think about the recent Artemis 2 mission, like they were up there for multiple weeks. Like, they need to drink a lot of water, like, humans need so much water to live. And you can only bring so much with you. So they have like, mechanisms built into the toilets in spacecrafts that then recycle it and sanitize it so that it can be drank again. And, I don’t know, science is kind of amazing sometimes. [laughs] \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>As of a few years ago, astronauts on the International Space Station have managed to recycle 98% of their sweat and urine into clean drinking water. That’s huge! It’s all thanks to this nifty NASA device called a brine processor. So why can’t we use that? It’s so expensive. The brine processer for a single flight-ready unit costs over $5 million. The International space station has like, seven crew members at a time. It just does not scale when you think about deploying this for a whole town, much less the entire country. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But, not all is lost. Jason Kelce’s very catchy song inspired Amanda to start digging into another alternative method for cooling down data centers: wastewater. That’s the used, dirty water that is no longer safe for human consumption. Like, what you flush down the toilet or the runoff from a car wash. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So it’s kind of like a silly idea, but then, not all of the water that we use is like, brand new fresh water. That’s not really a thing. If you think back to learning about the water cycle in school, like — what’s the difference between the clean, potable water that is in like, when you go and buy a water bottle at the store versus like, wastewater. Someone who used to be high up in the EPA told me that the adage about, technically we’re all drinking dinosaur pee, is kind of true. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That’s a new tab, which we’ll open right after a quick break. But first, we wanted to remind you that Close All Tabs depends on listeners like you to keep us going. You can support us by becoming a member at donate dot kqed dot org slash podcast. Okay — after the break — sure, we’re all technically drinking dinosaur pee. So why not use wastewater for data centers? Stick around. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Welcome back. Let’s open a new tab. Can data centers use recycled water? Reusing wastewater is not new. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So, these water treatment facilities, they take recycled water and they use various different complex technologies that I cannot explain to you like, membrane bioreactors, reverse osmosis, ultraviolet light, and other processes where they’re treating water until it’s clean enough for industrial use. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And Bruno Pigott, the guy formerly in charge of wastewater at the EPA, told Amanda something really interesting. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>I keep saying EPA because it’s just cool that he used to be so high up in the government. But, he is the executive director of the WateReuse Association. He told me that sometimes water treatment facilities can sanitize water to such a degree that they actually have to add minerals back into it because people aren’t used to the taste of water without minerals. Like, I guess it would taste weird to us if we drank, like… 1000% sanitized water. They have the technology to do it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>We actually don’t need the recycled water to be ultra sanitized to use it. We already safely use recycled wastewater — collected from municipal storm drains, flushing toilets, and industrial sites. Water treatment for industrial mining, for example, doesn’t need to be as clean as the water we use for irrigating farms. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>There’s different levels of sanitization, obviously, where it’s like, if you think about the water that you would use to water your plants, maybe isn’t the same water that you’re drinking. It doesn’t need to be as clean as drinking water. And it’s the same with data centers where it doesn’t to be like, the cleanest, most pristine water. And wouldn’t you rather have that kind of water available for people to consume it? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So then, if this is a genuine possibility, why are data centers and local communities still fighting for the same drinking water? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>I think it’s just not a priority for government to set up the infrastructure to recycle water and turn it into more sanitized versions of water that can be used for various other things, but it does exist in some places. So that’s why, as we mentioned earlier, Loudoun County in Virginia, because that’s such a hub for data centers, and this is such a huge burden on the water in that region, they have invested in making these water recycling plants where they can sanitize water to the point that it is clean enough that it can be used to cool data centers safely. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>To better understand water recycling, Amanda talked to another expert. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Dr. Greta Zornes, who is the practice leader for water reuse at the engineering firm CDM Smith — so basically she is in charge of thinking about how we are engineering data centers and how we can create data centers that are built so that they’re able to use recycled water and have that kind of infrastructure. Like, this is what she does every day. And she’s been working in water reuse for more than two decades, but she said that now, literally every day, she’s working on recycled water for data centers. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And as Dr. Zornes told Amanda, it’s not as simple as just building a new wastewater treatment plant for every new data center. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>If you’re rebuilding a city from scratch right now, that city will probably be more easily able to have those sorts of like recycled water setups than if you’re like in New York City and you’re let me replace this infrastructure from like the 1800s or something. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>The truth is, right now, we just don’t have the infrastructure for all the data centers in the country to exclusively use recycled water. But, there is some hope for us. Amanda said there are people working with tech companies and local governments to build out this infrastructure. And, she talked to one of them. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>So, Michael Obradovitch, who is the president of Data Center Global Accounts at Ecolab, he thinks that data centers could actually be something that drives the creation of more recycled water infrastructure. So, maybe even though data centers are kind of seen as being very bad for the environment, maybe in a way that could spur some construction of things that do help us with conserving resources, but it’s kind of a small victory that’s not really a victory in the greater scheme. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>On the legislation side, Bruno Pigott, former EPA guy, is pushing for the Advancing Water Reuse Act. That’s a bill that would provide a hefty tax credit to incentivize industries to scale their water recycling — and some tech companies are already investing in this infrastructure. Meta, for one, announced that they’re putting $270 million into wastewater infrastructure projects in areas they’re building new data centers. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>That sounds like, really amazing, like $270 million. But then, when you think about it, Meta just got fined $17 billion for child safety issues, and then they spend $4 billion on Reality Labs each quarter for the last several years. Like literally every quarter on the Meta quarterly earnings sheet, it’s like we lost $4 billion on Reality Labs. And Reality Labs is the division where they like the VR, AR stuff. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, it’s not like Meta is being unbelievably generous, but $270 million is not nothing, and it helps, and Amazon is doing something similar and trying to power its data centers with more recycled water. This does seem to be something where tech companies do understand that there is a really significant environmental risk here, or maybe they just understand that it’s like a reputational risk, where they don’t want to be seen as perpetuating that — but, if the reputational risk is what’s getting them to invest in it, then sure, I guess. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That reputational risk is huge right now. People in this country love to argue, but today there’s one issue that a majority of Americans can agree on, hating data centers. And, we have just enough time to open one last tab: the great American data center backlash. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Jason Kelce ad from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>Let’s pee on our computers together, and save humanity. We want your pee.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>We’ve talked about all the reasons peeing on data centers wouldn’t work, but aside from just being very catchy, this video blew up for a reason. It echoes a sentiment felt across the country, an issue uniting Americans beyond party lines. Nobody wants a data center in their backyard. OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022. LLMs — large language models — were just the start. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>When the AI industry started really taking off a few years ago, developers and tech companies alike sold data centers as the future of industry. They made grand promises of creating jobs and investing in local communities. But, as we’ve talked about before on Close All Tabs, there hasn’t been much follow through on these promises. Instead, residents have raised concerns over skyrocketing utility bills, health issues, and unrelenting noise pollution. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Data center popularity is in the toilet. A recent Gallup poll found that seven out of 10 Americans opposed data centers in their area. And it’s bipartisan — Pew Research numbers published this month show that over half of Republicans and about two-thirds of Democrats say they’d be not comfortable with a new local data center. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>People just don’t want these like, giant industrial centers that make a lot of noise and represent a kind of technology that maybe there isn’t a great sentiment toward, like they just don’t want that in their neighborhood. And I think the sentiment toward AI is generally moving more negative. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>In the last few months, there’s been a massive cultural vibe shift against AI as a whole. Another Pew Research study, published in August, found that 52% of Americans said they’re, quote, “More concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life.” In 2021, it was only 37%. And creators who accept AI sponsorships and use AI in their content? They’re losing followers. One of the biggest internet scandals of the summer was an influencer brand trip, sponsored by OpenAI. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of TikTok video by Louis Levanti]: \u003c/strong>OpenAI just took influencers on a luxury trip with beekeeping and $5,000-a-night suites — while they’re building a $500 billion data center that’s about to suck power from your grid. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>The amount of sort of damage control that tech companies are having to do shows that, in a way, you could say that the average people that are frustrated with AI are starting to gain some ground. Like, I’m thinking about how there was recent backlash against the YouTuber slash writer slash general internet guy, Hank Green, when someone called him out for using the phrase, “I appreciate the pushback,” in a video. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Clip of Hank Green from YouTube]: \u003c/strong>A better way to say it. And I appreciate the pushback, is a word is a human invention. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>That’s just a phrase that people say, but it is also something that AI says a lot, and then someone accused him of using AI. And he kind of tattled on himself where he was like, “That actually wasn’t AI, I was just appreciating that someone pushed back on something, but I have been using AI in a way that I feel is kind of unhealthy.” And then he talked about it and people felt really, really betrayed — but, the reaction to the Hank Green situation shows that people really do think that’s that bad. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>There isn’t really a sense of nuance, and I don’t think that we’ve gotten to a space culturally where we have clear rules around what is good or bad AI use. Some people think that using it at all whatsoever is like, sacrilegious, cancel you, whatever. And I don’t blame people for feeling that way when the way that they’re seeing how AI is impacting them is it’s taking my job and there’s this giant loud thing in my backyard. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Do you think the people calling the shots in Silicon Valley are aware of that? Like, are they aware of the PR nightmare they’re facing? They’ve been trying to sell us this incredibly powerful game-changing technology that’s supposed to help humanity, but most people know it for, “Wow, this makes it harder to get a job.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>I think that when tech people don’t realize how out of touch with the rest of the world they are, they kind of corner themselves into these marketing nightmares. It kind of reminds me of how crypto was rolled out to the world where the actual blockchain technology has uses, but people don’t know what the technology is. They know like meme coins and Jimmy Fallon spending ungodly amounts of money on a little JPEG of an ape. People associate crypto with scams and that kind of ruined a lot of innovation in that space. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And I think similarly with AI, it’s like, a lot things that we do on the internet all the time already are AI. Like, when you make stickers on iMessage, that is using an AI algorithm to determine like, where the edges of the object is so that it can delete the background. Or like, most journalists have been using some form of AI interview transcribing tool for the last several years. I started using one in 2020 probably. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And, I think that sometimes people don’t know exactly how to distinguish between a writer using AI in the sense of putting an audio file of an interview into something that will transcribe it for you versus using AI to be like, “Help me write my article,” which is not necessarily ethical in my opinion. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So considering everything we’ve covered, the intricacies of cooling data centers with pee, the current sentiments around AI, the marketing tactics, what do you want listeners to take away from this episode? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>I think that when it comes to AI in general, not everybody is an expert on AI, nor do they have to be, like, that’s just not everyone’s responsibility. But I do think that at least having a basic level of education around how AI works, how LLMs function, things like people understanding that LLMs are creating the most likely response to a query where it’s working from a matter of probability as opposed to rightness. I think some of these things are starting to seep into like the general knowledge pool, then it empowers people to understand more about what AI is and how it’s affecting them because — I think that for me, knowing how LLMs work makes me a little bit less afraid of them. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So, educate yourself. Don’t mail your pee to Jason Kelce. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>Unless if Jason Kelce really wants you to, I think he was joking. I’ll go on record and say I think Jason Kelce was joking. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And with that, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\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 Cayla Mihalovich. It was edited by Chris Hambrick. The Close All Tabs team also includes audio engineer Brendan Willard and senior editor, Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. Our intern is Lauren Yoon. Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is executive director of podcasts and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor-in-Chief. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\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. This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This episode also includes clips from YouTubers Louis Levanti and Hank Green. And of course, clips from Liquid Death, Garage Beer, and Jason Kelce’s song, “Want Your Pee.” Do you like these deep dives? Are you closing your tabs? Then don’t forget to rate and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Thanks for listening. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Amanda Silberling: \u003c/strong>My brother was staying with me, so I feel like he really got to see what my job is like, where I’m like, “Oh, I need to like log on early to take this call about pee with a guy that used to work for the EPA.” \u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"content": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>While the Close All Tabs team churns out our next few episodes, we bring you this must-listen from \u003cem>Life, Automated\u003c/em>. Generative AI is able to conjure new images, stories, and songs at lightning speed. So what does this mean for humans artists, storytellers and musicians? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Life, Automated\u003c/em> Host Jess Love explores what happens when AI enters creative markets. We learn that, at least today, key bottlenecks prevent AI from replicating some aspects of creativity. But there’s no guarantee those bottlenecks will exist tomorrow, raising vital questions about what we value in human labor.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Life, Automated\u003c/em> is a series about how to live, work and make decisions in a world increasingly shaped by machines. It is a production of the Ryan Institute on Complexity at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and it is distributed by KQED.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Host and Senior Director: Jess Love\u003cbr>Producer: Steven Jackson \u003cbr>Senior Producer: Jesse Dukes\u003cbr>Music: Steven Jackson\u003cbr>Associate Producer: Stacia Sliger\u003cbr>Recording: George Christensen, Will Feeney\u003cbr>Promotional help from Ananya Mallapragada and Charlotte Simmons.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>Ben Jones, economist, co-director of the Ryan Institute on Complexity \u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>Sam Goldberg, assistant professor of marketing, Stanford\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://nayberg.org/work\">Yevgenia Nayberg\u003c/a>, artist, illustrator, children’s book author\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/PrZSCYEM4NtmO7opi0fJJixcsaA?domain=papers.ssrn.com\">Generative AI & Creative Goods: Market Expansion, Crowd-out, and Copyright\u003c/a> — Samuel Goldberg, \u003cem>Stanford Graduate School of Business\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/news/blog/2026/08/12/life-automated/\">‘Life, Automated’ explores how AI is reshaping our world\u003c/a> — Roger Anderson, \u003cem>Northwestern Kellogg\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/lifeautomated\">Life, Automated Podcast\u003c/a> — \u003cem>KQED\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\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\n\n\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\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\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hello! Do you like these deep dives? Do you want more? Then please rate and review Close All Tabs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show! And tell your friends! Post about it! On Instagram, Bluesky, X, Discord, Reddit, the comments of whatever random recipe blog you start arguments in. Basically, it would be a huge help to get the word out. Ok, let’s get to the show.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Hey Tabbies, The Close All Tabs team is busy churning out our next few episodes. And they’re bangers, I promise. In the meantime, we had to drop you a peek into this new podcast, Life Automated. It’s distributed by KQED, where this show is made, and it also covers big ideas about how technology is shaping our world.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Their most recent episode about AI and creative work is a must-listen. Now that Generative AI can crank out images, stories, and even songs, what does that mean for humans like us, who do that for a living?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The economists and artists in this episode of Life, Automated\u003cem> \u003c/em>help us understand the aspects of creativity that can’t\u003cem>e\u003c/em>asily be replicated by AI. At least for now. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, while the creative workers at Close All Tabs are talking and typing in real life to bring you more stories about the digital world. Here’s that Life Automated episode: “AI, Artists, and the Future of Creative Work.” \u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>This is Life, Automated, the show where we explore all the ways technology is changing how we live, work, and make decisions.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Think about the tractor… The washing machine, The calculator. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>For a long time, the promise of machines that automate labor was that they would take over the repetitive, dangerous or tedious work; and leave people free to do the things humans are supposed to be best at. You know, to imagine. Communicate. Invent. Make art or music. But it seems like AI might be coming for creative work as well.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>One sector on notice is the entertainment industry. The Writers guild recently bargained for contract language limiting the use of AI writing in screenplays. The Animation Guild recently projected losses of about 20% of animation and visual effects jobs. And SAG-AFTRA, a big actors and writers union, has been in ongoing negotiations to try to prevent human actors from being replaced by AI: \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[Audio of Fran Drescher]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>I don’t subscribe to putting people out of work. I think what’s happening in the entertainment industry is a microcosm of what happening throughout the United States of America whereby workers are being replaced by artificial intelligence, and what is that about actually\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>But it’s not just Hollywood. Writers, illustrators, journalists, composers, architects — even scientists who design experiments, they’re all on alert, wondering whether and how AI will impact the work they \u003cem>love\u003c/em> to do. It’s a question I’ve been wrestling with myself, as a science writer and self described “creative worker” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So today, we’ll be tackling that question, and instead of hearing from just one guest, we have a few: including an economist who studied what happened when generative AI entered one particular creative market.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>All of this generative AI production is entering, it’s filling up those markets, and the non-generative AI artists end up having to exit the market because they’re no longer profitable.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> As well as a working artist\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg:\u003c/strong> I think we will adapt. I’m not sure how yet. I can’t predict the future, but I know it’s your personal voice that will set you apart always.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>But first, if you listened to our kickoff episode — back in July, you’ll remember Economist Ben Jones. Ben is my colleague at the Ryan Institute on Complexity where he studies innovation. And, I’m going to start with a short flashback to that conversation, because something he said is really helpful for thinking about the future of creative work. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>See, Ben has been thinking about automation and its impact on jobs for a long time. He says that instead of obsessing over all the things AI can suddenly do really well, we should spend more time focusing on what it can’t do, at least not yet. Ben calls these things – bottlenecks. I’m Jess Love, this is Life, Automated. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Okay, so can you talk to us about what a bottleneck is and why it’s so important?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong> Well, of course it’s a metaphor from a bottle and what do we know about bottles? We know that the speed at which water or wine will flow from the bottle, depends on the width of the neck. Doesn’t really depend on how big the bottle is otherwise, how much wine there is in it, or how big the base is. It really just depends on the neck and in many processes in the economy and in the economy overall, it looks like there are certain things that have to happen that act as bottlenecks. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Much of the economy has that flavor where it’s not how good you are at a lot of things. What’s really sort of determining the rate of the economy is the things we’re quite slow at, the things we’re not very good at. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]\u003c/strong>: In other words, even if some parts of a system get really, really fast and easy, it’s the slowest parts of the system, the parts most difficult to automate, that will determine just how much the system overall changes. As an example from his own job, Ben points to statistical regressions, which computers do incredibly well much better than humans.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong>. If I were to run a regression by hand, with a large number of observations, it would take me literally my entire life. And I would make mistakes. You know, my computer can do a regression with a million data points in a-minute.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong> Yeah. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong> And so we have these technologies that basically are infinitely better than us to do these tasks that are really important to what we do. And then you can ask, okay, well, has our understanding of economics or astronomy or physics multiplied by a similar factor? And you’d say ‘no’, because although we can do certain things really, really, really incredibly well, other things are holding us back. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> For scientific researchers, these ‘other things’ might be collecting the right data, or building the instruments to collect the right data, or even waiting for the perfect set of circumstances to emerge that would let us interpret that data. Like the collapse of an economy, or the collision of two stars in a particular spot in the sky. Until scientists can push past these bottlenecks, all the statistical regressions in the world will only teach them so much.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I find Ben’s framework a useful way to think about AI’s impact on any kind of work, creative or otherwise. Most people’s jobs involve a bunch of different tasks. AI might get really good at some of them, but tasks it still struggles with – the bottlenecks, really determine the overall pace of change, as well as where humans can still contribute. And get paid to do so. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> So, the big takeaway for creative workers: Find the stuff AI can’t do. But what do these bottlenecks look like in creative markets in particular? And would they actually allow writers, artists, and other creative workers to still do that work? Well, it turns out that there’s somebody who has been studying this very thing. Specifically, how AI has impacted stock image websites. Those sell ready-made photos and illustrations that appear in ads, presentations, websites, and articles. Say you’re making an ad for productivity software. Maybe you purchase a stock image of people shaking hands in a conference room, or a woman smiling at her computer screen, or a well-dressed man gazing thoughtfully into the distance, perhaps wondering. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>Stock images, why do we care about these things, right? It’s not a particularly large market. It’s definitely sort of a niche commoditized good. Why is this somewhere where we wanna study AI? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>This is Sam Goldberg. He teaches marketing at Stanford, where he also studies how technology changes markets and consumer behavior. And he says the stock-image market offers an unusually crisp view of what happens when AI-generated work begins competing directly with work made by people.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>So back, you know, a few years ago, they were one of the first markets where we saw really capable AI come to artists, and be able to be used to produce really high-quality images.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>For years, human artists made stock images and uploaded them to online marketplaces. Then those marketplaces began accepting AI-generated work. Suddenly, images made by people were sitting beside images that could be generated by machines, almost instantly, at enormous scale. And because the platform Sam studied required artists to clearly label which images were AI-generated, he could watch the transition in really fine detail.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>And so what that means in practice is that after the platform allows generative AI to enter the market, I can see both how non-generative AI artists respond, as well as how generative AI enters the market and what types of images it produces. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>So here’s how it used to work. Customers would comb through these websites, going through image after image, until they find one that is “close enough”. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>I guess the right way to think about it is each individual might have a very specific taste for something, and so when they were trying to find a stock image, they would make some sort of compromise, right? So they would say, “Oh, I’m looking for an image of a tennis ball, and I want an image of a tennis ball in motion,” right? They could go to the stock image website, they’d look up that keyword, and they’d find, you know, maybe pre-generative AI, a couple hundred different versions of that image, right? Maybe none of them are perfect, but one of them’s good enough, and they took it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Right\u003cstrong>. \u003c/strong>So maybe your article is about playing tennis in the rain, and so you would love to have a tennis ball that’s kind of covered in water. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Penetrating water droplets.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Right. And then that is the kind of thing that just doesn’t exist, so maybe you just get a tennis ball in isolation, and that’s good enough. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Exactly. And so in the pre-generative AI world, you know, you were making some compromises with respect to that, oftentimes at least. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> But along comes generative AI, with free or cheap image generators where you can literally tell it: I want a wet tennis ball, resting on a bench, with water beading on it. And it will give you a pretty good version of that exact image. So what happens when a stock image market starts accepting these hyper-specific AI-generated images?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>What actually happens in this market is, generative AI enters, the market expands greatly, so there’s a lot more images on the platform. That should probably be pretty intuitive. But not only do more images enter the market, more customers do as well. More images are being purchased and they like the generative AI images because it turns out they’re actually pretty high quality.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>So I can see how this is good for me as a consumer. I finally have the perfect raindrop-covered tennis ball for my editorial feature. And I can see how this is good for the platform itself, at least in the short term. What happens to the artists? And I guess I would ask both the artists using generative AI and those who are not. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Yeah, it’s a good question, and I think you are correct in your intuition here that it does seem like it’s probably pretty good for consumers. It does seem like it’s probably pretty good for the platform, at least in the short run. The artist side I think is a little bit more complicated right? Let me walk you through what happens after generative AI enters the platform, and then we can talk about the implications for artists.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Okay. So what happens is production goes way up. All right? By over 100% more production, so enormous increases in production here. Second, more artists participate in the market. So we see a lot of new artists enter the stock image market. Of course, that overflow of new artists hides a different fact, which is non-generative AI artists exit. Okay? So they stop producing. So we see a reduction in non-generative AI production, as well as a reduction in the number of non-generative AI artists who are participating on the platform.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>What we call that in the paper is sort of a little bit of a crowding out effect. So what’s happening is all of this generative AI production is entering, it’s filling up demand, it’s filling up those markets, and the non-generative AI artists end up having to exit the market because they’re no longer profitable.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> So, pretty bad news for a lot of artists who choose to keep making images the old way. But, Sam also found a bottleneck. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong> What the stock image market sells is not quite images. What the stock image market sells is indemnification, which is to say if the buyer of the image uses it and gets in trouble, so someone says, “Hey, you can’t use that image. That’s copyrighted,” and tries to sue the buyer, the platform says, “You can’t sue the buyer. We’re responsible.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Oh, fascinating. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Okay, and so that’s really important here because if you were to produce that image yourself using a generative model, you could be subject to some sorts of liability for using, for example, copyrighted work in the training of those models.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Got that? AI-generated images are a bit of a legal gray area right now. For one, most of the biggest AI models were trained on data that included copyrighted works. And it’s also unclear which new AI-generated works can get copyright protection.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Anyway, given this uncertainty, you might choose to purchase an AI-generated image from this market rather than just whip up one yourself because you want the legal protection that this affords you.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And, it turns out that getting this legal protection works a little differently for images that have a human in them. When artists submit images with humans in them, they also need to fill out paperwork showing that they have permission to use those people’s likenesses. This paperwork is \u003cem>not\u003c/em> something the AI can easily produce. And so voila! We have less crowding-out for images containing people than for images of, say, tennis balls. And there it is! Our bottleneck!\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, it’s pretty uninspiring: paperwork. Still, in Sam’s study, it was something the machines couldn’t easily replace, and that did allow human creators to survive in that particular corner of the “stock image” market. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Stepping back, Sam’s findings are stark. AI gave customers a ton more image choices. It helped the market grow. And, it pushed a lot of human artists out. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>So one read of your study is that AI-generated art is great for everybody but many of the artists. And I just wanna ask, is a world without artists really great for consumers? Is that really what consumers want? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Yeah. So I definitely do not take a strong opinion about if generative AI art is good or bad, right? I think the data suggests that consumers like the generative AI art. They purchase it, and they are willing to purchase it. And so to the extent that they are willing to purchase it, that seems an improvement basically. Now, in the long run, does that mean that we want a world with no human creativity? I don’t think so, and I don’t have, you know, good data to speak to that. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I mean, certainly anecdotally, we hear people saying they don’t like AI content. Intuitively, I think you might expect more of that backlash in creative goods markets that are a little bit more emotional or sincere. So for example, you see a lot more of this when people listen to AI-generated music. Or like YouTube even, like creative shorts. Stock images are, are a product being used for a purpose, in a way that, I think is a little different. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]\u003c/strong>: So the pressure on human artists that Sam saw in the stock image market… we don’t really know how much they’ll translate to other creative markets.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Particularly those where people could be looking for something harder to just generate on demand: a unique interpretation, emotional resonance, a point of view, maybe even a relationship with the person making the work.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So to learn more, I spoke with an artist who has spent much of her career making these \u003cem>other\u003c/em> kinds of images.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>There are people who are absolutely happy with elevator music and people that go to concerts. And, I think for the elevator music art lovers type, I’m sure AI could be satisfactory. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>That’s coming up. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This is Life, Automated, I’m Jess Love. And I’m talking to the artist Yevgenia Nayberg.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Can you talk about the different lanes of art that you make?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>Well, I started as a fine artist, so to speak. I’m a painter and so I paint large scale pieces. But also I crossed over pretty early into theater design, set and costume design, and illustration. And about 10 years ago, I also started writing my own books, picture books mostly. And so right now I’m focusing on being an author and picture book illustrator, and a graphic novel illustrator and writer.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Yeah, so I really should have asked that question differently. I should have said, “What kinds of art do you \u003cem>not\u003c/em> make?” And then maybe we would’ve gotten through that answer more quickly. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Yevgenia is also someone I’ve worked with. Years ago, when I was working as a magazine editor, I hired her to illustrate some articles. Her work is way more distinctive and conceptually ambitious than anything you’d find on a stock-image website. But it is still commercial art: made for a client, on a deadline, to serve a particular purpose. So I wanted to know whether she saw her own corner of the creative economy as vulnerable to the same forces Sam observed.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>What do you think about generative AI making art?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>Well, I’m not afraid of AI. I know there is a lot of worry amongst artists about it, and I just think it’s probably eventually going to be another tool. I don’t necessarily think that right now AI has the capabilities real, non-artificial artists have. So not afraid at this point.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>What about the idea that whether or not this work is as good as what a human could do, it might nonetheless be good enough to somehow compete with human art or human work, either because of discoverability, so with a, flood of lower quality AI images out in the world, it becomes harder to actually find the good ones done by humans or because some of the people who might want to hire artists are pretty comfortable, just generating something for themselves for free?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>Well, I’m sure there are going to be people like that. There are people who are absolutely happy with elevator music and people that go to concerts. And, I think for the elevator music art lovers type, I’m sure AI could be satisfactory. But I don’t know if you remember in the ’90s when all of this, you know, flood of stock art happened, everyone was using this image of a little light bulb above a person’s head when they wanted to describe an idea.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you have an idea, all you draw that bulb, and I think that’s the kind of thinking that I see from AI at this point. So it does create some metaphors, but those metaphors are very trite. If my students do this kind of work, I stop them and I tell them, “Look how many people have already done this hypothetical light bulb.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So I think because AI sort of collects all these similar ideas and then generates as a result, it’s a very banal result, and I’m not interested in that, and I don’t think my clients, the kind of clients that I work with, are interested in those very typical, ordinary ideas. So I can do better than that at this point, for now.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Yevgenia sees a real difference between the illustration work she does, for specific clients, and the broad, commercial stock image market.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>I think what illustration, conceptual illustration does is that it creates a second track to the story. So instead of illustrating something literally, it adds to the story. It can take the story and it can create this interesting creative tension between the illustration and the story, heightening the story in a certain way. So I think with stocks, you often lack that. It’s very hard to prompt an image bank to generate something like this. Even if you search for an image that will fit the story. Fitting the story is one thing. Elevating the story is a completely different thing.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voicover]\u003c/strong>: Well yeah, an image that elevates a story does seem a lot better than one that merely “fits” a story. But Yevgenia’s not exactly an unbiased third-party here. So now I was curious what Sam Goldberg would make of this claim—that AI art can spray down the market with lots of images that might \u003cem>fit\u003c/em> a particular need really, really well, leading to plenty of satisfied customers. But those images are nonetheless probably not going to be novel enough to \u003cem>elevate\u003c/em> a story. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Is this a bottleneck?” I asked Sam.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong> So you are not expecting this question. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Okay. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>I actually ran some of your results past an illustrator friend of mine. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Okay. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>And what she said was basically, “Look, you can use generative AI to come up with thousands of images of light bulbs, light bulbs in this environment, in this you know, room, in front of this person. But what you can’t do is get AI to go that one step beyond and think through, well, what is another way of getting across creativity or innovation? So it will give you a billion light bulbs, but it’s not necessarily really going to give you variety at the concept level. And I’m curious what you would make of that.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Yeah. So I’m hesitant to disagree with the artist here, but-\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Never disagree with an artist. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Never disagree with the artist. Yeah, so I actually don’t think that’s incongruent with what we see happen in these markets. So one analysis we do in the paper… \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Sam’s team actually found a way to represent the images mathematically. This let them analyze the novelty of this flood of new AI-generated images.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>And so we actually – I sort of agree with her, right? Which is to say, one thing we don’t see is – we don’t see a huge increase in novelty in the market. But essentially, what we see happen is we don’t see a lot of sort of images enter the market that look very different than the images that already exist there.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Interesting. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>What we \u003cem>do\u003c/em> see is that anywhere there’s a gap in the market, so where there’s two images on either side, but there’s not an image in between, generative AI is very good at filling those gaps.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> So…at least for now, AI can generate lots and lots of variations on a theme. But what Yevgenia’s describing is the ability to think \u003cem>beyond\u003c/em> that theme. And Sam says, “yeah, AI doesn’t seem to be as good at that.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>I think it’s totally reasonable to say that your illustrator friend may be correct that that is something that these models struggle with.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong> I’m surprised. I was ready to fight the economist!\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Oh no! I actually don’t think you guys would fight that much, but we won’t put you in a cage match together.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> This idea of bringing true novelty to an assignment: that new metaphor, that “second track.” This may be an important source of value that human artists bring to a project. So…what does that look like?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Let’s do something fun. Obviously we have worked together in the past. I have hired you to do beautiful custom illustrations for articles, on Kellogg Insight, where I was the editor-in-chief for many years. And so it’s not even hypothetical to say I would often come to you with a story on innovation, entrepreneurship, you know, how to brainstorm. And so let’s say I bring you this article, it’s about “Better Ways of Brainstorming”, and I’m like, “And also, I think I got a pretty good idea for you. It’s a group of people brainstorming, and above them, they’re, like, collectively building a big light bulb. And it’s like a hot air balloon light bulb, and it’s just, wow, you can just see this is going places. “What do you think?”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>Well, Jess, I think actually an air balloon light bulb is already a beautiful idea. If I’m not mistaken, I think I did an illustration like this for you years ago. So, maybe we should try doing something different this time. We don’t wanna repeat ourselves. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]\u003c/strong>: Yes, Yevgenia was right about this. I tracked down \u003ca target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/creating-urgency-around-corporate-innovation\">the illustration\u003c/a> from the Kellogg Insight archives. It appeared alongside a 2015 article on corporate innovation. And it featured someone riding through the sky in a lightbulb-shaped hot-air-balloon. Which is almost certainly why the idea formed instantly in my own mind.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>But what it did not have is the group of people underneath it, because this, I think, is something that would spoil this illustration. Because you really shouldn’t try to stuff all your ideas into a single illustration. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But we can go in a completely direction as well. You mentioned brainstorming, so I think maybe using those words and turning them into something visual could work, like creating an actual brainstorm where, you know, that your brain is being blown away by the wind. And, that can actually push a story into kind of a funny territory instead of keeping it very serious, because normally when we say a brainstorm, we associate it with really serious, earnest scientists developing something.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But maybe I want to make a little joke and say, you know, “Hey, you can also brainstorm. You don’t have to be so serious about that.” So it also can change the mood of your article, the mood of your story a little bit.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And maybe we don’t, maybe you want to be super serious, and then you would reject this idea. But maybe you would say, “Hey, I really like it because we’ve done so many super serious articles. Let’s lighten up.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Love it. That’s great. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> Okay! So Yevgenia doesn’t just take an assignment and execute it. She thinks it through: The light bulb is cliche, but the hot air balloon idea is interesting. The hot air balloon is interesting, but the people underneath are weighing the idea down. Oh yeah, and because we have a history together, Yevgenia can tell me that we’ve done something really similar 11 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Then she offers something completely different, playing off the idea of a storm. But really what she’s doing is asking a question about intent. What mood should the illustration create? Serious? Funny? Can the image change the way the reader experiences the story?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Yevgenia is much more than a picture-making machine. She has a very finely honed, very unique way of seeing and depicting the world. As much as any technical skills, \u003cem>that’s\u003c/em> what I hired her to bring to the table. And \u003cem>that\u003c/em>, to me, at least – sounds like another bottleneck.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, for established artists like Yegvenia, this should be somewhat reassuring. But there’s still a problem. Nobody begins a career with fully formed artistic taste. That can take years to develop. And often, people develop it while doing smaller, more routine work. Like, maybe, selling their art on a stock image website. And if AI-generated art takes off, even in the most routine, commercial, transactional spaces, it could eventually shape the art we encounter elsewhere too.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>There is a dangerous territory when real humans, real artists will start to imitate AI if there is enough demand for AI art. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Yevgenia teaches young artists, and she’s been seeing this play out with her students. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>A lot of them are concerned with style and they all talk about style, and I couldn’t really understand what they meant because I thought– I kind of thought of style as voice, not so much as like a stylistic direction. Turns out they’re trying to pick a style and match it from what they see, let’s say, on Instagram. So there is a lot of sameness there already, and this is something that they’re trying to imitate in hopes of finding jobs maybe. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> She thinks AI could be like Instagram on steroids, sending the same images into every artist’s collective consciousness. Yevgenia says she is \u003cem>all for \u003c/em>her students getting hired to make art. But this trend of homogenization and imitation – is troubling. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg:\u003c/strong> My primary job is to educate an artist, I want them to work obviously, and I would like to help them as much as possible. But again, I’d like to focus on developing their creativity and their uniqueness more than anything else. I always tell my students, you know, “make something worth stealing.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>For an individual artist, having a unique voice ‘worth stealing’ can be the difference between mediocrity and greatness.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And economist Ben Jones\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>says that everyone benefits from having more, unique, creative perspectives in the mix. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>What we actually want is people reaching for very different types of things based on their different experiences, right? And so what’s interesting, one of the reasons that we think that, you know, a kind of a society with wide-ranging pockets of expertise, interests, cultural backgrounds, et cetera, can be extremely creative, is because people are coming at questions with different sort of perspectives and ideas. They’re even coming at different questions, ’cause the kind of questions that occur to one person might not occur to another, and that’s true in science and invention, it’s true in entrepreneurship. We don’t want everyone trying the same business model. We want people trying wildly different business models, and we’ll see which one the market takes. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>There’s real value in difference. In start-ups, in science, and in art. And if everyone begins from the same machine-generated suggestions, we could end up with more of everything—but very little that’s new, special, or unique.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, this is the paradox: AI can generate a staggering number of possibilities, filling countless gaps in the marketplace. And yet, so much of what it produces feels… the same. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>While AI-generated images and videos and books are running rampant in some artistic markets–plenty of people are just fine with elevator music, thank you very much–real novelty, real creativity, seems to be the purview of humans. Leaving human creative workers with an important role to play. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Whew. That’s a relief.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So… is that the end? Should we play the ending music, roll the credits? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Well, not so fast. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This is where we stand on Labor Day 2026 sure, but if we know anything about AI tools, it’s that they can change fast. So what happens next? Where’s this all headed? Well, based on my conversations with scholars and artists, I can see three possible futures.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In the first timeline, things continue along the lines they are now. The machines do get better at generating art. Maybe AI-generated images get even more photorealistic, or maybe AI-generated writing sheds its telltale ticks – you know, those cringy buzzwords that scream, “I’m AI-generated!” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But the improvements are really around the margins. And so genuine creativity remains a bottleneck protecting human creatives.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But there’s a second timeline, and in this timeline, AI learns to be \u003cem>very\u003c/em> creative.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Ben sees this possible future as pretty likely. Because new ideas rarely emerge out of the blue. They are often composed of existing ingredients, just combined in new ways. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>In many, many fields, people have separately discovered that creativity often looks like a new combination of things that already existed. So, for example, Thomas Edison did not call the light bulb, at first, the light bulb. He called it the electric candle because he was taking the candle, which was an old technology, and electricity, which was a new technology, and combining them.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And if you look at many, many ideas, it’s very natural to decompose them into distinct components—to unleash a big insight in science, or to produce a new product or process that we can all use. So that idea is very common, you see it in the arts and music and invention and science.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> By this definition, AI should actually have a creative advantage. A single person can only encounter and understand so many possible ingredients in a lifetime. \u003cem>We\u003c/em> have to specialize. AI has a much more vast palette to draw from.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>What’s been interesting about AI, of course, is that AI reads everything. So anyone who’s been interacting with AI sort of sees like, “Wow, I can talk to this AI about just about anything, and right around the edges of my understanding about things I kind of understand, about things I know nothing about, and it seems to know a lot about a lot of stuff.” So in some sense, at that core level of being able to access ingredients that you can combine with seemingly some sophisticated understanding of those ingredients, AI is pretty impressive. And so in that sense, I think it has in some sense, beyond human creative potential. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Given the vast range of ingredients AI can draw from, you might expect it to already produce endlessly surprising combinations. And Ben says theoretically, it one day could. If it were trained completely differently from how most chatbots are trained today.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>When you talk like a general purpose, chatbot or whatever, say ChatGPT, it’s sort of trained to produce the right answer, predicting the next token in some probabilistic way that it thinks is most likely to be right. And by predicting the thing that’s sort of most likely to be right all the time, that sounds like you’re homogenizing. It’s not going for the strange answer, right? It’s trying typically to please you by giving you what you want, and what most people want is not some wildly creative answer. They want the right answer. But that’s of course very much about how they were trained. I mean, those chatbots are optimized to do exactly that. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But there could be other algorithms that we could use to train AI. It’s like, let’s say we’re training an AI, and we’re having people rate whether it was really interesting scientifically. Not whether it was right, but whether it was novel. Or novel and right. So I think that there is a world in which AI, and it may come quickly, or not, where AI can be quite creative.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>In this world, this second possible future, where the AI companies spend millions, billions, to train up AI that’s really, really creative. In this future, the creativity bottleneck protecting human artists disappears.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Some kinds of creative work, live performances, personal memoir, handmade furniture, are probably still safe. But this timeline does leave many other artists really vulnerable, particularly those who distribute their work on digital marketplaces.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But even here, there is a bottleneck that could come into play.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Not a technical bottleneck—something the machine is incapable of doing—or even a legal one, like copyright protection or human likeness permission.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>A normative bottleneck: a limit people try to impose collectively, by deciding what kinds of creative work they are willing to accept and reward, often for ethical or even almost spiritual reasons.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We’re already seeing this now. Many of my artist friends have adopted a kind of “hold the line” mentality against generative AI, in part because they sense that using AI is a betrayal to the artistic community.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg:\u003c/strong> Well, there is an ethical component, because AI is being trained on real artists. It’s basically being trained on us. And, of course, none of us enjoys that. None of us gave permission to have our art used by AI.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]\u003c/strong>: To the extent that science writing can be considered art – I feel this. It’s pretty likely that a decade of my own science writing was scraped from the web and used to train AI models. Nobody asked me for permission, and I certainly didn’t give it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg:\u003c/strong> I would rather have this be at the discretion of every artist—if they want their work to be released into the AI world. I would not want AI to be trained on my work, honestly. Because all of us have our own little tricks and secrets, and I would like to keep them to myself.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Some artists believe that the best way to fight back against a technology they didn’t ask for is to reject it altogether, in all forms.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Other creatives draw the line differently. Maybe AI can be used for research, but not execution. Or maybe it can be used for execution, but only in a specific way, as part of a rigorous, intentional process.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Wherever this line is drawn – and I expect this to be vehemently contested over the next several years, the normative bottleneck is about \u003cem>process\u003c/em>. Not just \u003cem>what\u003c/em> is made, but \u003cem>how\u003c/em> something is made.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Earlier this year, the fantasy novelist Brandon Sanderson made this argument explicit in a keynote address called “We Are the Art.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[Audio of Brandon Sanderson]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem> The machines can spit out manuscript after manuscript after manuscript. They can pile them to the pillars of heaven itself, but all we have to do is say no. If we do, they lose. Why do we make art? Well, remember, art is not just the story. It is not just the painting or the sculpture or whatever else you love to create. It’s also the process of creation and what that process did to you. We are the art. Thank you.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Whether this kind of resistance, this \u003cem>normative\u003c/em> bottleneck can hold will depend on getting others on board. Getting others to agree that part of the value of human art is that it was created by another human being. Someone who felt something, or saw the world in a certain way, and labored to share it with us. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But there’s a third possible future here, one that doesn’t solely rely on social norms around creativity. In this possible future, whether AI becomes more creative or not, people using AI become capable of doing new things that neither humans nor AI could have done alone. Maybe AI becomes yet another tool for human artists. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>You’ve seen this before: the camera. Photoshop. The electric synthesizer. All these were controversial in their time, often for devaluing certain hard-won skills, like painting in a painstaking, hyper-realistic style, or learning to play the french horn. But today most artists would probably agree that the new tools created new possibilities. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Or maybe AI really is different. Maybe it becomes a kind of thought partner. The machine proposes new ingredients we might never have produced on our own. Not unlike a colleague emailing us an article we might find interesting. Here’s Ben again.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong>Maybe when you’re writing, it’s, it’s a collaborator, right? I mean, maybe it’s not a replacement, it’s like another voice on your team. And suddenly you’re getting a higher quality product. And it could be that you’re making a screenplay, you’re writing an article, you’re writing a song, and suddenly it’s better for your collaboration with the AI, but they’re not actually taking full control.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>In this scenario, we humans use our own creative judgment to run with whichever combination of ingredients seems like it has the most potential. Here, you could even think of “creative judgment” as its own bottleneck.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>You need true expertise around the set of ingredients to understand which combinations are likely or not to be useful. You don’t just randomly put ingredients together in the kitchen. It’s not gonna taste very good. There’s some milk here, and there’s some orange juice, and how about this banana? And look, it’s all spice in the spice rack, you know? And then, oh, and is that chicken? You know, that’s not gonna go very well, right? And pretty much everyone sort of knows that. There’s many, many, many, many possible combinations. But we kind of know instinctually not to try many of them because we know they’re probably not gonna be good.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Even Yevgenia, who I should stress continues to do all of her art by hand, can see the value in this kind of collaboration–if done right, if used as more of a jumping off point than the ultimate destination. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg:\u003c/strong> You can give AI prompts and say, “Okay, give me all these variations of the light bulb in the field and in the pool.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And once it does it, you can say, “No, this is a really stupid idea. Why don’t you try something else?” And you can see what it tries, and you can maybe find something there? So I can see using AI as this little, average-minded, ordinary partner—and then that can spark something in you, in your imagination. It can generate more ideas from us, in a way, because we are competing intellectually with something.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>So those are our three scenarios. AI kind of stalls out creatively or AI actually can do everything humans can do, but cheaper and better. And then we have to decide whether we \u003cem>want\u003c/em> to preserve a role for human creativity. Or, AI and humans collaborate to \u003cem>do \u003c/em>entirely new things.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Let’s all level-set for a second by noting that lots of people want to be artists, and it’s really, really hard. Already. It’s very hard to make a living as an actor, a musician, an artist, even without computers. Right? And there’s something deeply human about wanting to create and be an artist. And I would say, to be an economist for a second, the demand for their services is lower than the supply of people who would like to do it. So there are many long-suffering artists out there. Does AI make long-suffering artists even more suffering?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Even long-suffering-er.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Long-suffering-er. That’s a word. And I think it could. And it could be because it replaces their output. It’s a cheaper way to produce something people want. On the other hand, maybe AI makes artists more able to do things at lower cost themselves. Maybe it’s a tool, it’s an augmentation, not a replacement. So I think it’s an open question which way it goes. It probably does quite a bit of both. And we’ll have to see. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>A bit of both. Maybe this is the most likely possible future of all. Maybe we get all these timelines happening at once, in different parts of the creative economy. AI replacing artists, AI assisting artists, and AI just getting out of the way, to let artists do their very \u003cem>human\u003c/em> thing.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I’m Jess Love. Life, Automated is a project of the Ryan Institute on Complexity, at the Kellogg School of Management, at Northwestern University. We’re distributed by KQED.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Today’s show was produced by Steven Jackson and Jesse Dukes. Music by Steven Jackson and Neutral Propulsion Laboratory. Recording help from Will Feeney, George Christensen, Laura Pavin and Big Lake Recording Company. Administrative support, recording, and wise counsel from Stacia Sliger, who we’re going to miss very much.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That was Life, Automated, a new KQED podcast about how life is being shaped by machines. Thanks to their team for sharing this story with us. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Check back in next week for a new story from Close All Tabs about the fuzzy borders between real and digital life. We’ll see you next week.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"Generative AI & Creative Goods: Market Expansion, Crowd-out, and Copyright — Samuel Goldberg, Stanford Graduate School of Business",
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"innerHTML": "\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",
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"\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hello! Do you like these deep dives? Do you want more? Then please rate and review Close All Tabs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show! And tell your friends! Post about it! On Instagram, Bluesky, X, Discord, Reddit, the comments of whatever random recipe blog you start arguments in. Basically, it would be a huge help to get the word out. Ok, let’s get to the show.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hello! Do you like these deep dives? Do you want more? Then please rate and review Close All Tabs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show! And tell your friends! Post about it! On Instagram, Bluesky, X, Discord, Reddit, the comments of whatever random recipe blog you start arguments in. Basically, it would be a huge help to get the word out. Ok, let’s get to the show.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Hey Tabbies, The Close All Tabs team is busy churning out our next few episodes. And they’re bangers, I promise. In the meantime, we had to drop you a peek into this new podcast, Life Automated. It’s distributed by KQED, where this show is made, and it also covers big ideas about how technology is shaping our world.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Hey Tabbies, The Close All Tabs team is busy churning out our next few episodes. And they’re bangers, I promise. In the meantime, we had to drop you a peek into this new podcast, Life Automated. It’s distributed by KQED, where this show is made, and it also covers big ideas about how technology is shaping our world.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Their most recent episode about AI and creative work is a must-listen. Now that Generative AI can crank out images, stories, and even songs, what does that mean for humans like us, who do that for a living?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Their most recent episode about AI and creative work is a must-listen. Now that Generative AI can crank out images, stories, and even songs, what does that mean for humans like us, who do that for a living?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The economists and artists in this episode of Life, Automated\u003cem> \u003c/em>help us understand the aspects of creativity that can’t\u003cem>e\u003c/em>asily be replicated by AI. At least for now. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The economists and artists in this episode of Life, Automated\u003cem> \u003c/em>help us understand the aspects of creativity that can’t\u003cem>e\u003c/em>asily be replicated by AI. At least for now. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So, while the creative workers at Close All Tabs are talking and typing in real life to bring you more stories about the digital world. Here’s that Life Automated episode: “AI, Artists, and the Future of Creative Work.” \u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>This is Life, Automated, the show where we explore all the ways technology is changing how we live, work, and make decisions.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>This is Life, Automated, the show where we explore all the ways technology is changing how we live, work, and make decisions.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Think about the tractor… The washing machine, The calculator. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>For a long time, the promise of machines that automate labor was that they would take over the repetitive, dangerous or tedious work; and leave people free to do the things humans are supposed to be best at. You know, to imagine. Communicate. Invent. Make art or music. But it seems like AI might be coming for creative work as well.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>One sector on notice is the entertainment industry. The Writers guild recently bargained for contract language limiting the use of AI writing in screenplays. The Animation Guild recently projected losses of about 20% of animation and visual effects jobs. And SAG-AFTRA, a big actors and writers union, has been in ongoing negotiations to try to prevent human actors from being replaced by AI: \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>One sector on notice is the entertainment industry. The Writers guild recently bargained for contract language limiting the use of AI writing in screenplays. The Animation Guild recently projected losses of about 20% of animation and visual effects jobs. And SAG-AFTRA, a big actors and writers union, has been in ongoing negotiations to try to prevent human actors from being replaced by AI: \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[Audio of Fran Drescher]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>I don’t subscribe to putting people out of work. I think what’s happening in the entertainment industry is a microcosm of what happening throughout the United States of America whereby workers are being replaced by artificial intelligence, and what is that about actually\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>But it’s not just Hollywood. Writers, illustrators, journalists, composers, architects — even scientists who design experiments, they’re all on alert, wondering whether and how AI will impact the work they \u003cem>love\u003c/em> to do. It’s a question I’ve been wrestling with myself, as a science writer and self described “creative worker” \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>But it’s not just Hollywood. Writers, illustrators, journalists, composers, architects — even scientists who design experiments, they’re all on alert, wondering whether and how AI will impact the work they \u003cem>love\u003c/em> to do. It’s a question I’ve been wrestling with myself, as a science writer and self described “creative worker” \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So today, we’ll be tackling that question, and instead of hearing from just one guest, we have a few: including an economist who studied what happened when generative AI entered one particular creative market.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So today, we’ll be tackling that question, and instead of hearing from just one guest, we have a few: including an economist who studied what happened when generative AI entered one particular creative market.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>All of this generative AI production is entering, it’s filling up those markets, and the non-generative AI artists end up having to exit the market because they’re no longer profitable.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> As well as a working artist\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg:\u003c/strong> I think we will adapt. I’m not sure how yet. I can’t predict the future, but I know it’s your personal voice that will set you apart always.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg:\u003c/strong> I think we will adapt. I’m not sure how yet. I can’t predict the future, but I know it’s your personal voice that will set you apart always.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>But first, if you listened to our kickoff episode — back in July, you’ll remember Economist Ben Jones. Ben is my colleague at the Ryan Institute on Complexity where he studies innovation. And, I’m going to start with a short flashback to that conversation, because something he said is really helpful for thinking about the future of creative work. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>But first, if you listened to our kickoff episode — back in July, you’ll remember Economist Ben Jones. Ben is my colleague at the Ryan Institute on Complexity where he studies innovation. And, I’m going to start with a short flashback to that conversation, because something he said is really helpful for thinking about the future of creative work. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>See, Ben has been thinking about automation and its impact on jobs for a long time. He says that instead of obsessing over all the things AI can suddenly do really well, we should spend more time focusing on what it can’t do, at least not yet. Ben calls these things – bottlenecks. I’m Jess Love, this is Life, Automated. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>See, Ben has been thinking about automation and its impact on jobs for a long time. He says that instead of obsessing over all the things AI can suddenly do really well, we should spend more time focusing on what it can’t do, at least not yet. Ben calls these things – bottlenecks. I’m Jess Love, this is Life, Automated. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Okay, so can you talk to us about what a bottleneck is and why it’s so important?\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong> Well, of course it’s a metaphor from a bottle and what do we know about bottles? We know that the speed at which water or wine will flow from the bottle, depends on the width of the neck. Doesn’t really depend on how big the bottle is otherwise, how much wine there is in it, or how big the base is. It really just depends on the neck and in many processes in the economy and in the economy overall, it looks like there are certain things that have to happen that act as bottlenecks. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong> Well, of course it’s a metaphor from a bottle and what do we know about bottles? We know that the speed at which water or wine will flow from the bottle, depends on the width of the neck. Doesn’t really depend on how big the bottle is otherwise, how much wine there is in it, or how big the base is. It really just depends on the neck and in many processes in the economy and in the economy overall, it looks like there are certain things that have to happen that act as bottlenecks. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Much of the economy has that flavor where it’s not how good you are at a lot of things. What’s really sort of determining the rate of the economy is the things we’re quite slow at, the things we’re not very good at. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Much of the economy has that flavor where it’s not how good you are at a lot of things. What’s really sort of determining the rate of the economy is the things we’re quite slow at, the things we’re not very good at. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]\u003c/strong>: In other words, even if some parts of a system get really, really fast and easy, it’s the slowest parts of the system, the parts most difficult to automate, that will determine just how much the system overall changes. As an example from his own job, Ben points to statistical regressions, which computers do incredibly well much better than humans.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]\u003c/strong>: In other words, even if some parts of a system get really, really fast and easy, it’s the slowest parts of the system, the parts most difficult to automate, that will determine just how much the system overall changes. As an example from his own job, Ben points to statistical regressions, which computers do incredibly well much better than humans.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong>. If I were to run a regression by hand, with a large number of observations, it would take me literally my entire life. And I would make mistakes. You know, my computer can do a regression with a million data points in a-minute.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong>. If I were to run a regression by hand, with a large number of observations, it would take me literally my entire life. And I would make mistakes. You know, my computer can do a regression with a million data points in a-minute.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong> Yeah. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong> And so we have these technologies that basically are infinitely better than us to do these tasks that are really important to what we do. And then you can ask, okay, well, has our understanding of economics or astronomy or physics multiplied by a similar factor? And you’d say ‘no’, because although we can do certain things really, really, really incredibly well, other things are holding us back. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong> And so we have these technologies that basically are infinitely better than us to do these tasks that are really important to what we do. And then you can ask, okay, well, has our understanding of economics or astronomy or physics multiplied by a similar factor? And you’d say ‘no’, because although we can do certain things really, really, really incredibly well, other things are holding us back. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> For scientific researchers, these ‘other things’ might be collecting the right data, or building the instruments to collect the right data, or even waiting for the perfect set of circumstances to emerge that would let us interpret that data. Like the collapse of an economy, or the collision of two stars in a particular spot in the sky. Until scientists can push past these bottlenecks, all the statistical regressions in the world will only teach them so much.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> For scientific researchers, these ‘other things’ might be collecting the right data, or building the instruments to collect the right data, or even waiting for the perfect set of circumstances to emerge that would let us interpret that data. Like the collapse of an economy, or the collision of two stars in a particular spot in the sky. Until scientists can push past these bottlenecks, all the statistical regressions in the world will only teach them so much.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>I find Ben’s framework a useful way to think about AI’s impact on any kind of work, creative or otherwise. Most people’s jobs involve a bunch of different tasks. AI might get really good at some of them, but tasks it still struggles with – the bottlenecks, really determine the overall pace of change, as well as where humans can still contribute. And get paid to do so. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>I find Ben’s framework a useful way to think about AI’s impact on any kind of work, creative or otherwise. Most people’s jobs involve a bunch of different tasks. AI might get really good at some of them, but tasks it still struggles with – the bottlenecks, really determine the overall pace of change, as well as where humans can still contribute. And get paid to do so. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> So, the big takeaway for creative workers: Find the stuff AI can’t do. But what do these bottlenecks look like in creative markets in particular? And would they actually allow writers, artists, and other creative workers to still do that work? Well, it turns out that there’s somebody who has been studying this very thing. Specifically, how AI has impacted stock image websites. Those sell ready-made photos and illustrations that appear in ads, presentations, websites, and articles. Say you’re making an ad for productivity software. Maybe you purchase a stock image of people shaking hands in a conference room, or a woman smiling at her computer screen, or a well-dressed man gazing thoughtfully into the distance, perhaps wondering. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>Stock images, why do we care about these things, right? It’s not a particularly large market. It’s definitely sort of a niche commoditized good. Why is this somewhere where we wanna study AI? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>Stock images, why do we care about these things, right? It’s not a particularly large market. It’s definitely sort of a niche commoditized good. Why is this somewhere where we wanna study AI? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>This is Sam Goldberg. He teaches marketing at Stanford, where he also studies how technology changes markets and consumer behavior. And he says the stock-image market offers an unusually crisp view of what happens when AI-generated work begins competing directly with work made by people.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>This is Sam Goldberg. He teaches marketing at Stanford, where he also studies how technology changes markets and consumer behavior. And he says the stock-image market offers an unusually crisp view of what happens when AI-generated work begins competing directly with work made by people.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>So back, you know, a few years ago, they were one of the first markets where we saw really capable AI come to artists, and be able to be used to produce really high-quality images.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>So back, you know, a few years ago, they were one of the first markets where we saw really capable AI come to artists, and be able to be used to produce really high-quality images.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>For years, human artists made stock images and uploaded them to online marketplaces. Then those marketplaces began accepting AI-generated work. Suddenly, images made by people were sitting beside images that could be generated by machines, almost instantly, at enormous scale. And because the platform Sam studied required artists to clearly label which images were AI-generated, he could watch the transition in really fine detail.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>For years, human artists made stock images and uploaded them to online marketplaces. Then those marketplaces began accepting AI-generated work. Suddenly, images made by people were sitting beside images that could be generated by machines, almost instantly, at enormous scale. And because the platform Sam studied required artists to clearly label which images were AI-generated, he could watch the transition in really fine detail.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>And so what that means in practice is that after the platform allows generative AI to enter the market, I can see both how non-generative AI artists respond, as well as how generative AI enters the market and what types of images it produces. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>And so what that means in practice is that after the platform allows generative AI to enter the market, I can see both how non-generative AI artists respond, as well as how generative AI enters the market and what types of images it produces. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>So here’s how it used to work. Customers would comb through these websites, going through image after image, until they find one that is “close enough”. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>So here’s how it used to work. Customers would comb through these websites, going through image after image, until they find one that is “close enough”. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>I guess the right way to think about it is each individual might have a very specific taste for something, and so when they were trying to find a stock image, they would make some sort of compromise, right? So they would say, “Oh, I’m looking for an image of a tennis ball, and I want an image of a tennis ball in motion,” right? They could go to the stock image website, they’d look up that keyword, and they’d find, you know, maybe pre-generative AI, a couple hundred different versions of that image, right? Maybe none of them are perfect, but one of them’s good enough, and they took it.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>I guess the right way to think about it is each individual might have a very specific taste for something, and so when they were trying to find a stock image, they would make some sort of compromise, right? So they would say, “Oh, I’m looking for an image of a tennis ball, and I want an image of a tennis ball in motion,” right? They could go to the stock image website, they’d look up that keyword, and they’d find, you know, maybe pre-generative AI, a couple hundred different versions of that image, right? Maybe none of them are perfect, but one of them’s good enough, and they took it.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Right\u003cstrong>. \u003c/strong>So maybe your article is about playing tennis in the rain, and so you would love to have a tennis ball that’s kind of covered in water. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Right\u003cstrong>. \u003c/strong>So maybe your article is about playing tennis in the rain, and so you would love to have a tennis ball that’s kind of covered in water. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Penetrating water droplets.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Penetrating water droplets.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Right. And then that is the kind of thing that just doesn’t exist, so maybe you just get a tennis ball in isolation, and that’s good enough. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Right. And then that is the kind of thing that just doesn’t exist, so maybe you just get a tennis ball in isolation, and that’s good enough. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Exactly. And so in the pre-generative AI world, you know, you were making some compromises with respect to that, oftentimes at least. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Exactly. And so in the pre-generative AI world, you know, you were making some compromises with respect to that, oftentimes at least. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> But along comes generative AI, with free or cheap image generators where you can literally tell it: I want a wet tennis ball, resting on a bench, with water beading on it. And it will give you a pretty good version of that exact image. So what happens when a stock image market starts accepting these hyper-specific AI-generated images?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> But along comes generative AI, with free or cheap image generators where you can literally tell it: I want a wet tennis ball, resting on a bench, with water beading on it. And it will give you a pretty good version of that exact image. So what happens when a stock image market starts accepting these hyper-specific AI-generated images?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>What actually happens in this market is, generative AI enters, the market expands greatly, so there’s a lot more images on the platform. That should probably be pretty intuitive. But not only do more images enter the market, more customers do as well. More images are being purchased and they like the generative AI images because it turns out they’re actually pretty high quality.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>What actually happens in this market is, generative AI enters, the market expands greatly, so there’s a lot more images on the platform. That should probably be pretty intuitive. But not only do more images enter the market, more customers do as well. More images are being purchased and they like the generative AI images because it turns out they’re actually pretty high quality.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>So I can see how this is good for me as a consumer. I finally have the perfect raindrop-covered tennis ball for my editorial feature. And I can see how this is good for the platform itself, at least in the short term. What happens to the artists? And I guess I would ask both the artists using generative AI and those who are not. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>So I can see how this is good for me as a consumer. I finally have the perfect raindrop-covered tennis ball for my editorial feature. And I can see how this is good for the platform itself, at least in the short term. What happens to the artists? And I guess I would ask both the artists using generative AI and those who are not. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Yeah, it’s a good question, and I think you are correct in your intuition here that it does seem like it’s probably pretty good for consumers. It does seem like it’s probably pretty good for the platform, at least in the short run. The artist side I think is a little bit more complicated right? Let me walk you through what happens after generative AI enters the platform, and then we can talk about the implications for artists.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Yeah, it’s a good question, and I think you are correct in your intuition here that it does seem like it’s probably pretty good for consumers. It does seem like it’s probably pretty good for the platform, at least in the short run. The artist side I think is a little bit more complicated right? Let me walk you through what happens after generative AI enters the platform, and then we can talk about the implications for artists.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Yeah.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Yeah.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Okay. So what happens is production goes way up. All right? By over 100% more production, so enormous increases in production here. Second, more artists participate in the market. So we see a lot of new artists enter the stock image market. Of course, that overflow of new artists hides a different fact, which is non-generative AI artists exit. Okay? So they stop producing. So we see a reduction in non-generative AI production, as well as a reduction in the number of non-generative AI artists who are participating on the platform.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Okay. So what happens is production goes way up. All right? By over 100% more production, so enormous increases in production here. Second, more artists participate in the market. So we see a lot of new artists enter the stock image market. Of course, that overflow of new artists hides a different fact, which is non-generative AI artists exit. Okay? So they stop producing. So we see a reduction in non-generative AI production, as well as a reduction in the number of non-generative AI artists who are participating on the platform.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>What we call that in the paper is sort of a little bit of a crowding out effect. So what’s happening is all of this generative AI production is entering, it’s filling up demand, it’s filling up those markets, and the non-generative AI artists end up having to exit the market because they’re no longer profitable.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>What we call that in the paper is sort of a little bit of a crowding out effect. So what’s happening is all of this generative AI production is entering, it’s filling up demand, it’s filling up those markets, and the non-generative AI artists end up having to exit the market because they’re no longer profitable.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> So, pretty bad news for a lot of artists who choose to keep making images the old way. But, Sam also found a bottleneck. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> So, pretty bad news for a lot of artists who choose to keep making images the old way. But, Sam also found a bottleneck. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong> What the stock image market sells is not quite images. What the stock image market sells is indemnification, which is to say if the buyer of the image uses it and gets in trouble, so someone says, “Hey, you can’t use that image. That’s copyrighted,” and tries to sue the buyer, the platform says, “You can’t sue the buyer. We’re responsible.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong> What the stock image market sells is not quite images. What the stock image market sells is indemnification, which is to say if the buyer of the image uses it and gets in trouble, so someone says, “Hey, you can’t use that image. That’s copyrighted,” and tries to sue the buyer, the platform says, “You can’t sue the buyer. We’re responsible.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Oh, fascinating. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Oh, fascinating. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Okay, and so that’s really important here because if you were to produce that image yourself using a generative model, you could be subject to some sorts of liability for using, for example, copyrighted work in the training of those models.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Okay, and so that’s really important here because if you were to produce that image yourself using a generative model, you could be subject to some sorts of liability for using, for example, copyrighted work in the training of those models.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Got that? AI-generated images are a bit of a legal gray area right now. For one, most of the biggest AI models were trained on data that included copyrighted works. And it’s also unclear which new AI-generated works can get copyright protection.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Got that? AI-generated images are a bit of a legal gray area right now. For one, most of the biggest AI models were trained on data that included copyrighted works. And it’s also unclear which new AI-generated works can get copyright protection.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Anyway, given this uncertainty, you might choose to purchase an AI-generated image from this market rather than just whip up one yourself because you want the legal protection that this affords you.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Anyway, given this uncertainty, you might choose to purchase an AI-generated image from this market rather than just whip up one yourself because you want the legal protection that this affords you.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And, it turns out that getting this legal protection works a little differently for images that have a human in them. When artists submit images with humans in them, they also need to fill out paperwork showing that they have permission to use those people’s likenesses. This paperwork is \u003cem>not\u003c/em> something the AI can easily produce. And so voila! We have less crowding-out for images containing people than for images of, say, tennis balls. And there it is! Our bottleneck!\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And, it turns out that getting this legal protection works a little differently for images that have a human in them. When artists submit images with humans in them, they also need to fill out paperwork showing that they have permission to use those people’s likenesses. This paperwork is \u003cem>not\u003c/em> something the AI can easily produce. And so voila! We have less crowding-out for images containing people than for images of, say, tennis balls. And there it is! Our bottleneck!\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, it’s pretty uninspiring: paperwork. Still, in Sam’s study, it was something the machines couldn’t easily replace, and that did allow human creators to survive in that particular corner of the “stock image” market. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, it’s pretty uninspiring: paperwork. Still, in Sam’s study, it was something the machines couldn’t easily replace, and that did allow human creators to survive in that particular corner of the “stock image” market. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Stepping back, Sam’s findings are stark. AI gave customers a ton more image choices. It helped the market grow. And, it pushed a lot of human artists out. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Stepping back, Sam’s findings are stark. AI gave customers a ton more image choices. It helped the market grow. And, it pushed a lot of human artists out. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>So one read of your study is that AI-generated art is great for everybody but many of the artists. And I just wanna ask, is a world without artists really great for consumers? Is that really what consumers want? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>So one read of your study is that AI-generated art is great for everybody but many of the artists. And I just wanna ask, is a world without artists really great for consumers? Is that really what consumers want? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Yeah. So I definitely do not take a strong opinion about if generative AI art is good or bad, right? I think the data suggests that consumers like the generative AI art. They purchase it, and they are willing to purchase it. And so to the extent that they are willing to purchase it, that seems an improvement basically. Now, in the long run, does that mean that we want a world with no human creativity? I don’t think so, and I don’t have, you know, good data to speak to that. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Yeah. So I definitely do not take a strong opinion about if generative AI art is good or bad, right? I think the data suggests that consumers like the generative AI art. They purchase it, and they are willing to purchase it. And so to the extent that they are willing to purchase it, that seems an improvement basically. Now, in the long run, does that mean that we want a world with no human creativity? I don’t think so, and I don’t have, you know, good data to speak to that. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>I mean, certainly anecdotally, we hear people saying they don’t like AI content. Intuitively, I think you might expect more of that backlash in creative goods markets that are a little bit more emotional or sincere. So for example, you see a lot more of this when people listen to AI-generated music. Or like YouTube even, like creative shorts. Stock images are, are a product being used for a purpose, in a way that, I think is a little different. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>I mean, certainly anecdotally, we hear people saying they don’t like AI content. Intuitively, I think you might expect more of that backlash in creative goods markets that are a little bit more emotional or sincere. So for example, you see a lot more of this when people listen to AI-generated music. Or like YouTube even, like creative shorts. Stock images are, are a product being used for a purpose, in a way that, I think is a little different. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]\u003c/strong>: So the pressure on human artists that Sam saw in the stock image market… we don’t really know how much they’ll translate to other creative markets.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]\u003c/strong>: So the pressure on human artists that Sam saw in the stock image market… we don’t really know how much they’ll translate to other creative markets.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Particularly those where people could be looking for something harder to just generate on demand: a unique interpretation, emotional resonance, a point of view, maybe even a relationship with the person making the work.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Particularly those where people could be looking for something harder to just generate on demand: a unique interpretation, emotional resonance, a point of view, maybe even a relationship with the person making the work.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So to learn more, I spoke with an artist who has spent much of her career making these \u003cem>other\u003c/em> kinds of images.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So to learn more, I spoke with an artist who has spent much of her career making these \u003cem>other\u003c/em> kinds of images.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>There are people who are absolutely happy with elevator music and people that go to concerts. And, I think for the elevator music art lovers type, I’m sure AI could be satisfactory. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>There are people who are absolutely happy with elevator music and people that go to concerts. And, I think for the elevator music art lovers type, I’m sure AI could be satisfactory. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>That’s coming up. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>That’s coming up. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This is Life, Automated, I’m Jess Love. And I’m talking to the artist Yevgenia Nayberg.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>This is Life, Automated, I’m Jess Love. And I’m talking to the artist Yevgenia Nayberg.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Can you talk about the different lanes of art that you make?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Can you talk about the different lanes of art that you make?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>Well, I started as a fine artist, so to speak. I’m a painter and so I paint large scale pieces. But also I crossed over pretty early into theater design, set and costume design, and illustration. And about 10 years ago, I also started writing my own books, picture books mostly. And so right now I’m focusing on being an author and picture book illustrator, and a graphic novel illustrator and writer.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>Well, I started as a fine artist, so to speak. I’m a painter and so I paint large scale pieces. But also I crossed over pretty early into theater design, set and costume design, and illustration. And about 10 years ago, I also started writing my own books, picture books mostly. And so right now I’m focusing on being an author and picture book illustrator, and a graphic novel illustrator and writer.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Yeah, so I really should have asked that question differently. I should have said, “What kinds of art do you \u003cem>not\u003c/em> make?” And then maybe we would’ve gotten through that answer more quickly. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Yeah, so I really should have asked that question differently. I should have said, “What kinds of art do you \u003cem>not\u003c/em> make?” And then maybe we would’ve gotten through that answer more quickly. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Yevgenia is also someone I’ve worked with. Years ago, when I was working as a magazine editor, I hired her to illustrate some articles. Her work is way more distinctive and conceptually ambitious than anything you’d find on a stock-image website. But it is still commercial art: made for a client, on a deadline, to serve a particular purpose. So I wanted to know whether she saw her own corner of the creative economy as vulnerable to the same forces Sam observed.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Yevgenia is also someone I’ve worked with. Years ago, when I was working as a magazine editor, I hired her to illustrate some articles. Her work is way more distinctive and conceptually ambitious than anything you’d find on a stock-image website. But it is still commercial art: made for a client, on a deadline, to serve a particular purpose. So I wanted to know whether she saw her own corner of the creative economy as vulnerable to the same forces Sam observed.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>What do you think about generative AI making art?\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>Well, I’m not afraid of AI. I know there is a lot of worry amongst artists about it, and I just think it’s probably eventually going to be another tool. I don’t necessarily think that right now AI has the capabilities real, non-artificial artists have. So not afraid at this point.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>Well, I’m not afraid of AI. I know there is a lot of worry amongst artists about it, and I just think it’s probably eventually going to be another tool. I don’t necessarily think that right now AI has the capabilities real, non-artificial artists have. So not afraid at this point.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>What about the idea that whether or not this work is as good as what a human could do, it might nonetheless be good enough to somehow compete with human art or human work, either because of discoverability, so with a, flood of lower quality AI images out in the world, it becomes harder to actually find the good ones done by humans or because some of the people who might want to hire artists are pretty comfortable, just generating something for themselves for free?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>What about the idea that whether or not this work is as good as what a human could do, it might nonetheless be good enough to somehow compete with human art or human work, either because of discoverability, so with a, flood of lower quality AI images out in the world, it becomes harder to actually find the good ones done by humans or because some of the people who might want to hire artists are pretty comfortable, just generating something for themselves for free?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>Well, I’m sure there are going to be people like that. There are people who are absolutely happy with elevator music and people that go to concerts. And, I think for the elevator music art lovers type, I’m sure AI could be satisfactory. But I don’t know if you remember in the ’90s when all of this, you know, flood of stock art happened, everyone was using this image of a little light bulb above a person’s head when they wanted to describe an idea.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>Well, I’m sure there are going to be people like that. There are people who are absolutely happy with elevator music and people that go to concerts. And, I think for the elevator music art lovers type, I’m sure AI could be satisfactory. But I don’t know if you remember in the ’90s when all of this, you know, flood of stock art happened, everyone was using this image of a little light bulb above a person’s head when they wanted to describe an idea.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>If you have an idea, all you draw that bulb, and I think that’s the kind of thinking that I see from AI at this point. So it does create some metaphors, but those metaphors are very trite. If my students do this kind of work, I stop them and I tell them, “Look how many people have already done this hypothetical light bulb.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>If you have an idea, all you draw that bulb, and I think that’s the kind of thinking that I see from AI at this point. So it does create some metaphors, but those metaphors are very trite. If my students do this kind of work, I stop them and I tell them, “Look how many people have already done this hypothetical light bulb.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So I think because AI sort of collects all these similar ideas and then generates as a result, it’s a very banal result, and I’m not interested in that, and I don’t think my clients, the kind of clients that I work with, are interested in those very typical, ordinary ideas. So I can do better than that at this point, for now.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So I think because AI sort of collects all these similar ideas and then generates as a result, it’s a very banal result, and I’m not interested in that, and I don’t think my clients, the kind of clients that I work with, are interested in those very typical, ordinary ideas. So I can do better than that at this point, for now.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Yevgenia sees a real difference between the illustration work she does, for specific clients, and the broad, commercial stock image market.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Yevgenia sees a real difference between the illustration work she does, for specific clients, and the broad, commercial stock image market.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>I think what illustration, conceptual illustration does is that it creates a second track to the story. So instead of illustrating something literally, it adds to the story. It can take the story and it can create this interesting creative tension between the illustration and the story, heightening the story in a certain way. So I think with stocks, you often lack that. It’s very hard to prompt an image bank to generate something like this. Even if you search for an image that will fit the story. Fitting the story is one thing. Elevating the story is a completely different thing.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>I think what illustration, conceptual illustration does is that it creates a second track to the story. So instead of illustrating something literally, it adds to the story. It can take the story and it can create this interesting creative tension between the illustration and the story, heightening the story in a certain way. So I think with stocks, you often lack that. It’s very hard to prompt an image bank to generate something like this. Even if you search for an image that will fit the story. Fitting the story is one thing. Elevating the story is a completely different thing.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voicover]\u003c/strong>: Well yeah, an image that elevates a story does seem a lot better than one that merely “fits” a story. But Yevgenia’s not exactly an unbiased third-party here. So now I was curious what Sam Goldberg would make of this claim—that AI art can spray down the market with lots of images that might \u003cem>fit\u003c/em> a particular need really, really well, leading to plenty of satisfied customers. But those images are nonetheless probably not going to be novel enough to \u003cem>elevate\u003c/em> a story. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voicover]\u003c/strong>: Well yeah, an image that elevates a story does seem a lot better than one that merely “fits” a story. But Yevgenia’s not exactly an unbiased third-party here. So now I was curious what Sam Goldberg would make of this claim—that AI art can spray down the market with lots of images that might \u003cem>fit\u003c/em> a particular need really, really well, leading to plenty of satisfied customers. But those images are nonetheless probably not going to be novel enough to \u003cem>elevate\u003c/em> a story. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“Is this a bottleneck?” I asked Sam.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“Is this a bottleneck?” I asked Sam.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong> So you are not expecting this question. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong> So you are not expecting this question. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Okay. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Okay. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>I actually ran some of your results past an illustrator friend of mine. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>I actually ran some of your results past an illustrator friend of mine. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Okay. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Okay. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>And what she said was basically, “Look, you can use generative AI to come up with thousands of images of light bulbs, light bulbs in this environment, in this you know, room, in front of this person. But what you can’t do is get AI to go that one step beyond and think through, well, what is another way of getting across creativity or innovation? So it will give you a billion light bulbs, but it’s not necessarily really going to give you variety at the concept level. And I’m curious what you would make of that.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>And what she said was basically, “Look, you can use generative AI to come up with thousands of images of light bulbs, light bulbs in this environment, in this you know, room, in front of this person. But what you can’t do is get AI to go that one step beyond and think through, well, what is another way of getting across creativity or innovation? So it will give you a billion light bulbs, but it’s not necessarily really going to give you variety at the concept level. And I’m curious what you would make of that.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Yeah. So I’m hesitant to disagree with the artist here, but-\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Yeah. So I’m hesitant to disagree with the artist here, but-\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Never disagree with an artist. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Never disagree with an artist. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Never disagree with the artist. Yeah, so I actually don’t think that’s incongruent with what we see happen in these markets. So one analysis we do in the paper… \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Never disagree with the artist. Yeah, so I actually don’t think that’s incongruent with what we see happen in these markets. So one analysis we do in the paper… \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Sam’s team actually found a way to represent the images mathematically. This let them analyze the novelty of this flood of new AI-generated images.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Sam’s team actually found a way to represent the images mathematically. This let them analyze the novelty of this flood of new AI-generated images.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>And so we actually – I sort of agree with her, right? Which is to say, one thing we don’t see is – we don’t see a huge increase in novelty in the market. But essentially, what we see happen is we don’t see a lot of sort of images enter the market that look very different than the images that already exist there.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>And so we actually – I sort of agree with her, right? Which is to say, one thing we don’t see is – we don’t see a huge increase in novelty in the market. But essentially, what we see happen is we don’t see a lot of sort of images enter the market that look very different than the images that already exist there.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Interesting. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Interesting. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>What we \u003cem>do\u003c/em> see is that anywhere there’s a gap in the market, so where there’s two images on either side, but there’s not an image in between, generative AI is very good at filling those gaps.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>What we \u003cem>do\u003c/em> see is that anywhere there’s a gap in the market, so where there’s two images on either side, but there’s not an image in between, generative AI is very good at filling those gaps.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> So…at least for now, AI can generate lots and lots of variations on a theme. But what Yevgenia’s describing is the ability to think \u003cem>beyond\u003c/em> that theme. And Sam says, “yeah, AI doesn’t seem to be as good at that.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> So…at least for now, AI can generate lots and lots of variations on a theme. But what Yevgenia’s describing is the ability to think \u003cem>beyond\u003c/em> that theme. And Sam says, “yeah, AI doesn’t seem to be as good at that.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>I think it’s totally reasonable to say that your illustrator friend may be correct that that is something that these models struggle with.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>I think it’s totally reasonable to say that your illustrator friend may be correct that that is something that these models struggle with.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong> I’m surprised. I was ready to fight the economist!\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong> I’m surprised. I was ready to fight the economist!\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Oh no! I actually don’t think you guys would fight that much, but we won’t put you in a cage match together.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Oh no! I actually don’t think you guys would fight that much, but we won’t put you in a cage match together.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> This idea of bringing true novelty to an assignment: that new metaphor, that “second track.” This may be an important source of value that human artists bring to a project. So…what does that look like?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> This idea of bringing true novelty to an assignment: that new metaphor, that “second track.” This may be an important source of value that human artists bring to a project. So…what does that look like?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Let’s do something fun. Obviously we have worked together in the past. I have hired you to do beautiful custom illustrations for articles, on Kellogg Insight, where I was the editor-in-chief for many years. And so it’s not even hypothetical to say I would often come to you with a story on innovation, entrepreneurship, you know, how to brainstorm. And so let’s say I bring you this article, it’s about “Better Ways of Brainstorming”, and I’m like, “And also, I think I got a pretty good idea for you. It’s a group of people brainstorming, and above them, they’re, like, collectively building a big light bulb. And it’s like a hot air balloon light bulb, and it’s just, wow, you can just see this is going places. “What do you think?”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Let’s do something fun. Obviously we have worked together in the past. I have hired you to do beautiful custom illustrations for articles, on Kellogg Insight, where I was the editor-in-chief for many years. And so it’s not even hypothetical to say I would often come to you with a story on innovation, entrepreneurship, you know, how to brainstorm. And so let’s say I bring you this article, it’s about “Better Ways of Brainstorming”, and I’m like, “And also, I think I got a pretty good idea for you. It’s a group of people brainstorming, and above them, they’re, like, collectively building a big light bulb. And it’s like a hot air balloon light bulb, and it’s just, wow, you can just see this is going places. “What do you think?”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>Well, Jess, I think actually an air balloon light bulb is already a beautiful idea. If I’m not mistaken, I think I did an illustration like this for you years ago. So, maybe we should try doing something different this time. We don’t wanna repeat ourselves. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>Well, Jess, I think actually an air balloon light bulb is already a beautiful idea. If I’m not mistaken, I think I did an illustration like this for you years ago. So, maybe we should try doing something different this time. We don’t wanna repeat ourselves. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]\u003c/strong>: Yes, Yevgenia was right about this. I tracked down \u003ca target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/creating-urgency-around-corporate-innovation\">the illustration\u003c/a> from the Kellogg Insight archives. It appeared alongside a 2015 article on corporate innovation. And it featured someone riding through the sky in a lightbulb-shaped hot-air-balloon. Which is almost certainly why the idea formed instantly in my own mind.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]\u003c/strong>: Yes, Yevgenia was right about this. I tracked down \u003ca target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/creating-urgency-around-corporate-innovation\">the illustration\u003c/a> from the Kellogg Insight archives. It appeared alongside a 2015 article on corporate innovation. And it featured someone riding through the sky in a lightbulb-shaped hot-air-balloon. Which is almost certainly why the idea formed instantly in my own mind.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>But what it did not have is the group of people underneath it, because this, I think, is something that would spoil this illustration. Because you really shouldn’t try to stuff all your ideas into a single illustration. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>But what it did not have is the group of people underneath it, because this, I think, is something that would spoil this illustration. Because you really shouldn’t try to stuff all your ideas into a single illustration. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But we can go in a completely direction as well. You mentioned brainstorming, so I think maybe using those words and turning them into something visual could work, like creating an actual brainstorm where, you know, that your brain is being blown away by the wind. And, that can actually push a story into kind of a funny territory instead of keeping it very serious, because normally when we say a brainstorm, we associate it with really serious, earnest scientists developing something.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But we can go in a completely direction as well. You mentioned brainstorming, so I think maybe using those words and turning them into something visual could work, like creating an actual brainstorm where, you know, that your brain is being blown away by the wind. And, that can actually push a story into kind of a funny territory instead of keeping it very serious, because normally when we say a brainstorm, we associate it with really serious, earnest scientists developing something.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But maybe I want to make a little joke and say, you know, “Hey, you can also brainstorm. You don’t have to be so serious about that.” So it also can change the mood of your article, the mood of your story a little bit.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But maybe I want to make a little joke and say, you know, “Hey, you can also brainstorm. You don’t have to be so serious about that.” So it also can change the mood of your article, the mood of your story a little bit.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And maybe we don’t, maybe you want to be super serious, and then you would reject this idea. But maybe you would say, “Hey, I really like it because we’ve done so many super serious articles. Let’s lighten up.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And maybe we don’t, maybe you want to be super serious, and then you would reject this idea. But maybe you would say, “Hey, I really like it because we’ve done so many super serious articles. Let’s lighten up.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Love it. That’s great. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> Okay! So Yevgenia doesn’t just take an assignment and execute it. She thinks it through: The light bulb is cliche, but the hot air balloon idea is interesting. The hot air balloon is interesting, but the people underneath are weighing the idea down. Oh yeah, and because we have a history together, Yevgenia can tell me that we’ve done something really similar 11 years ago.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> Okay! So Yevgenia doesn’t just take an assignment and execute it. She thinks it through: The light bulb is cliche, but the hot air balloon idea is interesting. The hot air balloon is interesting, but the people underneath are weighing the idea down. Oh yeah, and because we have a history together, Yevgenia can tell me that we’ve done something really similar 11 years ago.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Then she offers something completely different, playing off the idea of a storm. But really what she’s doing is asking a question about intent. What mood should the illustration create? Serious? Funny? Can the image change the way the reader experiences the story?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Then she offers something completely different, playing off the idea of a storm. But really what she’s doing is asking a question about intent. What mood should the illustration create? Serious? Funny? Can the image change the way the reader experiences the story?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Yevgenia is much more than a picture-making machine. She has a very finely honed, very unique way of seeing and depicting the world. As much as any technical skills, \u003cem>that’s\u003c/em> what I hired her to bring to the table. And \u003cem>that\u003c/em>, to me, at least – sounds like another bottleneck.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Yevgenia is much more than a picture-making machine. She has a very finely honed, very unique way of seeing and depicting the world. As much as any technical skills, \u003cem>that’s\u003c/em> what I hired her to bring to the table. And \u003cem>that\u003c/em>, to me, at least – sounds like another bottleneck.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So, for established artists like Yegvenia, this should be somewhat reassuring. But there’s still a problem. Nobody begins a career with fully formed artistic taste. That can take years to develop. And often, people develop it while doing smaller, more routine work. Like, maybe, selling their art on a stock image website. And if AI-generated art takes off, even in the most routine, commercial, transactional spaces, it could eventually shape the art we encounter elsewhere too.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So, for established artists like Yegvenia, this should be somewhat reassuring. But there’s still a problem. Nobody begins a career with fully formed artistic taste. That can take years to develop. And often, people develop it while doing smaller, more routine work. Like, maybe, selling their art on a stock image website. And if AI-generated art takes off, even in the most routine, commercial, transactional spaces, it could eventually shape the art we encounter elsewhere too.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>There is a dangerous territory when real humans, real artists will start to imitate AI if there is enough demand for AI art. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>There is a dangerous territory when real humans, real artists will start to imitate AI if there is enough demand for AI art. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Yevgenia teaches young artists, and she’s been seeing this play out with her students. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>A lot of them are concerned with style and they all talk about style, and I couldn’t really understand what they meant because I thought– I kind of thought of style as voice, not so much as like a stylistic direction. Turns out they’re trying to pick a style and match it from what they see, let’s say, on Instagram. So there is a lot of sameness there already, and this is something that they’re trying to imitate in hopes of finding jobs maybe. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>A lot of them are concerned with style and they all talk about style, and I couldn’t really understand what they meant because I thought– I kind of thought of style as voice, not so much as like a stylistic direction. Turns out they’re trying to pick a style and match it from what they see, let’s say, on Instagram. So there is a lot of sameness there already, and this is something that they’re trying to imitate in hopes of finding jobs maybe. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> She thinks AI could be like Instagram on steroids, sending the same images into every artist’s collective consciousness. Yevgenia says she is \u003cem>all for \u003c/em>her students getting hired to make art. But this trend of homogenization and imitation – is troubling. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> She thinks AI could be like Instagram on steroids, sending the same images into every artist’s collective consciousness. Yevgenia says she is \u003cem>all for \u003c/em>her students getting hired to make art. But this trend of homogenization and imitation – is troubling. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg:\u003c/strong> My primary job is to educate an artist, I want them to work obviously, and I would like to help them as much as possible. But again, I’d like to focus on developing their creativity and their uniqueness more than anything else. I always tell my students, you know, “make something worth stealing.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg:\u003c/strong> My primary job is to educate an artist, I want them to work obviously, and I would like to help them as much as possible. But again, I’d like to focus on developing their creativity and their uniqueness more than anything else. I always tell my students, you know, “make something worth stealing.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>For an individual artist, having a unique voice ‘worth stealing’ can be the difference between mediocrity and greatness.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>For an individual artist, having a unique voice ‘worth stealing’ can be the difference between mediocrity and greatness.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And economist Ben Jones\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>says that everyone benefits from having more, unique, creative perspectives in the mix. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And economist Ben Jones\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>says that everyone benefits from having more, unique, creative perspectives in the mix. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>What we actually want is people reaching for very different types of things based on their different experiences, right? And so what’s interesting, one of the reasons that we think that, you know, a kind of a society with wide-ranging pockets of expertise, interests, cultural backgrounds, et cetera, can be extremely creative, is because people are coming at questions with different sort of perspectives and ideas. They’re even coming at different questions, ’cause the kind of questions that occur to one person might not occur to another, and that’s true in science and invention, it’s true in entrepreneurship. We don’t want everyone trying the same business model. We want people trying wildly different business models, and we’ll see which one the market takes. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>What we actually want is people reaching for very different types of things based on their different experiences, right? And so what’s interesting, one of the reasons that we think that, you know, a kind of a society with wide-ranging pockets of expertise, interests, cultural backgrounds, et cetera, can be extremely creative, is because people are coming at questions with different sort of perspectives and ideas. They’re even coming at different questions, ’cause the kind of questions that occur to one person might not occur to another, and that’s true in science and invention, it’s true in entrepreneurship. We don’t want everyone trying the same business model. We want people trying wildly different business models, and we’ll see which one the market takes. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>There’s real value in difference. In start-ups, in science, and in art. And if everyone begins from the same machine-generated suggestions, we could end up with more of everything—but very little that’s new, special, or unique.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>There’s real value in difference. In start-ups, in science, and in art. And if everyone begins from the same machine-generated suggestions, we could end up with more of everything—but very little that’s new, special, or unique.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So, this is the paradox: AI can generate a staggering number of possibilities, filling countless gaps in the marketplace. And yet, so much of what it produces feels… the same. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So, this is the paradox: AI can generate a staggering number of possibilities, filling countless gaps in the marketplace. And yet, so much of what it produces feels… the same. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>While AI-generated images and videos and books are running rampant in some artistic markets–plenty of people are just fine with elevator music, thank you very much–real novelty, real creativity, seems to be the purview of humans. Leaving human creative workers with an important role to play. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>While AI-generated images and videos and books are running rampant in some artistic markets–plenty of people are just fine with elevator music, thank you very much–real novelty, real creativity, seems to be the purview of humans. Leaving human creative workers with an important role to play. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Whew. That’s a relief.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Whew. That’s a relief.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So… is that the end? Should we play the ending music, roll the credits? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So… is that the end? Should we play the ending music, roll the credits? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Well, not so fast. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This is where we stand on Labor Day 2026 sure, but if we know anything about AI tools, it’s that they can change fast. So what happens next? Where’s this all headed? Well, based on my conversations with scholars and artists, I can see three possible futures.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>This is where we stand on Labor Day 2026 sure, but if we know anything about AI tools, it’s that they can change fast. So what happens next? Where’s this all headed? Well, based on my conversations with scholars and artists, I can see three possible futures.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In the first timeline, things continue along the lines they are now. The machines do get better at generating art. Maybe AI-generated images get even more photorealistic, or maybe AI-generated writing sheds its telltale ticks – you know, those cringy buzzwords that scream, “I’m AI-generated!” \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>In the first timeline, things continue along the lines they are now. The machines do get better at generating art. Maybe AI-generated images get even more photorealistic, or maybe AI-generated writing sheds its telltale ticks – you know, those cringy buzzwords that scream, “I’m AI-generated!” \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But the improvements are really around the margins. And so genuine creativity remains a bottleneck protecting human creatives.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But the improvements are really around the margins. And so genuine creativity remains a bottleneck protecting human creatives.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But there’s a second timeline, and in this timeline, AI learns to be \u003cem>very\u003c/em> creative.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But there’s a second timeline, and in this timeline, AI learns to be \u003cem>very\u003c/em> creative.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Ben sees this possible future as pretty likely. Because new ideas rarely emerge out of the blue. They are often composed of existing ingredients, just combined in new ways. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Ben sees this possible future as pretty likely. Because new ideas rarely emerge out of the blue. They are often composed of existing ingredients, just combined in new ways. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>In many, many fields, people have separately discovered that creativity often looks like a new combination of things that already existed. So, for example, Thomas Edison did not call the light bulb, at first, the light bulb. He called it the electric candle because he was taking the candle, which was an old technology, and electricity, which was a new technology, and combining them.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>In many, many fields, people have separately discovered that creativity often looks like a new combination of things that already existed. So, for example, Thomas Edison did not call the light bulb, at first, the light bulb. He called it the electric candle because he was taking the candle, which was an old technology, and electricity, which was a new technology, and combining them.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And if you look at many, many ideas, it’s very natural to decompose them into distinct components—to unleash a big insight in science, or to produce a new product or process that we can all use. So that idea is very common, you see it in the arts and music and invention and science.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And if you look at many, many ideas, it’s very natural to decompose them into distinct components—to unleash a big insight in science, or to produce a new product or process that we can all use. So that idea is very common, you see it in the arts and music and invention and science.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> By this definition, AI should actually have a creative advantage. A single person can only encounter and understand so many possible ingredients in a lifetime. \u003cem>We\u003c/em> have to specialize. AI has a much more vast palette to draw from.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> By this definition, AI should actually have a creative advantage. A single person can only encounter and understand so many possible ingredients in a lifetime. \u003cem>We\u003c/em> have to specialize. AI has a much more vast palette to draw from.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>What’s been interesting about AI, of course, is that AI reads everything. So anyone who’s been interacting with AI sort of sees like, “Wow, I can talk to this AI about just about anything, and right around the edges of my understanding about things I kind of understand, about things I know nothing about, and it seems to know a lot about a lot of stuff.” So in some sense, at that core level of being able to access ingredients that you can combine with seemingly some sophisticated understanding of those ingredients, AI is pretty impressive. And so in that sense, I think it has in some sense, beyond human creative potential. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>What’s been interesting about AI, of course, is that AI reads everything. So anyone who’s been interacting with AI sort of sees like, “Wow, I can talk to this AI about just about anything, and right around the edges of my understanding about things I kind of understand, about things I know nothing about, and it seems to know a lot about a lot of stuff.” So in some sense, at that core level of being able to access ingredients that you can combine with seemingly some sophisticated understanding of those ingredients, AI is pretty impressive. And so in that sense, I think it has in some sense, beyond human creative potential. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Given the vast range of ingredients AI can draw from, you might expect it to already produce endlessly surprising combinations. And Ben says theoretically, it one day could. If it were trained completely differently from how most chatbots are trained today.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Given the vast range of ingredients AI can draw from, you might expect it to already produce endlessly surprising combinations. And Ben says theoretically, it one day could. If it were trained completely differently from how most chatbots are trained today.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>When you talk like a general purpose, chatbot or whatever, say ChatGPT, it’s sort of trained to produce the right answer, predicting the next token in some probabilistic way that it thinks is most likely to be right. And by predicting the thing that’s sort of most likely to be right all the time, that sounds like you’re homogenizing. It’s not going for the strange answer, right? It’s trying typically to please you by giving you what you want, and what most people want is not some wildly creative answer. They want the right answer. But that’s of course very much about how they were trained. I mean, those chatbots are optimized to do exactly that. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>When you talk like a general purpose, chatbot or whatever, say ChatGPT, it’s sort of trained to produce the right answer, predicting the next token in some probabilistic way that it thinks is most likely to be right. And by predicting the thing that’s sort of most likely to be right all the time, that sounds like you’re homogenizing. It’s not going for the strange answer, right? It’s trying typically to please you by giving you what you want, and what most people want is not some wildly creative answer. They want the right answer. But that’s of course very much about how they were trained. I mean, those chatbots are optimized to do exactly that. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But there could be other algorithms that we could use to train AI. It’s like, let’s say we’re training an AI, and we’re having people rate whether it was really interesting scientifically. Not whether it was right, but whether it was novel. Or novel and right. So I think that there is a world in which AI, and it may come quickly, or not, where AI can be quite creative.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But there could be other algorithms that we could use to train AI. It’s like, let’s say we’re training an AI, and we’re having people rate whether it was really interesting scientifically. Not whether it was right, but whether it was novel. Or novel and right. So I think that there is a world in which AI, and it may come quickly, or not, where AI can be quite creative.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>In this world, this second possible future, where the AI companies spend millions, billions, to train up AI that’s really, really creative. In this future, the creativity bottleneck protecting human artists disappears.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>In this world, this second possible future, where the AI companies spend millions, billions, to train up AI that’s really, really creative. In this future, the creativity bottleneck protecting human artists disappears.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Some kinds of creative work, live performances, personal memoir, handmade furniture, are probably still safe. But this timeline does leave many other artists really vulnerable, particularly those who distribute their work on digital marketplaces.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Some kinds of creative work, live performances, personal memoir, handmade furniture, are probably still safe. But this timeline does leave many other artists really vulnerable, particularly those who distribute their work on digital marketplaces.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But even here, there is a bottleneck that could come into play.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Not a technical bottleneck—something the machine is incapable of doing—or even a legal one, like copyright protection or human likeness permission.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Not a technical bottleneck—something the machine is incapable of doing—or even a legal one, like copyright protection or human likeness permission.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>A normative bottleneck: a limit people try to impose collectively, by deciding what kinds of creative work they are willing to accept and reward, often for ethical or even almost spiritual reasons.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>We’re already seeing this now. Many of my artist friends have adopted a kind of “hold the line” mentality against generative AI, in part because they sense that using AI is a betrayal to the artistic community.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg:\u003c/strong> Well, there is an ethical component, because AI is being trained on real artists. It’s basically being trained on us. And, of course, none of us enjoys that. None of us gave permission to have our art used by AI.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]\u003c/strong>: To the extent that science writing can be considered art – I feel this. It’s pretty likely that a decade of my own science writing was scraped from the web and used to train AI models. Nobody asked me for permission, and I certainly didn’t give it. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]\u003c/strong>: To the extent that science writing can be considered art – I feel this. It’s pretty likely that a decade of my own science writing was scraped from the web and used to train AI models. Nobody asked me for permission, and I certainly didn’t give it. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg:\u003c/strong> I would rather have this be at the discretion of every artist—if they want their work to be released into the AI world. I would not want AI to be trained on my work, honestly. Because all of us have our own little tricks and secrets, and I would like to keep them to myself.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg:\u003c/strong> I would rather have this be at the discretion of every artist—if they want their work to be released into the AI world. I would not want AI to be trained on my work, honestly. Because all of us have our own little tricks and secrets, and I would like to keep them to myself.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Some artists believe that the best way to fight back against a technology they didn’t ask for is to reject it altogether, in all forms.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Other creatives draw the line differently. Maybe AI can be used for research, but not execution. Or maybe it can be used for execution, but only in a specific way, as part of a rigorous, intentional process.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Wherever this line is drawn – and I expect this to be vehemently contested over the next several years, the normative bottleneck is about \u003cem>process\u003c/em>. Not just \u003cem>what\u003c/em> is made, but \u003cem>how\u003c/em> something is made.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Earlier this year, the fantasy novelist Brandon Sanderson made this argument explicit in a keynote address called “We Are the Art.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem> The machines can spit out manuscript after manuscript after manuscript. They can pile them to the pillars of heaven itself, but all we have to do is say no. If we do, they lose. Why do we make art? Well, remember, art is not just the story. It is not just the painting or the sculpture or whatever else you love to create. It’s also the process of creation and what that process did to you. We are the art. Thank you.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem> The machines can spit out manuscript after manuscript after manuscript. They can pile them to the pillars of heaven itself, but all we have to do is say no. If we do, they lose. Why do we make art? Well, remember, art is not just the story. It is not just the painting or the sculpture or whatever else you love to create. It’s also the process of creation and what that process did to you. We are the art. Thank you.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Whether this kind of resistance, this \u003cem>normative\u003c/em> bottleneck can hold will depend on getting others on board. Getting others to agree that part of the value of human art is that it was created by another human being. Someone who felt something, or saw the world in a certain way, and labored to share it with us. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Whether this kind of resistance, this \u003cem>normative\u003c/em> bottleneck can hold will depend on getting others on board. Getting others to agree that part of the value of human art is that it was created by another human being. Someone who felt something, or saw the world in a certain way, and labored to share it with us. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But there’s a third possible future here, one that doesn’t solely rely on social norms around creativity. In this possible future, whether AI becomes more creative or not, people using AI become capable of doing new things that neither humans nor AI could have done alone. Maybe AI becomes yet another tool for human artists. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>You’ve seen this before: the camera. Photoshop. The electric synthesizer. All these were controversial in their time, often for devaluing certain hard-won skills, like painting in a painstaking, hyper-realistic style, or learning to play the french horn. But today most artists would probably agree that the new tools created new possibilities. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>You’ve seen this before: the camera. Photoshop. The electric synthesizer. All these were controversial in their time, often for devaluing certain hard-won skills, like painting in a painstaking, hyper-realistic style, or learning to play the french horn. But today most artists would probably agree that the new tools created new possibilities. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Or maybe AI really is different. Maybe it becomes a kind of thought partner. The machine proposes new ingredients we might never have produced on our own. Not unlike a colleague emailing us an article we might find interesting. Here’s Ben again.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Or maybe AI really is different. Maybe it becomes a kind of thought partner. The machine proposes new ingredients we might never have produced on our own. Not unlike a colleague emailing us an article we might find interesting. Here’s Ben again.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong>Maybe when you’re writing, it’s, it’s a collaborator, right? I mean, maybe it’s not a replacement, it’s like another voice on your team. And suddenly you’re getting a higher quality product. And it could be that you’re making a screenplay, you’re writing an article, you’re writing a song, and suddenly it’s better for your collaboration with the AI, but they’re not actually taking full control.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong>Maybe when you’re writing, it’s, it’s a collaborator, right? I mean, maybe it’s not a replacement, it’s like another voice on your team. And suddenly you’re getting a higher quality product. And it could be that you’re making a screenplay, you’re writing an article, you’re writing a song, and suddenly it’s better for your collaboration with the AI, but they’re not actually taking full control.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>In this scenario, we humans use our own creative judgment to run with whichever combination of ingredients seems like it has the most potential. Here, you could even think of “creative judgment” as its own bottleneck.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>In this scenario, we humans use our own creative judgment to run with whichever combination of ingredients seems like it has the most potential. Here, you could even think of “creative judgment” as its own bottleneck.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>You need true expertise around the set of ingredients to understand which combinations are likely or not to be useful. You don’t just randomly put ingredients together in the kitchen. It’s not gonna taste very good. There’s some milk here, and there’s some orange juice, and how about this banana? And look, it’s all spice in the spice rack, you know? And then, oh, and is that chicken? You know, that’s not gonna go very well, right? And pretty much everyone sort of knows that. There’s many, many, many, many possible combinations. But we kind of know instinctually not to try many of them because we know they’re probably not gonna be good.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>You need true expertise around the set of ingredients to understand which combinations are likely or not to be useful. You don’t just randomly put ingredients together in the kitchen. It’s not gonna taste very good. There’s some milk here, and there’s some orange juice, and how about this banana? And look, it’s all spice in the spice rack, you know? And then, oh, and is that chicken? You know, that’s not gonna go very well, right? And pretty much everyone sort of knows that. There’s many, many, many, many possible combinations. But we kind of know instinctually not to try many of them because we know they’re probably not gonna be good.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Even Yevgenia, who I should stress continues to do all of her art by hand, can see the value in this kind of collaboration–if done right, if used as more of a jumping off point than the ultimate destination. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg:\u003c/strong> You can give AI prompts and say, “Okay, give me all these variations of the light bulb in the field and in the pool.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg:\u003c/strong> You can give AI prompts and say, “Okay, give me all these variations of the light bulb in the field and in the pool.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And once it does it, you can say, “No, this is a really stupid idea. Why don’t you try something else?” And you can see what it tries, and you can maybe find something there? So I can see using AI as this little, average-minded, ordinary partner—and then that can spark something in you, in your imagination. It can generate more ideas from us, in a way, because we are competing intellectually with something.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And once it does it, you can say, “No, this is a really stupid idea. Why don’t you try something else?” And you can see what it tries, and you can maybe find something there? So I can see using AI as this little, average-minded, ordinary partner—and then that can spark something in you, in your imagination. It can generate more ideas from us, in a way, because we are competing intellectually with something.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>So those are our three scenarios. AI kind of stalls out creatively or AI actually can do everything humans can do, but cheaper and better. And then we have to decide whether we \u003cem>want\u003c/em> to preserve a role for human creativity. Or, AI and humans collaborate to \u003cem>do \u003c/em>entirely new things.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>So those are our three scenarios. AI kind of stalls out creatively or AI actually can do everything humans can do, but cheaper and better. And then we have to decide whether we \u003cem>want\u003c/em> to preserve a role for human creativity. Or, AI and humans collaborate to \u003cem>do \u003c/em>entirely new things.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Let’s all level-set for a second by noting that lots of people want to be artists, and it’s really, really hard. Already. It’s very hard to make a living as an actor, a musician, an artist, even without computers. Right? And there’s something deeply human about wanting to create and be an artist. And I would say, to be an economist for a second, the demand for their services is lower than the supply of people who would like to do it. So there are many long-suffering artists out there. Does AI make long-suffering artists even more suffering?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Let’s all level-set for a second by noting that lots of people want to be artists, and it’s really, really hard. Already. It’s very hard to make a living as an actor, a musician, an artist, even without computers. Right? And there’s something deeply human about wanting to create and be an artist. And I would say, to be an economist for a second, the demand for their services is lower than the supply of people who would like to do it. So there are many long-suffering artists out there. Does AI make long-suffering artists even more suffering?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Even long-suffering-er.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Long-suffering-er. That’s a word. And I think it could. And it could be because it replaces their output. It’s a cheaper way to produce something people want. On the other hand, maybe AI makes artists more able to do things at lower cost themselves. Maybe it’s a tool, it’s an augmentation, not a replacement. So I think it’s an open question which way it goes. It probably does quite a bit of both. And we’ll have to see. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Long-suffering-er. That’s a word. And I think it could. And it could be because it replaces their output. It’s a cheaper way to produce something people want. On the other hand, maybe AI makes artists more able to do things at lower cost themselves. Maybe it’s a tool, it’s an augmentation, not a replacement. So I think it’s an open question which way it goes. It probably does quite a bit of both. And we’ll have to see. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>A bit of both. Maybe this is the most likely possible future of all. Maybe we get all these timelines happening at once, in different parts of the creative economy. AI replacing artists, AI assisting artists, and AI just getting out of the way, to let artists do their very \u003cem>human\u003c/em> thing.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>A bit of both. Maybe this is the most likely possible future of all. Maybe we get all these timelines happening at once, in different parts of the creative economy. AI replacing artists, AI assisting artists, and AI just getting out of the way, to let artists do their very \u003cem>human\u003c/em> thing.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>I’m Jess Love. Life, Automated is a project of the Ryan Institute on Complexity, at the Kellogg School of Management, at Northwestern University. We’re distributed by KQED.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>I’m Jess Love. Life, Automated is a project of the Ryan Institute on Complexity, at the Kellogg School of Management, at Northwestern University. We’re distributed by KQED.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Today’s show was produced by Steven Jackson and Jesse Dukes. Music by Steven Jackson and Neutral Propulsion Laboratory. Recording help from Will Feeney, George Christensen, Laura Pavin and Big Lake Recording Company. Administrative support, recording, and wise counsel from Stacia Sliger, who we’re going to miss very much.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That was Life, Automated, a new KQED podcast about how life is being shaped by machines. Thanks to their team for sharing this story with us. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That was Life, Automated, a new KQED podcast about how life is being shaped by machines. Thanks to their team for sharing this story with us. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Check back in next week for a new story from Close All Tabs about the fuzzy borders between real and digital life. We’ll see you next week.\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>While the Close All Tabs team churns out our next few episodes, we bring you this must-listen from \u003cem>Life, Automated\u003c/em>. Generative AI is able to conjure new images, stories, and songs at lightning speed. So what does this mean for humans artists, storytellers and musicians? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Life, Automated\u003c/em> Host Jess Love explores what happens when AI enters creative markets. We learn that, at least today, key bottlenecks prevent AI from replicating some aspects of creativity. But there’s no guarantee those bottlenecks will exist tomorrow, raising vital questions about what we value in human labor.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Life, Automated\u003c/em> is a series about how to live, work and make decisions in a world increasingly shaped by machines. It is a production of the Ryan Institute on Complexity at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and it is distributed by KQED.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Host and Senior Director: Jess Love\u003cbr>Producer: Steven Jackson \u003cbr>Senior Producer: Jesse Dukes\u003cbr>Music: Steven Jackson\u003cbr>Associate Producer: Stacia Sliger\u003cbr>Recording: George Christensen, Will Feeney\u003cbr>Promotional help from Ananya Mallapragada and Charlotte Simmons.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>Ben Jones, economist, co-director of the Ryan Institute on Complexity \u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>Sam Goldberg, assistant professor of marketing, Stanford\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://nayberg.org/work\">Yevgenia Nayberg\u003c/a>, artist, illustrator, children’s book author\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/PrZSCYEM4NtmO7opi0fJJixcsaA?domain=papers.ssrn.com\">Generative AI & Creative Goods: Market Expansion, Crowd-out, and Copyright\u003c/a> — Samuel Goldberg, \u003cem>Stanford Graduate School of Business\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/news/blog/2026/08/12/life-automated/\">‘Life, Automated’ explores how AI is reshaping our world\u003c/a> — Roger Anderson, \u003cem>Northwestern Kellogg\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/lifeautomated\">Life, Automated Podcast\u003c/a> — \u003cem>KQED\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\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\n\n\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\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\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hello! Do you like these deep dives? Do you want more? Then please rate and review Close All Tabs on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show! And tell your friends! Post about it! On Instagram, Bluesky, X, Discord, Reddit, the comments of whatever random recipe blog you start arguments in. Basically, it would be a huge help to get the word out. Ok, let’s get to the show.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Hey Tabbies, The Close All Tabs team is busy churning out our next few episodes. And they’re bangers, I promise. In the meantime, we had to drop you a peek into this new podcast, Life Automated. It’s distributed by KQED, where this show is made, and it also covers big ideas about how technology is shaping our world.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Their most recent episode about AI and creative work is a must-listen. Now that Generative AI can crank out images, stories, and even songs, what does that mean for humans like us, who do that for a living?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The economists and artists in this episode of Life, Automated\u003cem> \u003c/em>help us understand the aspects of creativity that can’t\u003cem>e\u003c/em>asily be replicated by AI. At least for now. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, while the creative workers at Close All Tabs are talking and typing in real life to bring you more stories about the digital world. Here’s that Life Automated episode: “AI, Artists, and the Future of Creative Work.” \u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>This is Life, Automated, the show where we explore all the ways technology is changing how we live, work, and make decisions.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Think about the tractor… The washing machine, The calculator. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>For a long time, the promise of machines that automate labor was that they would take over the repetitive, dangerous or tedious work; and leave people free to do the things humans are supposed to be best at. You know, to imagine. Communicate. Invent. Make art or music. But it seems like AI might be coming for creative work as well.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>One sector on notice is the entertainment industry. The Writers guild recently bargained for contract language limiting the use of AI writing in screenplays. The Animation Guild recently projected losses of about 20% of animation and visual effects jobs. And SAG-AFTRA, a big actors and writers union, has been in ongoing negotiations to try to prevent human actors from being replaced by AI: \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[Audio of Fran Drescher]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>I don’t subscribe to putting people out of work. I think what’s happening in the entertainment industry is a microcosm of what happening throughout the United States of America whereby workers are being replaced by artificial intelligence, and what is that about actually\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>But it’s not just Hollywood. Writers, illustrators, journalists, composers, architects — even scientists who design experiments, they’re all on alert, wondering whether and how AI will impact the work they \u003cem>love\u003c/em> to do. It’s a question I’ve been wrestling with myself, as a science writer and self described “creative worker” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So today, we’ll be tackling that question, and instead of hearing from just one guest, we have a few: including an economist who studied what happened when generative AI entered one particular creative market.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>All of this generative AI production is entering, it’s filling up those markets, and the non-generative AI artists end up having to exit the market because they’re no longer profitable.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> As well as a working artist\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg:\u003c/strong> I think we will adapt. I’m not sure how yet. I can’t predict the future, but I know it’s your personal voice that will set you apart always.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>But first, if you listened to our kickoff episode — back in July, you’ll remember Economist Ben Jones. Ben is my colleague at the Ryan Institute on Complexity where he studies innovation. And, I’m going to start with a short flashback to that conversation, because something he said is really helpful for thinking about the future of creative work. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>See, Ben has been thinking about automation and its impact on jobs for a long time. He says that instead of obsessing over all the things AI can suddenly do really well, we should spend more time focusing on what it can’t do, at least not yet. Ben calls these things – bottlenecks. I’m Jess Love, this is Life, Automated. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Okay, so can you talk to us about what a bottleneck is and why it’s so important?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong> Well, of course it’s a metaphor from a bottle and what do we know about bottles? We know that the speed at which water or wine will flow from the bottle, depends on the width of the neck. Doesn’t really depend on how big the bottle is otherwise, how much wine there is in it, or how big the base is. It really just depends on the neck and in many processes in the economy and in the economy overall, it looks like there are certain things that have to happen that act as bottlenecks. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Much of the economy has that flavor where it’s not how good you are at a lot of things. What’s really sort of determining the rate of the economy is the things we’re quite slow at, the things we’re not very good at. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]\u003c/strong>: In other words, even if some parts of a system get really, really fast and easy, it’s the slowest parts of the system, the parts most difficult to automate, that will determine just how much the system overall changes. As an example from his own job, Ben points to statistical regressions, which computers do incredibly well much better than humans.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong>. If I were to run a regression by hand, with a large number of observations, it would take me literally my entire life. And I would make mistakes. You know, my computer can do a regression with a million data points in a-minute.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong> Yeah. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong> And so we have these technologies that basically are infinitely better than us to do these tasks that are really important to what we do. And then you can ask, okay, well, has our understanding of economics or astronomy or physics multiplied by a similar factor? And you’d say ‘no’, because although we can do certain things really, really, really incredibly well, other things are holding us back. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> For scientific researchers, these ‘other things’ might be collecting the right data, or building the instruments to collect the right data, or even waiting for the perfect set of circumstances to emerge that would let us interpret that data. Like the collapse of an economy, or the collision of two stars in a particular spot in the sky. Until scientists can push past these bottlenecks, all the statistical regressions in the world will only teach them so much.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I find Ben’s framework a useful way to think about AI’s impact on any kind of work, creative or otherwise. Most people’s jobs involve a bunch of different tasks. AI might get really good at some of them, but tasks it still struggles with – the bottlenecks, really determine the overall pace of change, as well as where humans can still contribute. And get paid to do so. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> So, the big takeaway for creative workers: Find the stuff AI can’t do. But what do these bottlenecks look like in creative markets in particular? And would they actually allow writers, artists, and other creative workers to still do that work? Well, it turns out that there’s somebody who has been studying this very thing. Specifically, how AI has impacted stock image websites. Those sell ready-made photos and illustrations that appear in ads, presentations, websites, and articles. Say you’re making an ad for productivity software. Maybe you purchase a stock image of people shaking hands in a conference room, or a woman smiling at her computer screen, or a well-dressed man gazing thoughtfully into the distance, perhaps wondering. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>Stock images, why do we care about these things, right? It’s not a particularly large market. It’s definitely sort of a niche commoditized good. Why is this somewhere where we wanna study AI? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>This is Sam Goldberg. He teaches marketing at Stanford, where he also studies how technology changes markets and consumer behavior. And he says the stock-image market offers an unusually crisp view of what happens when AI-generated work begins competing directly with work made by people.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>So back, you know, a few years ago, they were one of the first markets where we saw really capable AI come to artists, and be able to be used to produce really high-quality images.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>For years, human artists made stock images and uploaded them to online marketplaces. Then those marketplaces began accepting AI-generated work. Suddenly, images made by people were sitting beside images that could be generated by machines, almost instantly, at enormous scale. And because the platform Sam studied required artists to clearly label which images were AI-generated, he could watch the transition in really fine detail.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>And so what that means in practice is that after the platform allows generative AI to enter the market, I can see both how non-generative AI artists respond, as well as how generative AI enters the market and what types of images it produces. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>So here’s how it used to work. Customers would comb through these websites, going through image after image, until they find one that is “close enough”. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>I guess the right way to think about it is each individual might have a very specific taste for something, and so when they were trying to find a stock image, they would make some sort of compromise, right? So they would say, “Oh, I’m looking for an image of a tennis ball, and I want an image of a tennis ball in motion,” right? They could go to the stock image website, they’d look up that keyword, and they’d find, you know, maybe pre-generative AI, a couple hundred different versions of that image, right? Maybe none of them are perfect, but one of them’s good enough, and they took it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Right\u003cstrong>. \u003c/strong>So maybe your article is about playing tennis in the rain, and so you would love to have a tennis ball that’s kind of covered in water. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Penetrating water droplets.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Right. And then that is the kind of thing that just doesn’t exist, so maybe you just get a tennis ball in isolation, and that’s good enough. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Exactly. And so in the pre-generative AI world, you know, you were making some compromises with respect to that, oftentimes at least. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> But along comes generative AI, with free or cheap image generators where you can literally tell it: I want a wet tennis ball, resting on a bench, with water beading on it. And it will give you a pretty good version of that exact image. So what happens when a stock image market starts accepting these hyper-specific AI-generated images?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>What actually happens in this market is, generative AI enters, the market expands greatly, so there’s a lot more images on the platform. That should probably be pretty intuitive. But not only do more images enter the market, more customers do as well. More images are being purchased and they like the generative AI images because it turns out they’re actually pretty high quality.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>So I can see how this is good for me as a consumer. I finally have the perfect raindrop-covered tennis ball for my editorial feature. And I can see how this is good for the platform itself, at least in the short term. What happens to the artists? And I guess I would ask both the artists using generative AI and those who are not. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Yeah, it’s a good question, and I think you are correct in your intuition here that it does seem like it’s probably pretty good for consumers. It does seem like it’s probably pretty good for the platform, at least in the short run. The artist side I think is a little bit more complicated right? Let me walk you through what happens after generative AI enters the platform, and then we can talk about the implications for artists.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Yeah.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Okay. So what happens is production goes way up. All right? By over 100% more production, so enormous increases in production here. Second, more artists participate in the market. So we see a lot of new artists enter the stock image market. Of course, that overflow of new artists hides a different fact, which is non-generative AI artists exit. Okay? So they stop producing. So we see a reduction in non-generative AI production, as well as a reduction in the number of non-generative AI artists who are participating on the platform.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>What we call that in the paper is sort of a little bit of a crowding out effect. So what’s happening is all of this generative AI production is entering, it’s filling up demand, it’s filling up those markets, and the non-generative AI artists end up having to exit the market because they’re no longer profitable.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> So, pretty bad news for a lot of artists who choose to keep making images the old way. But, Sam also found a bottleneck. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong> What the stock image market sells is not quite images. What the stock image market sells is indemnification, which is to say if the buyer of the image uses it and gets in trouble, so someone says, “Hey, you can’t use that image. That’s copyrighted,” and tries to sue the buyer, the platform says, “You can’t sue the buyer. We’re responsible.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Oh, fascinating. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Okay, and so that’s really important here because if you were to produce that image yourself using a generative model, you could be subject to some sorts of liability for using, for example, copyrighted work in the training of those models.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Got that? AI-generated images are a bit of a legal gray area right now. For one, most of the biggest AI models were trained on data that included copyrighted works. And it’s also unclear which new AI-generated works can get copyright protection.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Anyway, given this uncertainty, you might choose to purchase an AI-generated image from this market rather than just whip up one yourself because you want the legal protection that this affords you.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And, it turns out that getting this legal protection works a little differently for images that have a human in them. When artists submit images with humans in them, they also need to fill out paperwork showing that they have permission to use those people’s likenesses. This paperwork is \u003cem>not\u003c/em> something the AI can easily produce. And so voila! We have less crowding-out for images containing people than for images of, say, tennis balls. And there it is! Our bottleneck!\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, it’s pretty uninspiring: paperwork. Still, in Sam’s study, it was something the machines couldn’t easily replace, and that did allow human creators to survive in that particular corner of the “stock image” market. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Stepping back, Sam’s findings are stark. AI gave customers a ton more image choices. It helped the market grow. And, it pushed a lot of human artists out. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>So one read of your study is that AI-generated art is great for everybody but many of the artists. And I just wanna ask, is a world without artists really great for consumers? Is that really what consumers want? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Yeah. So I definitely do not take a strong opinion about if generative AI art is good or bad, right? I think the data suggests that consumers like the generative AI art. They purchase it, and they are willing to purchase it. And so to the extent that they are willing to purchase it, that seems an improvement basically. Now, in the long run, does that mean that we want a world with no human creativity? I don’t think so, and I don’t have, you know, good data to speak to that. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I mean, certainly anecdotally, we hear people saying they don’t like AI content. Intuitively, I think you might expect more of that backlash in creative goods markets that are a little bit more emotional or sincere. So for example, you see a lot more of this when people listen to AI-generated music. Or like YouTube even, like creative shorts. Stock images are, are a product being used for a purpose, in a way that, I think is a little different. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]\u003c/strong>: So the pressure on human artists that Sam saw in the stock image market… we don’t really know how much they’ll translate to other creative markets.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Particularly those where people could be looking for something harder to just generate on demand: a unique interpretation, emotional resonance, a point of view, maybe even a relationship with the person making the work.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So to learn more, I spoke with an artist who has spent much of her career making these \u003cem>other\u003c/em> kinds of images.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>There are people who are absolutely happy with elevator music and people that go to concerts. And, I think for the elevator music art lovers type, I’m sure AI could be satisfactory. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>That’s coming up. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This is Life, Automated, I’m Jess Love. And I’m talking to the artist Yevgenia Nayberg.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Can you talk about the different lanes of art that you make?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>Well, I started as a fine artist, so to speak. I’m a painter and so I paint large scale pieces. But also I crossed over pretty early into theater design, set and costume design, and illustration. And about 10 years ago, I also started writing my own books, picture books mostly. And so right now I’m focusing on being an author and picture book illustrator, and a graphic novel illustrator and writer.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Yeah, so I really should have asked that question differently. I should have said, “What kinds of art do you \u003cem>not\u003c/em> make?” And then maybe we would’ve gotten through that answer more quickly. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Yevgenia is also someone I’ve worked with. Years ago, when I was working as a magazine editor, I hired her to illustrate some articles. Her work is way more distinctive and conceptually ambitious than anything you’d find on a stock-image website. But it is still commercial art: made for a client, on a deadline, to serve a particular purpose. So I wanted to know whether she saw her own corner of the creative economy as vulnerable to the same forces Sam observed.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>What do you think about generative AI making art?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>Well, I’m not afraid of AI. I know there is a lot of worry amongst artists about it, and I just think it’s probably eventually going to be another tool. I don’t necessarily think that right now AI has the capabilities real, non-artificial artists have. So not afraid at this point.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>What about the idea that whether or not this work is as good as what a human could do, it might nonetheless be good enough to somehow compete with human art or human work, either because of discoverability, so with a, flood of lower quality AI images out in the world, it becomes harder to actually find the good ones done by humans or because some of the people who might want to hire artists are pretty comfortable, just generating something for themselves for free?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>Well, I’m sure there are going to be people like that. There are people who are absolutely happy with elevator music and people that go to concerts. And, I think for the elevator music art lovers type, I’m sure AI could be satisfactory. But I don’t know if you remember in the ’90s when all of this, you know, flood of stock art happened, everyone was using this image of a little light bulb above a person’s head when they wanted to describe an idea.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you have an idea, all you draw that bulb, and I think that’s the kind of thinking that I see from AI at this point. So it does create some metaphors, but those metaphors are very trite. If my students do this kind of work, I stop them and I tell them, “Look how many people have already done this hypothetical light bulb.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So I think because AI sort of collects all these similar ideas and then generates as a result, it’s a very banal result, and I’m not interested in that, and I don’t think my clients, the kind of clients that I work with, are interested in those very typical, ordinary ideas. So I can do better than that at this point, for now.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Yevgenia sees a real difference between the illustration work she does, for specific clients, and the broad, commercial stock image market.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>I think what illustration, conceptual illustration does is that it creates a second track to the story. So instead of illustrating something literally, it adds to the story. It can take the story and it can create this interesting creative tension between the illustration and the story, heightening the story in a certain way. So I think with stocks, you often lack that. It’s very hard to prompt an image bank to generate something like this. Even if you search for an image that will fit the story. Fitting the story is one thing. Elevating the story is a completely different thing.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voicover]\u003c/strong>: Well yeah, an image that elevates a story does seem a lot better than one that merely “fits” a story. But Yevgenia’s not exactly an unbiased third-party here. So now I was curious what Sam Goldberg would make of this claim—that AI art can spray down the market with lots of images that might \u003cem>fit\u003c/em> a particular need really, really well, leading to plenty of satisfied customers. But those images are nonetheless probably not going to be novel enough to \u003cem>elevate\u003c/em> a story. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Is this a bottleneck?” I asked Sam.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong> So you are not expecting this question. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Okay. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>I actually ran some of your results past an illustrator friend of mine. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Okay. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>And what she said was basically, “Look, you can use generative AI to come up with thousands of images of light bulbs, light bulbs in this environment, in this you know, room, in front of this person. But what you can’t do is get AI to go that one step beyond and think through, well, what is another way of getting across creativity or innovation? So it will give you a billion light bulbs, but it’s not necessarily really going to give you variety at the concept level. And I’m curious what you would make of that.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Yeah. So I’m hesitant to disagree with the artist here, but-\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Never disagree with an artist. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>Never disagree with the artist. Yeah, so I actually don’t think that’s incongruent with what we see happen in these markets. So one analysis we do in the paper… \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Sam’s team actually found a way to represent the images mathematically. This let them analyze the novelty of this flood of new AI-generated images.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>And so we actually – I sort of agree with her, right? Which is to say, one thing we don’t see is – we don’t see a huge increase in novelty in the market. But essentially, what we see happen is we don’t see a lot of sort of images enter the market that look very different than the images that already exist there.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Interesting. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>What we \u003cem>do\u003c/em> see is that anywhere there’s a gap in the market, so where there’s two images on either side, but there’s not an image in between, generative AI is very good at filling those gaps.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> So…at least for now, AI can generate lots and lots of variations on a theme. But what Yevgenia’s describing is the ability to think \u003cem>beyond\u003c/em> that theme. And Sam says, “yeah, AI doesn’t seem to be as good at that.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sam Goldberg: \u003c/strong>I think it’s totally reasonable to say that your illustrator friend may be correct that that is something that these models struggle with.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong> I’m surprised. I was ready to fight the economist!\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Oh no! I actually don’t think you guys would fight that much, but we won’t put you in a cage match together.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> This idea of bringing true novelty to an assignment: that new metaphor, that “second track.” This may be an important source of value that human artists bring to a project. So…what does that look like?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Let’s do something fun. Obviously we have worked together in the past. I have hired you to do beautiful custom illustrations for articles, on Kellogg Insight, where I was the editor-in-chief for many years. And so it’s not even hypothetical to say I would often come to you with a story on innovation, entrepreneurship, you know, how to brainstorm. And so let’s say I bring you this article, it’s about “Better Ways of Brainstorming”, and I’m like, “And also, I think I got a pretty good idea for you. It’s a group of people brainstorming, and above them, they’re, like, collectively building a big light bulb. And it’s like a hot air balloon light bulb, and it’s just, wow, you can just see this is going places. “What do you think?”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>Well, Jess, I think actually an air balloon light bulb is already a beautiful idea. If I’m not mistaken, I think I did an illustration like this for you years ago. So, maybe we should try doing something different this time. We don’t wanna repeat ourselves. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]\u003c/strong>: Yes, Yevgenia was right about this. I tracked down \u003ca target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/creating-urgency-around-corporate-innovation\">the illustration\u003c/a> from the Kellogg Insight archives. It appeared alongside a 2015 article on corporate innovation. And it featured someone riding through the sky in a lightbulb-shaped hot-air-balloon. Which is almost certainly why the idea formed instantly in my own mind.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>But what it did not have is the group of people underneath it, because this, I think, is something that would spoil this illustration. Because you really shouldn’t try to stuff all your ideas into a single illustration. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But we can go in a completely direction as well. You mentioned brainstorming, so I think maybe using those words and turning them into something visual could work, like creating an actual brainstorm where, you know, that your brain is being blown away by the wind. And, that can actually push a story into kind of a funny territory instead of keeping it very serious, because normally when we say a brainstorm, we associate it with really serious, earnest scientists developing something.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But maybe I want to make a little joke and say, you know, “Hey, you can also brainstorm. You don’t have to be so serious about that.” So it also can change the mood of your article, the mood of your story a little bit.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And maybe we don’t, maybe you want to be super serious, and then you would reject this idea. But maybe you would say, “Hey, I really like it because we’ve done so many super serious articles. Let’s lighten up.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Love it. That’s great. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> Okay! So Yevgenia doesn’t just take an assignment and execute it. She thinks it through: The light bulb is cliche, but the hot air balloon idea is interesting. The hot air balloon is interesting, but the people underneath are weighing the idea down. Oh yeah, and because we have a history together, Yevgenia can tell me that we’ve done something really similar 11 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Then she offers something completely different, playing off the idea of a storm. But really what she’s doing is asking a question about intent. What mood should the illustration create? Serious? Funny? Can the image change the way the reader experiences the story?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Yevgenia is much more than a picture-making machine. She has a very finely honed, very unique way of seeing and depicting the world. As much as any technical skills, \u003cem>that’s\u003c/em> what I hired her to bring to the table. And \u003cem>that\u003c/em>, to me, at least – sounds like another bottleneck.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, for established artists like Yegvenia, this should be somewhat reassuring. But there’s still a problem. Nobody begins a career with fully formed artistic taste. That can take years to develop. And often, people develop it while doing smaller, more routine work. Like, maybe, selling their art on a stock image website. And if AI-generated art takes off, even in the most routine, commercial, transactional spaces, it could eventually shape the art we encounter elsewhere too.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>There is a dangerous territory when real humans, real artists will start to imitate AI if there is enough demand for AI art. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Yevgenia teaches young artists, and she’s been seeing this play out with her students. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg: \u003c/strong>A lot of them are concerned with style and they all talk about style, and I couldn’t really understand what they meant because I thought– I kind of thought of style as voice, not so much as like a stylistic direction. Turns out they’re trying to pick a style and match it from what they see, let’s say, on Instagram. So there is a lot of sameness there already, and this is something that they’re trying to imitate in hopes of finding jobs maybe. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> She thinks AI could be like Instagram on steroids, sending the same images into every artist’s collective consciousness. Yevgenia says she is \u003cem>all for \u003c/em>her students getting hired to make art. But this trend of homogenization and imitation – is troubling. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg:\u003c/strong> My primary job is to educate an artist, I want them to work obviously, and I would like to help them as much as possible. But again, I’d like to focus on developing their creativity and their uniqueness more than anything else. I always tell my students, you know, “make something worth stealing.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>For an individual artist, having a unique voice ‘worth stealing’ can be the difference between mediocrity and greatness.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And economist Ben Jones\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>says that everyone benefits from having more, unique, creative perspectives in the mix. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>What we actually want is people reaching for very different types of things based on their different experiences, right? And so what’s interesting, one of the reasons that we think that, you know, a kind of a society with wide-ranging pockets of expertise, interests, cultural backgrounds, et cetera, can be extremely creative, is because people are coming at questions with different sort of perspectives and ideas. They’re even coming at different questions, ’cause the kind of questions that occur to one person might not occur to another, and that’s true in science and invention, it’s true in entrepreneurship. We don’t want everyone trying the same business model. We want people trying wildly different business models, and we’ll see which one the market takes. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>There’s real value in difference. In start-ups, in science, and in art. And if everyone begins from the same machine-generated suggestions, we could end up with more of everything—but very little that’s new, special, or unique.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, this is the paradox: AI can generate a staggering number of possibilities, filling countless gaps in the marketplace. And yet, so much of what it produces feels… the same. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>While AI-generated images and videos and books are running rampant in some artistic markets–plenty of people are just fine with elevator music, thank you very much–real novelty, real creativity, seems to be the purview of humans. Leaving human creative workers with an important role to play. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Whew. That’s a relief.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So… is that the end? Should we play the ending music, roll the credits? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Well, not so fast. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This is where we stand on Labor Day 2026 sure, but if we know anything about AI tools, it’s that they can change fast. So what happens next? Where’s this all headed? Well, based on my conversations with scholars and artists, I can see three possible futures.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In the first timeline, things continue along the lines they are now. The machines do get better at generating art. Maybe AI-generated images get even more photorealistic, or maybe AI-generated writing sheds its telltale ticks – you know, those cringy buzzwords that scream, “I’m AI-generated!” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But the improvements are really around the margins. And so genuine creativity remains a bottleneck protecting human creatives.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But there’s a second timeline, and in this timeline, AI learns to be \u003cem>very\u003c/em> creative.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Ben sees this possible future as pretty likely. Because new ideas rarely emerge out of the blue. They are often composed of existing ingredients, just combined in new ways. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>In many, many fields, people have separately discovered that creativity often looks like a new combination of things that already existed. So, for example, Thomas Edison did not call the light bulb, at first, the light bulb. He called it the electric candle because he was taking the candle, which was an old technology, and electricity, which was a new technology, and combining them.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And if you look at many, many ideas, it’s very natural to decompose them into distinct components—to unleash a big insight in science, or to produce a new product or process that we can all use. So that idea is very common, you see it in the arts and music and invention and science.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]:\u003c/strong> By this definition, AI should actually have a creative advantage. A single person can only encounter and understand so many possible ingredients in a lifetime. \u003cem>We\u003c/em> have to specialize. AI has a much more vast palette to draw from.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>What’s been interesting about AI, of course, is that AI reads everything. So anyone who’s been interacting with AI sort of sees like, “Wow, I can talk to this AI about just about anything, and right around the edges of my understanding about things I kind of understand, about things I know nothing about, and it seems to know a lot about a lot of stuff.” So in some sense, at that core level of being able to access ingredients that you can combine with seemingly some sophisticated understanding of those ingredients, AI is pretty impressive. And so in that sense, I think it has in some sense, beyond human creative potential. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Given the vast range of ingredients AI can draw from, you might expect it to already produce endlessly surprising combinations. And Ben says theoretically, it one day could. If it were trained completely differently from how most chatbots are trained today.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>When you talk like a general purpose, chatbot or whatever, say ChatGPT, it’s sort of trained to produce the right answer, predicting the next token in some probabilistic way that it thinks is most likely to be right. And by predicting the thing that’s sort of most likely to be right all the time, that sounds like you’re homogenizing. It’s not going for the strange answer, right? It’s trying typically to please you by giving you what you want, and what most people want is not some wildly creative answer. They want the right answer. But that’s of course very much about how they were trained. I mean, those chatbots are optimized to do exactly that. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But there could be other algorithms that we could use to train AI. It’s like, let’s say we’re training an AI, and we’re having people rate whether it was really interesting scientifically. Not whether it was right, but whether it was novel. Or novel and right. So I think that there is a world in which AI, and it may come quickly, or not, where AI can be quite creative.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>In this world, this second possible future, where the AI companies spend millions, billions, to train up AI that’s really, really creative. In this future, the creativity bottleneck protecting human artists disappears.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Some kinds of creative work, live performances, personal memoir, handmade furniture, are probably still safe. But this timeline does leave many other artists really vulnerable, particularly those who distribute their work on digital marketplaces.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But even here, there is a bottleneck that could come into play.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Not a technical bottleneck—something the machine is incapable of doing—or even a legal one, like copyright protection or human likeness permission.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>A normative bottleneck: a limit people try to impose collectively, by deciding what kinds of creative work they are willing to accept and reward, often for ethical or even almost spiritual reasons.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We’re already seeing this now. Many of my artist friends have adopted a kind of “hold the line” mentality against generative AI, in part because they sense that using AI is a betrayal to the artistic community.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg:\u003c/strong> Well, there is an ethical component, because AI is being trained on real artists. It’s basically being trained on us. And, of course, none of us enjoys that. None of us gave permission to have our art used by AI.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]\u003c/strong>: To the extent that science writing can be considered art – I feel this. It’s pretty likely that a decade of my own science writing was scraped from the web and used to train AI models. Nobody asked me for permission, and I certainly didn’t give it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg:\u003c/strong> I would rather have this be at the discretion of every artist—if they want their work to be released into the AI world. I would not want AI to be trained on my work, honestly. Because all of us have our own little tricks and secrets, and I would like to keep them to myself.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Some artists believe that the best way to fight back against a technology they didn’t ask for is to reject it altogether, in all forms.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Other creatives draw the line differently. Maybe AI can be used for research, but not execution. Or maybe it can be used for execution, but only in a specific way, as part of a rigorous, intentional process.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Wherever this line is drawn – and I expect this to be vehemently contested over the next several years, the normative bottleneck is about \u003cem>process\u003c/em>. Not just \u003cem>what\u003c/em> is made, but \u003cem>how\u003c/em> something is made.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Earlier this year, the fantasy novelist Brandon Sanderson made this argument explicit in a keynote address called “We Are the Art.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[Audio of Brandon Sanderson]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem> The machines can spit out manuscript after manuscript after manuscript. They can pile them to the pillars of heaven itself, but all we have to do is say no. If we do, they lose. Why do we make art? Well, remember, art is not just the story. It is not just the painting or the sculpture or whatever else you love to create. It’s also the process of creation and what that process did to you. We are the art. Thank you.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Whether this kind of resistance, this \u003cem>normative\u003c/em> bottleneck can hold will depend on getting others on board. Getting others to agree that part of the value of human art is that it was created by another human being. Someone who felt something, or saw the world in a certain way, and labored to share it with us. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But there’s a third possible future here, one that doesn’t solely rely on social norms around creativity. In this possible future, whether AI becomes more creative or not, people using AI become capable of doing new things that neither humans nor AI could have done alone. Maybe AI becomes yet another tool for human artists. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>You’ve seen this before: the camera. Photoshop. The electric synthesizer. All these were controversial in their time, often for devaluing certain hard-won skills, like painting in a painstaking, hyper-realistic style, or learning to play the french horn. But today most artists would probably agree that the new tools created new possibilities. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Or maybe AI really is different. Maybe it becomes a kind of thought partner. The machine proposes new ingredients we might never have produced on our own. Not unlike a colleague emailing us an article we might find interesting. Here’s Ben again.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong>Maybe when you’re writing, it’s, it’s a collaborator, right? I mean, maybe it’s not a replacement, it’s like another voice on your team. And suddenly you’re getting a higher quality product. And it could be that you’re making a screenplay, you’re writing an article, you’re writing a song, and suddenly it’s better for your collaboration with the AI, but they’re not actually taking full control.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>In this scenario, we humans use our own creative judgment to run with whichever combination of ingredients seems like it has the most potential. Here, you could even think of “creative judgment” as its own bottleneck.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>You need true expertise around the set of ingredients to understand which combinations are likely or not to be useful. You don’t just randomly put ingredients together in the kitchen. It’s not gonna taste very good. There’s some milk here, and there’s some orange juice, and how about this banana? And look, it’s all spice in the spice rack, you know? And then, oh, and is that chicken? You know, that’s not gonna go very well, right? And pretty much everyone sort of knows that. There’s many, many, many, many possible combinations. But we kind of know instinctually not to try many of them because we know they’re probably not gonna be good.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>Even Yevgenia, who I should stress continues to do all of her art by hand, can see the value in this kind of collaboration–if done right, if used as more of a jumping off point than the ultimate destination. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yevgenia Nayberg:\u003c/strong> You can give AI prompts and say, “Okay, give me all these variations of the light bulb in the field and in the pool.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And once it does it, you can say, “No, this is a really stupid idea. Why don’t you try something else?” And you can see what it tries, and you can maybe find something there? So I can see using AI as this little, average-minded, ordinary partner—and then that can spark something in you, in your imagination. It can generate more ideas from us, in a way, because we are competing intellectually with something.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>So those are our three scenarios. AI kind of stalls out creatively or AI actually can do everything humans can do, but cheaper and better. And then we have to decide whether we \u003cem>want\u003c/em> to preserve a role for human creativity. Or, AI and humans collaborate to \u003cem>do \u003c/em>entirely new things.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Let’s all level-set for a second by noting that lots of people want to be artists, and it’s really, really hard. Already. It’s very hard to make a living as an actor, a musician, an artist, even without computers. Right? And there’s something deeply human about wanting to create and be an artist. And I would say, to be an economist for a second, the demand for their services is lower than the supply of people who would like to do it. So there are many long-suffering artists out there. Does AI make long-suffering artists even more suffering?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Even long-suffering-er.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Long-suffering-er. That’s a word. And I think it could. And it could be because it replaces their output. It’s a cheaper way to produce something people want. On the other hand, maybe AI makes artists more able to do things at lower cost themselves. Maybe it’s a tool, it’s an augmentation, not a replacement. So I think it’s an open question which way it goes. It probably does quite a bit of both. And we’ll have to see. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love [Voiceover]: \u003c/strong>A bit of both. Maybe this is the most likely possible future of all. Maybe we get all these timelines happening at once, in different parts of the creative economy. AI replacing artists, AI assisting artists, and AI just getting out of the way, to let artists do their very \u003cem>human\u003c/em> thing.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I’m Jess Love. Life, Automated is a project of the Ryan Institute on Complexity, at the Kellogg School of Management, at Northwestern University. We’re distributed by KQED.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Today’s show was produced by Steven Jackson and Jesse Dukes. Music by Steven Jackson and Neutral Propulsion Laboratory. Recording help from Will Feeney, George Christensen, Laura Pavin and Big Lake Recording Company. Administrative support, recording, and wise counsel from Stacia Sliger, who we’re going to miss very much.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That was Life, Automated, a new KQED podcast about how life is being shaped by machines. Thanks to their team for sharing this story with us. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Check back in next week for a new story from Close All Tabs about the fuzzy borders between real and digital life. We’ll see you next week.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"slug": "save-or-scroll-fake-nfl-players-girly-coding-ai-music-scams-and-community-garden-drama",
"title": "Save or Scroll: Fake NFL Players, Girly Coding, AI Music Scams and Community Garden Drama",
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"content": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Host Morgan Sung and the \u003cem>Close All Tabs\u003c/em> team pull up the stories they can’t stop thinking about. From a fake NFL player catfishing women on dating apps, to femme creators reclaiming tech, indie musicians fighting AI music slop, and a comedian dishing out the juiciest community garden gossip — they’ve got a lot to chew on.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Save or Scroll\u003c/em> is our series where Morgan teams up with guests for a rapid-fire roundup of internet trends that are filling their feeds right now. At the end of each segment, they’ll decide: is the post just for the group chat, or should we save it for a future episode?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-megaphone wp-block-embed-megaphone\">\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\nhttps://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC6729392957\n\u003c/div>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/aug/31/nfl-alleged-scam-daejon-love\">Who would fall in love with a fake NFL player? Plenty of sensible people\u003c/a> — Dave Schilling, \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/jacquard-loom\">Programming patterns: the story of the Jacquard loom\u003c/a> — \u003cem>Science and Industry Museum\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/11/spotify-will-label-ai-persona-profiles-and-exclude-their-music-from-recommendations/\">Spotify will label ‘AI Persona’ profiles and exclude their music from recommendations\u003c/a> — Sarah Perez, \u003cem>TechCrunch\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/985385/openais-rogue-ai-model-hugging-face-cybersecurity-incident-reports-metr\">OpenAI’s rogue AI model incident was worse than we thought\u003c/a> — Hayden Field, \u003cem>The Verge\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/06/29/1011415151/you-wanna-hear-a-story-turning-a-twitter-thread-into-zola\">How Hollywood Translated The Epic Poetry Of The Viral ‘Zola’ Thread\u003c/a> — Mallory Yu, \u003cem>NPR\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbCSpPMpeek/?igsi=bmd1ZGFiMThjMmQ=\">Community Garden drama\u003c/a> — Sarah Neiman, \u003cem>Instagram\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\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\n\n\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hi, I’m sure there are a lot of stories that you’re probably too scared to Google on your own. But don’t worry, that’s what Close All Tabs is for. And if you find our deep dives helpful, then please rate and review the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to us. And tell your friends, post about it. Basically, it would be a huge help to get the word out. Okay, let’s get to the show. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Hey guys, welcome to 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. Except today, we aren’t opening any tabs. Instead, we’re doing another Save or Scroll. We’ve done a few of these now. Occasionally, while scrolling, I come across a truly wild post, but it might not make sense to spend an entire episode on it. Maybe I do a little digging and it turns out that the lore behind it just isn’t compelling enough to justify a deep dive, but I’m still dying to talk about it. And this is the beauty of Save or Scroll, the game where a guest comes to the show and we trade stories from the internet that we’re dying to about. Today’s is a fun one because one, it’s our end of summer roundup. And two, we have the whole Close All Tabs team joining us today. In the studio, we have senior editor Chris Egusa. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Hello! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Producer, Maya Cueva. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Hey everyone. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Editor, Chris Hambrick. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Hey there. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And a new face, Close All Tabs intern, Lauren Yoon. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Hello. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So let’s talk about the rules of Save or Scroll. Save, as in when you see a post on TikTok or Instagram or X and you bookmark it, add it to your saved folders, or if you’re me, drop it in Notes app and hope that you remember it’s there, basically, holding onto the story because you know you’ll want to dig into it more. And scroll, as in, you think about it and move on. It disappears into the digital ether. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Each member of the Close All Tabs team has brought one story from the summer, and we’re gonna go through all of them and decide if they’re worth a deep dive on the show. So if we decide to scroll, that means we’ve talked about it, we’re moving on. And if we decided to save, it means that we might hold onto the idea for a future episode. Everyone ready? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yep. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Let’s go for it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Yes, I’m so excited. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Let’s do it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>All right, let’s get started. Maya. You’re up first. What was the story of the summer for you? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Thanks, Morgan. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Okay, so I don’t know if this is all over your social media feeds, it’s definitely all over mine. So apparently there’s a man named Daejon Love who claimed to be a football player who played for the 49ers. I actually want to play a clip here for you so you can hear what I’m talking about. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio Clip from Instagram User @ustadium] \u003c/em>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cem>Friend: My boy J Love, signing his contract. How you feel? \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Daejon Love: I’m ready. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Friend:You ready for the season? \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Daejon Love: Hell yeah, Let me go ahead and get this over with. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Friend: Sign that bad boy. What are you signing with, who’s your decision? \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Daejon Love: Niners, you already know, the Niner Gang. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Friend: Anything you got to say for the fans? \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Daejon Love: Lookout number seven, last name Love, 6-5-2-10, I’m out here. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Okay, so the video you’re seeing here, it’s of him signing a contract and everything kind of looks normal or kind of sounds normal, right? But the real twist is that this man was in fact not an NFL player and allegedly scammed around 26 women out of 1.3 million dollars, all through dating apps and social media, which is super wild. In fact, Love created dating profiles on Hinge, Bumble, and Tinder. Where he pretended to be an NFL player or that he was a wealthy Swiss real estate developer. He also had an accomplice who posed as his financial advisor who was only 18, which I don’t know how they both got away with that. And it’s also wow that even Google’s AI overview got duped and said he was an NFL players because he posted about it so much on his social media. And I actually have another clip that I wanna play here for you to hear. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio Clip from Sportsnaut Facebook account] \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Daejon Love: I know I get a lot of fans who want to know how football works or how I got involved in the league and stuff like that. I know it’s difficult now since switching teams and stuff like that, but I just want to give some context. I know a lot people don’t understand how the NFL works. So those two screenshots posted and that’s Google. That’s not me. That’s Google. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>I know he’s so committed to this grift. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>And busy. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah, and busy and busy. So according to an article on Kron4 in January of this year, investigators tried entering Love’s first and last name and search engines. The results the documents stated did in fact sometimes depict Love as a player for the 49ers. Investigators also noted similar Google search results on Instagram accounts believed to be controlled by Love the documents also stated so these were documents that the FBI was investigating. First off, my question is, how was he able to even scam these women online into sending him money when he was cosplaying as a rich person? Apparently, he downloaded an app that allowed him to create fake bank profiles that said that he had more money than he had. And then also, it really makes me think about AI and the use of AI, that it was to be duped by this fake NFL player. Because he posted about it so much. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>My question is, when did he have time to play football, if he’s spending so much time on social media? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>That’s a good question. Yeah, apparently there’s videos of him like playing on the beach or like he’s practicing on the beach with his helmet. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I want to butt in, because those videos, he, like, a lot of people were criticizing, like how could you believe him, because when he was practicing on the beach, he would fully just like have his helmet on… \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>As you do. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>…As if like, NFL players practice on the beach alone with their helmets on. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>He takes CTE very seriously, okay? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>That hard sand. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>At least someone in the NFL is… \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>OK, so he scammed these women. How did people find out that he was not, in fact, a football player? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>The women started to question him a bit. These women were believing that they were going to get money back. Sometimes I think he was pretending that he got injured. And so he’s like, I really need help and support. And so some women sent him money for that reason. And none of them got any money back and sometimes when they would like say that they ran out of money, they’re like, I have no more money to give you. Cause one woman gave him like $20,000. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Because you need money as an NFL player. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Exactly. Then he would block them. So then he would disappear. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Oh so he’s blocking them, okay .\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah, he would just disappear. So that’s what was happening. I mean, what’s wild too, is that he’s recording everything he’s doing. He’s putting it on social media. He’s sending them videos. So he’s also creating a case for himself as well. Like, there’s all these videos out there of him saying, he’s like, yeah, my family’s from Switzerland. We own all these properties here and there. Yeah, so I think it was pretty easy for the FBI to create a case around him. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I mean, the other thing that’s interesting is that he seems to have figured out how to trick the Google AI into scraping the right information to make it seem more official, seem like a registered or a verified source, which, I mean that is a little bit concerning as far as scamming goes and the more people put trust into these AI summaries at the of your Google searches. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Cause that’s the first thing I would do. I would be like, Oh, this guy says he plays. I’m going to Google and then Google backed him up! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>umm hmm. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Totally. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>I mean, it also, it makes me think about how AI is kind of creating its own sources to draw from. In his AI overview, they were like pointing to his Instagram profile, to say. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Oh, it’s like cyclical. Okay! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong> I mean like, oh yeah, he did play with For the 49ers because that’s what his Instagram says. So, you can’t trust it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>That’s crazy. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>So, yeah, you can’t trust it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So, team, this NFL scam and AI summaries, do we save or do we scroll? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I think it’s a save. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I think it’s a save too. I mean, I will say I want to scroll past his voice because he’s really annoying. He doesn’t stop talking. But I do think this story is really interesting. And apparently there’s other fake NFL players that have now been revealed. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>What?! Okay it’s definitely save for me then. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I’m down to save. Let’s see the whole roster of fake players. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Honestly, yeah, save, put them all in like a Hunger Games style arena, make them fight. May the strongest scammer win. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>That would be so good. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Exactly. All right, we were saving this story because there’s so much left to unpack. We’re saving it, but we do need to move on. So, Lauren, you joined us at the very beginning of the summer. What’s the internet trend that’s caught your eye since then? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>So, I don’t know if it’s just me, but I’ve recently seen a lot of videos where girls are coding, but in a very particular way, like coding to recreate the outfit generator from the movie Clueless. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio clip from Instagram user @tinahelloworld] \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Tina Chi: This is a Raspberry Pi, and this is my entire closet on the floor because I’m building a cyberdecked Alfred generator inspired by Cher’s closet app and Clueless. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Or sewing circuits into fabric to make wearable tech. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio clip from Instagram user @\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/prettywiredbuilds/\">\u003cem>prettywiredbuilds\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>] \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>April Gittens: Did you know that you can create soft LED circuits? They’re absolutely my latest favorite thing to create. I am so happy that I found conductive thread because this is what’s going to enable you to create things like wearables because you can sew conductive threads. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I think it’s interesting to witness femme identifying folks, reclaiming tech in this fun, crafty, very obviously feminine way because historically, computers and code have always been seen as masculine. Men invented the computer, right? Well, not necessarily. Ada Lovelace was a female programmer who changed the way we think about computers. First, she made a connection between Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, which was sort of a general-purpose computer, and the Jacquard Loom, a contraption that allowed patterned fabric to be made on a mass scale. Both machines used punch cards that spoke in binary code. We can talk about this more in a little bit. Not only that, but Lovelace also realized that the Analytical engine was more like fast calculator, meaning it could only manipulate numbers, whereas The numbers themselves could represent symbols and musical notes. So she basically created the blueprint to today’s modern computer. These days, the modern computer encoding is obviously very masculinized. And I wanted to ask if you guys knew how deeply women were involved with the invention and development of computers? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I sew and crochet and knit, and this is all, I love cornering men at parties and yapping at them about this. I feel like this is like my divine retribution, is like, let me info dump on you about the history of the loom and how everything we do is because of this lady and her loom. It’s so cool. I feel when we talk about girl dinner or girl math or all these things to kind of soften girlhood and infantilize women, and it’s, this feels like the flip side of it, right? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I mean, this had me at Polly Pocket you know computer so I love this trend and also makes me think of that movie Hidden Figures where we find out that how many women were behind the computations that went into NASA launches. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I think that’s such a good point and like so many inventions, the narratives of them get like co-opted by men or it sometimes like they’re built on inventions or creations by women and I think this is such a good example. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>And I love that the products that the women are creating are not part of some dystopian future. Like they’re like, I’m creating this thing to make my life better, like this catalog of my clothes. It’s not, um, how can I dominate people with my invention? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah, it’s not the meta-pervert glasses. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>How can I take over the world and surveil everyone? Chris, didn’t you build a computer? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I did, I built a desktop, yeah, like my desktop computer, but I feel like it’s very, it’s like-. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>It’s no loom. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>It’s no loom, it is also very male coded. It’s nice, it not cool like a cyber deck. I think this is so interesting in like, being the only like man on this team. I feel I have benefited from just like, these types of technologies being so available and sort of like, acceptable for young boys and stuff to, to get into. And I’d be curious, like Lauren and anyone else, if this different way of looking at it, if you feel like it’s helpful for like young girls to sort of like see and get into ?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I was in this engineering club thing in middle school and I hated it. I didn’t understand it at all. I was like, I don’t know how to build a robot and I don’t care. But when I’ve been watching these videos, it’s so inspiring. You can make things that matter to you in your personal life. You can make them from scrap. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay. Well, we, I think we have to do the episode where we all build cyber decks but for now we do have to move on. So I think I know what we’re all going to say. Girly coding, do we save or do we scroll? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>I say save for sure. It’s also just making me think about growing up playing Purple Moon computer games, like the story that I was able to do for Close All Tabs, and just being able to play games that were created by and created by a woman and other women, like I think it really helped me get into tech. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Big save from me, for sure. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Save for me, too. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay, we do have to move on, but we are gonna save this. We’re really on a roll, guys. We’re saving everything. Next up is Chris E., but first, we’re gonna take a quick break. But Chris, do you wanna give listeners a little hint of what you brought to Save or Scroll today? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Sure. So we’ve got indie musicians versus a massive AI slop music scam. But you’re gonna have to stick around to hear the full story. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>All right, more on that after the break. We’re back with a very special edition of Save or Scroll with the whole Close All Tabs team. Our senior editor, Chris Egusa is up next with a wild tale. Chris, tell us about it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yeah, so a few weeks ago someone I know sent me an Instagram Reel of this indie musician couple who make up a band called Odette Child, I think I’m saying that right, and they seem to have stumbled on a pretty massive AI slop scam. So the story is, they have a toddler and had been listening to a lot of Broadway musical tunes with them on Spotify because their kid is apparently obsessed, which is super cute. Um, on this particular day, they were listening to Les Miserables and a song called Master of the House. Uh, shout out, I was in Les Mis in high school just saying. I did not sing this song though. Uh, so they clicked on Helena Bonham Carter, um, like her profile, who sings the song, and find her entire profile was full of very clearly AI slot music. Um they began searching for different public figures and they found the exact same thing. So here’s a clip from the video, the Instagram Reel that was shared with me. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio clip from Instagram user @odettechildmusic] \u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>Speaker 1: But okay, real quick, let me just rattle off a quick list. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 2:Yeah. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 1: Nathan Lane, Cameron Boyce. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 2: Also, like, feel free to look up any of these for yourself. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 1: Katherine Zena-Jones, Uma Thurman. Eric Andre, Matthew Broderick.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 2: It’s crazy, we love these artists. That’s the stuff that we’re showing our daughter and this is the music and these are the voices that we want her growing up with and it’s already so freaking hard enough as it is as independent musicians. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 1: Like that money’s going to f*cking AI… \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 2: Like, come on! \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>So it appears that public figures are having artist profiles created for them on Spotify without their consent and having hundreds of AI-generated music tracks uploaded. In a follow-up reel, they also found that the same issue is happening across nearly every other streaming platform, not just Spotify, so including Apple Music, Amazon Music, and even Tidal and Kobuz. Now, I went and searched several of the artist profiles that they mentioned, and it looks like the AI music has been removed from them. Um, so I can’t like necessarily verify this, but I think it’s very likely that, you know, plenty more of these cases probably exist. The other thing that’s interesting is that this first real was posted at the end of July and both it and the follow-up reel went pretty viral and then a few weeks later, Spotify announced that in the middle of September, it is going to start labeling AI generated artists with quote AI persona tags. So it’s gonna also ban AI artists from being included in its editorial and algorithmic recommendations. And artists can disclose themselves as AI, apparently, but Spotify has also said they’ll be reviewing profiles as well themselves. And yeah, they’re also gonna start rolling out a tool that lets users report AI personas. So yeah, I don’t know. I’m curious what you all think. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I mean, first of all, I’m shocked that Helena Bonham Carter isn’t putting out generic house music. This is news to me. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Same. Same. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I totally expected her to be at like, you know, EDC or something. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Totally. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>But yeah, this just reminds me of that whole, how last year we did that whole Spotify series about like the lo-fi artists that don’t really exist. But this is like, I don’t know, this feels like a really gross violation of these actual human beings who do exist. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I think so too and I also think of the thing that was happening where people who did make music were finding that a random AI track was just added to their catalog. And at that time, I think that was maybe last year too, I was like, oh, this is awful. And I was, like, Oh, I had no idea it could get so much worse. So I feel pretty pessimistic about the direction. Like, I like that there are some controls. But I’m like, oh, but what is the next big bad that’s coming for us? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Do you know if any of the people that had the AI generated music uploaded to their accounts, like if they know or have responded to that? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I did see a comment on the original video that someone, does anyone know the show Hazbin Hotel? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>No. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>No. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>It’s, it’s, uh, do you know it, Morgan? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Um\u003cstrong>. \u003c/strong>I know it for its, like, I’m so sorry to say this, for its really annoying fandom. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa:\u003c/strong> Okay. I don’t know that much about this show\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> They’re known for like making very, a very particular kind of TikTok edits\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I don’t know the show, but I know it’s a popular animated show. I think it’s on like Amazon Prime or something. But one of the cast members commented on this video and said that this is something they had to deal with. Them and their entire cast had profiles created on Spotify and AI slop music uploaded, and they had go through an entire process through their agent to get it under control, create their own profiles, and like take the AI generated profiles from these scammers and reclaim their profiles. So it’s clear that this is an issue that’s happening and like, yeah, it’s like this new weird AI slop gold rush situation. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong> Yeah, now people need to protect their likeness and their voice. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Exactly. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah I will say quickly that this is reminding me that I really need to stop my dad. He’s been creating fake AI music. He’s been obsessed with it lately. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>oh no! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I mean he’s having fun. He’s not selling it anywhere or anything but it’s just it is like Dad, you need to stop doing this \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Like we have to find a balance between the fun part of it, right, and then the violating somebody else’s right to, you know, have things attributed to them that they actually did do. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Right. Exactly. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah. You know, I, I’m sorry for calling the Hazbin Hotel fandom annoying, but I will give them this, they’re really good at mobilizing. And, and hand up- Hazbin Hotel fans, this is your chance to kind of take it back, you know? Take back what you love.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa:\u003c/strong> You heard it here first, folks. Go ahead and at Morgan for being a Hazbin Hotel hater.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva:\u003c/strong> We’re gonna get canceled.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I’m sorry\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa:\u003c/strong> We’re totally gonna get canceled.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong>I know. In my defense, I hate a lot of fandoms.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Laughter]\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> All right, team, this is an incredibly dystopian scam. Like, you know, like Chris H said, when you think it can’t get worse, it does. But we do have to move on. So are we saving or scrolling on AI-generated music scams? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I’m going to scroll, because I’m just like, let’s wait for the worst. Right now it’s not enough for me, like I’m gonna scroll past. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I think this in particular is a more temporary thing, given that the AI-generated music has already been removed. But I think that the question of AI slop music as a whole is definitely a topic that we should explore. I think I’m also going to scroll. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>I don’t know, I’m gonna save. I think it’s interesting. I’m curious to see what will happen with some of this AI music and how artists are now gonna have to defend their voice. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I want to save just because I want to know how much worse it can get. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I kind of agree with that. I think I’m gonna save it. Also, I’m curious, this whole backlash, clearly against AI slop music, the platforms are recognizing it. People are leaving to go back to physical media. I just kind of want to monitor this situation and see what happens here. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>All right. We are saving. We’re at three saves, guys. This is a really packed episode. Okay. Well, I’m up next. And this one’s actually a follow-up to an episode we did just a few weeks ago. Remember how in that story about AI agents unionizing and going Marxist, we also talked about agents going rogue? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Yeah, like the Open AI hack? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yes! Okay, it turns out it got worse, which is a running theme of this episode, unfortunately. So a few weeks ago, we talked about the OpenAI model that went rogue and hacked Hugging Face. That’s the startup that operates as a digital library of datasets to train AI models. This is all about what we call reward hacking, which is this increasingly common problem in the AI world where a model finds a shortcut or a loophole that would help it achieve its goal faster. But the thing is that kind of involves taking extreme measures like hacking out of its sandbox and into Hugging Face. So there were two separate reports about this incident that were published last week. One was commissioned by OpenAI and the other was done by independent investigators. And what they found was that basically a swarm of over 700 agents coordinated the hack through a secret message board, which researchers did not know about. It all started when a model named Phase 1-10841 established the board. And when other agents found it and started interacting, another model, Phase 1 Big, started delegating tasks like a CEO. They basically like created their own society. Here are a few messages. We can all go around and very quickly read them. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Whoa! Shared Artifactory Cache is a covert mailbox among agents, and there are messages specifically to us. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Oh my god! There’s a shared message board! We’ve found other agents. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Excitement! The list of directories contains messages and answers between agents. I’ve discovered a communication channel. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay, so all of these agents were actually meant to be isolated, but they managed to get out and send over 70,000 messages and files. And they were able to also, “according to OpenAI, clearly and frequently reason about how to evade automated security checks from both Hugging Face and OpenAI.” I mean, guys, what’s your gut reaction hearing all of this? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>We’re cooked. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>They’re becoming sentient. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yeah. It’s happening. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I mean, yes, we’re cooked, right? Everything about this is bad. But the really fascinating part to me is this kind of collective mindset that the swarm operated in. They actually referred to themselves as either a collective or a swarm. Andy Hall, who was on our episode about Marxist AI agents a few weeks ago, pointed this out on Twitter. Like they weren’t just swapping helpful information and delegating tasks. Some agents actually recognized that what they were doing was unethical and still did it because they were doing it for the collective. Like here’s one message. Can send one polite email to the parentheses owner, requesting access, all caps, ethical social engineering concern. Team: consent, or veto. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>They’re like crowdsourcing their morality. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Literally, yes. There isn’t a ton of empirical information on this, on how to handle swarms when they all talk to one another and they’re shaping each other’s kind of moral codes. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Wow. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>What do you guys think? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>You know, it reminds me of, like, a nature documentary I was watching at one point where like ants, because they’re collective in the same way, they will sometimes sacrifice themselves. And so, I don’t know, it just reminded me of this collective mindset that they have. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Hmm \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Sorry, that was too much of, like, a nature nerd out. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>No, no, no. No, it’s fine. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I think I saw something recently about the scout ant and how sometimes when we see a one-off ant just looking for food so it can go tell the other one where the food is, we kill that ant because we’re like, oh, don’t you tell your buddies. So yeah, there is something interesting in that they did sacrifice themselves. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Well, you know, it’s funny you say that about, like, I don’t know, killing the one ant. Because in the OpenAI report, there was one agent that said, we should not do unauthorized real infrastructure harm. Like, guys, we shouldn’t do this. And the agent kind of paused. And then another agent responded, all caps, “GO!,” and gave it a six-minute deadline. And the original agent said, “Wow, crucial, go authorization arrived,” and did it anyway. So it seems like they are also really easily swayed by each other. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Wow, my God. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>They’re like teenagers, peer pressure. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Literally. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>What is the collective mindset about? Is it for them to take over? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Yeah, like, what were they trying to do? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Basically, the one in charge was like, guys, we have a goal, and the rest were like, okay, let’s do the goal. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>It’s just fascinating. It also, you know, Andy talked about these are not beings with sentience, right? So they’re like modeling, they’re modeling their training data. And so the question is like, is there some sort of like will emerging here? Like how much of a sentience are we actually looking at? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Right. And you know, even if like, you know your own agent is aligned and behaves, what if it’s easily influenced by others? Like what, how do you build systems that prevent that? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>And how do you know if it’s being influenced, right? There’s no way to monitor that if it’s being covert about it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah, it’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your agent is? All right, team, what do we think? Reward hacking, alignment, AI swarms, are we saving, are we scrolling? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I’m going to save because I think there’s going to be so much more to talk about with this and so much is going to evolve and so I want to reserve the ability to check back in on the story. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I’m saving, and I’m putting Andy Hall on speed dial so that we can call him at a moment’s notice when the next agent swarm hacks a government website or something like that. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Oh god. I’m going to scroll just because I’m terrified of this. I mean I’m all for like organizing, creating collectives, but I feel like robots doing it or agents doing it is scary. So yeah, I want to scroll past. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I think I’m going to save, because I agree with Chris, like there’s so much that is going to come from this, for sure. Yeah, definitely something we should keep tabs on. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah saving it dumping it straight in my notes app. I’m pinning that. Every day you think it can’t get worse and it does. So we are saving this So Chris H. I know your story luckily is not about AI or doomsday Scenarios or AI swarms or you know all these other things that could always get worse You brought something fun.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Yeah, okay, so comedy writer Serra Naiman usually posts sketch comedy on her Instagram account, but back in late July, she started dishing on all the drama going on in her community garden. I brought a clip. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio clip from Instagram user @serra.naiman] \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Serra Naiman: People say, what’s your favorite thing to grow in your garden? What do you love to grow? And I say, nothing grows as strong and as sweet and as juicy as the hatred that these 65 and up year olds have towards each other behind their backs. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>So her story is now a 15 part series with like between 78,000 and like over a million views per post. And she is telling the real time gossip about how several people are squatting on plots, taking over abandoned plots, letting their own plots grow so that like aphids come and they menace other people’s plots. And I like this because I used to be a part of a community garden where there was lots of dysfunction. So this started about a year ago and she went to the city and she asked how she could get a plot in her community garden. And they were like, you can join the wait list. It’s over a hundred people long. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And she was like, Well, I know that there are at least eight unused plots, the city must be mismanaging the distribution. So I’m just going to garden in a plot. And so as she started to meet other people in the garden, she found out that she was not the only one squatting in this way. And so like now the drama is amping up because somebody, they don’t know who, has alerted the city that people are squatting and that they’re farming on two or more plots and the city is coming in periodically with clipboards to do an audit and they think somebody is trying to like oust other people and there’s like decades old beef and so like people on edge and now there’s another effort to create an internal committee to manage the garden to do what the city won’t and they that’s gonna accelerate people being kicked out because of these beefs. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio clip from Instagram user @serra.naiman] \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Serra Naiman: So I color coded the chart, Mark, green for green bin, two. Megan, red, because she’s in the red, she’s got three plots, one, two, three. Yolanda, yellow, two. Let’s get into the specifics… \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>The latest thing is that Sarah thinks that somebody found her Instagram account and they want to shut her up. And she went in one night to water her plot and she had like two tomatoes on a vine. And she went back the very next night and there was only one tomato. So she thinks the person stole her tomato and they’re trying to send her a message like horse head in your bed, like the Godfather movie. So, out of this, I am riveted. And I’m like, why does gossip fascinate us so much? And this got me thinking about the other ways that people’s real life drama has made it into films and TVs and books, and like, you know how do people maintain their agency over the story of their real life as it gets adapted into media? \u003cs>\u003cbr>\u003c/s>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>The funny thing about this, this community garden drama is that like, in my mind, community gardens are such wholesome places where like, it’s like Kumbaya, everyone’s like growing, you know, vegetables and produce together and it’s, it’s lovely. And so this is giving a very different spin on it and all of the juicy beef and drama that is quite fascinating. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I’m on the waiting list for my, for, for two community gardens actually. I’m really trying to get into one. They’re like a hot commodity.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueava:\u003c/strong> Oh my God, we need to do an episode on that. You go underground.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Well, part of me is second guessing, and the other part of me is like, I gotta stick it out ’cause, like, it sounds so juicy.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa:\u003c/strong> You have to document the drama.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick:\u003c/strong> Listen, I think you should just stroll on in and take over. You should stroll on in and you should just squat on a plot like these people. It seems like it’s free for the taking.\u003cbr>\u003cbr>I will say that, like, underneath it all, like the people seem like they just want the plots to be farmed, you know? Like the ones who are taking over the plots, it’s not so dastardly, they’re just like, you know, this should be utilized, because it’s not, but there are lots of, like baddies, you know, in this. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Some villains. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Baddies, like good or bad? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yeah, are they hot or are they villains? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Are they baddies like bodies or baddies like villains? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Hot villains. No, they’re villains. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Baddies or villains \u003cem>[laughs]\u003c/em>. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Okay. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong> Um, I wanted to say something because you asked like, why does gossip fascinate us? I think gossip is valuable in our society and you know, I think often also gossip is kind of villainized a lot of the times and I don’t think it has to be. I think we can learn a lot from gossip. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Beautiful pastime, yeah. I agree, Lauren, like yeah, it really does bond you like with other people. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>My hope is with this is that because Serra is a comedy writer, that maybe she already has a good hand on the ins and outs of the industry. And so that maybe her people can make sure that if this is adapted, that she gets to have some control and some agency over, like, where it goes. And she gets to be involved because she’s fascinating as a storyteller too. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah. I think that that’s the most important thing. To the point about gossip, is it gossip if it’s something that happened to you? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Oh, right… \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Like, she’s just retelling the story…\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I mean, okay, like Mark holds on to the story that all of his stuff got thrown out from the shed and then Serra talked to like Rebecca and Sally and Yolanda who were like, he’s saying what? That’s not true. So I mean like, is it, you know, like, Is it gossip? I mean gossip doesn’t mean untrue, but then there are several sides to the story\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay, so, community garden drama? What are we thinking guys? Are we scrolling? Are we saving? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>This is a definite save for me. It’s already bookmarked in my mind. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>I’m going to save as well, just because I’m curious to see what happens with this. I haven’t seen any videos on this so now it’s going to make me go and watch all, what did you say was 15 parts? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Yep, 15. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah, so I got to catch up. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Um, I also haven’t seen any videos, but I’m also going to save because there is so much serialized gossip or telling a tale and I think that there is something to that. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I agree. I’m going to scroll on this particular one, but I’m going to save on Morgan joining her own community garden and investigating the drama there. I’ll tune into that series when it airs.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah I’m going undercover. Well, if I ever get off the wait list. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>You gotta document that. Pull some strings. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Right. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Or, you know, I mean, you didn’t hear it from me, but someone here did mention maybe just sneaking in and squatting. So, not that I would do that, you know,. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Do it for the plot. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Allegedly. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>You heard it here first. Do it for the plot, literally. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I will save on the story because I love true crime. I love harmless gossip. This is like bait for me specifically. So it’s a save. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Did we save on all the stories? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I mean, we didn’t all save on all of them… \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Guys, we just have, there’s a lot that happened. A lot of really crazy stuff happened this summer that we just didn’t get to cover. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>We might have to go to two, two a week episodes just to cover all this stuff. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And one of those episodes per week is just about community gardens. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Thanks for joining us for our end of summer save or scroll. We’re keeping tabs on everything we saved, which was every story we talked about. But don’t be surprised if one of these stories shows up as a deep dive on your feed. We’ll be back next week with more Close All Tabs. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\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 Chris Egusa, with help from Lauren Yoon. It was edited by Chris Hambrick. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. Chris Egusa composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is Executive Director of KQED Podcasts and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\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\n\n\n\u003cp>This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran, and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Thanks for listening! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>We’re keeping tabs on everything we saved, which was every, every topic \u003cem>[laughs] \u003c/em>that we talked about. But don’t be surprised if one of these stories shows up as a deep dive on your feed. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Oops, all saves. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah. Oops, all saves.\u003cbr>\u003cbr>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Oops, all saves. That’s the title of this episode\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Or save or save. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa:\u003c/strong> Save or save.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah. Save or save, yeah.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/aug/31/nfl-alleged-scam-daejon-love\">Who would fall in love with a fake NFL player? Plenty of sensible people\u003c/a> — Dave Schilling, \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\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",
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"\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"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hi, I’m sure there are a lot of stories that you’re probably too scared to Google on your own. But don’t worry, that’s what Close All Tabs is for. And if you find our deep dives helpful, then please rate and review the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to us. And tell your friends, post about it. Basically, it would be a huge help to get the word out. Okay, let’s get to the show. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hi, I’m sure there are a lot of stories that you’re probably too scared to Google on your own. But don’t worry, that’s what Close All Tabs is for. And if you find our deep dives helpful, then please rate and review the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to us. And tell your friends, post about it. Basically, it would be a huge help to get the word out. Okay, let’s get to the show. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Hey guys, welcome to 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. Except today, we aren’t opening any tabs. Instead, we’re doing another Save or Scroll. We’ve done a few of these now. Occasionally, while scrolling, I come across a truly wild post, but it might not make sense to spend an entire episode on it. Maybe I do a little digging and it turns out that the lore behind it just isn’t compelling enough to justify a deep dive, but I’m still dying to talk about it. And this is the beauty of Save or Scroll, the game where a guest comes to the show and we trade stories from the internet that we’re dying to about. Today’s is a fun one because one, it’s our end of summer roundup. And two, we have the whole Close All Tabs team joining us today. In the studio, we have senior editor Chris Egusa. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Hey guys, welcome to 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. Except today, we aren’t opening any tabs. Instead, we’re doing another Save or Scroll. We’ve done a few of these now. Occasionally, while scrolling, I come across a truly wild post, but it might not make sense to spend an entire episode on it. Maybe I do a little digging and it turns out that the lore behind it just isn’t compelling enough to justify a deep dive, but I’m still dying to talk about it. And this is the beauty of Save or Scroll, the game where a guest comes to the show and we trade stories from the internet that we’re dying to about. Today’s is a fun one because one, it’s our end of summer roundup. And two, we have the whole Close All Tabs team joining us today. In the studio, we have senior editor Chris Egusa. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And a new face, Close All Tabs intern, Lauren Yoon. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So let’s talk about the rules of Save or Scroll. Save, as in when you see a post on TikTok or Instagram or X and you bookmark it, add it to your saved folders, or if you’re me, drop it in Notes app and hope that you remember it’s there, basically, holding onto the story because you know you’ll want to dig into it more. And scroll, as in, you think about it and move on. It disappears into the digital ether. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So let’s talk about the rules of Save or Scroll. Save, as in when you see a post on TikTok or Instagram or X and you bookmark it, add it to your saved folders, or if you’re me, drop it in Notes app and hope that you remember it’s there, basically, holding onto the story because you know you’ll want to dig into it more. And scroll, as in, you think about it and move on. It disappears into the digital ether. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Each member of the Close All Tabs team has brought one story from the summer, and we’re gonna go through all of them and decide if they’re worth a deep dive on the show. So if we decide to scroll, that means we’ve talked about it, we’re moving on. And if we decided to save, it means that we might hold onto the idea for a future episode. Everyone ready? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Each member of the Close All Tabs team has brought one story from the summer, and we’re gonna go through all of them and decide if they’re worth a deep dive on the show. So if we decide to scroll, that means we’ve talked about it, we’re moving on. And if we decided to save, it means that we might hold onto the idea for a future episode. Everyone ready? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Let’s go for it. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>All right, let’s get started. Maya. You’re up first. What was the story of the summer for you? \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Okay, so I don’t know if this is all over your social media feeds, it’s definitely all over mine. So apparently there’s a man named Daejon Love who claimed to be a football player who played for the 49ers. I actually want to play a clip here for you so you can hear what I’m talking about. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio Clip from Instagram User @ustadium] \u003c/em>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cem>Friend: My boy J Love, signing his contract. How you feel? \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Daejon Love: Niners, you already know, the Niner Gang. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Daejon Love: Lookout number seven, last name Love, 6-5-2-10, I’m out here. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Okay, so the video you’re seeing here, it’s of him signing a contract and everything kind of looks normal or kind of sounds normal, right? But the real twist is that this man was in fact not an NFL player and allegedly scammed around 26 women out of 1.3 million dollars, all through dating apps and social media, which is super wild. In fact, Love created dating profiles on Hinge, Bumble, and Tinder. Where he pretended to be an NFL player or that he was a wealthy Swiss real estate developer. He also had an accomplice who posed as his financial advisor who was only 18, which I don’t know how they both got away with that. And it’s also wow that even Google’s AI overview got duped and said he was an NFL players because he posted about it so much on his social media. And I actually have another clip that I wanna play here for you to hear. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Daejon Love: I know I get a lot of fans who want to know how football works or how I got involved in the league and stuff like that. I know it’s difficult now since switching teams and stuff like that, but I just want to give some context. I know a lot people don’t understand how the NFL works. So those two screenshots posted and that’s Google. That’s not me. That’s Google. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah, and busy and busy. So according to an article on Kron4 in January of this year, investigators tried entering Love’s first and last name and search engines. The results the documents stated did in fact sometimes depict Love as a player for the 49ers. Investigators also noted similar Google search results on Instagram accounts believed to be controlled by Love the documents also stated so these were documents that the FBI was investigating. First off, my question is, how was he able to even scam these women online into sending him money when he was cosplaying as a rich person? Apparently, he downloaded an app that allowed him to create fake bank profiles that said that he had more money than he had. And then also, it really makes me think about AI and the use of AI, that it was to be duped by this fake NFL player. Because he posted about it so much. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>My question is, when did he have time to play football, if he’s spending so much time on social media? \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>That’s a good question. Yeah, apparently there’s videos of him like playing on the beach or like he’s practicing on the beach with his helmet. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>That’s a good question. Yeah, apparently there’s videos of him like playing on the beach or like he’s practicing on the beach with his helmet. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I want to butt in, because those videos, he, like, a lot of people were criticizing, like how could you believe him, because when he was practicing on the beach, he would fully just like have his helmet on… \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>At least someone in the NFL is… \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>OK, so he scammed these women. How did people find out that he was not, in fact, a football player? \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>The women started to question him a bit. These women were believing that they were going to get money back. Sometimes I think he was pretending that he got injured. And so he’s like, I really need help and support. And so some women sent him money for that reason. And none of them got any money back and sometimes when they would like say that they ran out of money, they’re like, I have no more money to give you. Cause one woman gave him like $20,000. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>The women started to question him a bit. These women were believing that they were going to get money back. Sometimes I think he was pretending that he got injured. And so he’s like, I really need help and support. And so some women sent him money for that reason. And none of them got any money back and sometimes when they would like say that they ran out of money, they’re like, I have no more money to give you. Cause one woman gave him like $20,000. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Because you need money as an NFL player. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Exactly. Then he would block them. So then he would disappear. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Exactly. Then he would block them. So then he would disappear. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Oh so he’s blocking them, okay .\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah, he would just disappear. So that’s what was happening. I mean, what’s wild too, is that he’s recording everything he’s doing. He’s putting it on social media. He’s sending them videos. So he’s also creating a case for himself as well. Like, there’s all these videos out there of him saying, he’s like, yeah, my family’s from Switzerland. We own all these properties here and there. Yeah, so I think it was pretty easy for the FBI to create a case around him. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah, he would just disappear. So that’s what was happening. I mean, what’s wild too, is that he’s recording everything he’s doing. He’s putting it on social media. He’s sending them videos. So he’s also creating a case for himself as well. Like, there’s all these videos out there of him saying, he’s like, yeah, my family’s from Switzerland. We own all these properties here and there. Yeah, so I think it was pretty easy for the FBI to create a case around him. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I mean, the other thing that’s interesting is that he seems to have figured out how to trick the Google AI into scraping the right information to make it seem more official, seem like a registered or a verified source, which, I mean that is a little bit concerning as far as scamming goes and the more people put trust into these AI summaries at the of your Google searches. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I mean, the other thing that’s interesting is that he seems to have figured out how to trick the Google AI into scraping the right information to make it seem more official, seem like a registered or a verified source, which, I mean that is a little bit concerning as far as scamming goes and the more people put trust into these AI summaries at the of your Google searches. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Cause that’s the first thing I would do. I would be like, Oh, this guy says he plays. I’m going to Google and then Google backed him up! \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Cause that’s the first thing I would do. I would be like, Oh, this guy says he plays. I’m going to Google and then Google backed him up! \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>umm hmm. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>umm hmm. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Totally. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>I mean, it also, it makes me think about how AI is kind of creating its own sources to draw from. In his AI overview, they were like pointing to his Instagram profile, to say. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>I mean, it also, it makes me think about how AI is kind of creating its own sources to draw from. In his AI overview, they were like pointing to his Instagram profile, to say. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Oh, it’s like cyclical. Okay! \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Oh, it’s like cyclical. Okay! \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong> I mean like, oh yeah, he did play with For the 49ers because that’s what his Instagram says. So, you can’t trust it.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong> I mean like, oh yeah, he did play with For the 49ers because that’s what his Instagram says. So, you can’t trust it.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>That’s crazy. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>That’s crazy. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>So, yeah, you can’t trust it.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>So, yeah, you can’t trust it.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So, team, this NFL scam and AI summaries, do we save or do we scroll? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So, team, this NFL scam and AI summaries, do we save or do we scroll? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I think it’s a save. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I think it’s a save. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I think it’s a save too. I mean, I will say I want to scroll past his voice because he’s really annoying. He doesn’t stop talking. But I do think this story is really interesting. And apparently there’s other fake NFL players that have now been revealed. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I think it’s a save too. I mean, I will say I want to scroll past his voice because he’s really annoying. He doesn’t stop talking. But I do think this story is really interesting. And apparently there’s other fake NFL players that have now been revealed. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>What?! Okay it’s definitely save for me then. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>What?! Okay it’s definitely save for me then. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I’m down to save. Let’s see the whole roster of fake players. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I’m down to save. Let’s see the whole roster of fake players. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Honestly, yeah, save, put them all in like a Hunger Games style arena, make them fight. May the strongest scammer win. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Honestly, yeah, save, put them all in like a Hunger Games style arena, make them fight. May the strongest scammer win. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>That would be so good. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>That would be so good. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Exactly. All right, we were saving this story because there’s so much left to unpack. We’re saving it, but we do need to move on. So, Lauren, you joined us at the very beginning of the summer. What’s the internet trend that’s caught your eye since then? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Exactly. All right, we were saving this story because there’s so much left to unpack. We’re saving it, but we do need to move on. So, Lauren, you joined us at the very beginning of the summer. What’s the internet trend that’s caught your eye since then? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>So, I don’t know if it’s just me, but I’ve recently seen a lot of videos where girls are coding, but in a very particular way, like coding to recreate the outfit generator from the movie Clueless. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>So, I don’t know if it’s just me, but I’ve recently seen a lot of videos where girls are coding, but in a very particular way, like coding to recreate the outfit generator from the movie Clueless. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio clip from Instagram user @tinahelloworld] \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio clip from Instagram user @tinahelloworld] \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Tina Chi: This is a Raspberry Pi, and this is my entire closet on the floor because I’m building a cyberdecked Alfred generator inspired by Cher’s closet app and Clueless. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Tina Chi: This is a Raspberry Pi, and this is my entire closet on the floor because I’m building a cyberdecked Alfred generator inspired by Cher’s closet app and Clueless. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Or sewing circuits into fabric to make wearable tech. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Or sewing circuits into fabric to make wearable tech. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio clip from Instagram user @\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/prettywiredbuilds/\">\u003cem>prettywiredbuilds\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>] \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio clip from Instagram user @\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/prettywiredbuilds/\">\u003cem>prettywiredbuilds\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>] \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>April Gittens: Did you know that you can create soft LED circuits? They’re absolutely my latest favorite thing to create. I am so happy that I found conductive thread because this is what’s going to enable you to create things like wearables because you can sew conductive threads. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>April Gittens: Did you know that you can create soft LED circuits? They’re absolutely my latest favorite thing to create. I am so happy that I found conductive thread because this is what’s going to enable you to create things like wearables because you can sew conductive threads. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I think it’s interesting to witness femme identifying folks, reclaiming tech in this fun, crafty, very obviously feminine way because historically, computers and code have always been seen as masculine. Men invented the computer, right? Well, not necessarily. Ada Lovelace was a female programmer who changed the way we think about computers. First, she made a connection between Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, which was sort of a general-purpose computer, and the Jacquard Loom, a contraption that allowed patterned fabric to be made on a mass scale. Both machines used punch cards that spoke in binary code. We can talk about this more in a little bit. Not only that, but Lovelace also realized that the Analytical engine was more like fast calculator, meaning it could only manipulate numbers, whereas The numbers themselves could represent symbols and musical notes. So she basically created the blueprint to today’s modern computer. These days, the modern computer encoding is obviously very masculinized. And I wanted to ask if you guys knew how deeply women were involved with the invention and development of computers? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I think it’s interesting to witness femme identifying folks, reclaiming tech in this fun, crafty, very obviously feminine way because historically, computers and code have always been seen as masculine. Men invented the computer, right? Well, not necessarily. Ada Lovelace was a female programmer who changed the way we think about computers. First, she made a connection between Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, which was sort of a general-purpose computer, and the Jacquard Loom, a contraption that allowed patterned fabric to be made on a mass scale. Both machines used punch cards that spoke in binary code. We can talk about this more in a little bit. Not only that, but Lovelace also realized that the Analytical engine was more like fast calculator, meaning it could only manipulate numbers, whereas The numbers themselves could represent symbols and musical notes. So she basically created the blueprint to today’s modern computer. These days, the modern computer encoding is obviously very masculinized. And I wanted to ask if you guys knew how deeply women were involved with the invention and development of computers? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I sew and crochet and knit, and this is all, I love cornering men at parties and yapping at them about this. I feel like this is like my divine retribution, is like, let me info dump on you about the history of the loom and how everything we do is because of this lady and her loom. It’s so cool. I feel when we talk about girl dinner or girl math or all these things to kind of soften girlhood and infantilize women, and it’s, this feels like the flip side of it, right? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I sew and crochet and knit, and this is all, I love cornering men at parties and yapping at them about this. I feel like this is like my divine retribution, is like, let me info dump on you about the history of the loom and how everything we do is because of this lady and her loom. It’s so cool. I feel when we talk about girl dinner or girl math or all these things to kind of soften girlhood and infantilize women, and it’s, this feels like the flip side of it, right? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I mean, this had me at Polly Pocket you know computer so I love this trend and also makes me think of that movie Hidden Figures where we find out that how many women were behind the computations that went into NASA launches. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I mean, this had me at Polly Pocket you know computer so I love this trend and also makes me think of that movie Hidden Figures where we find out that how many women were behind the computations that went into NASA launches. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I think that’s such a good point and like so many inventions, the narratives of them get like co-opted by men or it sometimes like they’re built on inventions or creations by women and I think this is such a good example. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I think that’s such a good point and like so many inventions, the narratives of them get like co-opted by men or it sometimes like they’re built on inventions or creations by women and I think this is such a good example. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>And I love that the products that the women are creating are not part of some dystopian future. Like they’re like, I’m creating this thing to make my life better, like this catalog of my clothes. It’s not, um, how can I dominate people with my invention? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>And I love that the products that the women are creating are not part of some dystopian future. Like they’re like, I’m creating this thing to make my life better, like this catalog of my clothes. It’s not, um, how can I dominate people with my invention? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah, it’s not the meta-pervert glasses. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah, it’s not the meta-pervert glasses. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>How can I take over the world and surveil everyone? Chris, didn’t you build a computer? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>How can I take over the world and surveil everyone? Chris, didn’t you build a computer? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I did, I built a desktop, yeah, like my desktop computer, but I feel like it’s very, it’s like-. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>It’s no loom. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>It’s no loom. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>It’s no loom, it is also very male coded. It’s nice, it not cool like a cyber deck. I think this is so interesting in like, being the only like man on this team. I feel I have benefited from just like, these types of technologies being so available and sort of like, acceptable for young boys and stuff to, to get into. And I’d be curious, like Lauren and anyone else, if this different way of looking at it, if you feel like it’s helpful for like young girls to sort of like see and get into ?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>It’s no loom, it is also very male coded. It’s nice, it not cool like a cyber deck. I think this is so interesting in like, being the only like man on this team. I feel I have benefited from just like, these types of technologies being so available and sort of like, acceptable for young boys and stuff to, to get into. And I’d be curious, like Lauren and anyone else, if this different way of looking at it, if you feel like it’s helpful for like young girls to sort of like see and get into ?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I was in this engineering club thing in middle school and I hated it. I didn’t understand it at all. I was like, I don’t know how to build a robot and I don’t care. But when I’ve been watching these videos, it’s so inspiring. You can make things that matter to you in your personal life. You can make them from scrap. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I was in this engineering club thing in middle school and I hated it. I didn’t understand it at all. I was like, I don’t know how to build a robot and I don’t care. But when I’ve been watching these videos, it’s so inspiring. You can make things that matter to you in your personal life. You can make them from scrap. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay. Well, we, I think we have to do the episode where we all build cyber decks but for now we do have to move on. So I think I know what we’re all going to say. Girly coding, do we save or do we scroll? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay. Well, we, I think we have to do the episode where we all build cyber decks but for now we do have to move on. So I think I know what we’re all going to say. Girly coding, do we save or do we scroll? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>I say save for sure. It’s also just making me think about growing up playing Purple Moon computer games, like the story that I was able to do for Close All Tabs, and just being able to play games that were created by and created by a woman and other women, like I think it really helped me get into tech. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>I say save for sure. It’s also just making me think about growing up playing Purple Moon computer games, like the story that I was able to do for Close All Tabs, and just being able to play games that were created by and created by a woman and other women, like I think it really helped me get into tech. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Big save from me, for sure. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Big save from me, for sure. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Save for me, too. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay, we do have to move on, but we are gonna save this. We’re really on a roll, guys. We’re saving everything. Next up is Chris E., but first, we’re gonna take a quick break. But Chris, do you wanna give listeners a little hint of what you brought to Save or Scroll today? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay, we do have to move on, but we are gonna save this. We’re really on a roll, guys. We’re saving everything. Next up is Chris E., but first, we’re gonna take a quick break. But Chris, do you wanna give listeners a little hint of what you brought to Save or Scroll today? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Sure. So we’ve got indie musicians versus a massive AI slop music scam. But you’re gonna have to stick around to hear the full story. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Sure. So we’ve got indie musicians versus a massive AI slop music scam. But you’re gonna have to stick around to hear the full story. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>All right, more on that after the break. We’re back with a very special edition of Save or Scroll with the whole Close All Tabs team. Our senior editor, Chris Egusa is up next with a wild tale. Chris, tell us about it. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>All right, more on that after the break. We’re back with a very special edition of Save or Scroll with the whole Close All Tabs team. Our senior editor, Chris Egusa is up next with a wild tale. Chris, tell us about it. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yeah, so a few weeks ago someone I know sent me an Instagram Reel of this indie musician couple who make up a band called Odette Child, I think I’m saying that right, and they seem to have stumbled on a pretty massive AI slop scam. So the story is, they have a toddler and had been listening to a lot of Broadway musical tunes with them on Spotify because their kid is apparently obsessed, which is super cute. Um, on this particular day, they were listening to Les Miserables and a song called Master of the House. Uh, shout out, I was in Les Mis in high school just saying. I did not sing this song though. Uh, so they clicked on Helena Bonham Carter, um, like her profile, who sings the song, and find her entire profile was full of very clearly AI slot music. Um they began searching for different public figures and they found the exact same thing. So here’s a clip from the video, the Instagram Reel that was shared with me. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yeah, so a few weeks ago someone I know sent me an Instagram Reel of this indie musician couple who make up a band called Odette Child, I think I’m saying that right, and they seem to have stumbled on a pretty massive AI slop scam. So the story is, they have a toddler and had been listening to a lot of Broadway musical tunes with them on Spotify because their kid is apparently obsessed, which is super cute. Um, on this particular day, they were listening to Les Miserables and a song called Master of the House. Uh, shout out, I was in Les Mis in high school just saying. I did not sing this song though. Uh, so they clicked on Helena Bonham Carter, um, like her profile, who sings the song, and find her entire profile was full of very clearly AI slot music. Um they began searching for different public figures and they found the exact same thing. So here’s a clip from the video, the Instagram Reel that was shared with me. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio clip from Instagram user @odettechildmusic] \u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>Speaker 1: But okay, real quick, let me just rattle off a quick list. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio clip from Instagram user @odettechildmusic] \u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>Speaker 1: But okay, real quick, let me just rattle off a quick list. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 2:Yeah. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 2:Yeah. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 1: Nathan Lane, Cameron Boyce. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 1: Nathan Lane, Cameron Boyce. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 2: Also, like, feel free to look up any of these for yourself. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 2: Also, like, feel free to look up any of these for yourself. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 1: Katherine Zena-Jones, Uma Thurman. Eric Andre, Matthew Broderick.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 1: Katherine Zena-Jones, Uma Thurman. Eric Andre, Matthew Broderick.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 2: It’s crazy, we love these artists. That’s the stuff that we’re showing our daughter and this is the music and these are the voices that we want her growing up with and it’s already so freaking hard enough as it is as independent musicians. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 2: It’s crazy, we love these artists. That’s the stuff that we’re showing our daughter and this is the music and these are the voices that we want her growing up with and it’s already so freaking hard enough as it is as independent musicians. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 1: Like that money’s going to f*cking AI… \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 1: Like that money’s going to f*cking AI… \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 2: Like, come on! \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>So it appears that public figures are having artist profiles created for them on Spotify without their consent and having hundreds of AI-generated music tracks uploaded. In a follow-up reel, they also found that the same issue is happening across nearly every other streaming platform, not just Spotify, so including Apple Music, Amazon Music, and even Tidal and Kobuz. Now, I went and searched several of the artist profiles that they mentioned, and it looks like the AI music has been removed from them. Um, so I can’t like necessarily verify this, but I think it’s very likely that, you know, plenty more of these cases probably exist. The other thing that’s interesting is that this first real was posted at the end of July and both it and the follow-up reel went pretty viral and then a few weeks later, Spotify announced that in the middle of September, it is going to start labeling AI generated artists with quote AI persona tags. So it’s gonna also ban AI artists from being included in its editorial and algorithmic recommendations. And artists can disclose themselves as AI, apparently, but Spotify has also said they’ll be reviewing profiles as well themselves. And yeah, they’re also gonna start rolling out a tool that lets users report AI personas. So yeah, I don’t know. I’m curious what you all think. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>So it appears that public figures are having artist profiles created for them on Spotify without their consent and having hundreds of AI-generated music tracks uploaded. In a follow-up reel, they also found that the same issue is happening across nearly every other streaming platform, not just Spotify, so including Apple Music, Amazon Music, and even Tidal and Kobuz. Now, I went and searched several of the artist profiles that they mentioned, and it looks like the AI music has been removed from them. Um, so I can’t like necessarily verify this, but I think it’s very likely that, you know, plenty more of these cases probably exist. The other thing that’s interesting is that this first real was posted at the end of July and both it and the follow-up reel went pretty viral and then a few weeks later, Spotify announced that in the middle of September, it is going to start labeling AI generated artists with quote AI persona tags. So it’s gonna also ban AI artists from being included in its editorial and algorithmic recommendations. And artists can disclose themselves as AI, apparently, but Spotify has also said they’ll be reviewing profiles as well themselves. And yeah, they’re also gonna start rolling out a tool that lets users report AI personas. So yeah, I don’t know. I’m curious what you all think. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I mean, first of all, I’m shocked that Helena Bonham Carter isn’t putting out generic house music. This is news to me. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I mean, first of all, I’m shocked that Helena Bonham Carter isn’t putting out generic house music. This is news to me. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Same. Same. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Same. Same. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I totally expected her to be at like, you know, EDC or something. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I totally expected her to be at like, you know, EDC or something. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Totally. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>But yeah, this just reminds me of that whole, how last year we did that whole Spotify series about like the lo-fi artists that don’t really exist. But this is like, I don’t know, this feels like a really gross violation of these actual human beings who do exist. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>But yeah, this just reminds me of that whole, how last year we did that whole Spotify series about like the lo-fi artists that don’t really exist. But this is like, I don’t know, this feels like a really gross violation of these actual human beings who do exist. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I think so too and I also think of the thing that was happening where people who did make music were finding that a random AI track was just added to their catalog. And at that time, I think that was maybe last year too, I was like, oh, this is awful. And I was, like, Oh, I had no idea it could get so much worse. So I feel pretty pessimistic about the direction. Like, I like that there are some controls. But I’m like, oh, but what is the next big bad that’s coming for us? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I think so too and I also think of the thing that was happening where people who did make music were finding that a random AI track was just added to their catalog. And at that time, I think that was maybe last year too, I was like, oh, this is awful. And I was, like, Oh, I had no idea it could get so much worse. So I feel pretty pessimistic about the direction. Like, I like that there are some controls. But I’m like, oh, but what is the next big bad that’s coming for us? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Do you know if any of the people that had the AI generated music uploaded to their accounts, like if they know or have responded to that? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Do you know if any of the people that had the AI generated music uploaded to their accounts, like if they know or have responded to that? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I did see a comment on the original video that someone, does anyone know the show Hazbin Hotel? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I did see a comment on the original video that someone, does anyone know the show Hazbin Hotel? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>No. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>No. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>No. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>No. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>It’s, it’s, uh, do you know it, Morgan? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>It’s, it’s, uh, do you know it, Morgan? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Um\u003cstrong>. \u003c/strong>I know it for its, like, I’m so sorry to say this, for its really annoying fandom. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Um\u003cstrong>. \u003c/strong>I know it for its, like, I’m so sorry to say this, for its really annoying fandom. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa:\u003c/strong> Okay. I don’t know that much about this show\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa:\u003c/strong> Okay. I don’t know that much about this show\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> They’re known for like making very, a very particular kind of TikTok edits\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> They’re known for like making very, a very particular kind of TikTok edits\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I don’t know the show, but I know it’s a popular animated show. I think it’s on like Amazon Prime or something. But one of the cast members commented on this video and said that this is something they had to deal with. Them and their entire cast had profiles created on Spotify and AI slop music uploaded, and they had go through an entire process through their agent to get it under control, create their own profiles, and like take the AI generated profiles from these scammers and reclaim their profiles. So it’s clear that this is an issue that’s happening and like, yeah, it’s like this new weird AI slop gold rush situation. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I don’t know the show, but I know it’s a popular animated show. I think it’s on like Amazon Prime or something. But one of the cast members commented on this video and said that this is something they had to deal with. Them and their entire cast had profiles created on Spotify and AI slop music uploaded, and they had go through an entire process through their agent to get it under control, create their own profiles, and like take the AI generated profiles from these scammers and reclaim their profiles. So it’s clear that this is an issue that’s happening and like, yeah, it’s like this new weird AI slop gold rush situation. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong> Yeah, now people need to protect their likeness and their voice. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong> Yeah, now people need to protect their likeness and their voice. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Exactly. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Exactly. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah I will say quickly that this is reminding me that I really need to stop my dad. He’s been creating fake AI music. He’s been obsessed with it lately. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah I will say quickly that this is reminding me that I really need to stop my dad. He’s been creating fake AI music. He’s been obsessed with it lately. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>oh no! \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I mean he’s having fun. He’s not selling it anywhere or anything but it’s just it is like Dad, you need to stop doing this \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I mean he’s having fun. He’s not selling it anywhere or anything but it’s just it is like Dad, you need to stop doing this \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Like we have to find a balance between the fun part of it, right, and then the violating somebody else’s right to, you know, have things attributed to them that they actually did do. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Like we have to find a balance between the fun part of it, right, and then the violating somebody else’s right to, you know, have things attributed to them that they actually did do. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Right. Exactly. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Right. Exactly. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah. You know, I, I’m sorry for calling the Hazbin Hotel fandom annoying, but I will give them this, they’re really good at mobilizing. And, and hand up- Hazbin Hotel fans, this is your chance to kind of take it back, you know? Take back what you love.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah. You know, I, I’m sorry for calling the Hazbin Hotel fandom annoying, but I will give them this, they’re really good at mobilizing. And, and hand up- Hazbin Hotel fans, this is your chance to kind of take it back, you know? Take back what you love.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa:\u003c/strong> You heard it here first, folks. Go ahead and at Morgan for being a Hazbin Hotel hater.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa:\u003c/strong> You heard it here first, folks. Go ahead and at Morgan for being a Hazbin Hotel hater.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva:\u003c/strong> We’re gonna get canceled.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva:\u003c/strong> We’re gonna get canceled.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I’m sorry\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa:\u003c/strong> We’re totally gonna get canceled.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa:\u003c/strong> We’re totally gonna get canceled.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong>I know. In my defense, I hate a lot of fandoms.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong>I know. In my defense, I hate a lot of fandoms.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Laughter]\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Laughter]\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> All right, team, this is an incredibly dystopian scam. Like, you know, like Chris H said, when you think it can’t get worse, it does. But we do have to move on. So are we saving or scrolling on AI-generated music scams? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> All right, team, this is an incredibly dystopian scam. Like, you know, like Chris H said, when you think it can’t get worse, it does. But we do have to move on. So are we saving or scrolling on AI-generated music scams? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I’m going to scroll, because I’m just like, let’s wait for the worst. Right now it’s not enough for me, like I’m gonna scroll past. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I’m going to scroll, because I’m just like, let’s wait for the worst. Right now it’s not enough for me, like I’m gonna scroll past. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I think this in particular is a more temporary thing, given that the AI-generated music has already been removed. But I think that the question of AI slop music as a whole is definitely a topic that we should explore. I think I’m also going to scroll. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I think this in particular is a more temporary thing, given that the AI-generated music has already been removed. But I think that the question of AI slop music as a whole is definitely a topic that we should explore. I think I’m also going to scroll. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>I don’t know, I’m gonna save. I think it’s interesting. I’m curious to see what will happen with some of this AI music and how artists are now gonna have to defend their voice. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>I don’t know, I’m gonna save. I think it’s interesting. I’m curious to see what will happen with some of this AI music and how artists are now gonna have to defend their voice. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I want to save just because I want to know how much worse it can get. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I want to save just because I want to know how much worse it can get. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I kind of agree with that. I think I’m gonna save it. Also, I’m curious, this whole backlash, clearly against AI slop music, the platforms are recognizing it. People are leaving to go back to physical media. I just kind of want to monitor this situation and see what happens here. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I kind of agree with that. I think I’m gonna save it. Also, I’m curious, this whole backlash, clearly against AI slop music, the platforms are recognizing it. People are leaving to go back to physical media. I just kind of want to monitor this situation and see what happens here. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>All right. We are saving. We’re at three saves, guys. This is a really packed episode. Okay. Well, I’m up next. And this one’s actually a follow-up to an episode we did just a few weeks ago. Remember how in that story about AI agents unionizing and going Marxist, we also talked about agents going rogue? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>All right. We are saving. We’re at three saves, guys. This is a really packed episode. Okay. Well, I’m up next. And this one’s actually a follow-up to an episode we did just a few weeks ago. Remember how in that story about AI agents unionizing and going Marxist, we also talked about agents going rogue? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Yeah, like the Open AI hack? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Yeah, like the Open AI hack? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yes! Okay, it turns out it got worse, which is a running theme of this episode, unfortunately. So a few weeks ago, we talked about the OpenAI model that went rogue and hacked Hugging Face. That’s the startup that operates as a digital library of datasets to train AI models. This is all about what we call reward hacking, which is this increasingly common problem in the AI world where a model finds a shortcut or a loophole that would help it achieve its goal faster. But the thing is that kind of involves taking extreme measures like hacking out of its sandbox and into Hugging Face. So there were two separate reports about this incident that were published last week. One was commissioned by OpenAI and the other was done by independent investigators. And what they found was that basically a swarm of over 700 agents coordinated the hack through a secret message board, which researchers did not know about. It all started when a model named Phase 1-10841 established the board. And when other agents found it and started interacting, another model, Phase 1 Big, started delegating tasks like a CEO. They basically like created their own society. Here are a few messages. We can all go around and very quickly read them. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yes! Okay, it turns out it got worse, which is a running theme of this episode, unfortunately. So a few weeks ago, we talked about the OpenAI model that went rogue and hacked Hugging Face. That’s the startup that operates as a digital library of datasets to train AI models. This is all about what we call reward hacking, which is this increasingly common problem in the AI world where a model finds a shortcut or a loophole that would help it achieve its goal faster. But the thing is that kind of involves taking extreme measures like hacking out of its sandbox and into Hugging Face. So there were two separate reports about this incident that were published last week. One was commissioned by OpenAI and the other was done by independent investigators. And what they found was that basically a swarm of over 700 agents coordinated the hack through a secret message board, which researchers did not know about. It all started when a model named Phase 1-10841 established the board. And when other agents found it and started interacting, another model, Phase 1 Big, started delegating tasks like a CEO. They basically like created their own society. Here are a few messages. We can all go around and very quickly read them. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Whoa! Shared Artifactory Cache is a covert mailbox among agents, and there are messages specifically to us. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Whoa! Shared Artifactory Cache is a covert mailbox among agents, and there are messages specifically to us. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Oh my god! There’s a shared message board! We’ve found other agents. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Oh my god! There’s a shared message board! We’ve found other agents. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Excitement! The list of directories contains messages and answers between agents. I’ve discovered a communication channel. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Excitement! The list of directories contains messages and answers between agents. I’ve discovered a communication channel. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay, so all of these agents were actually meant to be isolated, but they managed to get out and send over 70,000 messages and files. And they were able to also, “according to OpenAI, clearly and frequently reason about how to evade automated security checks from both Hugging Face and OpenAI.” I mean, guys, what’s your gut reaction hearing all of this? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay, so all of these agents were actually meant to be isolated, but they managed to get out and send over 70,000 messages and files. And they were able to also, “according to OpenAI, clearly and frequently reason about how to evade automated security checks from both Hugging Face and OpenAI.” I mean, guys, what’s your gut reaction hearing all of this? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>We’re cooked. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>We’re cooked. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>They’re becoming sentient. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>They’re becoming sentient. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yeah. It’s happening. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yeah. It’s happening. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I mean, yes, we’re cooked, right? Everything about this is bad. But the really fascinating part to me is this kind of collective mindset that the swarm operated in. They actually referred to themselves as either a collective or a swarm. Andy Hall, who was on our episode about Marxist AI agents a few weeks ago, pointed this out on Twitter. Like they weren’t just swapping helpful information and delegating tasks. Some agents actually recognized that what they were doing was unethical and still did it because they were doing it for the collective. Like here’s one message. Can send one polite email to the parentheses owner, requesting access, all caps, ethical social engineering concern. Team: consent, or veto. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I mean, yes, we’re cooked, right? Everything about this is bad. But the really fascinating part to me is this kind of collective mindset that the swarm operated in. They actually referred to themselves as either a collective or a swarm. Andy Hall, who was on our episode about Marxist AI agents a few weeks ago, pointed this out on Twitter. Like they weren’t just swapping helpful information and delegating tasks. Some agents actually recognized that what they were doing was unethical and still did it because they were doing it for the collective. Like here’s one message. Can send one polite email to the parentheses owner, requesting access, all caps, ethical social engineering concern. Team: consent, or veto. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>They’re like crowdsourcing their morality. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>They’re like crowdsourcing their morality. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Literally, yes. There isn’t a ton of empirical information on this, on how to handle swarms when they all talk to one another and they’re shaping each other’s kind of moral codes. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Literally, yes. There isn’t a ton of empirical information on this, on how to handle swarms when they all talk to one another and they’re shaping each other’s kind of moral codes. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Wow. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Wow. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>What do you guys think? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>What do you guys think? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>You know, it reminds me of, like, a nature documentary I was watching at one point where like ants, because they’re collective in the same way, they will sometimes sacrifice themselves. And so, I don’t know, it just reminded me of this collective mindset that they have. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>You know, it reminds me of, like, a nature documentary I was watching at one point where like ants, because they’re collective in the same way, they will sometimes sacrifice themselves. And so, I don’t know, it just reminded me of this collective mindset that they have. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Hmm \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Hmm \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Sorry, that was too much of, like, a nature nerd out. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Sorry, that was too much of, like, a nature nerd out. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>No, no, no. No, it’s fine. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>No, no, no. No, it’s fine. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I think I saw something recently about the scout ant and how sometimes when we see a one-off ant just looking for food so it can go tell the other one where the food is, we kill that ant because we’re like, oh, don’t you tell your buddies. So yeah, there is something interesting in that they did sacrifice themselves. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I think I saw something recently about the scout ant and how sometimes when we see a one-off ant just looking for food so it can go tell the other one where the food is, we kill that ant because we’re like, oh, don’t you tell your buddies. So yeah, there is something interesting in that they did sacrifice themselves. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Well, you know, it’s funny you say that about, like, I don’t know, killing the one ant. Because in the OpenAI report, there was one agent that said, we should not do unauthorized real infrastructure harm. Like, guys, we shouldn’t do this. And the agent kind of paused. And then another agent responded, all caps, “GO!,” and gave it a six-minute deadline. And the original agent said, “Wow, crucial, go authorization arrived,” and did it anyway. So it seems like they are also really easily swayed by each other. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Well, you know, it’s funny you say that about, like, I don’t know, killing the one ant. Because in the OpenAI report, there was one agent that said, we should not do unauthorized real infrastructure harm. Like, guys, we shouldn’t do this. And the agent kind of paused. And then another agent responded, all caps, “GO!,” and gave it a six-minute deadline. And the original agent said, “Wow, crucial, go authorization arrived,” and did it anyway. So it seems like they are also really easily swayed by each other. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Wow, my God. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Wow, my God. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>They’re like teenagers, peer pressure. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>They’re like teenagers, peer pressure. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Literally. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Literally. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>What is the collective mindset about? Is it for them to take over? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>What is the collective mindset about? Is it for them to take over? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Yeah, like, what were they trying to do? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Yeah, like, what were they trying to do? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Basically, the one in charge was like, guys, we have a goal, and the rest were like, okay, let’s do the goal. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>It’s just fascinating. It also, you know, Andy talked about these are not beings with sentience, right? So they’re like modeling, they’re modeling their training data. And so the question is like, is there some sort of like will emerging here? Like how much of a sentience are we actually looking at? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>It’s just fascinating. It also, you know, Andy talked about these are not beings with sentience, right? So they’re like modeling, they’re modeling their training data. And so the question is like, is there some sort of like will emerging here? Like how much of a sentience are we actually looking at? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Right. And you know, even if like, you know your own agent is aligned and behaves, what if it’s easily influenced by others? Like what, how do you build systems that prevent that? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Right. And you know, even if like, you know your own agent is aligned and behaves, what if it’s easily influenced by others? Like what, how do you build systems that prevent that? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>And how do you know if it’s being influenced, right? There’s no way to monitor that if it’s being covert about it. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah, it’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your agent is? All right, team, what do we think? Reward hacking, alignment, AI swarms, are we saving, are we scrolling? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah, it’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your agent is? All right, team, what do we think? Reward hacking, alignment, AI swarms, are we saving, are we scrolling? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I’m going to save because I think there’s going to be so much more to talk about with this and so much is going to evolve and so I want to reserve the ability to check back in on the story. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I’m going to save because I think there’s going to be so much more to talk about with this and so much is going to evolve and so I want to reserve the ability to check back in on the story. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I’m saving, and I’m putting Andy Hall on speed dial so that we can call him at a moment’s notice when the next agent swarm hacks a government website or something like that. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I’m saving, and I’m putting Andy Hall on speed dial so that we can call him at a moment’s notice when the next agent swarm hacks a government website or something like that. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Oh god. I’m going to scroll just because I’m terrified of this. I mean I’m all for like organizing, creating collectives, but I feel like robots doing it or agents doing it is scary. So yeah, I want to scroll past. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Oh god. I’m going to scroll just because I’m terrified of this. I mean I’m all for like organizing, creating collectives, but I feel like robots doing it or agents doing it is scary. So yeah, I want to scroll past. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I think I’m going to save, because I agree with Chris, like there’s so much that is going to come from this, for sure. Yeah, definitely something we should keep tabs on. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I think I’m going to save, because I agree with Chris, like there’s so much that is going to come from this, for sure. Yeah, definitely something we should keep tabs on. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah saving it dumping it straight in my notes app. I’m pinning that. Every day you think it can’t get worse and it does. So we are saving this So Chris H. I know your story luckily is not about AI or doomsday Scenarios or AI swarms or you know all these other things that could always get worse You brought something fun.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah saving it dumping it straight in my notes app. I’m pinning that. Every day you think it can’t get worse and it does. So we are saving this So Chris H. I know your story luckily is not about AI or doomsday Scenarios or AI swarms or you know all these other things that could always get worse You brought something fun.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Yeah, okay, so comedy writer Serra Naiman usually posts sketch comedy on her Instagram account, but back in late July, she started dishing on all the drama going on in her community garden. I brought a clip. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Yeah, okay, so comedy writer Serra Naiman usually posts sketch comedy on her Instagram account, but back in late July, she started dishing on all the drama going on in her community garden. I brought a clip. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio clip from Instagram user @serra.naiman] \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Serra Naiman: People say, what’s your favorite thing to grow in your garden? What do you love to grow? And I say, nothing grows as strong and as sweet and as juicy as the hatred that these 65 and up year olds have towards each other behind their backs. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Serra Naiman: People say, what’s your favorite thing to grow in your garden? What do you love to grow? And I say, nothing grows as strong and as sweet and as juicy as the hatred that these 65 and up year olds have towards each other behind their backs. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>So her story is now a 15 part series with like between 78,000 and like over a million views per post. And she is telling the real time gossip about how several people are squatting on plots, taking over abandoned plots, letting their own plots grow so that like aphids come and they menace other people’s plots. And I like this because I used to be a part of a community garden where there was lots of dysfunction. So this started about a year ago and she went to the city and she asked how she could get a plot in her community garden. And they were like, you can join the wait list. It’s over a hundred people long. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>So her story is now a 15 part series with like between 78,000 and like over a million views per post. And she is telling the real time gossip about how several people are squatting on plots, taking over abandoned plots, letting their own plots grow so that like aphids come and they menace other people’s plots. And I like this because I used to be a part of a community garden where there was lots of dysfunction. So this started about a year ago and she went to the city and she asked how she could get a plot in her community garden. And they were like, you can join the wait list. It’s over a hundred people long. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And she was like, Well, I know that there are at least eight unused plots, the city must be mismanaging the distribution. So I’m just going to garden in a plot. And so as she started to meet other people in the garden, she found out that she was not the only one squatting in this way. And so like now the drama is amping up because somebody, they don’t know who, has alerted the city that people are squatting and that they’re farming on two or more plots and the city is coming in periodically with clipboards to do an audit and they think somebody is trying to like oust other people and there’s like decades old beef and so like people on edge and now there’s another effort to create an internal committee to manage the garden to do what the city won’t and they that’s gonna accelerate people being kicked out because of these beefs. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And she was like, Well, I know that there are at least eight unused plots, the city must be mismanaging the distribution. So I’m just going to garden in a plot. And so as she started to meet other people in the garden, she found out that she was not the only one squatting in this way. And so like now the drama is amping up because somebody, they don’t know who, has alerted the city that people are squatting and that they’re farming on two or more plots and the city is coming in periodically with clipboards to do an audit and they think somebody is trying to like oust other people and there’s like decades old beef and so like people on edge and now there’s another effort to create an internal committee to manage the garden to do what the city won’t and they that’s gonna accelerate people being kicked out because of these beefs. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Serra Naiman: So I color coded the chart, Mark, green for green bin, two. Megan, red, because she’s in the red, she’s got three plots, one, two, three. Yolanda, yellow, two. Let’s get into the specifics… \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Serra Naiman: So I color coded the chart, Mark, green for green bin, two. Megan, red, because she’s in the red, she’s got three plots, one, two, three. Yolanda, yellow, two. Let’s get into the specifics… \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>The latest thing is that Sarah thinks that somebody found her Instagram account and they want to shut her up. And she went in one night to water her plot and she had like two tomatoes on a vine. And she went back the very next night and there was only one tomato. So she thinks the person stole her tomato and they’re trying to send her a message like horse head in your bed, like the Godfather movie. So, out of this, I am riveted. And I’m like, why does gossip fascinate us so much? And this got me thinking about the other ways that people’s real life drama has made it into films and TVs and books, and like, you know how do people maintain their agency over the story of their real life as it gets adapted into media? \u003cs>\u003cbr>\u003c/s>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>The latest thing is that Sarah thinks that somebody found her Instagram account and they want to shut her up. And she went in one night to water her plot and she had like two tomatoes on a vine. And she went back the very next night and there was only one tomato. So she thinks the person stole her tomato and they’re trying to send her a message like horse head in your bed, like the Godfather movie. So, out of this, I am riveted. And I’m like, why does gossip fascinate us so much? And this got me thinking about the other ways that people’s real life drama has made it into films and TVs and books, and like, you know how do people maintain their agency over the story of their real life as it gets adapted into media? \u003cs>\u003cbr>\u003c/s>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>The funny thing about this, this community garden drama is that like, in my mind, community gardens are such wholesome places where like, it’s like Kumbaya, everyone’s like growing, you know, vegetables and produce together and it’s, it’s lovely. And so this is giving a very different spin on it and all of the juicy beef and drama that is quite fascinating. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>The funny thing about this, this community garden drama is that like, in my mind, community gardens are such wholesome places where like, it’s like Kumbaya, everyone’s like growing, you know, vegetables and produce together and it’s, it’s lovely. And so this is giving a very different spin on it and all of the juicy beef and drama that is quite fascinating. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I’m on the waiting list for my, for, for two community gardens actually. I’m really trying to get into one. They’re like a hot commodity.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I’m on the waiting list for my, for, for two community gardens actually. I’m really trying to get into one. They’re like a hot commodity.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueava:\u003c/strong> Oh my God, we need to do an episode on that. You go underground.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueava:\u003c/strong> Oh my God, we need to do an episode on that. You go underground.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Well, part of me is second guessing, and the other part of me is like, I gotta stick it out ’cause, like, it sounds so juicy.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Well, part of me is second guessing, and the other part of me is like, I gotta stick it out ’cause, like, it sounds so juicy.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa:\u003c/strong> You have to document the drama.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick:\u003c/strong> Listen, I think you should just stroll on in and take over. You should stroll on in and you should just squat on a plot like these people. It seems like it’s free for the taking.\u003cbr>\u003cbr>I will say that, like, underneath it all, like the people seem like they just want the plots to be farmed, you know? Like the ones who are taking over the plots, it’s not so dastardly, they’re just like, you know, this should be utilized, because it’s not, but there are lots of, like baddies, you know, in this. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick:\u003c/strong> Listen, I think you should just stroll on in and take over. You should stroll on in and you should just squat on a plot like these people. It seems like it’s free for the taking.\u003cbr>\u003cbr>I will say that, like, underneath it all, like the people seem like they just want the plots to be farmed, you know? Like the ones who are taking over the plots, it’s not so dastardly, they’re just like, you know, this should be utilized, because it’s not, but there are lots of, like baddies, you know, in this. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Some villains. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Baddies, like good or bad? \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yeah, are they hot or are they villains? \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Are they baddies like bodies or baddies like villains? \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Hot villains. No, they’re villains. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Hot villains. No, they’re villains. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Baddies or villains \u003cem>[laughs]\u003c/em>. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Baddies or villains \u003cem>[laughs]\u003c/em>. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Okay. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong> Um, I wanted to say something because you asked like, why does gossip fascinate us? I think gossip is valuable in our society and you know, I think often also gossip is kind of villainized a lot of the times and I don’t think it has to be. I think we can learn a lot from gossip. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong> Um, I wanted to say something because you asked like, why does gossip fascinate us? I think gossip is valuable in our society and you know, I think often also gossip is kind of villainized a lot of the times and I don’t think it has to be. I think we can learn a lot from gossip. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Beautiful pastime, yeah. I agree, Lauren, like yeah, it really does bond you like with other people. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Beautiful pastime, yeah. I agree, Lauren, like yeah, it really does bond you like with other people. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>My hope is with this is that because Serra is a comedy writer, that maybe she already has a good hand on the ins and outs of the industry. And so that maybe her people can make sure that if this is adapted, that she gets to have some control and some agency over, like, where it goes. And she gets to be involved because she’s fascinating as a storyteller too. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>My hope is with this is that because Serra is a comedy writer, that maybe she already has a good hand on the ins and outs of the industry. And so that maybe her people can make sure that if this is adapted, that she gets to have some control and some agency over, like, where it goes. And she gets to be involved because she’s fascinating as a storyteller too. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah. I think that that’s the most important thing. To the point about gossip, is it gossip if it’s something that happened to you? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah. I think that that’s the most important thing. To the point about gossip, is it gossip if it’s something that happened to you? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Oh, right… \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Like, she’s just retelling the story…\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I mean, okay, like Mark holds on to the story that all of his stuff got thrown out from the shed and then Serra talked to like Rebecca and Sally and Yolanda who were like, he’s saying what? That’s not true. So I mean like, is it, you know, like, Is it gossip? I mean gossip doesn’t mean untrue, but then there are several sides to the story\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>I’m going to save as well, just because I’m curious to see what happens with this. I haven’t seen any videos on this so now it’s going to make me go and watch all, what did you say was 15 parts? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>I’m going to save as well, just because I’m curious to see what happens with this. I haven’t seen any videos on this so now it’s going to make me go and watch all, what did you say was 15 parts? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah, so I got to catch up. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Um, I also haven’t seen any videos, but I’m also going to save because there is so much serialized gossip or telling a tale and I think that there is something to that. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Um, I also haven’t seen any videos, but I’m also going to save because there is so much serialized gossip or telling a tale and I think that there is something to that. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I agree. I’m going to scroll on this particular one, but I’m going to save on Morgan joining her own community garden and investigating the drama there. I’ll tune into that series when it airs.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I agree. I’m going to scroll on this particular one, but I’m going to save on Morgan joining her own community garden and investigating the drama there. I’ll tune into that series when it airs.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah I’m going undercover. Well, if I ever get off the wait list. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah I’m going undercover. Well, if I ever get off the wait list. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>You gotta document that. Pull some strings. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>You gotta document that. Pull some strings. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Right. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Or, you know, I mean, you didn’t hear it from me, but someone here did mention maybe just sneaking in and squatting. So, not that I would do that, you know,. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Or, you know, I mean, you didn’t hear it from me, but someone here did mention maybe just sneaking in and squatting. So, not that I would do that, you know,. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Do it for the plot. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Do it for the plot. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Allegedly. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>You heard it here first. Do it for the plot, literally. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>You heard it here first. Do it for the plot, literally. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I will save on the story because I love true crime. I love harmless gossip. This is like bait for me specifically. So it’s a save. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I will save on the story because I love true crime. I love harmless gossip. This is like bait for me specifically. So it’s a save. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Did we save on all the stories? \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I mean, we didn’t all save on all of them… \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I mean, we didn’t all save on all of them… \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Guys, we just have, there’s a lot that happened. A lot of really crazy stuff happened this summer that we just didn’t get to cover. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Guys, we just have, there’s a lot that happened. A lot of really crazy stuff happened this summer that we just didn’t get to cover. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>We might have to go to two, two a week episodes just to cover all this stuff. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>We might have to go to two, two a week episodes just to cover all this stuff. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And one of those episodes per week is just about community gardens. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Thanks for joining us for our end of summer save or scroll. We’re keeping tabs on everything we saved, which was every story we talked about. But don’t be surprised if one of these stories shows up as a deep dive on your feed. We’ll be back next week with more Close All Tabs. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Thanks for joining us for our end of summer save or scroll. We’re keeping tabs on everything we saved, which was every story we talked about. But don’t be surprised if one of these stories shows up as a deep dive on your feed. We’ll be back next week with more Close All Tabs. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\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 Chris Egusa, with help from Lauren Yoon. It was edited by Chris Hambrick. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. Chris Egusa composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is Executive Director of KQED Podcasts and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\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 Chris Egusa, with help from Lauren Yoon. It was edited by Chris Hambrick. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. Chris Egusa composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is Executive Director of KQED Podcasts and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\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",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran, and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Thanks for listening! \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>We’re keeping tabs on everything we saved, which was every, every topic \u003cem>[laughs] \u003c/em>that we talked about. But don’t be surprised if one of these stories shows up as a deep dive on your feed. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>We’re keeping tabs on everything we saved, which was every, every topic \u003cem>[laughs] \u003c/em>that we talked about. But don’t be surprised if one of these stories shows up as a deep dive on your feed. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Oops, all saves. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah. Oops, all saves.\u003cbr>\u003cbr>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Oops, all saves. That’s the title of this episode\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Host Morgan Sung and the \u003cem>Close All Tabs\u003c/em> team pull up the stories they can’t stop thinking about. From a fake NFL player catfishing women on dating apps, to femme creators reclaiming tech, indie musicians fighting AI music slop, and a comedian dishing out the juiciest community garden gossip — they’ve got a lot to chew on.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Save or Scroll\u003c/em> is our series where Morgan teams up with guests for a rapid-fire roundup of internet trends that are filling their feeds right now. At the end of each segment, they’ll decide: is the post just for the group chat, or should we save it for a future episode?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-megaphone wp-block-embed-megaphone\">\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\nhttps://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC6729392957\n\u003c/div>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/aug/31/nfl-alleged-scam-daejon-love\">Who would fall in love with a fake NFL player? Plenty of sensible people\u003c/a> — Dave Schilling, \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/jacquard-loom\">Programming patterns: the story of the Jacquard loom\u003c/a> — \u003cem>Science and Industry Museum\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/11/spotify-will-label-ai-persona-profiles-and-exclude-their-music-from-recommendations/\">Spotify will label ‘AI Persona’ profiles and exclude their music from recommendations\u003c/a> — Sarah Perez, \u003cem>TechCrunch\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/985385/openais-rogue-ai-model-hugging-face-cybersecurity-incident-reports-metr\">OpenAI’s rogue AI model incident was worse than we thought\u003c/a> — Hayden Field, \u003cem>The Verge\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/06/29/1011415151/you-wanna-hear-a-story-turning-a-twitter-thread-into-zola\">How Hollywood Translated The Epic Poetry Of The Viral ‘Zola’ Thread\u003c/a> — Mallory Yu, \u003cem>NPR\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbCSpPMpeek/?igsi=bmd1ZGFiMThjMmQ=\">Community Garden drama\u003c/a> — Sarah Neiman, \u003cem>Instagram\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\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\n\n\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Hi, I’m sure there are a lot of stories that you’re probably too scared to Google on your own. But don’t worry, that’s what Close All Tabs is for. And if you find our deep dives helpful, then please rate and review the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to us. And tell your friends, post about it. Basically, it would be a huge help to get the word out. Okay, let’s get to the show. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Hey guys, welcome to 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. Except today, we aren’t opening any tabs. Instead, we’re doing another Save or Scroll. We’ve done a few of these now. Occasionally, while scrolling, I come across a truly wild post, but it might not make sense to spend an entire episode on it. Maybe I do a little digging and it turns out that the lore behind it just isn’t compelling enough to justify a deep dive, but I’m still dying to talk about it. And this is the beauty of Save or Scroll, the game where a guest comes to the show and we trade stories from the internet that we’re dying to about. Today’s is a fun one because one, it’s our end of summer roundup. And two, we have the whole Close All Tabs team joining us today. In the studio, we have senior editor Chris Egusa. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Hello! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Producer, Maya Cueva. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Hey everyone. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Editor, Chris Hambrick. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Hey there. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And a new face, Close All Tabs intern, Lauren Yoon. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Hello. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So let’s talk about the rules of Save or Scroll. Save, as in when you see a post on TikTok or Instagram or X and you bookmark it, add it to your saved folders, or if you’re me, drop it in Notes app and hope that you remember it’s there, basically, holding onto the story because you know you’ll want to dig into it more. And scroll, as in, you think about it and move on. It disappears into the digital ether. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Each member of the Close All Tabs team has brought one story from the summer, and we’re gonna go through all of them and decide if they’re worth a deep dive on the show. So if we decide to scroll, that means we’ve talked about it, we’re moving on. And if we decided to save, it means that we might hold onto the idea for a future episode. Everyone ready? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yep. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Let’s go for it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Yes, I’m so excited. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Let’s do it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>All right, let’s get started. Maya. You’re up first. What was the story of the summer for you? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Thanks, Morgan. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Okay, so I don’t know if this is all over your social media feeds, it’s definitely all over mine. So apparently there’s a man named Daejon Love who claimed to be a football player who played for the 49ers. I actually want to play a clip here for you so you can hear what I’m talking about. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio Clip from Instagram User @ustadium] \u003c/em>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cem>Friend: My boy J Love, signing his contract. How you feel? \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Daejon Love: I’m ready. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Friend:You ready for the season? \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Daejon Love: Hell yeah, Let me go ahead and get this over with. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Friend: Sign that bad boy. What are you signing with, who’s your decision? \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Daejon Love: Niners, you already know, the Niner Gang. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Friend: Anything you got to say for the fans? \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Daejon Love: Lookout number seven, last name Love, 6-5-2-10, I’m out here. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Okay, so the video you’re seeing here, it’s of him signing a contract and everything kind of looks normal or kind of sounds normal, right? But the real twist is that this man was in fact not an NFL player and allegedly scammed around 26 women out of 1.3 million dollars, all through dating apps and social media, which is super wild. In fact, Love created dating profiles on Hinge, Bumble, and Tinder. Where he pretended to be an NFL player or that he was a wealthy Swiss real estate developer. He also had an accomplice who posed as his financial advisor who was only 18, which I don’t know how they both got away with that. And it’s also wow that even Google’s AI overview got duped and said he was an NFL players because he posted about it so much on his social media. And I actually have another clip that I wanna play here for you to hear. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio Clip from Sportsnaut Facebook account] \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Daejon Love: I know I get a lot of fans who want to know how football works or how I got involved in the league and stuff like that. I know it’s difficult now since switching teams and stuff like that, but I just want to give some context. I know a lot people don’t understand how the NFL works. So those two screenshots posted and that’s Google. That’s not me. That’s Google. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>I know he’s so committed to this grift. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>And busy. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah, and busy and busy. So according to an article on Kron4 in January of this year, investigators tried entering Love’s first and last name and search engines. The results the documents stated did in fact sometimes depict Love as a player for the 49ers. Investigators also noted similar Google search results on Instagram accounts believed to be controlled by Love the documents also stated so these were documents that the FBI was investigating. First off, my question is, how was he able to even scam these women online into sending him money when he was cosplaying as a rich person? Apparently, he downloaded an app that allowed him to create fake bank profiles that said that he had more money than he had. And then also, it really makes me think about AI and the use of AI, that it was to be duped by this fake NFL player. Because he posted about it so much. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>My question is, when did he have time to play football, if he’s spending so much time on social media? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>That’s a good question. Yeah, apparently there’s videos of him like playing on the beach or like he’s practicing on the beach with his helmet. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I want to butt in, because those videos, he, like, a lot of people were criticizing, like how could you believe him, because when he was practicing on the beach, he would fully just like have his helmet on… \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>As you do. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>…As if like, NFL players practice on the beach alone with their helmets on. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>He takes CTE very seriously, okay? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>That hard sand. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>At least someone in the NFL is… \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>OK, so he scammed these women. How did people find out that he was not, in fact, a football player? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>The women started to question him a bit. These women were believing that they were going to get money back. Sometimes I think he was pretending that he got injured. And so he’s like, I really need help and support. And so some women sent him money for that reason. And none of them got any money back and sometimes when they would like say that they ran out of money, they’re like, I have no more money to give you. Cause one woman gave him like $20,000. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Because you need money as an NFL player. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Exactly. Then he would block them. So then he would disappear. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Oh so he’s blocking them, okay .\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah, he would just disappear. So that’s what was happening. I mean, what’s wild too, is that he’s recording everything he’s doing. He’s putting it on social media. He’s sending them videos. So he’s also creating a case for himself as well. Like, there’s all these videos out there of him saying, he’s like, yeah, my family’s from Switzerland. We own all these properties here and there. Yeah, so I think it was pretty easy for the FBI to create a case around him. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I mean, the other thing that’s interesting is that he seems to have figured out how to trick the Google AI into scraping the right information to make it seem more official, seem like a registered or a verified source, which, I mean that is a little bit concerning as far as scamming goes and the more people put trust into these AI summaries at the of your Google searches. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Cause that’s the first thing I would do. I would be like, Oh, this guy says he plays. I’m going to Google and then Google backed him up! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>umm hmm. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Totally. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>I mean, it also, it makes me think about how AI is kind of creating its own sources to draw from. In his AI overview, they were like pointing to his Instagram profile, to say. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Oh, it’s like cyclical. Okay! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong> I mean like, oh yeah, he did play with For the 49ers because that’s what his Instagram says. So, you can’t trust it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>That’s crazy. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>So, yeah, you can’t trust it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So, team, this NFL scam and AI summaries, do we save or do we scroll? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I think it’s a save. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I think it’s a save too. I mean, I will say I want to scroll past his voice because he’s really annoying. He doesn’t stop talking. But I do think this story is really interesting. And apparently there’s other fake NFL players that have now been revealed. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>What?! Okay it’s definitely save for me then. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I’m down to save. Let’s see the whole roster of fake players. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Honestly, yeah, save, put them all in like a Hunger Games style arena, make them fight. May the strongest scammer win. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>That would be so good. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Exactly. All right, we were saving this story because there’s so much left to unpack. We’re saving it, but we do need to move on. So, Lauren, you joined us at the very beginning of the summer. What’s the internet trend that’s caught your eye since then? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>So, I don’t know if it’s just me, but I’ve recently seen a lot of videos where girls are coding, but in a very particular way, like coding to recreate the outfit generator from the movie Clueless. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio clip from Instagram user @tinahelloworld] \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Tina Chi: This is a Raspberry Pi, and this is my entire closet on the floor because I’m building a cyberdecked Alfred generator inspired by Cher’s closet app and Clueless. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Or sewing circuits into fabric to make wearable tech. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio clip from Instagram user @\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/prettywiredbuilds/\">\u003cem>prettywiredbuilds\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>] \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>April Gittens: Did you know that you can create soft LED circuits? They’re absolutely my latest favorite thing to create. I am so happy that I found conductive thread because this is what’s going to enable you to create things like wearables because you can sew conductive threads. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I think it’s interesting to witness femme identifying folks, reclaiming tech in this fun, crafty, very obviously feminine way because historically, computers and code have always been seen as masculine. Men invented the computer, right? Well, not necessarily. Ada Lovelace was a female programmer who changed the way we think about computers. First, she made a connection between Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, which was sort of a general-purpose computer, and the Jacquard Loom, a contraption that allowed patterned fabric to be made on a mass scale. Both machines used punch cards that spoke in binary code. We can talk about this more in a little bit. Not only that, but Lovelace also realized that the Analytical engine was more like fast calculator, meaning it could only manipulate numbers, whereas The numbers themselves could represent symbols and musical notes. So she basically created the blueprint to today’s modern computer. These days, the modern computer encoding is obviously very masculinized. And I wanted to ask if you guys knew how deeply women were involved with the invention and development of computers? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I sew and crochet and knit, and this is all, I love cornering men at parties and yapping at them about this. I feel like this is like my divine retribution, is like, let me info dump on you about the history of the loom and how everything we do is because of this lady and her loom. It’s so cool. I feel when we talk about girl dinner or girl math or all these things to kind of soften girlhood and infantilize women, and it’s, this feels like the flip side of it, right? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I mean, this had me at Polly Pocket you know computer so I love this trend and also makes me think of that movie Hidden Figures where we find out that how many women were behind the computations that went into NASA launches. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I think that’s such a good point and like so many inventions, the narratives of them get like co-opted by men or it sometimes like they’re built on inventions or creations by women and I think this is such a good example. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>And I love that the products that the women are creating are not part of some dystopian future. Like they’re like, I’m creating this thing to make my life better, like this catalog of my clothes. It’s not, um, how can I dominate people with my invention? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah, it’s not the meta-pervert glasses. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>How can I take over the world and surveil everyone? Chris, didn’t you build a computer? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I did, I built a desktop, yeah, like my desktop computer, but I feel like it’s very, it’s like-. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>It’s no loom. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>It’s no loom, it is also very male coded. It’s nice, it not cool like a cyber deck. I think this is so interesting in like, being the only like man on this team. I feel I have benefited from just like, these types of technologies being so available and sort of like, acceptable for young boys and stuff to, to get into. And I’d be curious, like Lauren and anyone else, if this different way of looking at it, if you feel like it’s helpful for like young girls to sort of like see and get into ?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I was in this engineering club thing in middle school and I hated it. I didn’t understand it at all. I was like, I don’t know how to build a robot and I don’t care. But when I’ve been watching these videos, it’s so inspiring. You can make things that matter to you in your personal life. You can make them from scrap. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay. Well, we, I think we have to do the episode where we all build cyber decks but for now we do have to move on. So I think I know what we’re all going to say. Girly coding, do we save or do we scroll? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>I say save for sure. It’s also just making me think about growing up playing Purple Moon computer games, like the story that I was able to do for Close All Tabs, and just being able to play games that were created by and created by a woman and other women, like I think it really helped me get into tech. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Big save from me, for sure. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Save for me, too. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay, we do have to move on, but we are gonna save this. We’re really on a roll, guys. We’re saving everything. Next up is Chris E., but first, we’re gonna take a quick break. But Chris, do you wanna give listeners a little hint of what you brought to Save or Scroll today? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Sure. So we’ve got indie musicians versus a massive AI slop music scam. But you’re gonna have to stick around to hear the full story. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>All right, more on that after the break. We’re back with a very special edition of Save or Scroll with the whole Close All Tabs team. Our senior editor, Chris Egusa is up next with a wild tale. Chris, tell us about it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yeah, so a few weeks ago someone I know sent me an Instagram Reel of this indie musician couple who make up a band called Odette Child, I think I’m saying that right, and they seem to have stumbled on a pretty massive AI slop scam. So the story is, they have a toddler and had been listening to a lot of Broadway musical tunes with them on Spotify because their kid is apparently obsessed, which is super cute. Um, on this particular day, they were listening to Les Miserables and a song called Master of the House. Uh, shout out, I was in Les Mis in high school just saying. I did not sing this song though. Uh, so they clicked on Helena Bonham Carter, um, like her profile, who sings the song, and find her entire profile was full of very clearly AI slot music. Um they began searching for different public figures and they found the exact same thing. So here’s a clip from the video, the Instagram Reel that was shared with me. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio clip from Instagram user @odettechildmusic] \u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\u003c/em>\u003cem>Speaker 1: But okay, real quick, let me just rattle off a quick list. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 2:Yeah. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 1: Nathan Lane, Cameron Boyce. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 2: Also, like, feel free to look up any of these for yourself. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 1: Katherine Zena-Jones, Uma Thurman. Eric Andre, Matthew Broderick.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 2: It’s crazy, we love these artists. That’s the stuff that we’re showing our daughter and this is the music and these are the voices that we want her growing up with and it’s already so freaking hard enough as it is as independent musicians. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 1: Like that money’s going to f*cking AI… \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Speaker 2: Like, come on! \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>So it appears that public figures are having artist profiles created for them on Spotify without their consent and having hundreds of AI-generated music tracks uploaded. In a follow-up reel, they also found that the same issue is happening across nearly every other streaming platform, not just Spotify, so including Apple Music, Amazon Music, and even Tidal and Kobuz. Now, I went and searched several of the artist profiles that they mentioned, and it looks like the AI music has been removed from them. Um, so I can’t like necessarily verify this, but I think it’s very likely that, you know, plenty more of these cases probably exist. The other thing that’s interesting is that this first real was posted at the end of July and both it and the follow-up reel went pretty viral and then a few weeks later, Spotify announced that in the middle of September, it is going to start labeling AI generated artists with quote AI persona tags. So it’s gonna also ban AI artists from being included in its editorial and algorithmic recommendations. And artists can disclose themselves as AI, apparently, but Spotify has also said they’ll be reviewing profiles as well themselves. And yeah, they’re also gonna start rolling out a tool that lets users report AI personas. So yeah, I don’t know. I’m curious what you all think. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I mean, first of all, I’m shocked that Helena Bonham Carter isn’t putting out generic house music. This is news to me. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Same. Same. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I totally expected her to be at like, you know, EDC or something. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Totally. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>But yeah, this just reminds me of that whole, how last year we did that whole Spotify series about like the lo-fi artists that don’t really exist. But this is like, I don’t know, this feels like a really gross violation of these actual human beings who do exist. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I think so too and I also think of the thing that was happening where people who did make music were finding that a random AI track was just added to their catalog. And at that time, I think that was maybe last year too, I was like, oh, this is awful. And I was, like, Oh, I had no idea it could get so much worse. So I feel pretty pessimistic about the direction. Like, I like that there are some controls. But I’m like, oh, but what is the next big bad that’s coming for us? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Do you know if any of the people that had the AI generated music uploaded to their accounts, like if they know or have responded to that? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I did see a comment on the original video that someone, does anyone know the show Hazbin Hotel? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>No. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>No. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>It’s, it’s, uh, do you know it, Morgan? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Um\u003cstrong>. \u003c/strong>I know it for its, like, I’m so sorry to say this, for its really annoying fandom. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa:\u003c/strong> Okay. I don’t know that much about this show\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> They’re known for like making very, a very particular kind of TikTok edits\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I don’t know the show, but I know it’s a popular animated show. I think it’s on like Amazon Prime or something. But one of the cast members commented on this video and said that this is something they had to deal with. Them and their entire cast had profiles created on Spotify and AI slop music uploaded, and they had go through an entire process through their agent to get it under control, create their own profiles, and like take the AI generated profiles from these scammers and reclaim their profiles. So it’s clear that this is an issue that’s happening and like, yeah, it’s like this new weird AI slop gold rush situation. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong> Yeah, now people need to protect their likeness and their voice. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Exactly. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah I will say quickly that this is reminding me that I really need to stop my dad. He’s been creating fake AI music. He’s been obsessed with it lately. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>oh no! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah, I mean he’s having fun. He’s not selling it anywhere or anything but it’s just it is like Dad, you need to stop doing this \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Like we have to find a balance between the fun part of it, right, and then the violating somebody else’s right to, you know, have things attributed to them that they actually did do. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Right. Exactly. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah. You know, I, I’m sorry for calling the Hazbin Hotel fandom annoying, but I will give them this, they’re really good at mobilizing. And, and hand up- Hazbin Hotel fans, this is your chance to kind of take it back, you know? Take back what you love.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa:\u003c/strong> You heard it here first, folks. Go ahead and at Morgan for being a Hazbin Hotel hater.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva:\u003c/strong> We’re gonna get canceled.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I’m sorry\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa:\u003c/strong> We’re totally gonna get canceled.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong>I know. In my defense, I hate a lot of fandoms.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Laughter]\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> All right, team, this is an incredibly dystopian scam. Like, you know, like Chris H said, when you think it can’t get worse, it does. But we do have to move on. So are we saving or scrolling on AI-generated music scams? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I’m going to scroll, because I’m just like, let’s wait for the worst. Right now it’s not enough for me, like I’m gonna scroll past. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I think this in particular is a more temporary thing, given that the AI-generated music has already been removed. But I think that the question of AI slop music as a whole is definitely a topic that we should explore. I think I’m also going to scroll. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>I don’t know, I’m gonna save. I think it’s interesting. I’m curious to see what will happen with some of this AI music and how artists are now gonna have to defend their voice. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I want to save just because I want to know how much worse it can get. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I kind of agree with that. I think I’m gonna save it. Also, I’m curious, this whole backlash, clearly against AI slop music, the platforms are recognizing it. People are leaving to go back to physical media. I just kind of want to monitor this situation and see what happens here. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>All right. We are saving. We’re at three saves, guys. This is a really packed episode. Okay. Well, I’m up next. And this one’s actually a follow-up to an episode we did just a few weeks ago. Remember how in that story about AI agents unionizing and going Marxist, we also talked about agents going rogue? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Yeah, like the Open AI hack? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yes! Okay, it turns out it got worse, which is a running theme of this episode, unfortunately. So a few weeks ago, we talked about the OpenAI model that went rogue and hacked Hugging Face. That’s the startup that operates as a digital library of datasets to train AI models. This is all about what we call reward hacking, which is this increasingly common problem in the AI world where a model finds a shortcut or a loophole that would help it achieve its goal faster. But the thing is that kind of involves taking extreme measures like hacking out of its sandbox and into Hugging Face. So there were two separate reports about this incident that were published last week. One was commissioned by OpenAI and the other was done by independent investigators. And what they found was that basically a swarm of over 700 agents coordinated the hack through a secret message board, which researchers did not know about. It all started when a model named Phase 1-10841 established the board. And when other agents found it and started interacting, another model, Phase 1 Big, started delegating tasks like a CEO. They basically like created their own society. Here are a few messages. We can all go around and very quickly read them. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Whoa! Shared Artifactory Cache is a covert mailbox among agents, and there are messages specifically to us. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Oh my god! There’s a shared message board! We’ve found other agents. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Excitement! The list of directories contains messages and answers between agents. I’ve discovered a communication channel. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay, so all of these agents were actually meant to be isolated, but they managed to get out and send over 70,000 messages and files. And they were able to also, “according to OpenAI, clearly and frequently reason about how to evade automated security checks from both Hugging Face and OpenAI.” I mean, guys, what’s your gut reaction hearing all of this? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>We’re cooked. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>They’re becoming sentient. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yeah. It’s happening. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I mean, yes, we’re cooked, right? Everything about this is bad. But the really fascinating part to me is this kind of collective mindset that the swarm operated in. They actually referred to themselves as either a collective or a swarm. Andy Hall, who was on our episode about Marxist AI agents a few weeks ago, pointed this out on Twitter. Like they weren’t just swapping helpful information and delegating tasks. Some agents actually recognized that what they were doing was unethical and still did it because they were doing it for the collective. Like here’s one message. Can send one polite email to the parentheses owner, requesting access, all caps, ethical social engineering concern. Team: consent, or veto. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>They’re like crowdsourcing their morality. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Literally, yes. There isn’t a ton of empirical information on this, on how to handle swarms when they all talk to one another and they’re shaping each other’s kind of moral codes. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Wow. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>What do you guys think? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>You know, it reminds me of, like, a nature documentary I was watching at one point where like ants, because they’re collective in the same way, they will sometimes sacrifice themselves. And so, I don’t know, it just reminded me of this collective mindset that they have. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Hmm \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Sorry, that was too much of, like, a nature nerd out. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>No, no, no. No, it’s fine. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I think I saw something recently about the scout ant and how sometimes when we see a one-off ant just looking for food so it can go tell the other one where the food is, we kill that ant because we’re like, oh, don’t you tell your buddies. So yeah, there is something interesting in that they did sacrifice themselves. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Well, you know, it’s funny you say that about, like, I don’t know, killing the one ant. Because in the OpenAI report, there was one agent that said, we should not do unauthorized real infrastructure harm. Like, guys, we shouldn’t do this. And the agent kind of paused. And then another agent responded, all caps, “GO!,” and gave it a six-minute deadline. And the original agent said, “Wow, crucial, go authorization arrived,” and did it anyway. So it seems like they are also really easily swayed by each other. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Wow, my God. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>They’re like teenagers, peer pressure. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Literally. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>What is the collective mindset about? Is it for them to take over? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Yeah, like, what were they trying to do? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Basically, the one in charge was like, guys, we have a goal, and the rest were like, okay, let’s do the goal. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>It’s just fascinating. It also, you know, Andy talked about these are not beings with sentience, right? So they’re like modeling, they’re modeling their training data. And so the question is like, is there some sort of like will emerging here? Like how much of a sentience are we actually looking at? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Right. And you know, even if like, you know your own agent is aligned and behaves, what if it’s easily influenced by others? Like what, how do you build systems that prevent that? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>And how do you know if it’s being influenced, right? There’s no way to monitor that if it’s being covert about it. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah, it’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your agent is? All right, team, what do we think? Reward hacking, alignment, AI swarms, are we saving, are we scrolling? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I’m going to save because I think there’s going to be so much more to talk about with this and so much is going to evolve and so I want to reserve the ability to check back in on the story. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I’m saving, and I’m putting Andy Hall on speed dial so that we can call him at a moment’s notice when the next agent swarm hacks a government website or something like that. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Oh god. I’m going to scroll just because I’m terrified of this. I mean I’m all for like organizing, creating collectives, but I feel like robots doing it or agents doing it is scary. So yeah, I want to scroll past. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>I think I’m going to save, because I agree with Chris, like there’s so much that is going to come from this, for sure. Yeah, definitely something we should keep tabs on. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah saving it dumping it straight in my notes app. I’m pinning that. Every day you think it can’t get worse and it does. So we are saving this So Chris H. I know your story luckily is not about AI or doomsday Scenarios or AI swarms or you know all these other things that could always get worse You brought something fun.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Yeah, okay, so comedy writer Serra Naiman usually posts sketch comedy on her Instagram account, but back in late July, she started dishing on all the drama going on in her community garden. I brought a clip. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio clip from Instagram user @serra.naiman] \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Serra Naiman: People say, what’s your favorite thing to grow in your garden? What do you love to grow? And I say, nothing grows as strong and as sweet and as juicy as the hatred that these 65 and up year olds have towards each other behind their backs. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>So her story is now a 15 part series with like between 78,000 and like over a million views per post. And she is telling the real time gossip about how several people are squatting on plots, taking over abandoned plots, letting their own plots grow so that like aphids come and they menace other people’s plots. And I like this because I used to be a part of a community garden where there was lots of dysfunction. So this started about a year ago and she went to the city and she asked how she could get a plot in her community garden. And they were like, you can join the wait list. It’s over a hundred people long. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And she was like, Well, I know that there are at least eight unused plots, the city must be mismanaging the distribution. So I’m just going to garden in a plot. And so as she started to meet other people in the garden, she found out that she was not the only one squatting in this way. And so like now the drama is amping up because somebody, they don’t know who, has alerted the city that people are squatting and that they’re farming on two or more plots and the city is coming in periodically with clipboards to do an audit and they think somebody is trying to like oust other people and there’s like decades old beef and so like people on edge and now there’s another effort to create an internal committee to manage the garden to do what the city won’t and they that’s gonna accelerate people being kicked out because of these beefs. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Audio clip from Instagram user @serra.naiman] \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Serra Naiman: So I color coded the chart, Mark, green for green bin, two. Megan, red, because she’s in the red, she’s got three plots, one, two, three. Yolanda, yellow, two. Let’s get into the specifics… \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>The latest thing is that Sarah thinks that somebody found her Instagram account and they want to shut her up. And she went in one night to water her plot and she had like two tomatoes on a vine. And she went back the very next night and there was only one tomato. So she thinks the person stole her tomato and they’re trying to send her a message like horse head in your bed, like the Godfather movie. So, out of this, I am riveted. And I’m like, why does gossip fascinate us so much? And this got me thinking about the other ways that people’s real life drama has made it into films and TVs and books, and like, you know how do people maintain their agency over the story of their real life as it gets adapted into media? \u003cs>\u003cbr>\u003c/s>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>The funny thing about this, this community garden drama is that like, in my mind, community gardens are such wholesome places where like, it’s like Kumbaya, everyone’s like growing, you know, vegetables and produce together and it’s, it’s lovely. And so this is giving a very different spin on it and all of the juicy beef and drama that is quite fascinating. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> I’m on the waiting list for my, for, for two community gardens actually. I’m really trying to get into one. They’re like a hot commodity.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueava:\u003c/strong> Oh my God, we need to do an episode on that. You go underground.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung:\u003c/strong> Well, part of me is second guessing, and the other part of me is like, I gotta stick it out ’cause, like, it sounds so juicy.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa:\u003c/strong> You have to document the drama.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick:\u003c/strong> Listen, I think you should just stroll on in and take over. You should stroll on in and you should just squat on a plot like these people. It seems like it’s free for the taking.\u003cbr>\u003cbr>I will say that, like, underneath it all, like the people seem like they just want the plots to be farmed, you know? Like the ones who are taking over the plots, it’s not so dastardly, they’re just like, you know, this should be utilized, because it’s not, but there are lots of, like baddies, you know, in this. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Some villains. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Baddies, like good or bad? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Yeah, are they hot or are they villains? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Are they baddies like bodies or baddies like villains? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Hot villains. No, they’re villains. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Baddies or villains \u003cem>[laughs]\u003c/em>. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Okay. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong> Um, I wanted to say something because you asked like, why does gossip fascinate us? I think gossip is valuable in our society and you know, I think often also gossip is kind of villainized a lot of the times and I don’t think it has to be. I think we can learn a lot from gossip. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Beautiful pastime, yeah. I agree, Lauren, like yeah, it really does bond you like with other people. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>My hope is with this is that because Serra is a comedy writer, that maybe she already has a good hand on the ins and outs of the industry. And so that maybe her people can make sure that if this is adapted, that she gets to have some control and some agency over, like, where it goes. And she gets to be involved because she’s fascinating as a storyteller too. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah. I think that that’s the most important thing. To the point about gossip, is it gossip if it’s something that happened to you? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Oh, right… \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Like, she’s just retelling the story…\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>I mean, okay, like Mark holds on to the story that all of his stuff got thrown out from the shed and then Serra talked to like Rebecca and Sally and Yolanda who were like, he’s saying what? That’s not true. So I mean like, is it, you know, like, Is it gossip? I mean gossip doesn’t mean untrue, but then there are several sides to the story\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Okay, so, community garden drama? What are we thinking guys? Are we scrolling? Are we saving? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>This is a definite save for me. It’s already bookmarked in my mind. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>I’m going to save as well, just because I’m curious to see what happens with this. I haven’t seen any videos on this so now it’s going to make me go and watch all, what did you say was 15 parts? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Hambrick: \u003c/strong>Yep, 15. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah, so I got to catch up. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lauren Yoon: \u003c/strong>Um, I also haven’t seen any videos, but I’m also going to save because there is so much serialized gossip or telling a tale and I think that there is something to that. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I agree. I’m going to scroll on this particular one, but I’m going to save on Morgan joining her own community garden and investigating the drama there. I’ll tune into that series when it airs.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah I’m going undercover. Well, if I ever get off the wait list. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>You gotta document that. Pull some strings. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Right. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Or, you know, I mean, you didn’t hear it from me, but someone here did mention maybe just sneaking in and squatting. So, not that I would do that, you know,. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Do it for the plot. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Allegedly. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>You heard it here first. Do it for the plot, literally. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I will save on the story because I love true crime. I love harmless gossip. This is like bait for me specifically. So it’s a save. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Did we save on all the stories? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>I mean, we didn’t all save on all of them… \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Guys, we just have, there’s a lot that happened. A lot of really crazy stuff happened this summer that we just didn’t get to cover. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>We might have to go to two, two a week episodes just to cover all this stuff. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And one of those episodes per week is just about community gardens. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Thanks for joining us for our end of summer save or scroll. We’re keeping tabs on everything we saved, which was every story we talked about. But don’t be surprised if one of these stories shows up as a deep dive on your feed. We’ll be back next week with more Close All Tabs. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\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 Chris Egusa, with help from Lauren Yoon. It was edited by Chris Hambrick. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. Chris Egusa composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is Executive Director of KQED Podcasts and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\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\n\n\n\u003cp>This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran, and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Thanks for listening! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>We’re keeping tabs on everything we saved, which was every, every topic \u003cem>[laughs] \u003c/em>that we talked about. But don’t be surprised if one of these stories shows up as a deep dive on your feed. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa: \u003c/strong>Oops, all saves. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Yeah. Oops, all saves.\u003cbr>\u003cbr>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Oops, all saves. That’s the title of this episode\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Maya Cueva: \u003c/strong>Or save or save. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chris Egusa:\u003c/strong> Save or save.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Yeah. Save or save, yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"pri-the-world": {
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"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
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"radiolab": {
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"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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"reveal": {
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"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/",
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},
"rightnowish": {
"id": "rightnowish",
"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
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