The 404 Media Podcast

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We start this week with Jason’s piece on a cop making a fake Flock camera to catch a vandal. How can you be charged with destroying expensive property if… the camera wasn’t real? After the break, Sam tells us about how Darth Vader loves Flock. In the subscribers-only section, we talk a bit about three years of 404 Media.

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Man Charged With 3 Felonies For Breaking 3D-Printed ‘Decoy’ Flock Camera

The Man Behind the Anti-Flock Darth Vader Mask Wants to Know: 'When Will This End?'

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/rYCvhAOGAjM
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Tech companies want you to believe that the chatbots they profit from are the always ready, never judgemental, constantly affirming friend in our pockets. But are the people using them as companions under some kind of deep self-delusion? Or are they seeking something else?

This week I’m joined by Bridget Todd. Among many other projects and accomplishments, Bridget is the creator and host of the award winning podcast There Are No Girls on the Internet, is a Fellow at the MacArthur Foundation, and an affiliate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Her new audiobook, Love at First Prompt: AI and the Future of Intimacy, launched in July with coauthor Michael Amato.

We talk about her work interviewing people who use chatbots to fill an emotional need, how people who engage in romantic, intimate and erotic roleplay with LLMs are mocked for it, and how tech companies are implicated in all of this. In her new book, you’ll hear from experts in the field of AI companionship, but also from people who have nuanced, interesting interactions with chatbots every day. Bridget’s book is her most vulnerable work yet: She unpacks and critiques her own use of ChatGPT during a crisis, and reveals what she learned about herself, her friendships and real-life relationships, and what it means to maintain human connections in a world where tech companies are constantly trying to exploit our innermost worlds.

Love at First Prompt: AI and the Future of Intimacy

New Study Reveals the Manipulative ‘Dark Patterns’ of AI Chatbots

‘It’s Hurting Like Hell’: AI Companion Users Are In Crisis, Reporting Sudden Sexual Rejection

ChatGPT’s Hail Mary: Chatbots You Can Fuck

Youtube Version: https://youtu.be/qCk-7r7lp8Y

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We start this week with Emanuel’s big story about Amazon buying, and destroying, masses of books to train AI. After the break we talk about a couple of wild cases where people are using AI. In the subscribers-only section, we talk about Meta’s new smart glasses patent and research into how perverts are using them.

We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility

‘Show How 3M Is 0% at Fault:’ Expert Witness Used ChatGPT to Write Report Defending Company in Deadly Explosion Lawsuit

Person Hides Prompt Injection in Legal Filing Telling AI to Side With Them

Meta Patents AI Glasses to Use Facial Recognition to Identify People, Make Highlight Reels of Your Dinner Party

Researchers Show How Meta's 'Pervert Glasses' Are Used to Harass Women

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/_sf2VoKvxBk

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The past, present, and future of deepfakes, as seen by the world’s leading expert on synthetic media.

I think we’re pretty good at telling the difference between an AI generated image and a real photograph, but when I need help I call Hany Farid.

Farid is the cofounder of GetReal, a company that specializes in detecting deepfakes and other AI-generated images, and is the developer of PhotoDNA, a perceptual hashing algorithm that helps companies automatically detect and remove some of the worst images that exist online, and that is now being used by every serious internet platform in the world.

We started talking to Hany regularly in 2017, when Sam first reported on deepfakes. As that technology evolved and changed how we perceive reality, so have our conversations. I wanted to talk to him today on the podcast so you could hear of those conversations, and so that Hany and I could zoom out, reflect on the past few years, and speculate about where we might be headed.

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/0xVxK5o4P48

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Take control of your data footprint risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Go to ⁠https://incogni.com/404Media⁠ and use code 404MEDIA for 60% off an annual plan. That's code 404MEDIA at ⁠https://incogni.com/404Media⁠.

We start this week with Jason’s article about Mark Zuckerberg’s plan for Meta’s AI agents. They don't sound fun at all. After the break, Emanuel tells us how a company offering “100% human-written” medical research is actually all AI. In the subscribers-only section, Joseph explains why some cities are ditching Flock then immediately replacing those cameras with Axon ones.

Mark Zuckerberg Posts Deranged 6,500-Word Essay About Giving Everyone AI Superintelligence

Company Offering ‘100% Human-Written, Never AI’ Peer Review Is Entirely AI

Cities Are Ditching Flock, Immediately Replacing It With Axon License Plate Readers

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