What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future

Under fire for what critics say is inadequate protection of its young user base, Roblox nevertheless remains incredibly popular. Are the company’s new ballyhooed protections up for the task of keeping kids safe? Or is that asking the wrong question entirely?

Guests:

Cecilia D'Anastasio, video game reporter for Bloomberg. 

Mary Harris, host of the other What Next

Stella Harris, daughter of Mary.

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Between artificial intelligence, the Iran War, and the future of Taiwan, there’s a lot for the United States and China to hash out—not least of which being the pecking order.

Guest: Josh Chin, senior global correspondent for the Wall Street Journal.

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Everyone would probably hate A.I. less if we could just see some upside to it. But despite all the investment—into the companies, into infrastructure like data centers, so much into marketing—it’s widely known: artificial intelligence sucks.

Guest: Nilay Patel, co-founder and editor in chief of The Verge. 

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The not-always-beloved-but-indisputably-useful Spirit Airlines has given up the ghost. What does this mean for the airline industry and your summer travel plans? 

Guest: Will Guisbond, senior reporter for The Air Current.

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In the early 2020s, Microsoft committed to buying 75 million tons of carbon removal—somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of the entire carbon removal market. But the company just announced it was putting that ambition on pause.. 

Guest: Robinson Meyer, founding executive editor of Heatmap News.

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This week marks the beginning of the jury trial between Elon Musk and Sam Altman. There are massive implications for the A.I. industry here, but at the end of the day, the question might just boil down to - who do people dislike more?

Guest: Gerrit De Vynck, tech reporter at the Washington Post

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The era of ads following you around the internet via cookies might be coming to an end. What’s replacing it?

Guest: Sara Fisher, Axios' media correspondent, and media analyst at CNN.

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Is artificial intelligence a blessing to all humanity, or a demon sent to lead us astray from God’s path? MAGA is choosing between two extremes.

Guest: Kiera Butler, national correspondent for Mother Jones.

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This very online administration is facing push back from Iran in their own home territory: the world of insipid memes, A.I. videos, and online mockery.

Guest: Ali Breland, staff writer for the Atlantic.

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Back in the depths of the pandemic, what was an actor to do? Ben McKenzie started looking into cryptocurrency—and his research yielded both a book and a new documentary. The works are both non-fiction, which is more than McKenzie can say for crypto.

Guest: Ben McKenzie, actor, director of the documentary Everyone Is Lying to You for Money, and co-author of Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Frau...

If you had as much trouble getting along with other humans as Sam Altman does, you too might be eager to issue in the artificial intelligence revolution.

Guest: Andrew Marantz, staff writer for the New Yorker. 

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As OpenAI prepares for its IPO, the company decided to…pay millions of dollars for a tech talk show? Is this just what rich tech guys like Sam Altman are like now? 

Guest: Mike Isaac, tech reporter for the New York Times.

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One of artificial intelligence’s most hyped “abilities” is how it writes computer code. So much so that seemingly anyone can do it. So we figured… why not us? 

Guests: 

Greg Lavalee, Slate’s Chief Technology Officer.

Clive Thompson, contributing writer for the New York Times

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In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, private credit or “shadow banking” grew as an alternative to the regulations and shared risk that institutional banks operate within. What happens if a crisis hits the trillions of dollars that are outside of those guardrails? We may be about to find out. 

Guest: Tracy Alloway, co-host of Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast.

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Artificial intelligence is working its way into every aspect of our lives, including law and immigration enforcement, and the industry is spending millions of dollars to ensure it can continue to do so unregulated. But as evidence of bias appears in this nascent tech, this congresswoman wants to ensure we’re not just recreating our historical biases and problems all over again—which is to say, she wants guardrails. 

Guest: ...

What YouTube and Meta’s loss in the “social media addiction trial” could mean for your feed.

Guest: Ryan Mac, business and technology reporter for the New York Times.

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Why Palantir cofounder and CEO Alex Karp views working with Western militaries not just as a business opportunity, but as a higher calling.

Guest: Jacob Silverman, journalist and author of “Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley.”

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Hank Green recently pulled a “reverse OpenAI” - he took his education platform Complexly and made it a nonprofit. In a world where outrage, A.I. slop and “brain rot” are all heavily incentivized by platforms, Hank explains why he’d rather make content that leans into the complexity of our world. 

Guest: Hank Green, YouTuber, half of Vlogbrothers, host of Crash Course and SciShow and founder of VidCon and Complexly.

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A half dozen state attorneys general have sued the online gaming platform Roblox after multiple investigations found child predators on the site and more than 20 people were arrested for abducting or abusing children they had met via Roblox. 

Guest: Mike Hilgers, Nebraska Attorney General.

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