00:00:53.240and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:00:58.760I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
00:01:02.380Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:01:09.920These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:01:13.740Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:21.360If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:01:27.100Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:35.740Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:02:24.440So, Producer Mike, do you know what that means?
00:02:26.760It means we have a new crop of prom-inspired AI scams just dropped.
00:02:33.280Every season, you got to keep up with the hottest new scams.
00:02:37.620Yeah, so the new prom AI scam purports to show a girl who is getting dressed up for prom,
00:02:44.280like it's your typical prom picture of a girl dressed up in a prom dress.
00:02:48.440But the twist is, she is holding a framed photo of her father, who is a soldier who is purported to have died in some sort of military conflict or is otherwise not around. And she has made a dress, her prom dress, out of his uniform.
00:03:06.620So she's holding a picture of an impossibly handsome-looking soldier.
00:03:12.420She herself is impossibly beautiful, but she's sobbing in a way that is almost uncontrollably sobbing while holding this image, while showing herself in this dress that I feel like if you know much about dresses, you would look at this dress and say,
00:03:28.200I don't think that this teenager made this dress out of her fallen soldier father's army uniform for prom.
00:03:36.620Something about the image, to me, I was surprised to see this one take off because I thought, oh, this one does seem to be one of the pictures that falls apart or gives itself away as AI, the more you look at it.
00:03:49.200It does, but I have to say this one, they got me for a couple of seconds. I was just so curious about it. Like I didn't read, I don't know that there was much text written about it, but I was just kind of perplexed by it because I thought that it was pretending to represent that this like military dress was somehow part of like an official uniform or something.
00:04:17.760I didn't really get it, you know, and it just like kind of sidestepped around my usual defenses
00:04:25.100of constantly asking, like, is this AI? Is this AI? And I was just like, what is this?
00:04:30.900And then you're right, you know, after clicking in and looking at it and thinking about it a little
00:04:35.380bit more deeply, it's AI. It's all AI. Everything is AI. But something about it, I don't know,
00:04:41.600just like, it tricked me for a couple seconds. I got to admit it.
00:04:44.960Ooh, you know, you're not alone because it also got Katie Couric in a thread about how this AI scam slop was everywhere. Katie Couric had initially shared it and then in a thread about how it's AI, someone tagged her and it was like, it even got Katie Couric. In her defense, Katie Couric replied, guilty, we'll do better.
00:05:05.700face palm emoji, which I feel like is very relatable. If you Google, she had her prom
00:05:12.660dress made from her late father's military uniform, you will find just post after post
00:05:18.800after post after post of variations on this story. A lot of them use a young Black woman,
00:05:24.580but there's one that is probably my favorite where it's a non-Black woman. The uniform dress1.00
00:05:30.260is always the same, but in this picture, the girl who is going to prom is, like, ugly crying,
00:05:37.280like, really sobbing with a distorted face, and for some reason, the picture that she's holding,
00:05:43.580which purports to be her father's official military portrait, what do you know what her
00:05:47.560father is also ugly crying in the image? I've seen that one, and yeah, they just,
00:05:54.100they jumped the shark, they went too far, too much sentimentality. I do love that there are still
00:08:42.220Yes. You've really said that well. That's kind of what I was trying to get at. The photo, if you take a step back from it, it feels like it was engineered to evoke a certain response in you, the viewer. And the subject of the photo is almost, you know, happenstance.
00:09:01.400You are having such an emotional, instant response to it that that seems to be what the piece of content is going for. And it is what it's going for because it's not real. It's AI.
00:09:12.220Yeah, right. That is what it's going for. Exactly. You know, we got a comment, I think, on Spotify a little bit ago. Somebody was criticizing you for getting taken by the crab video of the crab wearing the GoPro going down into their like crab catacombs.
00:09:29.200That was one of the only, not to be one of those podcasts that like complains about the comments because I love the comments, but that was maybe the only genuinely, I thought, mean comment we've ever gotten for real where I'm like, oh, this person listened to the podcast and had something kind of rude to say about it.
00:12:45.420So this is usually the kind of Elon Musk story that I would never bring to the pod.
00:12:50.060But it's just sort of been on my mind lately because it kind of involves a lot of different elements that kind of catch my interest.
00:12:57.100So Christopher Nolan, the director, did you know that he's doing this film adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey that's coming out later this summer?
00:13:06.400I am aware, and I'm actually pretty excited for it.
00:13:09.860As you know, I have a longstanding interest in, you know, ancient civilizations.
00:13:17.680Well, you know who is not excited for that adaptation?
00:13:42.520I've seen a lot of kind of guys in that arena really losing it about this casting choice.
00:13:51.200And I wanted to sort of talk about it, even though generally this is the kind of thing that,
00:13:54.440You know, I think that Elon wants people to be talking about his terrible take about this.
00:14:00.900But I do think there's something else going on here, which is why I want to talk about it.
00:14:04.460So the whole thing kind of started when Matt Walsh, that conservative commentator, posted on X that, oh, we're all being told not to object to Helen of Troy being portrayed as a Black woman.
00:14:15.280But if a white woman was cast as the most beautiful woman in Africa, it would cause riots.
00:14:20.560not to mention the fact that this is a completely historical comment. There's all kinds of casting
00:14:26.580nonsense that goes on in Hollywood, which we can talk about in a minute because I have an example
00:14:30.720that might blow your mind. But Elon Musk replied, absolutely true, such hypocrisy in Hollywood.0.90
00:14:36.920And then he kept tweeting about it for days. He called Nolan's casting choice a desecration of
00:14:44.520Homer, he endorsed posts claiming that the Odyssey is actually part of a left-wing effort to, quote,
00:14:51.720destroy Western civilization and everything that helped create it. There's also this casting rumor
00:14:56.960that Elliot Page might be involved in the film in some way. Elon called that the dumbest and most0.99
00:15:02.360twisted thing I've ever heard. And mind you, this is not just a blip. He has been talking about0.99
00:15:07.660this Helen of Troy casting since January.
00:15:10.840So it is not just a passing irritation.
00:15:14.480It is something that he continues to return to.
00:15:17.220Now, as an appreciator of the classics, Mike,
00:16:58.060Right? Like, I think there has been this real conflagration of that fictional work with actual history in ways that really undersell how deeply interesting that period actually was. I'll stop there.
00:17:16.460We got to get you a spinoff podcast for folks who want to know what was really going on with the ancient Greeks. The truth about what was going on in ancient Greece.
00:17:33.320So, suffice to say, there is, like, there's just not a historically accurate version of Helen of Troy that Nolan is violating.
00:17:41.960Even if, like, I don't get down with arguments like that.0.68
00:17:44.920But just for the sake of argument, if you were, like, oh, in history this person had XYZ identity, we need to, you know, abide by that.
00:17:52.440I don't get down with that. But even if you were, this doesn't work here because there is no historically accurate version of Helen of Troy that is being violated by this casting choice.0.56
00:18:01.780Yes. And I promise I won't keep interrupting. But one other thing that definitely didn't exist back then is our contemporary notions of race.
00:18:10.580Like, white and black race were just not a thing back then.
00:18:19.520Sorry to Elon Musk, but his ideas of historical inaccuracy here are just completely divorced from reality.
00:18:30.260And that's a good way to put it because I don't actually think that Musk's big objection here is about historical accuracy.
00:18:37.740He can say, like, that can be the window dressing that he uses to be like, oh, it's not about race. It's about historical accuracy. But I don't think that's actually true. And I don't think it's actually about film criticism either. And I think if we let him say that that is what's going on here, we're sort of missing what he's actually saying and what's actually going on.
00:18:58.560Huffington Post spoke to Alvin Tillery,
00:19:00.500who directs the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy
00:19:02.800at Northwestern University, who put it really plainly.
00:19:05.580He said, when Elon Musk looks at Lupita,
00:19:09.040you know, this beautiful Oscar-winning actor
00:19:11.600who is sort of just known for her talent and beauty
00:19:14.860and dismisses her and just sort of says
00:19:17.820that she is implausible in the role of Helen of Troy,
00:19:21.520that that reaction is actually a window
00:19:26.140He basically said that Musk's framework
00:19:28.020which is inherited from and reinforced by clear white supremacist thinking,
00:19:33.140has a structural inability to locate Black beauty as the apex of human aesthetic experience.0.63
00:19:39.800And so that is like the entire architecture of anti-Black racism, you know,
00:19:46.340which has always depended on degrading Black women, Black appearance, Black beauty, Black bodies, Black humanity as foundational, right?0.54
00:19:55.240And so that's really, according to Tillery, what Musk is doing here.0.83
00:19:59.960He can sort of dress it up as anger about this casting choice or just about this movie, but this is actually a pattern with him.
00:20:09.040And it's one that, if you look at the other things that he tweets and posts about, go far beyond one movie, one casting choice, one tweet.0.60
00:20:17.080He warns often and publicly about, you know, white people becoming this rapidly diminishing minority of the global population.
00:20:26.580He, you know, accused the South African government of being racist against white people.
00:20:30.740And it's always amplifying these unfounded claims of like anti-white genocides in South Africa.0.50
00:20:36.400He's often amplifying claims that white people are going to be slaughtered, that white solidarity is the only way to survive.
00:20:43.000all of these incredibly incendiary, you know, manifestations of what's called the Great
00:20:49.060Replacement Theory, this white nationalist conspiracy theory that says that white populations
00:20:54.120are deliberately being replaced by non-white immigrants. And if you're to look at his tweets
00:20:59.660and the kind of political issues that he amplifies, this seems to be a core part of how he understands
00:21:05.000the world. So when he sees this Black woman being cast as Helen of Troy and calls it, you know,
00:21:10.140the desecration of Western civilization, I think that framing and talking about this particular
00:21:16.360pop culture thing is really doing the work of continuing to amplify his belief in this unfounded
00:21:22.800Great Replacement conspiracy theory. The Peace and Huff Post actually spoke to Kirsten Moana
00:21:28.540Thompson, who was a film and media professor at Seattle University. Thompson offered, I guess I
00:21:34.120would call it maybe a slightly more generous interpretation, that some of this criticism
00:21:39.320also reflects a broader essentialist approach to casting that has become common in certain
00:21:45.600corners of the internet, which is basically the idea that only actors whose lived experience
00:21:50.880matches a character's can authentically portray them. But she said that she also does not doubt
00:21:57.300that on a personal level, that Musk's comments are rooted in his white supremacist leanings
00:22:02.040philosophy. So even if you're thinking, well, this is, he is, you know, aligning with this
00:22:07.360school of thought that says that you have to be able to, you know, embody the identity of the
00:22:13.360person that you're portraying, even if you think that's what's going on here, which I don't believe
00:22:18.200that to be the case, even that interpretation has a ceiling, right? Yes. And also, I just have to
00:22:23.800say how deeply skeptical i am in that generous interpretation you know the idea that some other
00:22:32.740white actor because of her lived experience in 2026 would be better suited to play helen of troy
00:22:40.580you know a princess from the mists of anatolia in the ancient world the idea that her lived0.61
00:22:50.020experience would be more relevant than lupita's is just ridiculous like there's nothing in either
00:22:57.160one of their experiences that really makes them well-suited to even begin to understand
00:23:02.500what that was like and certainly the color of their skin has like i can't imagine how that
00:23:10.860could possibly have any relevance whatsoever yeah i mean i think for this specific example
00:23:16.260when we're talking about Helen of Troy,
00:29:14.940So I did an episode of the podcast that y'all are going to hear pretty soon about AI and women and why all of these influencers and famous women and celebrities are really trying to sell AI to us women and what that's about.0.78
00:29:29.920my theory is that this is the new iteration of the girl boss movement is telling women,
00:29:36.900you know, before it was telling women to lean in and now it's just use AI, girl. Like, girl,0.83
00:29:41.560wash your face. Girl, use AI. So women and AI and the workplace has been top of mind. And0.69
00:29:49.960one of our listeners actually flagged this very interesting research about women, AI and resumes
00:30:20.220which was founded by former Meta employee Zara Chatou.
00:30:24.840It found that hypothetical men and women who were using the exact same resume, which differed only in the name at the top of the resume, right?
00:30:36.140So all the qualifications, the history was the same.
00:30:38.240The only thing that differed was the name, a typically male name or a typically female name.
00:30:43.260This was shown to a bunch of participants.
00:30:46.940And for everyone, the participants were told that the applicant had used AI to help them create their resume.
00:30:54.000And when a woman's name was at the top of it, the participants judged it more harshly. They questioned her competence and ranked her overall as a lower quality candidate for the job than men, even though all of the information was the same.
00:31:16.160They were able to quantify it, and they said that they found that people were 22% more likely to question the female applicant's trustworthiness in particular compared to the male applicants.
00:31:28.240So that's what the study said, and people talked about that quite a bit on social media.
00:31:33.120I saw a lot of people talking about it on Blue Sky.
00:31:36.700I saw people talking about it on LinkedIn.
00:31:40.120And so I wanted to look into the study a little bit more deeply.
00:31:43.660There was an article in Fortune magazine by writer Eleanor Pringle summarizing the study.
00:31:49.440That's what I had read, and that's what people online were linking to.
00:31:52.880That article, in Fortune, it quotes the author, Chatush, summarizing the results as,
00:31:57.840when men use AI, we question their effort.
00:32:00.620When women use AI, we question their integrity.0.89
00:32:03.280That difference changes the perceived risk of using AI.
00:32:07.060So I'm so glad that you included that quote and that the author of the study put it that way,
00:32:11.820Because that is exactly what I found, too, when I was looking at the conversations that a lot of these influencers like Reese Witherspoon, I guess you're not an influencer, but you know what I'm saying.
00:32:21.620People who have been advocating for women in AI use.
00:32:25.040One of the reasons that I find those conversations to be so lacking is that it includes none of this context.
00:32:33.560I'm not even necessarily against telling women, you know, if you if you feel strongly that women should be using AI, you want to do AI skill shares, whatever. Fine. Got it. But doing so, telling women that they need to be getting involved in AI because if they don't, they could be, quote, left behind. Their careers could suffer.
00:32:54.760And leaving out this context that when men use AI, folks question their effort. When women use AI, our integrity is questioned. That's a pretty big risk. And so in some ways, I'm almost thinking that these influencers can almost be setting women up to be getting in trouble or having problems in the workplace because they used AI.
00:33:16.920They should at least be telling them and speaking honestly about all the perceived risk that comes with the scrutiny of women using AI in workplaces.
00:33:26.860Just leaving that out of the conversation to me is irresponsible.1.00
00:33:31.280Like you said, we had this conversation on the podcast a couple weeks ago.
00:33:35.100And so when I saw people talking about this study, I thought, this is great.
00:33:39.260It's nice to have some empirical evidence to back up what we were saying.
00:33:44.380So as our resident PhD who deals in studies all day long, writes studies, I'm glad we put you on this.
00:33:51.820What can you tell us about this study?
00:33:53.780Well, this is where it gets a little interesting and actually unsatisfying.
00:33:58.620So I wanted to dig into the details of it, learn more about it.
00:34:02.000You know, typically when somebody does a study, it gets published somewhere.
00:34:06.600And then popular press outfits like Fortune, in this case, or, you know, Wired or 404,
00:34:12.700these are all outlets that we cite all the time. We'll write up like a summary of it where they
00:34:17.500translate the research into something that is more accessible to members of the public who are not
00:34:25.280experts in psychology or sociology or economics or whatever discipline the researchers who
00:34:32.480conducted the study are located in. So I tried to find the actual study, but it doesn't seem to be
00:34:40.560published anywhere. I went to the website of the organization Code for Good Now, and
00:34:48.320they have a tile that links out to the Fortune article about the study. But as far as I could
00:34:57.640tell, there was no actual link to the study on their website. And I reached out to them through
00:35:04.260their like contact us form to ask about it. I haven't gotten a response, but it was less than
00:35:09.50024 hours ago. So, you know, I'm not going to expect them to be closely monitoring their inbox,
00:35:16.960but it would be nice to be able to see. I also looked at the LinkedIn page of the founder,
00:35:23.660Zira Chatou, and she had made a big post about it, repeating a lot of the main headline points
00:35:28.940from the Fortune article. And then the comments were filled with a lot of people responding to
00:35:36.880that. And most of them being very supportive, being like, yes, this is great. Thanks for doing
00:35:42.500this study. But there were quite a few other people like me asking for where they could find
00:35:49.160details of the study. And as far as I could tell, those comments were all unanswered, despite this
00:35:54.000post being up for about two weeks. And Chatou had been in the comments replying to people who were
00:35:59.640giving accolades, so she had seen these. There was also an Instagram post that used a carousel,
00:36:07.720and I thought they did a nice job using the carousel format in Instagram to communicate,
00:36:13.100again, those headline points from the study. Listeners who follow you on Instagram, Bridget,
00:36:18.720will know that you have been doing an amazing job with carousel posts, summarizing these news
00:36:24.240roundups and also adding additional stories that pop up over the weekend.
00:36:29.700Oh, thanks for my little shout out to my carousel posts. But I always link back to the original
00:36:35.160reporting so folks know, you know, where I'm getting my information. How frustrating that
00:36:39.520you're not able to actually find the actual study. What do you think is going on there?
00:36:45.460I don't really know. And it's it is frustrating because I don't doubt the intentions of
00:36:52.720Chatou or this, you know, the study that she's done. And it's not a particularly complicated
00:36:58.620study. And so based on the limited information that's available, I don't have any reason to
00:37:04.680doubt that what she's saying about the results is true. But it's weird to not include details. It's
00:37:12.280just strange. And I also find it kind of concerning that this is becoming normalized or maybe will
00:37:25.780become normalized. There are standard practices that scientists go through to ensure that the
00:37:34.520results that they share with the public are accurate and can be trusted so that when people
00:37:41.180are having discussions about policy or about social phenomena, like, say, the reasons that
00:37:47.740women are not embracing AI in the workplace to the same extent as men, we can bring data into
00:37:55.640those conversations and have confidence that the data is accurate. And, you know, if you can't
00:38:02.960evaluate the methodological details of the study, the statistics that they used, you know, for
00:38:09.080example, they say that people were 22 percent more likely to question the female applicant's
00:38:14.540trustworthiness. Well, how did they measure trustworthiness? What is the confidence interval
00:38:21.360around that 22 percent, right? Is it highly precise or is it somewhere between like 10 and 40 percent?
00:38:30.840You know, these are questions that responsible researchers should share. And so I guess to me, it just highlights this trend that has been happening. And, you know, I'll admit that we've been part of it, too, of as data becomes harder to access.
00:38:55.080A lot of the data points that are available to the public come from sources that are not within traditional academic journals or have gone through peer review, right?
00:39:09.480Like we did an episode a while ago about bot networks promoting particular narratives about female celebrities, and we talked with people who were not academic researchers but were employees of digital security companies.
00:39:28.980And so I do want to be clear that I think there is a lot of value in data like that. But I also think that it is important to not just abandon all pretense of scientific transparency and, you know, push us further into territory where nothing can be trusted and anybody can say anything.
00:39:55.420Oh, I really well put. It is a deeper frustration. And I know, you know, you and I have talked off mic about, you know, you've done this kind of work. You've done these kinds of studies and surveys and stuff. And when I tell you there is so little really good research about women and technology in general, AI very much included.
00:40:19.000Like I did my deep dive. And so I'm pretty aware of what's out there. And we got to the point where we were like, well, maybe you should be putting together some research just so we have more data. But it is frustrating. And I think it goes to highlight how tough it can be to get access to data and surveys and studies from peer reviewed, you know, academic sources anymore. That's basically what you're saying.
00:40:45.000It is. Yeah, that's part of it. And I bring that up as another example of a reason why the sort of full details of a study might not be available, right, because of like access and proprietary data.
00:41:00.060In this case, though, I don't think that those concerns apply here, right? Like, she says that she did this study and, you know, conducted it as a survey. So as far as I can tell, there's no proprietary data concerns about like data sharing that she would be violating by sharing it or that her organization be violating by sharing it.
00:41:25.160So I can only conclude that, you know, either they've got something to hide, which I don't really believe, or they just, like, didn't think it was worth taking the time to actually write a report and put it out there so that other researchers could evaluate them, which is, I don't know, feels weird, you know?
00:41:44.340And you weren't the only person asking for the actual study.
00:41:48.840You said that, like, there were other people asking, where is this report?
00:42:23.740That is weird. Well, I don't doubt this study and that's not what I think either of us is saying. I just, you know, when we talk about a study on here, I have the benefit of having a producer who knows about academia and knows about research. And so I'm always like, first things first, we don't need to rely on the write up in Fortune. We can actually look at the primary source itself. And it's just a bummer to not be able to do that to give you all more context.
00:42:48.820It is a bummer. Yeah, this was like an unexpected direction for this segment to take, right? I was excited to dig into this and just like, just really unpack the study and share the results. One last thing that I'll share, though, in the LinkedIn comments, a person named Ray Ruzzo, whose LinkedIn profile describes themselves as a professional nerd.
00:44:57.740or overly sharing versus collegial, right?
00:45:04.920There are so many ways where the same behavior in the workplace is a negative thing for a woman but gets reframed as a positive thing for a man.
00:45:16.900And so I just really feel like that context and the body of research there is important to keep in mind when thinking through these very important questions of how women should be thinking about using AI in their own work.
00:45:38.020And especially what kinds of interventions or programs we might want to put in place to help them in whatever way they decide they want to deal with that.0.52
00:47:01.620If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:47:08.080This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters,
00:47:14.200pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:47:20.240I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:47:27.360I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. So obsessed.
00:47:30.500From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:47:36.900It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
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00:47:53.980Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:49:08.800Well, speaking of like women and AI and what we know about how it's playing out with women and AI adoption at workplaces, I did see a couple of stories that came across my desk that, I don't know, just really kind of got me thinking about what you were talking about about this study.
00:49:24.860And, you know, one was about new moms who were coming back to tech jobs, and another was about administrative assistants in workplaces that are largely women.
00:49:34.780And basically, I can't stop thinking about how when it comes to AI, women are essentially just being asked to absorb a disproportionate share of the costs, whether it's in their career, in their communities, in family planning, and then just getting less of whatever benefit might be there, right?0.94
00:49:52.820And so if there is benefit to be had, like if men are using AI at work and it makes them look cutting edge or dynamic or something, women, it makes them look like lazy, dishonest slobs.0.73
00:50:02.800And so Wired ran a piece this week about new moms in software development who took maternity leave sometime in the last year or two and then came back to jobs that, because of AI, they barely recognized.0.92
00:50:16.840They spoke to a woman named Danielle, who was a software developer at a car company in Portland.
00:50:23.940At the time, barely anybody was using AI to write code.
00:50:28.140When she came back a year later, not only was everybody doing it, but it had become the expectation in her department.
00:50:36.120And so this wasn't something where it was like about her catching up to a new tool.
00:50:40.480The entire nature of her work had completely shifted.
00:50:44.000She described it as the skills that she spent years building, the rote development skills, were now something that she was expected to outsource to AI.
00:50:52.720She told Wired, the kind of work I was doing before, I would like to do again.
00:50:56.660I think I was good at it, but I recognize that job will never exist again.
00:51:01.020And all I kept thinking about this is like, yes, the tech, yes, the AI, yes, the workplace dynamics.
00:51:05.980But also, I simply cannot imagine how destabilizing and derailing this would be against the backdrop of being a new parent or having a newborn at home to care for.
00:51:18.840You know, they talked to another engineer who worked at a marketing software company in Minnesota who described coming back from maternity leave in 2024.
00:51:28.300When she left, the company had been mostly using AI like a glorified Stack Overflow, which is basically the Internet's go-to forum where programmers can post coding questions and then get answers from other developers.
00:51:40.840So basically, it was basically just like a forum where you would post, they were using AI as like a forum to post questions.
00:51:45.720A year later, she says that all code changes were being fed through AI, and that then AI started doing the bulk of her coding work.
00:51:54.660And the company kept a leaderboard ranking engineers by how much they used AI in their work.
00:51:59.860She told Wired, instead of being a software engineer, I'm more like a puppet master.
00:52:04.440I have heard very similar things from my friends who are software engineers, that they feel like the profession has changed so much. And particularly her comment about feeling like the part of the job that she likes is gone. I've heard that from them as well.
00:52:26.860yeah i really feel for these folks who just experienced such rapid change i i asked a friend
00:52:34.320of mine uh who is a software engineer to read that article and what he thought about it and
00:52:41.380you know he also said a lot of it rang true to him but he was struck by the experience of these
00:52:49.420mothers who had taken some time away and how jarring that would be for exactly the reason
00:52:54.960And you said that, you know, for him, he has been continuing to be a software engineer throughout this transition.
00:53:02.980And for somebody to like step back and miss out on that transitional period, and it must have been such a jarring experience to come back and just find it so different, right?
00:53:13.400Like he said, quote, they weren't boiled in it slowly, so it's more shocking to them.
00:53:19.040He also pointed out that he has had a ton of time to experiment and figure out how to make this new world work for him in a context where the expectations on him were, I have to believe, substantially lower than a returning mother coming back to work who is probably expected to just hit the ground running immediately out of the gate.
00:53:45.900Yes. So that was something that I one of the reasons I wanted to really talk about this is because exactly as you said, I just think there's a psychological component here of all of this happening when you've been out, particularly when you've been out on parental leave.
00:54:00.860You know, one of the women that they talked to for the piece talked about how, you know, even when she started to use AI, you know, to do the work as her team was telling her she had to, at that point, she started to think, oh, well, now I'm just kind of automating myself out of existence entirely.
00:54:50.020They're taking some sort of relaxing, fun vacation for themselves and that they are doing so at like taxing the rest of their team that might have to pick up the slack while they're gone.
00:55:00.880And that is not the case. And I think that when they come back from maternity leave, there's probably this dynamic where they feel more pressure to perform at work to sort of earn, in quotes, the leave that they took.
00:55:14.920Like one person talked about how when she was on maternity leave, her manager suggested that she use that leave to brush up on AI.
00:55:24.120She told Wired, the likelihood of me spending my statutory maternity pay on an AI course is slim to none.
00:55:29.980That is not something I should be spending my maternity leave doing.
00:55:32.400But then she becomes scared that falling behind and saying like, no, I actually am planning on spending my maternity leave. I don't know, giving birth and caring for my child as I'm legally allowed to do. And by holding firm to that boundary, it makes it seem like she's falling behind. It makes it sound like she's like not a team player, not thrilled about endorsing AI or adopting AI at work.
00:55:58.200And that might make her a target for a layoff. So again, it's like an unfair burden that is being unequally held by women in the workforce.1.00
00:56:07.780Totally. I think those contextual factors are so important to keep in mind that, yeah, it's an industry where there are lots of layoffs happening across a bunch of companies. I think many workers in those industries feel very precarious, both in terms of are they going to continue to have their job next week and also will their profession continue to exist a year from now?0.78
00:56:34.280it's got to be very nerve-wracking and also it's an industry where you have some people
00:56:41.580advocating for like 60 80 hour weeks right what is that phenomenon called i was trying to remember
00:56:47.560that where you work like 10 hours a day six days a week or something like that hell yeah it does
00:56:55.460sound like hell but it and it's like a bit of a fringe idea but it is sufficiently mainstream that
00:57:02.260it has a name that I think if you're like a young tech bro who is like, I'm just going
00:57:11.460to work 80 hours a week and not have a life, like intentionally not have any sort of work
00:57:19.120That is an idea that also exists in this industry, which I think doesn't need to be said is pretty
00:57:25.380incompatible with being a good parent.
00:57:28.220Yeah. And I think that is the sort of, I mean, don't even get me started about how unfair this shit is, because I bet a lot of the people who advocate for that style of working are men. I bet a good portion of those men have partners who might be picking up whatever slack that causes at home.0.99
00:57:45.960It's just an impossible standard for, I think, a lot of women in workplaces to be expected to meet, where you would be out on maternity leave, come back from that maternity leave, and then have to basically accept and get on board with the fact that your job has completely changed because of AI.0.57
00:58:02.700and you might even be judged more harshly0.98
00:58:08.740for doing the thing that your workplace
00:58:10.680is telling you that they want you to do,
01:01:16.380Now, I need to be kind of precise about what this means in practice because I looked through some of these documents. The documents do include people who seem to be genuinely advocating for violence.
01:01:30.220There is this group that Wired gets into, led by a software developer named Ziz Leota, who Wired describes as an extreme rationalist who already led a small cult-like group, three members of which have been charged with murder tied to an obsessive ideology focused on the existential risk posed by AI.
01:01:49.740Side note, the story of that group of people is just really fascinating and crazy and involved.
01:01:59.180It involves people getting stabbed with swords and somebody faking their own death.
01:02:05.060Maybe we'll do a whole episode about it.
01:02:07.140But what I'm saying is that there are people who I'm like, okay, it actually makes sense to me that people who are genuinely involved in some type of violence are actually worth monitoring.
01:02:19.740But the problem, or upside maybe, if you're a Trump administration official who wants to suppress activism and speech,
01:02:26.340is that that category, anti-tech extremists, is so broad that it also includes people who are doing nothing illegal,
01:02:35.900who are just exercising their constitutional rights.
01:02:39.240Here's the most concrete example that they have in the Wired piece.
01:02:42.940A private intelligence firm that contracts with federal law enforcement flagged a video from the progressive media nonprofit
01:02:49.100it, more perfect union. Now, the video was just about the harmful effects of data centers on a
01:02:55.960community in Georgia. It did not advocate for violence in any capacity. It did not advocate
01:03:02.480for any kind of illegal behavior whatsoever. It was just, here is what's happening to these people
01:03:08.460in Georgia where a data center is going up. But that video, despite not involving anything illegal,
01:03:14.120is now circulating amongst U.S. intelligence and law enforcement as a potential threat vector.
01:03:20.960And this is not happening in isolation.
01:03:23.960Fusion centers, y'all might remember, were set up after 9-11 as a way to integrate intelligence sharing across federal and state agencies.
01:03:31.220The same fusion centers monitoring alleged extremists are also generating reports about things like demonstrations at a county budget meeting or school board meetings.
01:03:41.240You know, the places where everyday local residents might show up and make their voices heard if they don't want a data center put in their community.
01:03:50.300In at least six states already, police have removed or arrested speakers at town halls for criticizing data centers.
01:03:57.720In one case, the arrest was made before the person was even allowed to speak.
01:04:01.240And just to be clear about the scope of what's being monitored, the documents also show that fusion centers are tracking the Tesla takedown protests, which are the demonstrations against Musk's role in the federal government, as potential threat activity.
01:04:14.680So we're talking about people who are using their constitutionally protected rights to express themselves and protest Elon Musk as a private citizen having political influence, those people being surveilled as potential extremists by the Trump administration.
01:04:31.240And that's just what they're doing on the books.
01:04:33.400Off the books, we know that Trump family members and associates and friends, as well as many high-ranking officials in his administration, are personally, heavily, financially invested in AI.
01:04:45.440So you've got an administration that is building this AI infrastructure and profiting from it, also building this massive surveillance apparatus around anybody who objects to it, which is most people.
01:04:56.300I like to think most people would agree that monitoring people and labeling them as potential terrorists because they oppose building data centers in their backyards is extreme and concerning.
01:05:12.300concerning. Yeah, Wired spoke to Spencer Reynolds at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund who said,
01:05:18.260as people continue to organize for a better future, we're likely to see more surveillance
01:05:21.880and criminalization of this opposition, just as we have seen with Occupy Wall Street,
01:05:26.820Black Lives Matter, and environmental movements in recent decades. And yeah, I mean, as somebody
01:05:32.560who makes a tech podcast that I think I'm on the record about my feelings about things like data
01:05:38.600centers and communities. I mean, I live in the belly of the beast for data centers in the United
01:05:43.680States. Yeah, it's incredibly concerning, I'll say, to say the least. It is. Yeah, just a good
01:05:52.220reminder to be careful with what you say on the internet. More after a quick break.
01:09:25.820So a coalition of Dutch LGBTQ plus organizations and digital rights advocates sent a formal legal demand letter to Meta over this wave of Instagram account removals that I think pretty plainly are targeting queer venues, queer artists, publications and community organizations.
01:14:09.820that she had been tagged in across Instagram.
01:14:12.420And it's exactly kind of the stuff that you would expect.1.00
01:14:15.220Black and brown women and femmes doing performance, right?1.00
01:14:19.500Like sometimes sensual performance, but it's clothed.
01:14:23.940So it's not breaking any of any Instagram's rules.
01:14:27.160So that phrase, human exploitation, I don't know, it just sounded to me like they were applying it to queer and black and brown performers' Instagrams, even though those Instagrams, if what I saw was representative of what was being posted, did not seem to be breaking any of Instagram's stated rules about what is or is not allowed on the platform.
01:14:49.960And again, these are just performers, like black and brown performers, queer performers, doing consenting performance with no nudity, being flagged as, quote, human exploitation.
01:15:02.540Yeah, and that seems really overly aggressive enforcement of their policy, whatever policy they happen to think is relevant, I guess, human exploitation.
01:15:18.800It reminds me of what we were talking about last week with the Take It Down Act and the concern that critics have expressed of companies being heavily incentivized to just take everything down, regardless of whether it actually is a violation or not.
01:15:36.760Right. And I think this a generous interpretation of this is that's what they're doing here, just overly policing in an attempt to avoid violating any of their rules.
01:15:53.340I think a less generous interpretation is that it is homophobic and perhaps racially motivated.
01:16:02.260Yeah. And she also made a very good point to Q News that there is a disconnect where all manner of influencers can kind of adopt and essentially profit from sex worker aesthetics on Instagram and be fine.
01:16:19.640But anybody who is consensually making content that is even like adjacent to sex work is not.
01:16:27.860She said, we can't post poll videos in bikinis just dancing in our living room or dancing in a studio, but influencers can post bikini pics constantly. What is the difference? And I think that's also, there's the queerphobic part of it, the anti-LGBTQ part of it, the anti-Black part of it, all of that, but also just the frustration of not having clarity.
01:16:51.100So if you post something that, to your understanding, does not break any of Instagram's rules, having your entire platform, which you could have been developing over years, be taken down with no recourse and no clear way to appeal, it's like, what are the rules?
01:17:08.280You know, it's like, I understand the frustration here. And importantly, a lot of the folks that they talked to for this piece, they weren't just upset at losing followers or losing their big platform. That is community, right? Like people talked about having a backlog of all their performances just gone overnight where it's like, oh, I was keeping all of the archives of my performances over the years on this platform and they just took it down with no recourse, right?
01:17:35.820Or like if you're a sexual wellness or reproductive health educator or advocate, think about all the ways that you have built up resources over decades just gone overnight.
01:17:47.540Like that can actually translate to meaningful harm.
01:17:52.000If folks need services, if folks need resources, if folks need community, of course they're going to go to social media.
01:17:57.460And so that being so precarious and threatened that it can just be disappeared overnight because of the whim of Zuckerberg and not even clearly explained why, I understand why this is a big problem.
01:18:11.420And so back to the Dutch case, it is meaningful because they're using the Digital Services Act in a way that it has not been used before.
01:18:19.620The Digital Services Act in the EU regulates how platforms moderate content, so it requires some transparency, a meaningful appeals process, and protection against discriminatory enforcement.
01:18:31.440So if this legal challenge succeeds, it could establish a precedent that platforms cannot selectively just disappear or arbitrarily or unequally enforce things against marginalized communities without consequence, at least in Europe.
01:18:48.200And I want to end by saying, if you have experienced account suspensions, removals, shadow banning, or content restrictions on meta platforms, particularly if you are part of a queer community or BIPOC or a sex worker or reproductive health community, Q News is collecting accounts confidentially as part of their ongoing reporting.
01:19:08.480So we will put that link in the show notes.
01:19:10.740Well, I don't know about you, but I could use a little bit of a palate cleanser.
01:23:12.320These stories of the ways that people who like didn't necessarily think of themselves as techie and now it's like, no, now I'm 3D printing my own cyber deck.
01:23:20.980There's also Matania Effentusu, a 29-year-old new media artist in New York and a former Google employee who kind of soured on working in corporate tech.
01:23:29.080She started with simple projects like a wearable resin ring that also worked as a scannable bus pass
01:23:36.100and a hair barrette that plays Solange Knowles' song, Don't Touch My Hair When You Press It.
01:23:43.280And then she worked her way up to making this motorized kinetic sculpture for a gallery show
01:23:49.480inspired by watching the 2024 solar eclipse and witnessing a bunch of strangers suspended in
01:23:55.040collective awe. We actually, you and I, watched that eclipse in 2024. Collective awe is the way
01:24:02.500to describe it. It is. I don't think there's any greater experience of collective awe than watching
01:24:08.960a total solar eclipse with people. We're running long here, so we don't have time to go on a whole
01:24:13.940solar eclipse digression. But, you know, there's one coming up in Spain in August.
01:24:21.620I know you've already got plans to be there.