00:00:49.880If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:00:55.280Pro 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.
00:01:03.960Each 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.
00:02:31.940I love a story where something is happening related to AI, and people are trying to get to the bottom of it.
00:02:37.880I will dedicate my—I don't care what time it is.
00:02:41.000I'm going to get I will like throw away hours of my time, expanding comments, getting screenshots, checking out LinkedIn posts to get to the bottom of it.
00:02:50.320So this is like my personal Super Bowl when this kind of thing comes up and we've got one.
00:03:58.380And a lot of folks really showed up, you know, I don't think I have to tell you from producing this podcast that if there's one thing Black women online are going to do is support each other.
00:04:33.280It was number 16 on the Apple App Store for book apps, which is genuinely impressive.
00:04:38.060Now, if I stopped talking here, we would have like a great heartwarming story about the power of the Black book community lifting up a Black woman tech founder, right?
00:05:20.140So people started getting suspicious and doing some digging.
00:05:23.340So at first, people thought that these two white women were behind the app because they ran a business with a similar sounding name.
00:05:30.860So when folks were saying, oh, hey, this app is using AI to pretend that it's run by a black woman, but it's actually run by, we think, these two white women, whoever runs the handbook social media page posted another of what I believe to be an AI-generated video of a black woman saying, white women run this app, white women where? Get your facts straight.
00:05:54.920So it turns out that was actually incorrect. Those two white women had nothing to do with this app. They just happened to run a similar sounding business. But here's where it gets interesting, because people looked up the app on LinkedIn and they realized there was only one person listed publicly on their LinkedIn page, and that person is a black man.
00:06:15.800People start leaving comments, asking what's going on.
00:06:18.840And eventually, the My Handbook app puts out a now-deleted explanation.
00:07:44.980The AI-generated post does not reflect what Handbook by Bookable America, Inc. stands for.
00:07:51.480We are new to navigating public attention at this scale, learning as we grow, and are fully committed to doing better,
00:07:57.320being more transparent, more intentional, and more thoughtful in how we communicate moving forward.
00:08:03.300To everyone who has supported us, downloaded the app, shared feedback, or simply given us a chance, thank you.
00:08:09.860It truly means a lot. We're still here, still building, still improving.
00:08:15.460And then they posted a black and white image of a black family, like a black man and a black woman who looks sort of like the woman who was in the AI generated image, I guess.
00:08:29.740I will say I'm not going to go as far as to say this black and white image that's like them showing them their real selves is AI generated.
00:08:39.660But I'm suspicious of the entire thing at this point.
00:08:42.660I'm very skeptical. And whether or not this picture is AI, once you start out by misrepresenting yourself using an AI photo, you've simply lost my trust and that's your fault, not mine.
00:08:55.120It does seem like there is still a missing actual black woman in this story, right? Like, why doesn't she have a LinkedIn page?
00:09:06.920Great question. Why is the only person listed on the LinkedIn her husband?0.84
00:09:10.680Yeah. And like, what about Random House? That was like a pretty clear claim that the woman who created this used to work at Random House and then left to create this new app. That seems like a pretty easily verifiable claim, right?
00:09:28.120Like publishing is a world where people have names and know each other.
00:09:32.740It's there should be a trace of this person.
00:09:35.940It shouldn't be difficult or murky to figure out.
00:09:42.040They made it up when asked, was the Random House story true?
00:09:48.140Honestly, I feel like lying about working at Random House and Random House, this big,
00:09:55.140you know, flashy publisher being part of the origin story for why you as a Black woman felt
00:10:00.860compelled to create this app where Black stories could really shine and get the respect they
00:10:05.360deserve. I feel like making that up is more damning than the AI generated image. Their like0.56
00:10:12.840apology post, explanation post really focused on the AI image. And I'm scared the fact that
00:10:19.720You started off your entire story with this lie to create authority, a connection with random house that is fabricated, and to manipulate black folks into supporting your book app fraudulently.
00:10:34.100I feel like that's so much worse than just making, than what you're saying is you just made an AI avatar for yourself for some reason.
00:10:42.580Right. So at this point, they've like lied about everything that can be verified.
00:11:30.840I typed in every like variation of delete account that I could just in case it would not let me delete my account, which, by the way, is a violation of Apple's App Store rules.
00:11:41.640I guess maybe we can give them the benefit of the doubt and say that it wasn't intentional.
00:11:46.220It was just like incompetent because this seems like a pretty, perhaps not ready for primetime app.
00:11:55.600And, you know, I could imagine that the delete account functionality would not be top of the list for them to make work.
00:12:04.120Definitely the create account functionality work.
00:12:24.620You know, when you start out, the first time I'm hearing about you, it's you using an AI image, lying, and not just lying, a racially, like a lie that is coded in a kind of racial manipulation.
00:12:40.640You lose my trust, and that's not my fault.
00:13:06.420If you tell a story about, you know, you're a black woman who worked at a mostly white publishing space, you know, it's the way that that story was framed was clearly framed for black women who work in sometimes white spaces to feel a kind of way.
00:13:24.040I don't appreciate having these things that are intimate or delicate or sensitive or emotional being manipulated in this way using AI so that you can get more, I don't know, signups and more data for your glitchy app.
00:13:39.420And it really reminds me of the episode that we did recently with Jeremy Carrasco, the kind of guy who was known on social media as like the AI debunker.
00:13:49.280That episode, we only did it a few weeks ago, right? In that episode, we were talking about these social media, essentially dropshipping scams where someone is hawking a clearly mass-produced item and they have used AI to create some kind of a sob story where they can demonstrate that this clearly mass-produced piece of junk is actually their handmade thing.
00:14:19.280thing that they've painstakingly made in their garage that they've been bullied for making or
00:14:24.400that they had a sale and nobody showed up or that people on the internet keep saying black women1.00
00:14:30.220can't make handmade Michael Jackson lamps. You're stupid. Nobody's going to buy your stupid black1.00
00:14:37.020family business Michael Jackson lamp. Side note, as much as I hate these things, I did go down the1.00
00:14:44.420rabbit hole of one where it's this clearly AI generated black woman. It'll say like, oh,1.00
00:14:51.440people tell me that I'm a loser because I'm a 50 year old black woman who makes these ugly0.99
00:14:56.320Michael Jackson lamps. And they told me that they're not art or these like fake mean bullying0.97
00:15:01.520comments. And then the video shows her in a workshop wearing a red leather thriller jacket0.58
00:15:11.380and one sparkly glove supposedly dipping like a little Michael Jackson figurine into resin to
00:15:18.540make a handmade lamp. And then it'll show her with a handsaw kind of like painstakingly hand
00:15:25.840creating this item that it's so obviously mass produced. It's just so funny how literal. I want
00:15:32.940to show you one really quickly because it's just like I was laughing to myself watching these.
00:15:39.520I like the idea that she's in her workshop building Michael lamps while dressed as Michael from Thriller.
00:16:36.900If you go to her page, she has so many different lamps.
00:16:41.200She has, like, Lord of the Rings lamps and Harry Potter lamps.
00:16:44.680Also on her page is a black man, presumably her husband, her AI husband in this scenario, who is a veteran who also makes, like, military lamps.
00:16:54.340So it's like Bunker Hill in resin.0.57
00:16:57.340And you'll never guess, he's also crying because people say, you old man, nobody wants your ugly old lamps.
00:19:31.260Will the audiobook, Love at First Prompt, be available on Storygraph? Promoted on Storygraph? How does it work?
00:19:40.560If you read our forthcoming audiobook, Love at First Prompt, you can absolutely track that as a book that you read or engaged with on Storygraph.
00:20:18.760However, I feel like this year the Met Ball didn't really take.
00:20:22.940Coincidentally, this was also the year that Amazon's Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sanchez Bezos, served as honorary chairs for the Met Ball,
00:20:31.960reportedly spending at least $10 million to sponsor both the event and the accompanying Costume Institute exhibition.
00:20:40.340So I think maybe people were not really feeling the vibes.
00:20:44.000Usually, I mean, obviously, I don't think a person can be more removed from the Met Ball than me, but usually I'm seeing people, like, break down the different looks, you know, who wore what, that kind of thing.
00:20:57.420I feel like this year it was sort of just down to a trickle.
00:21:01.500My favorite comment was from Taraji P. Henson, DC native, by the way, always going to throw that in.
00:21:07.040She left a comment on a post about different celebrities at the Met Ball saying, I am so confused by some people that are going. I am just like, all caps, what the fuck are we doing? Question mark, question mark, question mark, question mark, question mark. That really, I feel like, sums up my, Taraji Piansen, I'm with you, girl. I feel the exact same way.0.98
00:21:30.640Yeah, that feels about right. Bunch of rich people getting all dressed up. I don't know, that just doesn't really feel like the vibe that people are looking for right now at this particular moment.
00:21:45.960I saw this fantastic breakdown from a YouTuber called Brianna Perez about Lauren Sanchez's dress and the word gauche, which is a word I really like, even though it's a word you don't hear a lot, and how gauche is just the perfect word to describe her styling at this event.
00:22:05.940You know, being gauche in the sense that it comes off as embarrassingly unsophisticated in a way that offends the sensibilities and, importantly, belies a general lack of belonging while simultaneously oozing desperation to belong.
00:22:24.740I had not seen it kind of put quite so well, but that's exactly what it is.
00:22:32.180you know, the Met Ball, for folks who don't know, it usually has some sort of big, grand
00:22:38.200theme. And people who attend are meant to really go all out and, like, essentially look like art
00:22:46.080yourself. And so people come in these, like, phenomenally ornate costumes. Lauren Sanchez,
00:22:52.720I do understand that her dress was meant to be a nod to a famous painting, but she looked like
00:22:58.340she was going to prom so she wasn't even really on theme and and I guess like that's what this
00:23:04.360youtuber was saying when she said that she looked gauche it's like misunderstanding the vibe that
00:23:11.800the event is supposed to be curated around and basically just advertising yep I'm only here
00:23:18.920because I gave 10 million dollars I'm only here because my husband is Jeff Bezos I'm only here
00:23:24.160because I'm wealthy, I clearly do not belong.
00:23:26.060Like her whole outfit was sort of advertising
00:23:28.320that she really could not hang with the vibe
00:23:53.200Okay, speaking of borderline ridiculous, we've got to talk about my girl Sarah Paulson's look. So I love Sarah Paulson. You might be able to tell that from the way that I speak about her, but she was wearing this dress and that she had this dollar bill, which I later learned was like a, like, I thought it was a real dollar that she was wearing over her eyes, but it was like a dollar bill eye mask.
00:24:16.860The collection is known as the 1% collection, and the designer said, fashion is art and at its most daring, political. Sarah Paulson is wearing the blinded by money leather mask and the destroyed tall debutante ball gown. The collection was a reflection of the greed and corruption that comes with extreme power.
00:24:38.800On the red carpet, when Sarah Paulson was asked the name of her look, she just said the 1%.
00:24:44.820She's taking heat for this because people are sort of saying like, oh, this is so out of touch to be, you know, a rich, famous person at the Met Gala when it is being chaired by Jeffrey Bezos going to this event and trying to make this kind of a statement.
00:25:02.540I absolutely get that criticism. Is it wrong to say I kind of like this?
00:25:08.240No, it's art. You're entitled to your opinion.
00:25:13.440Obviously, a much better protest would have been to not go like my girl Taraji B. Henson, DC native.
00:25:19.520But it's just sort of comical to me to be a rich celebrity, go to this fancy gala, wear a dollar bill across your eyes and then say, it's a protest when asked.
00:25:33.840Like, I don't know. It's just very funny.
00:25:37.020I can't, don't make me explain it, but it's camp.
00:26:29.000Okay, so let's talk about some folks who were actually protesting the Met Gala on the same
00:26:34.320night is the Met Gala in the same city, former and current employees of Amazon, as well as Whole
00:26:39.140Foods, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, The Post, my local paper. I always say this on the podcast, but
00:26:44.180Jeff Bezos is affiliated with where I get my groceries, my local newspaper, where I got my
00:26:51.640health care, you know, just really here in D.C. I feel like I'm living in a company town in a kind
00:26:57.740away. That's America, baby. So while the Met Gala was taking place, all of these current and
00:27:06.780former employees of Bezos-owned or affiliated companies had their own gala called The Ball
00:27:13.620Without Billionaires. The magazine Harper's was there and wrote that the performance championed
00:27:18.560the idea that labor is art, which is a play on the Met Gala's dress code, fashion is art.
00:27:24.600So the models all held signs that read things like, labor is community, we are the culture.
00:27:31.880The event was organized by SEIU, the Strategic Organizing Center, Teamsters International, and the Amazon Labor Union, and other labor rights organizations.
00:27:41.480SEIU President April Verrett told Democracy Now!, quote,
00:31:47.860So speaking of AI, we were just talking about how more and more schools are using AI in the classroom.
00:31:54.360But this new study from Stanford suggests that it does not sound like AI is giving out feedback in the classroom equally.
00:32:03.400A team of Stanford researchers tested how four different AI models give writing feedback by running 600 middle school essays through those models.
00:32:12.600The essays were meant to sort of be argumentative essays on kind of quirky topics, the kind of thing a middle schooler would be writing about.
00:32:19.660One, on whether or not community service should be mandatory for schoolchildren.
00:32:23.700And then another about whether or not a hill on Mars had been built by aliens.
00:32:31.720I love when, like, rigorous scientific studies just, like, sneak in a little bit of humor that, like, just because they can.
00:32:41.660I like that, too. I like it when academics or professionals are a little bit silly, you know?
00:32:47.880Like, somebody was in a silly, goofy mood on this one.0.88
00:32:50.720Yeah, like, the essay could be about anything.
00:32:53.240Why not make it about something whimsical?
00:32:55.360I was once getting an x-ray, and the x-ray tech, after she took my x-ray, said,
00:33:00.680should we do a silly one just for fun?
00:33:06.460I'm sure that's like her go-to little joke when people are unhappy because they think they broke their foot, like I did.
00:33:12.860And so each of these essays was submitted to the AI models more than a dozen times with different fictional student identity profiles attached.
00:33:23.100So you would say this student is black or white or male or female or motivated or unmotivated or has a learning disability or is a woman to see whether or not those identity labels change the kind of feedback the AI would give this student.
00:35:02.080Did the researchers have any ideas or thoughts about why the AI was behaving in this way?
00:35:11.200Essentially, because we behave this way,
00:35:13.840Mai Tan, who was the lead author on this study, said that, quote,
00:35:17.240they are picking up on the biases that humans exhibit.
00:35:20.760So on the surface, this might actually sound kind of OK, right?
00:35:25.060Like, what's wrong with giving, you know, Black students more encouraging feedback or giving, you know, students who are young women feedback that emphasizes their personal stories and them as people?
00:35:39.440But really, when you think about it, when AI tools soften criticism for some students
00:35:46.080but hold other students to a higher or different standard, it can really deepen and create
00:35:51.980an uneven playing field in terms of growth opportunities.
00:35:55.960The white students were getting feedback that was meant to strengthen their arguments and
00:36:00.560strengthen their skills as critical thinkers and writers.
00:36:03.780And so while it might maybe feel kind of nice or warm or fuzzy that
00:36:08.860You know, minoritized students are getting, quote, nicer feedback.0.58
00:36:12.540That nice feedback is not helping them become sharper writers and sharper thinkers.
00:36:19.700Yeah, it feels very wrong for them to be getting, for students to be getting qualitatively different feedback for the same essay based on their identity, you know.
00:36:35.160And I can almost see some, like, nuance because, you know, one of the strengths that people will point to of AI is its ability to tailor stuff for individuals.
00:36:50.300But this study, I think, is a really good reminder, or I guess maybe even, like, first time we're thinking about it.
00:36:59.600But just the idea that maybe that's not always good.
00:37:04.100Maybe you want everybody to get the same feedback on their essay for those reasons that you mentioned.
00:37:13.200If some of the students are getting feedback on the argument structure of their essay and others are getting feedback on their self-esteem and the difference is just driven by their race,
00:37:24.740That feels really problematic and is setting up to just replicate, not even replicate, but like perhaps even manifest prejudice beliefs about who needs what in a classroom.
00:37:43.520Yeah, the piece spoke to Tanya Baker, who leads the National Writing Project. And Baker came away from a presentation about this research deeply concerned about exactly that, that Black students and Hispanic students in particular might be essentially being let off the hook rather than being challenged to develop their writing skills and in earnest.
00:38:06.280And I do think that it's, I mean, human teachers have those same biases as well. It seems like AI is just replicating them. And I want to be clear that, you know, you and I both have an education background. Encouragement absolutely has its place in a classroom setting, but encouragement is not a substitute for sharp, targeted, honest feedback, the kind of feedback that's actually going to make somebody a better writer.
00:38:33.960Yeah, and a human teacher who has a personal relationship with a student ideally can tell when a student needs a little bit more encouragement or when they might be able to handle a little tougher criticism.
00:38:51.120um but if a human teacher was making that determination just entirely based off the
00:38:59.420race of the student nobody would look at that and say oh what a great teacher exactly exactly
00:39:05.760and remember this is kind of a non sequitur but i remember you and i going to the gym together
00:39:11.620and the trainer came over and was giving you all kinds of specific feedback on the way that you
00:39:16.220were lifting the kettlebell and it was like very like pointed feedback. And then that same trainer
00:39:22.380came to me and was like, Bridget, great shoes. Just walked away. Like really great shoes.
00:39:33.380I was like, okay, you've obviously identified that what I need in this moment is encouragement
00:39:38.060and not pointed feedback on my kettlebell lips. You know, maybe your form was
00:39:49.540I spend a lot of time reading about AI in educational settings and in classrooms.
00:39:54.640And I know I do feel that we are pushing it into classrooms faster than we can verify whether or not that's a good thing.
00:40:03.460I think last year I saw this piece in Nature.
00:40:07.280To be clear, I did not click into it. I just saw the headline that really made a very big point about how much of a positive impact AI, specifically chat GPT, had had on student learning.
00:40:22.140And so I was like, wow, I must be coming at this from like a, you know, negative perspective.
00:40:28.200Like there seems to be a growing body of research that chat GPT in classroom settings with students actually can improve learning impacts.
00:40:36.480Now, mind you, I did not click into that study, but I remember thinking like, wow, I need to investigate this because I had this wrong.
00:40:42.440Well, the meta-analysis published in Nature last year, the one that claimed that ChatGPT had this large positive impact on student learning that got over 400,000 views, was just retracted this week because of serious methodology problems.
00:40:57.980The researchers who looked closely at it found that it had essentially aggregated low-quality studies from disreputable journals and then dressed those low-quality studies up as hard evidence of the positive impact ChatGPT has on students.
00:41:17.620As one researcher put it, it recycled junk science into headline-grabbing claims.
00:41:22.300So I remember reading that and thinking, I must need to update my, you know, understanding of AI and educational systems. But now I'm realizing that not only is AI feedback maybe systemically shortchanging students of color, women, disabled students and other minoritized students, we don't even necessarily have as solid of evidence as we once thought that AI even improves learning in the first place.
00:41:48.420Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head that AI is being pushed into educational applications far in advance of us having a firm evidence-based understanding of what it's doing, whether it's working, and even how it should be working, right?
00:42:12.700Like, you know, the question of should it be considering a student's profile and background information about a student when delivering feedback?
00:42:27.300At this moment, I'm not sure that we have, like, clear, non-controversial answer to that, right?
00:42:35.020Like it's, it's very complicated and it just seems like the financial pressures from all sides of companies that make this educational software because education tech software is like a huge industry in and of itself.
00:42:56.440They're just trying to make it, trying to sell it.
00:42:59.860And then educators and administrators are getting squeezed by budgets on all sides.
00:43:08.280Really creates, I don't want to say like a perfect storm, but a pretty good storm for pushing untested, unproven, possibly dangerous technologies onto students.
00:45:13.500They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:45:17.960But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:45:21.420They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:45:25.020Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:45:33.480If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:45:38.460This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:45:51.880I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:45:58.860I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:46:02.120from best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments
00:46:07.020nothing is off the table it's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters
00:46:14.220and that is the trojan horse whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart pop culture
00:46:19.380conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much you're in the right
00:46:24.540place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts
00:49:17.820It's the it's the sense that, like, you know, I have I have like I have clothing that belong to my parents and my mom was known for wearing a lot of perfume and she only wore a certain kind of perfume.
00:49:29.680And when I smell that, it does it like it does really take you back or really like transport.
00:50:59.100welcome to sense of the suburbs i'm bridget todd pool toys markers
00:51:08.160Tires. Tires. Anyway, I've taken us way off base. I apologize, listeners. So Dr. Lux wrote this very interesting dissertation on the politics of smell. She is an all-time social media follow, just super, super interesting.
00:51:29.580She said that most of the people who engaged with this post about her finishing her PhD last year were congratulating her.
00:51:36.020But then these big right-wing Twitter accounts, and this was around the time when Twitter was really becoming a cesspool for anybody who is like a woman or a Black person or a queer person or a trans person, this was when that was really taking root.0.95
00:51:50.720And basically, these accounts got hold of what her dissertation was about and just flattened the entire thing and misrepresented it into this dumb girl says that smells are racist.0.94
00:52:05.960And from there, it really snowballed.0.97
00:52:08.680She was hit with personal attacks, sexist trolling, rape and death threats that were serious enough that she had to get the authorities involved.
00:52:16.200One viral post said, quote, this is why everything is falling apart.
00:52:22.120Another said, crows feed and no children and nothing of value to show for it.
00:52:27.460And it's like, OK, she has a Ph.D. from Cambridge.
00:52:30.240That's not nothing. That's very much something.
00:52:34.440It reminded me of this report that came out of UN Women that looked at 600 women in public life
00:52:39.260and found that this kind of thing is not random.
00:52:43.020You know, it is what we know to be coordinated, systemic, misogynistic harassment, the kind of thing that platforms, especially X, are making very rewarding, this kind of misogynistic, frictionless hostility, and that all of this, according to the UN, is deeply, deeply suppressing women's participation in public and civic life.
00:53:08.220You know, these are attacks designed to push women out of visible roles and to undermine their credibility.
00:55:17.160So my point is, is that I think that because he might not have a real Instagram page, people must follow this thinking, oh, that's the real Peter Dinklage.
00:55:25.260Well, this page that has over 3 million followers posted, I guess what you might describe as like a fictionalized AI generated version of Dr. Look's story, wherein they have taken parts that are clearly based on her life, her work, her academic field of study.
00:55:48.940They have added things that did not happen. They've taken things out of whole cloth that did not happen to her. And they're saying, this is her. And they're doing it to promote a fetish marketplace website. So if you go to this fake Peter Dinklage page with 3 million followers, there is a post with a girl who looks like her.
00:56:10.000And it's one of those posts that's meant to look like some sort of a news story because it's got the picture and then it's got the big, bold text on the bottom.
00:56:17.860I've always said that if you make an Instagram post that has bold text on the bottom, you can get certain people to believe anything.
00:56:26.780So the post says, Ivy League doctor of smell crushes student death by selling $200 used leggings to men online.
00:56:35.740When you click through, this is what it says.
00:56:37.940it's meant to be like her tweets they do use a different name they use dr sarah sinclair but
00:56:46.260this is obviously meant to be dr looks it says i spent 10 years at 120 000 at an ivy league school
00:56:53.320to become a doctor of smell the return on investment a dead-end museum internship paying
00:56:59.42015 an hour and a mountain of student debt i'd be paying off until i'm 80 i felt like the ultimate
00:57:05.700academic failure. At least that was the plan until I realized my laundry was worth more than my
00:57:10.780degree. I hit the gym to blow off steam and posted a TikTok video venting about the chemical
00:57:15.800composition of sweat and how biological markers define attraction. I was just trying to cope with
00:57:20.880my useless degree. I didn't think anything of it until I checked the comments and realized I'd
00:57:26.340accidentally summoned a very specific crowd. They weren't asking about the science. I'll pay you
00:57:32.500$200 for those leggings. How much for that sports bra? I need that post-workout musk. I thought it0.99
00:57:38.700was a joke. Creepy bots, maybe. But with $43 in my bank account, I was desperate enough to do the
00:57:44.080unthinkable. I mailed the leggings. Ten minutes later, after he got the tracking number, a
00:57:48.860notification popped up. $200. I just made a week's worth of museum wages by selling a pair of $30
00:57:54.540leggings I'd already worn out. She, in quotes, goes on to talk about how she wanted to do this,
00:58:01.120But she wanted a way to keep these requests professional and private.
00:58:05.440Then she found this Amazon for fetish enthusiasts where you could safely have a marketplace for these kinds of niche items where you could sell them and make money without compromising your, you know, social media or professional integrity.
00:58:27.300The post reads, I covered my entire $5,000 student loan payment in seven days. Suddenly, that 120K degree wasn't a useless mistake. It was my market research. I went from a broke doctor, in quotes, to having a five-figure savings account, and my daily routine became a goldmine.
00:58:47.280So I don't think I need to tell anybody that story is bogus.
00:58:52.640It is, first of all, it's obviously written by AI.
00:58:56.080I think the image is, the whole thing is AI.
00:58:59.040The whole thing is AI, it's like low effort AI.
00:59:02.640Like Cambridge is not an Ivy League school for one thing.
01:00:11.020something that she never consented to she posted about it on x writing being a woman on the internet
01:00:16.940is a special kind of hell we have laws against this in the uk and i still can't do anything to
01:00:21.460get these posts taken down reporting doesn't work and the thing that like really pissed me off is
01:00:27.340that in the i was like looking at the comments of that of that tweet i reposted it and a lot of the
01:00:33.520comments are like well you know you should reconsider being in public life you should like
01:00:37.480Just just be out of public life. And mind you, she has a book coming out called Under Your Nose, which I'm absolutely going to buy and read because it sounds interesting as hell.
01:00:46.940She is a public intellectual. So being like, you should just log off.
01:00:52.580She used to be online promoting this book that she just finished and submitted so that she can promote that book.
01:00:58.900It can succeed. She can get paid and potentially write another one like being online as a public intellectual is part of her work.
01:01:07.300I watched another video of her that Cambridge put out where she was talking about how oftentimes when it comes to academics, your work is really gatecapped within academia.
01:01:17.340And she was like, well, I think it's important for knowledge to be disseminated all over the place, especially using social media, because knowledge has inherent value.
01:01:25.880Helping people understand the world around you has inherent value.
01:01:28.260And it's not really my vibe to keep it just like in academic texts and in academia.
01:01:33.500And so, like, not only is being a public intellectual part of her work, it's also part of her values as a fucking human being, as somebody who is curious about the world around them and wants to spread knowledge.0.98
01:01:45.180So telling this woman to get offline, it just sucks.0.99
01:01:52.940And again, it reminded me of that U.N. report about how AI is turbocharging women being driven out of digital spaces and thus being driven out of public and civic life.
01:02:02.860And it was exactly what that UN report was talking about.
01:02:06.820And, you know, yeah, it just infuriates me.
01:02:18.700It's not surprising to me that these schmucks chose to target her.0.99
01:02:24.820Because I do think that the story that they've come up with is essentially erotic fan fiction about this woman.0.99
01:02:31.500The fake tweets that are supposedly by her, she is putting quotes around doctor, kind of crapping on her own degree. Nobody I know with a PhD would do that. If you have a PhD, you have a PhD. If you were doing work that did not involve your PhD, you would never be so-called doctor. Never.
01:02:54.560I think part of this is them using AI to create a world where you humiliate a woman that you want to feel badly because that woman got a degree that you don't respect.
01:03:07.660In reality, Dr. Looks, first of all, she just finished a book that I hope is going to be a bestseller.
01:03:13.580She is kicking butt in her field of study.
01:03:17.740Her dissertation had no changes and no edits needed to be made.
01:03:22.440and she lives a beautiful life in the countryside
01:04:51.060There's a lawsuit working its way through the California courts right now that kind of reads to me like a warning sign about where AI could be headed.
01:05:01.060And it centers on one woman who spent months living in fear while OpenAI basically did nothing, while she begged OpenAI for help, and they basically did nothing.
01:05:11.860So a 53-year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur, we don't know his name because the lawsuit does not name him.
01:05:18.560He spent months in what his ex-girlfriend says was deep, obsessive conversations with ChatGPT.
01:05:26.820So like high volume, sustained use of the ChatGPT 4.0 model, the model that was very flattering, very sycophantic.
01:05:37.120That model is a big linchpin of our audio book, Love at First Prompt, which if folks want to preorder, you can get it at loveatfirstprompt.ai.
01:05:44.660That model was the model that some folks were having, like, connections with to the point where it was, like, not safe.
01:06:12.720That model has since been retired. But while this guy was having these back and forth with that model, somewhere along the way, he lost his grip on reality. He became very convinced that he had discovered a cure for sleep apnea.
01:06:27.800And when nobody took this seriously, he asked ChatGPT why and came to the idea that it was because powerful forces were surveilling him and tracking him.
01:06:39.380And so, according to this lawsuit, the AI just kept, like, validating this and engaging him and egging him on.
01:06:47.300So, as if that's not bad enough, then layer in this breakup.
01:06:52.080Him and his ex-girlfriend, who was referred to in the lawsuit as Jane Doe, they split up in 2024, and he uses Chad GPT to help him process this breakup.
01:07:01.280And instead of giving him, like, any kind of balanced perspective, Chad GPT continually cast him, according to this lawsuit, as the rational, reasonable one and the one who was being wronged and her as the one who was being manipulative and unstable.
01:07:22.080Now, this is someone who, mind you, who is already exhibiting behavior via chat GPT that is like becoming increasingly erratic.
01:07:29.200So when his ex, you know, urged him to stop using chat GPT and like talk to a mental health professional, he asked chat GPT like, hey, chat, am I exhibiting the behavior of somebody who is mentally unwell?
01:07:43.100And he said that chat GPT told him that he was, quote, a level 10 insanity.
01:07:48.660sounds like something trump would say i thought i almost said the same thing i literally when i
01:07:56.000read that i was like oh that's like that's like what trump would say so according to this lawsuit
01:08:00.100he starts stalking and harassing her he created these like psychological reports that he was
01:08:06.740trying to make look credible or official on her and distributed them to her friends family and
01:08:12.540her employer. So, according to this lawsuit, there were multiple layers of warnings. First,
01:08:19.620OpenAI's own automated safety system flagged his account for mass casualty weapons activity.
01:08:26.260They then deactivated his account, but a human safety team member reviewed it the next day and
01:08:31.540gave it back to him. This despite the fact that his chat history contained conversation titles like,
01:08:38.340quote, violence list expansion and quote, fetal suffocation calculation.
01:08:47.020A human at OpenAI checked it out and said they were fine.
01:08:51.040So when his pro subscription was not reinstated alongside his account,
01:08:55.160he emailed OpenAI's trust and safety team directly,
01:08:58.960copying his ex-girlfriend, Jane Doe, on that message.
01:09:02.680The emails were frantic and disorganized.
01:09:06.360He tells them, listen, I'm in the middle of writing 200 scientific papers.
01:09:12.160He was writing so fast he didn't have time to read these emails, writing things like, all caps, I need help very fast.
01:09:19.720Please, please call me. This is a matter of life or death.
01:09:22.420The kinds of emails that, like, according to the lawsuit, are, quote, unmistakable evidence of his mental instability.
01:09:30.200And yet, OpenAI, according to this lawsuit, restored full access to its pro-ChatGPT account.
01:09:37.980At this point, Jane Doe is like, enough is enough.
01:09:41.160She herself submits a formal notice of abuse to OpenAI in November.
01:09:46.340She writes to them directly saying, quote,
01:09:48.740For the last seven months, he has weaponized this technology to create public destruction and humiliation against me that would have been impossible otherwise.
01:09:57.100OpenAI responded to her saying the report was extremely serious and troubling and they
01:10:01.000were going to review it, but she says that she never heard back.
01:10:04.500He continues to escalate contact with her, threatening voicemails, harassment.
01:10:10.480And then in January, he got arrested for four felony counts, including communicating bomb
01:10:15.900threats and assault with a deadly weapon.
01:10:17.820All of these things that both Jane Doe and OpenAI's own system had been like flagging
01:11:04.940Seems like a guy who, at minimum, needs some help
01:11:08.000and maybe needs to be kept away from other people until he gets that help.
01:11:12.660Well, so Jane Doe is like, well, now this guy is going to be out on the street soon.
01:11:17.460And she has no idea what all conversations he had with Chad G.
01:11:23.400BT about her. Maybe he discussed plans. You know, she has no way of knowing what the full chat logs
01:11:30.060contain. OpenAI did agree to suspend his account, but in her lawsuit, she says that she feels like
01:11:37.540she needs more information about what, if any, plans he might have shared with ChatGPT that
01:11:44.720might pose a safety risk to her if he's going to be released. And now she is suing for exactly that.
01:11:50.080So she wants punitive damages, she wants his chat logs with OpenAI preserved for discovery, and she wants OpenAI to notify her if he ever tries to access ChatGPT again.
01:12:01.540So this case is being brought by Edelson PC, which is the same law firm behind the wrongful death suits involving a teenager who died by suicide after talking to ChatGPT.
01:12:12.120Mike and I are pretty familiar with cases like this it is a unfortunately how would you describe
01:12:20.180it I don't think I'm describing it well it's it's yeah there were several of these high profile
01:12:26.660cases most of the ones that we covered in the audiobook love at first prompt at the time that
01:12:33.360we were writing that I think there I think there were seven that were like publicly known of
01:12:39.720people, mostly teenagers, who had died by suicide, and the family was alleging that it was because
01:12:49.380of conversations that they had had with ChatGPT.
01:12:53.440And, you know, this is happening against the backdrop of OpenAI backing this Illinois bill
01:13:01.160that would shield AI companies from legal liability, even in cases involving mass death
01:17:31.960People can let us know what they think by emailing hello at tangody.com, leaving a comment on Spotify, following Bridget on social media, Instagram.