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
00:01:32.380and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting
00:01:36.660the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk
00:01:41.300creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro
00:01:46.480Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:51.920I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb.
00:01:56.300You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy.
00:02:01.620Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out.
00:02:08.660You're not hired just to fill time and space.
00:02:11.420You're hired to fill the space with you.
00:02:14.300Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:02:22.140The facts that media and tech are working this closely together should be very, very concerning.
00:02:33.600There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:02:37.400I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:02:47.140There's a question that I keep coming back to when I think about AI and creative work.
00:02:52.420And that is, who gets to set the standard?
00:02:55.380And maybe more importantly, who gets protected by it and who gets sacrificed to it?
00:03:00.720And to explore that, I want to talk about a story that I think we're all getting kind of wrong.
00:03:05.820It's about a Black woman author, a major publisher, a powerful newspaper, and an AI detection company whose business model depends on all of us believing that their tool is the final word on what counts as human.
00:03:20.380And it all starts with a horror novel called Shy Girl by author Mia Ballard.
00:03:26.660Now, there's a good chance you've heard about this story already.
00:03:29.900I just talked about it on the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You.
00:03:32.820And I only now just realized that I only had about half of the story.
00:03:38.900Dre, of the Dre Dossier, has been working tirelessly to fill in that other half.
00:03:45.620I'm Dre of the Dre Dossier, and I'm thrilled to be here.
00:03:51.680I think that even of big legacy journalism outlets, you have been doing the most in-depth coverage of a lot of things,
00:04:01.180but particularly the Mia Ballard shy girl saga, what was it that drew you to that story in the
00:04:08.840first place? Yeah, I mean, I always keep an eye on the AI tech side of things, right? And I found
00:04:15.920just this interesting convergence of the same day that that story broke, the White House sent over
00:04:21.340to Congress the AI action plan, what they wanted Congress to vote on and stuff. And I just found
00:04:26.500it to be such an interesting dichotomy of like, here is this one story about like what happens to
00:04:32.620artists if they do or don't use AI. And then here are, you know, here's a plan for the people
00:04:38.180to be protected, you know, at the top. And so that kind of is what drew me to initially,
00:04:42.880but as somebody who works in media and is working, you know, with, I'm working with my agents on a
00:04:46.980book, you know, deal situation on my own. So I've been kind of exploring that, that world a little
00:04:51.140bit more. And I'm like, wow, this is, this is important. This is a landmark case.
00:04:55.300It's the first time, correct me if I'm wrong, the first time a Big Five publisher cut ties with an author over suspected AI use. Is that right?
00:05:05.300Yeah, the first time one of the Big Five, yeah. I mean, that we know of. I mean, as we'll probably get into later on, there's been cases where AI detection tools detect AI use, and then you can submit proposals or something that combats it and submit inquiries.
00:05:22.460But it's the first time that, yeah, so publicly, like the same day that that article dropped, they dropped her.0.56
00:05:27.940So Mia Ballard is a Black woman horror author.
00:05:31.000She self-published a novel called Shy Girl.0.50
00:05:33.920That novel was acquired by the big publisher Hachette, though not before some early controversy.
00:05:40.880The cover art on the self-published version of her novel had been taken from another artist without credit or permission.
00:05:47.800Hachette, her publishing company, was aware of this, and the image had to be replaced.
00:05:52.220Even while the book had good to mixed reviews on Goodreads,
00:05:56.060earlier this year, readers on social media started to speculate whether or not this book was AI-generated.
00:06:02.580The popular YouTube channel Frankie's Shelf made an almost three-hour video called
00:06:09.040I Think This Is AI Slop that over one million people watched,
00:06:13.560pointing out what Frankie saw as the hallmarks of AI-generated text.
00:06:18.440This is when Max Spiro, the founder and CEO of Pangram, an AI detection program,
00:06:25.400tweeted that he had heard about the claims around Shy Girl
00:06:28.080and decided to run a test of the full text using his proprietary software.
00:06:34.100He said the results indicated that the book was 78% AI generated.
00:06:38.800The New York Times published a piece about it on March 19th.
00:06:41.660The Times also analyzed passages from the novel using two other AI detection tools,
00:07:41.660She declined to say more because she said that she's pursuing legal action.
00:07:44.720So I was prepping an episode about this situation when I encountered Dre's reporting, specifically about the AI detection company at the center of all of it, Pangram.
00:07:55.940And that is when I realized this whole thing was a lot more complicated than I had first thought.
00:08:01.400Because the question is not whether or not Mia used AI.
00:08:05.460I don't know. And honestly, neither do you.
00:08:08.460Neither does Hachette. And really, neither does the New York Times.
00:08:11.740What we do know is that a Black woman lost her book deal,
00:08:15.140based largely on the output of a detection tool
00:08:17.680that the person who flagged the story to the Times in the first place
00:08:21.360says should be used, quote, only for guidance, not as proof of guilt.
00:08:26.180But that didn't keep a major publisher, a major newspaper,
00:08:29.500and the entire internet treating it like an incontrovertible truth.
00:08:34.660So no, the real question to me is not about Mia Ballard and whether or not she used AI.
00:08:39.140It's about what the formal process of dealing with these kinds of AI allegations should look like
00:08:45.040and whether or not we're comfortable with this being the precedent.
00:08:49.000So to truly understand the shy girl situation, we have to tell that whole story.
00:08:56.100All of these landmark cases are going to serve as the larger outline for how we treat future cases,
00:09:02.820which is why it's so important that we are so specific about how, who, what, when, where, and why is involved
00:09:08.100And what it means, because if there is no formal process in which this goes through today, someone might think, oh, well, she deserved it.
00:09:15.240But tomorrow, if it's them or if it's someone else and they didn't, you know, that becomes a really messy situation.
00:09:20.880And so, you know, it's been interesting. It's one of my only videos so far that I've seen on my YouTube channel that's gotten really mixed, you know, in the comments.
00:09:28.380Like there are people who are very much, I think, black and white on the situation.
00:09:33.000And so I think that the asking for that nuance is something that I'm hoping we can find ways to leverage in conversations like this.
00:09:41.360It feels to me like we have a little bit of a crisis of trust and authenticity and accountability.
00:09:47.380And so audiences are understandably, I think, very touchy and very tense about suspected AI use and conversations about, oh, did this person use AI?
00:09:57.160Because we're in this media landscape where you don't know who to trust.
00:10:00.500So I don't think audiences who are responding in a certain kind of way about AI are wrong.
00:10:28.600And I think that the biggest my biggest point in this is that, like, yes, absolutely.
00:10:33.780If you feel like, you know, to your point, if you feel as though your trust was was was broken with this kind of writing, I absolutely agree.
00:10:41.420But it's it's in the same way we have like the FDA.
00:10:43.700Right. Or we have these systems in place so that you don't have to worry about each individual piece of chicken you're buying from the store as being, you know, not having salmonella.
00:10:51.740You have these processes in place to make sure that you, the individual, aren't on a constant on edge trust.
00:10:57.260what happened does this person use ai do they not does this chicken have salmonella and it does it
00:11:02.180not you trust in the environment and the government that has created this structure that says here are
00:11:07.120all the tests we do to make sure that you the individual can breathe easy knowing that you're
00:11:11.580buying chicken it's not going to hurt you and that's kind of what my point has been is that
00:11:15.440companies like hachette should have for the multi-billions of dollars that they make every
00:11:21.200year should have a system in place they went through months of editing this girl's book
00:11:25.620and if a goodreads was able to clock it within a few minutes you have to think that an editor
00:11:30.140was able to so then that bar you know brings up the question well who is held responsible
00:11:34.640when something like that is found absolutely you know if the author did wrong that is on the author
00:11:39.300but then that's a conversation that they should have could have had and made the decision whether
00:11:43.480they want to go forward or not rather than leaving now this on this public display of you know letting
00:11:48.820the internet attack her from all corners and then you look at other people who similarly have been
00:11:54.200caught using ai but then within a weekend it gets fixed like it just bring it brings up the question
00:11:58.980who is this really going to serve if we don't have those structures in place it can't be mia
00:12:03.540ballard's fault just the same way it can't be always each individual artist's fault we have
00:12:07.640to find a way that the system's going to work through this let's take a quick break
00:13:20.780If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:13:26.720This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters,
00:13:33.140pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:13:39.180I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:13:46.300I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:13:49.780From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:13:55.820It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:14:03.300Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:14:12.900Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:15:01.020They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:15:05.480But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:15:08.940They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:15:12.560Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:15:21.820I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb.
00:15:25.840If you know me, you know I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy.
00:15:32.700So this podcast lets us uncover those things together through meaningful conversations
00:15:38.620with fascinating people. Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors
00:15:45.100and really anybody hoping to stand out. You're not hired just to fill time and space. You're
00:15:51.380hired to fill the space with you. You have something in your guts. You go with it.
00:15:57.360And Shawn Johnson recalled the moment she realized her now husband, Andrew, was the one.
00:16:03.100He was just so unapologetically himself and knew nothing of Hollywood. He hadn't been on a plane
00:16:08.640before without his family. It was so pure. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the
00:16:15.460iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:16:21.380The New York Times spent weeks developing this story that accused Mia of using AI in her book
00:16:36.880Shy Girl. But what they didn't tell readers is who they were developing it with. They briefly
00:16:42.520quote Thad McElroy, who they describe as a publishing industry consultant. But according
00:16:48.000to McElroy's own blog post, he is not just a consultant. He says that he worked closely with
00:16:54.400the Times for over a month, answering their questions, even negotiating his own credit
00:16:59.740before that piece even ran. In his blog post called Shy Girl, the Background to the New York
00:17:05.680Times Story, he laments the fact that the Times didn't give him more credit for his role
00:17:10.340conceptualizing this piece. He writes, I brought the story to the paper and was assured that I
00:17:15.860would be credited as the source. That didn't happen. I've not had any follow-up queries.
00:17:20.960Why would I have? My role in the story was apparently unimportant. And he's kind of right
00:17:27.000because if you've just read the Times piece, he's only quoted as an independent publishing
00:17:32.380consultant sounding the alarm. He is not identified as the person who brought the scoop to the Times
00:17:37.680or the person who worked with them over weeks to develop it. The Times does disclose very briefly
00:17:44.500that McElroy first learned about Shy Girl from an employee at Pangram.
00:17:49.820What they don't tell you is that employee at Pangram is a sales representative.
00:17:54.580Her job is to sell the exact product the Times later used as evidence in that same article.
00:18:00.640And the Times never disclosed that McElroy had a pre-existing professional relationship
00:18:05.380with Pangram's CEO, the same company whose 78% figure sits at the heart of the Times' own reporting.
00:18:12.800So the two sources the Times leaned on the most were not independent of each other.
00:18:17.980They were very much connected to each other and to this story long before they ever came to the paper.
00:18:25.960When I was doing my initial sort of podcast run through of what happened, I did not feel like I had a clear read on the role that the New York Times played in all of this.
00:18:36.980And in one of their initial pieces, The Times, they wrote, quote, The Times also analyzed passages from the novel using several AI detection tools and found recurring patterns characteristic of AI-generated texts like gaps in logic, excessive use of melodramatic adjectives, and the over-reliance on the rule of three.
00:18:55.660And so when I read that, I thought, OK, well, I guess The New York Times did their own investigation and they feel confident in saying they think this was AI-generated, fine.
00:19:05.420the times did not really do a very good job of explaining just how this story came to be
00:19:13.740the players involved and when i learned that from your reporting i was like i we have i don't feel
00:19:20.520like we're being told the real story it changes everything it totally does and to just act as
00:19:25.340though you know it doesn't or it's like well it doesn't matter she's still admitted to using ai
00:19:29.160absolutely but does this is this not worrisome to anybody because if we ignore this level of it
00:19:34.540And we were doing the lobbying for tech bros for them because that's essentially what this felt like it appeared to be to me.
00:19:40.560You describe this chain that starts with a Pangram sales employee who runs through a consultant with professional ties to Pangram and then ends with a scan produced by that same company, Pangram.
00:19:56.400Yes. Yeah. Thad McElroy or McElroy, I'm not sure I've pronounced the last name, but he was the one who brought this story, as we come to find out through his own essay, to the Times.
00:20:05.980He was the one who had gotten a call from Pan Graham. And this is according to him in his very in-depth essay, which is something that we can get into in a minute.
00:20:15.120But he got a call from this sales executive, this account executive, and was like they talked about it.
00:20:21.860He brought the story to the Times. And yeah, the the Times quoted, you know, McElroy goes on in an email to me and in his own essay of how he ran it through these other checkers and all that.
00:20:35.200The one that is linked in his or in the New York Times story is the one to that Pangram, Pangram X tweets or X, whatever you want to call it, X post.
00:20:44.660And so it's just a little curious how, you know, it goes from this, you know, got 2,000 views, like seven likes or something like that on X.
00:20:52.800And then now it's the centerpiece of this story, this company.
00:20:57.960Max Spiro, who calls himself an AI slop janitor on Twitter, is the founder and chief executive of Pangram.
00:21:05.640He said he'd heard about the controversy back in January and that he ran his own test of the full text of the book.
00:21:11.380Just as a side note, according to the screenshot of his findings, it looks like he used a pirated copy of Shy Girl from a website called Oceans of PDFs, a notoriously sketchy website that offers free downloads of copyrighted e-books in PDF.
00:21:27.780Max said that his scan indicated the book was 78% AI-generated.
00:25:50.100Like, so they, so one of two things either happened then.
00:25:52.840Either the New York Times did not get in contact once with Hachette until the day of their publishing.
00:25:57.760which would be weird to spend five weeks on a case that what Hachette did not get any heads up
00:26:02.460on or they did reach out to Hachette earlier than publication date and Hachette and then
00:26:08.260gave them some heads up where they were able to do a few things here and there with the contracts to
00:26:13.360then the day that it drops that Mia is taken by surprise all of a sudden the contract is ready
00:26:17.960to be dropped lawyers are ready to fight it if there's any push like so one of two things happen0.98
00:26:22.360in either way it's kind of bullshit for Mia like that's that sucks whether she used AI or she didn't0.98
00:26:27.340use AI that this is an ambush of an artist who did not get a chance to defend herself and then0.98
00:26:32.400the goal of somebody to then later on in their blog say you know and Hachette I think you know
00:26:37.020threw Mia under the bus and you know did not give her a chance to defend herself nobody in this
00:26:41.260story I apparently I'm the only one that got in contact with her so it's like this is kind of
00:26:45.340crazy yeah and something else I found really telling about uh McElroy's explanation of what
00:26:51.420happened here is when he says, well, Mia, it's almost like, who is Mia Ballard? She doesn't
00:26:57.100really have a social media presence. I was able to find one kind of like sketchy website for an
00:27:01.580old book that doesn't work anymore. Basically blaming her for not having a big digital footprint0.97
00:27:08.440and making herself more difficult, according to him, to get in contact with. But then you were
00:27:14.020able to get in contact with her just fine. Well, yeah. And also think about it. He wrote his blog
00:27:17.860post you know maybe a few days after uh after the the new york times article came out she pulled
00:27:24.120down her social accounts because the hate she was getting i'm sure was across the board like you
00:27:29.260have this brand new art like author who is new to this is going to get attacked from every corner
00:27:33.840and does not have the protection of this industry that said we will help you and protect you through
00:27:38.380this and so like i i don't know how you can blame somebody like that for not being reachable of
00:27:43.360course she's scared and not does not want to be reached. And, you know, yeah, I just think that
00:27:47.700it's it is pretty crazy. And Mia was very willing to chat with me. Obviously, I will let her she's
00:27:54.400going through her own stuff. But she you know, my biggest thing was that, like, how are you doing,
00:27:59.260you know, because the opening of what she said to the Times was that her mental health has never
00:28:03.520been lower. And, you know, she's now left to the wolves. And Heshek gets to walk away saying,0.87
00:28:08.960we are just so we love our artists we're artist friendly and we always want to be and so that's
00:28:14.040why we did this when you to me this could not be a clearer distinction of how you feel about artists
00:28:19.340yeah and it took this situation for one individual writer to be thrown to the wolves as you say
00:28:27.740for Hachette to come out and say well here's our expanded statement on AI and part of me is
00:28:33.460thinking in 2026, like it's wild to me that it took this situation for them to even put out a
00:28:41.340clarified statement about where they stand with AI. And that I think really speaks to your point
00:28:46.160of like industries and big moneyed companies, private companies that make tons and tons of
00:28:52.040money and publishing is their thing, is their business. They are falling short and that it is
00:28:58.240individual writers, whether they use AI or not, who are absorbing the impact of that.
00:29:04.340And it's where the conversation starts and always stops. And it's the same logic running all the way
00:29:08.540up to the federal level, which was, I think, my my bigger point in all of it that I hope gets
00:29:13.400across is that the White House framework that landed on Congress's desk the same day that
00:29:18.220the New York Times published on March 30, March 19. And, you know, the facts that that same week,
00:29:27.140The Shy Girl Story Broke recommends, you know, the AI training on copyright material be not treated as infringement, which is what part of that Congress framework was and that no federal, you know, regulatory lobby or body be created and that the states be blocked if they try to create any of their own AI protections.
00:29:44.320I mean, all of it does is show that that the artist is always going to be the one held responsible.
00:29:51.060And, you know, to to be quite frank, in my opinion, whether an artist is a good writer, a bad writer, uses AI or doesn't use AI, I have my own standard for which authors I read.
00:30:00.520And that is totally up to me in the same way. It's totally up to anybody else.
00:30:03.300But my standard for buying a published book is going to be probably similar to that of other people.
00:30:09.760So that says, OK, we need to then turn to, you know, the people who are making the chicken and say, why is there salmonella in this chicken?
00:30:17.260That's not good. Your whole corporation makes too much money for the salmonella to be in this chicken.
00:30:22.180Yes, I I'm so glad that you keep bringing it back to that federal legislation, because I think that shows that we're just having the wrong conversation and that something is very wrong here in terms of who is expected to absorb the blowback when it comes to this kind of thing.
00:30:38.180And also, like you, I just can't accept that nobody got to the point where they thought something is up here.
00:30:46.440The fact that it didn't take long for this book to get clocked as perhaps parts of it being generated by AI on Goodreads and YouTube and Reddit.
00:30:55.940I don't buy that this is the first that the publishing company heard of it.
00:31:00.020Just as though I don't buy that the first time the New York Times reached out to either of them was the day of it.
00:31:04.940I think Hachette probably, it seems to me, it appears, that they probably would have gotten a heads up.
00:31:10.340And yeah, Icamilla is just one cautionary tale of that bad process.
00:32:23.760If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:32:30.200This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters,
00:32:36.320pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:32:42.360I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:32:49.340I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed, so obsessed.
00:32:52.520from best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments
00:32:57.520nothing is off the table it's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling
00:33:04.060characters and that is a trojan horse whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart
00:33:09.340pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much
00:33:14.100you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever
00:33:20.560you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held
00:33:27.960captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what
00:33:34.420should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember
00:33:40.780this low taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week I'm with0.97
00:33:49.640survivors who lived through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going
00:33:56.460to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and I just started
00:34:03.160screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories
00:34:09.880about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:34:15.240Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:34:24.920I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb.
00:34:29.360If you know me, you know I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy.
00:34:35.900So this podcast lets us uncover those things together through meaningful conversations with fascinating people.
00:34:43.860Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to
00:34:50.400stand out. You're not hired just to fill time and space. You're hired to fill the space with
00:34:56.720you. You have something in your guts. You go with it. And Shawn Johnson recalled the moment she
00:35:02.460realized her now husband, Andrew, was the one. He was just so unapologetically himself and knew
00:35:09.420nothing of Hollywood. He hadn't been on a plane before without his family. It was so pure.
00:35:16.040Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
00:35:22.280podcasts. Let's get right back into it. Mia may be the first person that we know about losing a
00:35:36.220book deal with one of the big publishers because of AI allegations. But she is far from the first
00:35:41.540person to face allegations like this. Because, believe it or not, Thad McElroy, that consultant
00:35:48.080that brought the allegations about Mia using AI to the Times in the first place, also faced
00:35:53.480allegations of AI youth in his own book. About eight months before any of this happened, Thad
00:35:59.800McElroy published a book called The AI Revolution in Book Publishing. Ingram, the biggest book
00:36:05.980distributor in the country flagged it and pulled it from distribution after their automated AI
00:36:11.220detection filters identified it as AI-generated. But after Thad McElroy posted about the issue on
00:36:17.640LinkedIn, within hours, a senior Ingram executive personally responded and offered to look into it.
00:36:24.400And by Monday, his book was back. The normal appeals process at Ingram takes up to 14 business
00:36:31.980days, and according to authors who have been through it, can stretch to months. But Thad
00:36:36.920McElroy got it resolved over a weekend because somebody with power knew his name. He even
00:36:43.260publicly said at the time that he worried how many other authors might find themselves in a
00:36:48.300similar situation, and whether or not our current systems were robust enough to protect them. Yet,
00:36:54.700eight months later, he put a debut Black woman author in exactly that same position.1.00
00:37:00.580And unfortunately for her, I guess nobody with the right kind of power knew her name to step in.
00:37:07.520You look at somebody like, you know, the person who wrote the blog, Thad McElroy, who had the same thing happen to him in 2024, wrote a book about AI and publishing.
00:37:16.640And the people, the company that took that book out, they classified his as being AI written.
00:37:25.580And and he got his fixed in a weekend. One of the one of the publishers or executives over at the company reached out and they were able to find, you know, some way over the course of a two day weekend to get it back on shelves by Monday, which I think speaks volumes.
00:37:40.740When I was watching your video over the weekend, that was the revelation that floored me. And I was I was planning an episode where I was like, oh, like, Drake's reporting on this has been so great. I'll cite Drake's reporting. At that point of your video, I paused and I was like, I'm actually emailing Drake to come on the podcast because I was so floored.
00:37:57.880The fact that he was able to just post on LinkedIn, I think it was Ingram, getting an Ingram executive to be like, we'll handle this.
00:38:11.000And you frame this as kind of one rule for important people and then one rule for everybody else.
00:38:17.900If you're important enough, the head of a book distributor will personally handle this in a couple of days and it'll be no problem.
00:38:24.980If you're someone deemed not important enough, perhaps because you're a black woman like Mia Ballard, it's like it's a completely different set of rules.
00:38:33.480And I'm curious, how do you see this as a structural disparity working in publishing?
00:38:39.500I think the race element of it plays a huge part.
00:38:42.460And, you know, some of the pushback I think I've gotten from some people in my comment section was like, oh, well, you know, excusing AI writing as being OK is, you know, does nothing to do with her race.
00:38:52.240And I just think, you know, in my opinion, first of all, we're not even having a discussion about whether this is okay or not to use AI. It's just about who absorbs the, you know, at the end of the day, who absorbs the fault of it. And I think that, you know, the publishing, the new publishing standards said the same thing.
00:39:09.160And I think how can you not at least ask the question of what played a role in this when, you know, a 50 some year old white guy has the same thing happen to him and it gets fixed over a weekend.
00:39:20.900And I think you have to ask yourself, you know, if if this tool was the thing, Pan Graham, as being one of the reasons that the Hachette let's let me go, then you have to ask, well, what is this?
00:39:33.940What is this tool trained on? What are its biases? Because time and time again, there are academic studies that prove that there are so many racial biases in those AI detection tools and and so forth.
00:39:46.180So, yeah, I think that there I think it's worth publicly questioning what is in place to protect authors who are either, you know, people of color or just new and emerging and, you know, get and really be clear about what the structural bias there is, because if it's made by and if it's made by a tech bro, it's going to have some.
00:40:05.040Now, Max Spiro told The New York Times that pangram has a false positive rate around 1 in 10,000.
00:40:14.160But independent research tells a very different story about AI detection tools broadly.
00:40:20.360No AI detection tool exceeds 85% accuracy across all models.
00:40:25.400And accuracy drops below 50% for mixed or edited content, which is exactly what an edited book would be.
00:40:33.780Even Thad McElroy himself has written that these scores are not verdicts
00:40:38.180and that they should not be used alone in high-stakes decisions,
00:40:42.280a standard that it seems to me he helped set and then ignored.
00:40:46.480These tools are also unreliable in a specific direction.
00:40:50.500Research has shown that they disproportionately flag text
00:40:53.440written by non-native speakers as AI-generated,
00:40:56.120with one Stanford study showing an average false positive rate
00:40:59.920of 61.3 percent for non-native speakers. Because they're trained on standard American or British0.98
00:41:06.400English, anything outside of these norms is obviously more likely to get flagged.
00:41:11.440Now, I don't know if Mia Ballard is a non-native English speaker, she might not be.
00:41:15.760So I don't know exactly how her writing registered against those biases.
00:41:20.080But what I do know is that a tool with documented racial and linguistic blind spots
00:41:25.040was used as the primary evidence to end a Black woman's writing career.
00:41:29.680And she was not really given an opportunity to meaningfully defend herself.
00:41:34.560So regardless of whether she did or did not use AI to write this book, I have a big problem with
00:41:42.240that process. And I do not think that this should be the standard for what that process looks like.
00:41:47.200I think the Times spoke to a computer scientist and professor at Stony Brook University about
00:41:56.720Pangram and he was like well it can make mistakes and he didn't work at Pangram but he was like I
00:42:03.080use this to determine whether things are not are AI generated or not it can make mistakes but I
00:42:07.720still stand by it and I think it's important to note that I in my opinion and I'm no computer
00:42:14.100scientist but calling it mistakes isn't right that the the real way to put that is like it has
00:42:21.460been shown to be biased it's biased against non-native speakers or anybody that wasn't
00:42:26.460trained that anybody who did not who writes or speaks outside of a very specific training data
00:42:33.880that it was trained on that we know is biased and so also look at look at the report and what it
00:42:38.720flags too like it it flags literally like as small as something that's like an apostrophe t and like
00:42:44.960a word that comes after it like from what i just saw it seems unrealistic somebody made a point in
00:42:50.240my comments lecture i want to bring up two really quick that said you know this these tools these
00:42:54.320ai tools are trained on us so they're trained on our verbiage and our repetition of the way we speak
00:43:00.300and then what it's going to you know lean heavily in its weights more one way or the other and then0.94
00:43:04.940this thing is going to say oh this is bad because this looks like it was ai generated based off of0.96
00:43:09.520the training material is still us at the end of the day so it's such a mind fuck like yeah i saw0.70
00:43:15.480a there was a um op-ed in the times by an author whose name i'm blanking where she said the issue0.55
00:43:20.840was not that i rate right like ai ai writes like me ai writes like us exactly and i think it's just
00:43:29.480like I think that the dignity of the author me somebody like Mia if Mia was a more established
00:43:35.120author somebody who you know had some more pull in the industry they would have treated that0.98
00:43:38.640conversation very differently than Mia finding out the same time the rest of the world that her
00:43:42.820contract is dissolved they good they would not treat that that McElroy McElroy that way they
00:43:49.260would not treat you know a number of authors that way but they're they're going to treat Mia and so
00:43:54.040I just think yeah it's worth taking into consideration every angle of this because we
00:43:57.780need to be very clear if what we're asking and what I'm asking for is a framework of what actually
00:44:02.340needs to be a standard, you know, across the industry, then we have to be very clear about
00:44:06.560what that standard is and isn't. And, you know, those are hard conversations to have, but I think
00:44:10.640that they're important. Yes. And McElroy himself says that these detection reports should only be
00:44:17.860used, quote, only for guidance, not as proof of guilt. But in this case, his own scan and these
00:44:26.240scans that was the only proof that we have like that was the if you could if you could even call
00:44:31.520it proof like that's what this entire conversation is built on and then mia you know said well you
00:44:37.240know she admitted to a person or you know an editor who came in at some point and um and used
00:44:42.980it and who knows if that's true or not it could be one of those things that somebody was like oh god
00:44:48.080i'm scared now like let's just put it on somebody else or it could have happened it could i don't
00:44:51.620know but i think that most importantly the fact that yeah that that this you know op-ed by the
00:44:57.760new york times was seems to be the catalyst of that you know or it was you know maybe they saw
00:45:04.320some of the pushback in hashette meaning in the reddit threads and in some of these videos like
00:45:09.180from frankie and whatnot they could have said oh this is getting bad press now we need a reason to
00:45:13.220drop it like there's too many unknowns that they aren't forthcoming about what their internal
00:45:18.760process was that to me says, well, I have a lot of distrust in Hachette because if they're going
00:45:23.200to rely on, let's say they saw Frankie, you know, Frankie Shelf's video and on top of that,
00:45:27.980the Pangram video or whatever, it just makes me wonder, well, what is your standard then Hachette?
00:45:32.680Because you clearly, you're not willing to back up what you said. This is a good book. We want it
00:45:37.560under our name. We're going to start selling copies. Like you didn't even come to bat for
00:45:41.280the fact that you, you know, Pangram used a, a stolen copy of a writer's book. Here you are in
00:45:47.440court with Google and OpenAI and all these other companies fighting for your artists because you
00:45:52.080love artists. And one of your artists is now being this is being waged against her. And I would have
00:45:57.560a lot more respect for a company who says, hey, we'll talk about that. But first of all, where'd
00:46:01.740you get that fucking copy of of the book? Because you didn't buy it from us. And that's our author's0.99
00:46:07.000work. So she you owe her money for that. Like that's somebody who protects their artists and
00:46:11.160then has enough dignity and respect for them to have a conversation, you know, between them to
00:46:15.660say like here's what we can and can't do for you but like all the way that this unfolded just
00:46:20.320makes me really scared for future authors yeah it is pretty ironic to be having this conversation
00:46:27.800about the use of ai and creative work and then i think it was max and his initial tweet or or post
00:46:35.260on x about this in the screenshot of the version of shy girl that he used for the scan it's very
00:46:40.600clear that it's a pirated copy in the in the headline itself yeah whether people people are
00:46:46.580like oh i don't like these ai scanners but like you know mia is still in the wrong like right but
00:46:51.240like right now when we keep saying like okay but this is just thrown away we don't like the ai
00:46:55.580scanners i'm focused on hating me i'm like you're doing some lobbying for this guy who is literally0.89
00:47:00.320stealing copies of books and trying to make pr like campaigns out of them like that sucks like0.97
00:47:06.040And yeah, it is is very ironic. And I would think that Hachette being in these lawsuits would want to also, you know, go after every one of the people who, you know, come in between an author and their work.
00:47:17.060But apparently it seems as though it's only the, you know, high prize, like big profile, you know, tech accountability.
00:47:23.140And then when it comes to the individual authors like Mia Ballard, I guess she's just one of the few that has to, you know, absorb that impact.
00:51:49.740I know this is a little bit different because I think that he has a completely different publishing model and all of that.
00:51:56.080But when I was researching initially the Mia Ballard situation, it was around the same time that that memoirist James Frey was doing press for his newest book.
00:52:07.000And like, you might remember he wrote a memoir called A Million Little Pieces.
00:52:11.740He went on Oprah like many, many years ago.
00:52:13.740And Oprah was like, why did you write a memoir full of lies?
00:52:17.520Well, he has a new book out and at times he has talked about how he has used AI in his writing. He's given inconsistent statements, but I was just struck by the fact that he was, you know, I think, I think it was, I'm forgetting the, the, the outlet that called him this, but it was like the bad boy of right of the literary bad boy is back.
00:52:39.220He was getting very glowing praise for his work. And none of the scrutiny about whether or not this work was AI generated, even after he publicly talked about the way that he uses AI in his creative writing. And it just was interesting to me who gets a witch hunt and who doesn't.
00:53:02.880it's not about race or women that we are making it about we're making it about something
00:53:07.560completely separate this is about ai integrity right and it's just it's just not lost on me
00:53:14.440that the first person that we know of to lose a book deal with a big publisher is a black woman
00:53:20.480it's just like that there are so few of us in publishing in general we're already underrepresented
00:53:26.700that can't be a coincidence yeah it it it's it's worth examining and i'll keep saying that and
00:53:34.860you know i think that there's a difference in making something the center of the story and
00:53:38.820making it something that again like the story has a lot of things we need to hold at once which
00:53:43.060makes it a very difficult conversation but the more difficult a conversation is the more important
00:53:47.580it probably is to have and that is one facet of it and as a white woman looking at this you know i
00:53:54.160I can say I can look at this and say I wonder if I would have had the same experience that Mia had
00:53:59.860I wonder if Hachette would have reached out to me beforehand or I have agents I wonder if they
00:54:04.320would have you know because I have agents protecting me like they would have reached out to
00:54:07.880them like there are so many different ways that this could again could have been handled and
00:54:11.700wasn't and yeah it just felt like something that is worth bringing up because it's always it feels0.97
00:54:18.000like people of color communities of color that whenever we have a new set of rules a lack of
00:54:22.100rules you know law enforcement whatever it is it always gets tested there first and then the first0.99
00:54:27.040fall guys are always end up being I mean you look at the syphilis experiments right I mean like any1.00
00:54:31.560of them like it's always people of color because their voices matter a little bit less than1.00
00:54:36.520everybody else's and then we have we look back on it 20 years later and we're like oh that sucks0.99
00:54:41.120how that happened we never can let that happen again until it comes time for and then it's like
00:54:44.900well no this is about this not about that like it's about a lot of things I got the sense from
00:54:50.740your reporting that the major players who pitched this story and got it to the Times,
00:54:57.660that they had been sniffing around the internet for a book with allegations around being AI
00:55:03.500generated to get press for this company and this AI detection software. And then they found one
00:55:10.760in Shy Girl. Is that also your sense? You know, I won't speculate too much on that. But what I
00:55:17.540will say is when i like i'm looking at pangram's website right now and i'm looking at how you have
00:55:22.840these huge universities like the university of maryland and stony brook university using pan
00:55:27.080gram and you have these you know i think it's it's worth stating that there is definitely you've got
00:55:33.340the chat gpt zeros who are you know originality ai you know robert ai whatever all of these they're
00:55:39.680all in a in this year is going to is a huge tech like you know you either win or you lose like
00:55:44.480make it or break it type year this is a company who i see that has a lot to lose if they are not
00:55:50.580seen as the standard and especially with all the competition out there if you type in just ai
00:55:55.540um checker whatever chat gbt or the gbt zero is like one of the first ones that comes up and
00:56:01.320so i think that there's a high competition for products to get in that that spot and then that's
00:56:06.480that's all i'll say about that is it it shows a uh false positive rate that is that has no third
00:56:12.480party like you know looking at if that's true or not even if like giving them the benefit of the
00:56:17.840doubt what was it one in 10 000 has like giving a false positive i mean i'm looking at the nia
00:56:22.760ballard's shy girl uh report and there is more than like a couple hundred points in that that
00:56:29.980are not uh that were flagged as ai and and clearly not but you know i i think that they have a lot
00:56:35.900more to lose if they don't get ahead in this and i think that it it sure it seems like it worked
00:56:40.820out in their favor, doesn't it? It sure does. Pangram's website features testimonials from
00:56:48.560individual customers who are affiliated with Stony Brook University and University of Maryland.
00:56:53.740But as far as I can tell, neither of those universities have an official contract with
00:56:58.820Pangram. Stony Brook uses an AI detection tool called Turnitin, which is popular among many
00:57:04.680universities. However, many large universities have actually banned faculty and staff from using
00:57:10.840AI detection tools specifically because of the problems with accuracy and false positives that
00:57:16.640Dre is describing. The list of universities that have turned away from AI detection tools includes
00:57:22.600MIT, Yale, NYU, Berkeley, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, and many, many others. UT Austin
00:57:30.100has gone even further and strictly prohibited all third-party AI detection software for evaluating
00:57:36.500any student work. And faculty are warned that even if they purchase such tools with their personal
00:57:42.100money, they can be held personally liable for damages to students if those students are falsely
00:57:48.120accused. You put it well that, let's just be clear, Pangram's business model depends on publishers
00:57:58.340believing that their AI detection and that AI detection in general is reliable and is
00:58:04.820consequential. And so setting aside the question of whether or not this specific author Mia used
00:58:11.080AI or not, I do think we should be asking about this incentive structure that is profiting from
00:58:17.220understandable AI panic. And that company is also supplying the evidence in these high profile AI
00:58:24.280cases where someone can who doesn't have a lot of structural protection can lose everything.
00:58:29.380And the New York Times didn't even disclose that they have an existing relationship with
00:58:34.120McElroy or McElroy's existing relationship with Pancram. I mean, I'm on Pancram's website and
00:58:38.840they have a whole subsection for for publishing media, for universities, for law firms. So
00:58:43.720they in each one of these facets for recruiters, they need to have a certain level of trust in
00:58:50.540that and seeing all the talk online on these Reddit threads that were the first arguably the
00:58:55.360first AI catchers of people who were like, this seems like AI. They thought, oh, great, here is
00:59:00.080a chance to do that. And The New York Times, you know, did not state at all like they have a
00:59:05.100preexisting relationship with McElroy. They made him seem like this independent third party. McElroy
00:59:09.560did not state his, you know, relationship with Max Sparrow, which he'd known for years. And that
00:59:14.880the first he had heard of this story, like it was from them until he wrote his block. Like there
00:59:19.460are so many people that you have to ask what the reason behind this was. And regardless of how you
00:59:24.380feel about Mia Ballard, her writing, or whether or not she's AI, the facts that media and tech
00:59:30.520are working this closely together should be very, very concerning to everybody, especially after the
00:59:36.520fact that Sam Altman just bought a media company. And so like tech is going after media for this
00:59:41.440reason, like this is how they're going to get more of the market. And so if we could just for a
00:59:45.760second, chill on Mia Ballard and pivot over to these guys and say, what the hell are you doing?
00:59:51.880Like, that would be great. I personally would just love that.
00:59:55.700And I always make this point on the show that the standard that we give and the leeway that
01:00:01.600we give tech companies and the tech bros and tech leaders that run them is absurd. If other
01:00:06.540industries or other companies tried this, we would have something to say about it. If a
01:00:10.480pharmaceutical company, if their sales rep brought a story to a journalist at The Times and that
01:00:15.580story relied entirely on that same company's product as its key piece of evidence we would
01:00:21.320call that what it is a conflict of interest yeah don't worry McElroy put it through gpt zero though
01:00:27.440too so it's like it's kind of like having an independent third party investigator yeah and
01:00:31.720the fact that the new york times didn't you have to assume they didn't either look closely at the
01:00:37.880the x post or they just did and they didn't care but the fact that it said oceans of pdf but you
01:00:43.840don't even have to click on the report it says oceans of pdf right under the name and oceans of
01:00:47.740pdf was one of the terms i think flagged over 2 000 times in the report as being ai generated
01:00:53.160like you have to ask what what was their reason for publishing the story you know and that's where
01:00:58.360i get into the question and not an allegation but the question of they have no reason to publish
01:01:03.380this other than did they get in touch with with hachette and hachette's like there's too much
01:01:08.280chatter going on about this book being ai i don't know if we're going to really see a profit on it
01:01:12.040like we thought hey New York Times it would be great if we had like you have to ask like and
01:01:17.120that's where my brain immediately goes and I hope that that's false and I would hope that Hachette
01:01:20.640would be more honest if you know about whether or not authors are hitting a mark or not but yeah it
01:01:26.380just seems like there's a lot of people who had a lot to gain from from this story in the in the
01:01:31.100New York Times still to this day has not come forward with any additions anything yeah I mean
01:01:37.300And that was going to be one of my questions is, why do you think that nobody in this chain
01:01:43.460applied, I think, the sort of like basic baseline standard of at least saying like, hey, we
01:01:49.760have XYZ relationship with Pan Graham, we have XYZ relationship with McElroy.
01:01:54.100Do you think it's just a system where media and tech are kind of locked in together?
01:03:22.020Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, I've I get a lot of messages nowadays from I don't think McElroy McElroy is very happy with my article.
01:03:35.180But I think that the facts that I was asked to give them more decency than anybody else was given in this story about checking in to make sure that nobody's name was, you know, drugged through the mud speaks volumes as to what the expectations are from people who are used to having one set of treatment in this industry versus others who just have to deal with the results that were given.
01:03:57.700And like nobody, nobody gets to question it.
01:04:00.720Well, Dre, he is a white guy. Like, of course, you would want to give him this courtesy. Like, I mean, it's not enough that I gave the courtesy of just clarifying, you know, his his own story. But God forbid I use his own words in in my investigation. Yeah, it is. It's one of those things that's infuriating as a just a woman like it's infuriating how people want to talk over, you know, factual evidence because of what standard they're used to in this industry.
01:04:29.340And then on top of that, I can't imagine like being a woman of color where it's like, not only are we going to talk over you, but we're going to completely drag your name through the mud and you don't get a chance to respond. Here's our reaching out to you as the New York Times, the article publishes in one hour have good luck. Like, yeah, I cannot imagine the way that the way that I would come for these people is beyond and whether Mia does or doesn't is totally up to her. Like, it can be a very expensive process to go, you know, against companies like this.0.99
01:04:56.440but um she I you know she knows very well that at the very least she would have me behind her
01:05:02.540in that and that sucks yeah I've been following the reaction just the public like comments and
01:05:08.560stuff on your videos on this and a lot of people accuse you of like caping for me being like no no
01:05:17.880I like and it's and I guess my question is why do you it's clear to me that you're not saying
01:05:23.140it's okay or it's good that Mia used AI.
01:05:26.900It's clear to me that you're not saying,
01:05:48.400to look beyond one truth at the same time.
01:05:51.620And I think that it's it's really it feels better to us and it feels more resolved to say bad guy, good guy, end of story.
01:05:59.200And as we know that that's in life, just not true in general.
01:06:02.860But like, especially with a story like this, the people who do things that that we don't agree with and are bad, like, you know, her taking the, you know, another artist's painting for the cover of her book, that that's bad.
01:06:17.060you know and a lot of some of the people that you mentioned um they brought that up as well as like
01:06:22.280she's got a history of stealing like that i can agree with as bad but in the same way that somebody
01:06:28.100you know tried for theft doesn't always deserve the death penalty like that's it's that same kind
01:06:34.000of conversation where it's like could this standard have been higher from the shed like
01:06:38.940she could have left her book self-published and we could have all chosen whether we want to support
01:06:43.840that kind of person or not, whether we want to buy the book. But now that Hachette pulled it off
01:06:49.240shelves, started remarketing stuff, she can't put that book back out as herself anymore. Like
01:06:53.920Hachette's name is attached to it. There's gonna be all these legal issues if she does. So it feels0.99
01:06:58.460as though like, yeah, that they ruined something that we could have used our own money to vote on.
01:07:04.300But now they want also for us to like use our own money to vote on and also not have them be a part
01:07:09.680of the equation when when that should have been the case. Yeah, I think it's just I think people
01:07:14.100find it much easier to hold one truth, you know, as the main, you know, here's a villain, here's
01:07:18.980not. And it sucks because I would encourage people to learn to hold both of those because one day
01:07:25.360it's not going to be so black and white with you. And I would hope that you would give you, you know,0.66
01:07:29.680I would hope that other people give you somebody that they don't know that you are innocent until
01:07:34.820proven guilty rather than guilty until proven innocent kind of mentality. Because I think that
01:07:40.420once we switch to that, we get into a really dark place as a country. You know, I don't have to
01:07:46.440like the idea that an author might use AI for their book, but I'm not going to let that personal
01:07:54.700feeling then have me cheerleading a bunch of tech bros who got together to essentially
01:08:03.040try to manufacture credibility for their AI detection tool that they benefit from that
01:08:12.640we already know is probably biased. They've done it in a really shady way that has been totally
01:08:17.100untransparent. Like you don't have to like AI or be cheerleading the use of AI in writing to be
01:08:22.120like, well, I don't have to sign up for that. Yeah. Or to have like, you know, I personally
01:08:26.480don't like, I think it's distasteful for a CEO of a company who he calls himself, I think on X,
01:08:32.280the garbage man of AI slop or like the janitor of AI slop to post, you know, publicly on somebody
01:08:39.960else's post talking about AI use to then like public, you know, this report that's like, hey,0.89
01:08:45.080here's what we found. Like, to me, that's distasteful, whether it's legal or not is beyond
01:08:49.020me. But I think that it speaks to this larger issue of the White House does not want to defend
01:08:53.680the people who are on the side of the of this retaliation from tech companies. It's going to
01:09:00.420be on the the tech company side and that is a really big problem for me and and why i think
01:09:05.280more than anything if we really love artists and we really care about artists the way we say we do
01:09:09.120we need to be standing up for what their rights are a right to being you know innocent until proven
01:09:14.520guilty all of those things and whether you personally think she's guilty or not based off
01:09:18.920of what you've read based off what you've seen that is your right but she has the right to to
01:09:23.440not have this happen the way that it did and i that's that's yeah i had my core thesis here
01:09:29.960Because, like, I didn't read the book. I've seen the passages that people have put out and like maybe they are AI, maybe they aren't. But that is like the least of my worries in this conversation.
01:09:42.400What do you think this entire saga tells us about how prepared or perhaps unprepared major publishers are when it comes to actually investigating these accusations rather than just reacting to them?
01:09:54.260I think it tells us that our country is woefully unprepared for AI at all without any regulations or guardrails. And I think it shows that on a legislative level, because we have this administration saying that we want states not to be able to have laws, we want everybody to have to just go by what the federal, you know, open, you know, it's an open market.
01:10:19.440Anybody who wants to do anything can. I think it shows it speaks to beyond publishers. It speaks to, you know, filmmaking. It speaks to any artistic endeavor. It speaks to employment in general. We don't have a standard for how HR, a lot of HR is the first to get automated in these companies. And HR is like, you know, we've seen the stories from Amazon where they go through resumes and they automatically, if somebody's a woman, they assume less experience than if somebody's a man.
01:10:44.400Like it speaks to as a country how woefully unprepared for this we are. And until we actively fight back, it's going to be the people at the bottom of this food chain that we've created in this country that are going to be the ones who reap these these results.
01:10:58.700And then one day it's going to happen to the wrong person, the wrong person who has money and establishment and whatever that then we change the rule.
01:11:05.880And I'm just trying to get ahead of that before we how many other people have to lose careers before we come to that conclusion.
01:11:11.960You know, I walked away from reading your piece and watching your video feeling like, as you say, like our window for regulation in a meaningful way is kind of quickly closing.
01:11:23.640Are you worried about this? Like, are you worried that we're going to do nothing and then we're just going to be left with this like horrible system?
01:11:31.440Yeah, I'm worried that we're it's the same rules of war, right, where it's like, well, in times of war, we allow for anything on behalf of national security to happen and we'll clean it up later.
01:11:41.780And I'm worried that that is exactly what we're doing with AI where it's like, let's cut the red tape. Let's do anything that we need to do now. And whatever happens, we'll clean it up later. And like cleaning things up later always takes longer. It always affects more people. And it and it worries me immensely.
01:11:58.380And I I for for one time in our country's history, if we could not, you know, rely on janitors of AI slop and we could, you know, worry about the people who are constructing these buildings or, you know, the people who are putting out these pieces of meat to get ahead of all this illness.
01:12:15.980this is about to come our way, that, yeah, that makes me very worried, which is why I think being
01:12:20.320loud about this is important. And why podcasts like yours who who want to talk about this is
01:12:24.920really important, because a lot of people aren't willing to have this conversation because it is
01:12:29.440very difficult. And it and it makes it asks a lot of questions of yourself and of a government who
01:12:35.080is not prepared to answer it. But that doesn't mean we should be any quieter about it.
01:12:38.880Uh, hear, hear. You know, one of my last questions for you is, you don't have a newsroom, you don't have a consulting firm, you are one person putting things together on Substack and on YouTube, yet, by far and away, you are doing the most in-depth reporting, following of threads, turning this into like a real tech accountability story.
01:13:00.800why do you think it like where where is everybody else how did you get ahead of this and how are
01:13:06.640you just as one person doing this kind of deep dive reporting that institutions should be doing
01:13:12.480that have more resources than you but are not doing well i think it are what we want out of it
01:13:19.300i think differs from me from institutional media um i don't have to answer to anybody but but me
01:13:26.480in my audience. And yeah, I mean, look, every generation needs a good dossier, which is why
01:13:32.600the Dre dossier exists. But as somebody who's worked in media, you know, I used to work in
01:13:37.040Hollywood and then has worked on the tech startup side for a little bit. I've seen a lot of
01:13:41.820different angles of how people talk about this stuff. And tech accountability is more than just,
01:13:47.940you know, taking Sam Altman to court. It's on every level of every person who this affects,
01:13:53.040We treat that story with the gravity that that it deserves. And, you know, when stories like this get out, I can see very quickly, you know, the Internet can take an angle and spin it very fast, which is we make room for that conversation.
01:14:05.820But it's more of my the Dre dossier is meant to make room for the conversation that brings it to this federal level, because at the end of the day, until that changes, everything that is the waterfall after that is going to be tainted in the same way.
01:14:21.880It is the dam that's broken that we have to rebuild in order to fix any of this.
01:14:27.020And so I'm just going to try to keep bringing that conversation up there where I can.
01:14:31.240And in the meantime, we're all allowed to have our own opinions about it.
01:14:35.020But just remember that it is this executive branch that until something changes there,
01:14:39.540everybody else is going to have like a firing squad at them.
01:15:01.380So go to YouTube and Substack to find me.
01:15:05.300And yeah, I'm on Instagram, Dre Dossier.
01:15:07.340It's the same across the board, TikTok, wherever you can.
01:15:10.660And I'll keep reporting on this stuff.
01:15:12.700And I'm working on currently a case for protecting our health care and our data that goes into that health care right now against the current Department of Defense use of it.
01:15:25.880So please follow along if you would like to keep an eye on all of that.
01:15:30.580Come back and talk about that anytime. You're always really at this very important intersection of tech and power and policy and culture.
01:15:39.060So important. Any final thoughts you'd like to leave folks with?
01:15:42.700If it bothers you that that race is brought into this as a conversation, I would say ask yourself where that comes from and and do internal work there.
01:15:53.760And then maybe we can all have this larger conversation with it.
01:15:58.100That is the only thing I'll leave with.
01:16:00.160I think that's a great place to leave it.
01:16:02.240Dre, thank you so much for being here.
01:16:03.900I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you and your work.