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uncover, the unseen Upside available

1:09

now. Lauren. Mike

1:11

when is the last time you

1:13

visited the website? The Hairpin. It's.

1:15

Been awhile. Why? Do you ask? You

1:18

should go check it out right now. right now.

1:20

Yeah, right. Okay, Hold on. I'm gonna do

1:22

this. Okay,

1:25

wow, I'm. Talking.

1:28

With an actual tiny house. future

1:30

resident Dream interpretations. The ultimate guide

1:32

to wearing a jumpsuits? What's the?

1:34

who's? the most important person in

1:37

your life? Question. Mark testimonies.

1:39

It's a little different from the

1:41

hairpin I remember. Is not the hairpin

1:43

you remember. It's not. so what's going on here.

1:46

Maybe something has happened to it? Maybe somebody else owns

1:48

and runs it? It's it. Sure

1:50

looks like it or perfect. Well

1:52

our guess today's gonna explain what's going on

1:54

our I had. I'm intrigued. Let's talk about

1:56

it. Hi,

2:04

everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I'm Michael Kalori.

2:07

I am the director of Consumer Tech and

2:09

Culture at Wired. And I'm Lauren Goode.

2:11

I'm a senior writer at Wired. We

2:13

are also joined by Wired senior

2:15

writer Kate Nibbs, who covers culture,

2:17

media, and artificial intelligence for us.

2:19

Hi, Kate. Hi. Thanks for having

2:21

me. Of course. Welcome back to the show. We

2:24

also have a special bonus. We have

2:26

in studio the person who

2:28

is your boss and mine, Wired's

2:30

executive editor of news, Brian Barrett.

2:32

Brian, welcome back. Thank you. And

2:34

I like to think of myself

2:36

as your friend and yours. Management

2:40

speak if I ever heard it. I think the

2:42

last time you were here was 2022. We talked about Peloton. Yes,

2:46

we sure did. Do you still row, bike,

2:48

run? I still bike. And

2:50

Mike, I've added some strength training.

2:53

Ooh. I don't know if anybody's

2:55

noticed. Who's your favorite

2:57

strength training instructor on Peloton? I got to go with

2:59

Adrian, right? I thought you were going to say Rad.

3:01

No, I haven't. Adrian's great. Maybe I need to give

3:03

Rad a chance. Rad Lopez. I'm

3:06

familiar. He's pretty great. Yeah. Yeah.

3:09

Always a Ben fan too. Respect. Do you meditate

3:11

on Peloton? I do. I tell you what,

3:14

sleep meditation, I feel like is a cheat

3:16

code. Cross Rayburn. Yeah.

3:20

Oh, so Krista Mickey. This is just

3:23

the podcast now, everybody. Well,

3:25

unfortunately, we're not talking about Peloton or

3:27

sleep meditation this week. Can

3:29

we also just add the context that this

3:31

isn't just Brian's first time back in the

3:34

podcast studio. He actually left Wired and came

3:36

back to us. He did a boomerang. He

3:38

did. He went on a long journey of self-discovery.

3:41

Let's call it that. We're

3:43

so happy to have you back. I'm happy to be here. And

3:45

Kate, of course, thank you for joining us. I

3:48

haven't gone anywhere. Well,

3:52

the thing that we are talking about

3:54

this week is terribly exciting. It's domain

3:56

squatting. It's a business model as

3:58

old as. The Web: Somebody will

4:01

scoop up a domain name that used to

4:03

host a website that has since been abandoned.

4:05

The person will then launch a new website

4:07

at that domain and fill it with content

4:09

that has a good chance of showing up

4:11

in search results for commonly searched phrases. You.

4:14

Problem Landed on one of the zombie web sites

4:16

yourself. When you click and a search result for

4:18

a new story or and article offering some advice,

4:20

he may have wondered what's going on. Domain.

4:23

Squatters have been doing a pretty good business

4:25

for decades. But. The explosive growth

4:27

of generative A I Tools has

4:29

given the practice a significant boost.

4:31

A T U Cel into this

4:33

world of a I empowered domain

4:36

squatting recently when you visited the

4:38

Hairpin. The. Site that more and was just

4:40

checking out. Tell. Us a little bit about

4:42

that experience. It was a

4:44

very shocking experience because of the hairpin

4:46

has on my my favorite web sites

4:48

in or two thousand hands like. The

4:52

definitely describe myself as a hairpin superfan.

4:54

so much so that when I moved

4:57

to New York's be a Writer I

4:59

like talented Mr. Ripley my way into

5:01

being friends with the writers and so

5:04

much and the will that I found

5:06

all vote for her upon had been

5:08

turned into a zombie. Version

5:10

of it felt like it hasn't in

5:13

a group chat with some of the

5:15

former editors and they were all very

5:17

alarmed and confused. About what had

5:19

happened to their work and. I

5:21

thought quite actually, I'm a tech.

5:24

Reporters ice Pepsi like look into

5:26

the speed and Ryan is nodding

5:28

right now as or executive editor

5:30

of New is summed up yet

5:32

after s Yeah I love when

5:34

stories come to you via the

5:36

group sat it's it's a real

5:38

life hack and so yeah I

5:40

I was like let me see

5:42

what I can find out and.

5:44

I. Actually, Didn't

5:47

have to do that much digging

5:49

because when I emailed that email

5:51

address that with on this new

5:54

Weird Hairpins website the owner of

5:56

responded to me and was surprisingly

5:58

open said talking about what he

6:00

had done to the website. What?

6:03

Sort of articles. Was this new owner publishing.

6:06

So it was a mix of

6:08

he I generated hard oppose an

6:10

hour of there's a lotta Senza

6:12

dream interpretation and there was some

6:14

like really generic relationship advice to

6:17

says that you would never have

6:19

seen on the old hairpin because

6:21

the author pin was very it

6:23

was a blog with other women

6:25

central interest. Blog. Extensively

6:27

by a publish, a lot

6:29

of very like a centrist

6:31

humor writing and a lot

6:34

his voice see conversational sleep.

6:36

One of the on headlines that you

6:38

read out as like the we're do

6:40

hairpin was. Actually an old

6:42

hairpin headline at the jumpsuit

6:45

one, actually. But the content.

6:47

That exists. Understand me? Her plan

6:49

is like the exact opposite of

6:51

the content that existed on Original

6:54

Flavor Hairpin Instead of being very

6:56

like idiosyncratic. In Boise, it's. Generic

6:59

nonsense. I. Think that's

7:01

the part that up seemed especially weird and

7:03

troublesome to me As someone in media I

7:06

guess like I have been a in digital

7:08

media for so long I sort of now

7:10

expects that my work from previous ten years

7:12

ago might not still survive so I buy

7:14

say tds of it like a grub worm

7:16

to do that on things that I really

7:18

care about and you see like the messenger

7:20

setting down. All. Of those stories are

7:23

gone so I think that's become a part of.

7:25

just being a journals line is recognizing their some

7:27

of the morality to it but. It's.

7:29

Not just that, in this case, it's

7:31

sort of bastard awesome that was already

7:33

bear and sort of turning it into

7:35

the sort of remixed glue Be some

7:37

nonsense garbage. Under

7:39

the name I but almost in some ways maybe

7:41

not prefer that to go away that be turned

7:43

into this like Xabi thing that goes against everything

7:46

that it stood for. I mean Qaeda when you

7:48

talk to is that sort of of those feeling

7:50

from the group chat to to the extent you.

7:52

Can. Share subject confidentiality. But yeah,

7:55

how our the writers and

7:57

editors feeling? yes

7:59

so i've out to a bunch of

8:01

them separately and ask them to speak about it

8:03

on the record. So I can definitely say that

8:06

people were very upfront about how

8:08

disappointed they were on behalf

8:11

of a lot of the freelancers who

8:13

didn't really have

8:15

the opportunity to save their work

8:17

as PDFs. And for a lot of them,

8:20

it was some

8:22

of their first published clips, like

8:25

things that have a lot

8:27

of sentimental value and they didn't know that they were going

8:29

to need to save so there was

8:31

just definitely a feeling of palpable disappointment that

8:33

they didn't have a heads up that their

8:36

work might be going away. Oh, because

8:40

what I should have said earlier was

8:42

that in addition to the AI generated

8:44

articles, there were some of

8:46

the original articles republished,

8:48

but the author's names had been

8:50

removed and they had been replaced

8:53

by generic male names and then

8:55

like the story art

8:57

had been changed too. So

8:59

you get in these situations where like Kelly

9:01

Conaboy, who was a really

9:04

fantastic humor writer and journalist who wrote for

9:06

the hairpin, one of her articles

9:09

is still up there. It's about celebrity teeth

9:11

and how all celebrities have veneers.

9:14

And instead of her name on

9:17

the story, like

9:19

as the byline, now it's just a random

9:21

guy's name. And so yeah,

9:24

technically, you could still read her writing,

9:26

but it's been stripped of all context.

9:29

It's her, her

9:31

name isn't even on it anymore. And it

9:33

just is definitely

9:35

I think worse than it just disappearing

9:37

for good. And

9:39

when you wrote to this new owner of

9:41

the hairpin domain, he responded to

9:43

you and you ended up learning quite a

9:46

bit about his life. You wrote in your

9:48

story on wire.com that he was actually kind

9:50

of a nice guy, not this tortling villain

9:52

who you would picture him to be. How

9:55

does he explain what he does and why he

9:57

does it? And also, how do you pronounce

9:59

his name? So

10:01

I might not do the greatest

10:04

job pronouncing it, but it's Nabojah,

10:07

Vojinovic, and Vujoh. Vujoh

10:11

is kind of the name

10:13

that he goes by. So we'll just call him Vujoh. So

10:16

when I emailed him and asked him some questions

10:18

about the hairpin, he responded to my questions, but

10:21

he said, I have another

10:23

story I want to tell you, actually.

10:25

And so I made an appointment to

10:27

Zoom with him the next week,

10:29

and then we ended up talking for

10:31

like almost two and a half hours. He

10:34

was very forthcoming. He

10:37

doesn't think that what he's doing is

10:39

good. That was why I ended

10:41

up kind of liking him, because he

10:44

wasn't really trying to defend himself.

10:46

He was more just trying to

10:48

explain himself, and I

10:50

appreciated the candor. He

10:55

is aware that he is making the

10:57

internet worse, basically. And he

10:59

thinks it's inevitable that

11:01

the internet is going to be filled

11:03

with like AI-generated nonsense. And so he

11:05

just thinks he might as well make some

11:08

money playing a small part

11:10

in like a thing that

11:12

he sees as unsophable. And I'm not

11:14

defending him. Like I don't

11:16

think that what he's doing is good either. I

11:18

very much wish he wasn't doing it. And I

11:20

feel terrible for the writers and

11:22

editors at the hairpin. But yeah,

11:26

he is very self-aware that he is

11:28

not doing anything

11:31

admirable. I'd like to learn a

11:33

little bit more about how he's doing what he's

11:35

doing. So he's publishing articles

11:37

that are generated just

11:39

by Gen AI tools. Are there humans

11:41

involved? Is he just publishing

11:43

these things automatically, or is he

11:45

doing it manually? No,

11:48

there's humans involved. And that was one

11:50

of the points that he emphasized, was

11:52

that even though he was a purveyor

11:54

of AI-generated slime, it was AI-generated slime

11:56

with like a modicum of quality

11:59

control. he does have an editorial

12:01

staff. He

12:04

has a digital marketing agency called

12:06

Chantel that is

12:09

like, that's his main

12:11

business. And so he has

12:13

a staff that used to outsource

12:16

the writing of this kind of article because he

12:18

has been doing this for years. He's been doing

12:20

this before generative AI came onto the scene. Initially,

12:23

he would go on different

12:26

domain auction websites and look

12:28

for URLs that

12:30

had a good reputation and then

12:32

buy them. And he would fill

12:34

them with human generated content that was

12:37

just very hastily written

12:39

for SEO purposes. And he would

12:41

hire bloggers from like different

12:44

platforms like Fiverr and Upwork

12:46

and basically gig workers, he

12:48

would pay small amounts of

12:50

money to fill his website.

12:53

With AI, he had

12:55

like a team of full time

12:57

editors. And now instead of coordinating

12:59

with these gig workers, they'll just

13:02

use chat GPT to generate the

13:04

articles. And he claims that

13:06

they fact check them. I don't know. They

13:08

do. But human eyes

13:10

see them. I mean, the best jumpsuit

13:13

is kind of subjective. Is

13:15

it though? Sorry

13:18

to interrupt, Kate, please continue. So

13:21

it's not totally automated at all.

13:23

It's basically just that they use

13:25

chat GPT to generate a bunch

13:27

of articles very quickly. Because the

13:29

hairpin was just one of many,

13:32

many websites that he's doing

13:34

this on. Like he was surprised that

13:36

I asked him about the hairpin because

13:38

it's not one of his more popular

13:40

offerings. So

13:43

it's, there's a lot of content that

13:45

he's putting up every day. Kate,

13:48

and that's one thing I did want to ask

13:50

you about too, because it's not just the hairpin.

13:52

And there's some really big name sites that I

13:54

was surprised to see in your story. Do you

13:57

mind talking through some notable examples?

14:00

that you've seen and how he came

14:02

to get them. Sure.

14:04

So he told me like

14:07

the most successful site

14:09

that he has is another

14:11

women's website called the Frisky.

14:15

He purchased that when

14:19

it shut down because of digital media

14:21

complications. And his

14:23

first year he said he made half a million

14:26

dollars running it. And that's, you

14:28

know, he said it changed his life.

14:30

Like he had sort of just been

14:32

dabbling in domain squatting before that. Its

14:36

success made him turn this into

14:38

a full-time career. His

14:42

favorite website that he has

14:44

squatted on is a website

14:46

called Pope2U. And

14:49

it was Pope Benedict

14:51

XVI original

14:54

like official website, which is just insane

14:56

to me because it's like Pope the

14:58

letter 2 and then U. That

15:00

is what the Vatican picked out. What

15:03

they wanted. And when

15:06

he stepped down and the

15:09

new Pope came on the scene, somehow

15:11

that website got lost in the shuffle

15:13

and its domain went to auction and

15:15

Boujaud bought it and he was super

15:18

excited about it. And he just thought

15:20

it was like the funniest thing in the

15:22

world that he owned this website. And

15:25

he did make a big point to tell

15:27

me that he really didn't want it to

15:29

offend anyone. And I will say that that

15:31

website actually had my favorite. Like

15:34

some of the content I was like,

15:36

yeah, this isn't that bad. There was

15:38

a post about how Pope wears red

15:41

shoes that I found like genuinely kind

15:43

of informative. The

15:45

site that like made

15:47

my jaw drop when he told me about it

15:49

was the website for Apple Daily,

15:54

which is a

15:56

newspaper that was Hong Kong based. It's been around

15:59

since the 90s. and is

16:02

like very culturally significant because its

16:04

owner Jimmy Lai is a very outspoken

16:06

critic of the CCP and

16:10

government corruption in China in general and

16:12

he used

16:15

the newspaper to really advance like

16:17

a pro-democracy platform in Hong Kong

16:19

and he got arrested for it

16:21

and Once

16:25

he got arrested and so did

16:27

several of his editors Somehow

16:30

the domain they lost control of

16:33

the domain Nujo bought it and

16:35

now he's filled it with

16:37

content that is basically like the exact

16:39

opposite of what used to be on Apple Daily

16:41

and it just as

16:45

much as I talks to him

16:47

and saw him as a human and sort

16:49

of understood his motivations and was like Kind of

16:51

getting on board with how he was justifying it

16:53

when he explained the Apple Daily thing to me. I

16:55

just It

16:57

made what he was doing very

17:00

apparently grimy

17:02

and damaging

17:05

because he had taken this Important

17:08

news site and like

17:11

the articles that he's put on there

17:13

are the most insipid things you've ever read

17:15

in your life Mm-hmm. It's like 45

17:17

wishes for teacher It's

17:21

just Stuff that

17:23

he's not even trying to pretend his value and

17:27

so It's just

17:29

made like the scavenger e nature of

17:31

his mission Very stark

17:33

and he told you he he doesn't really care

17:35

about politics like you asked him about that Chinese

17:42

Communist Party is cracking down on freedom

17:44

of speech in Hong Kong. No,

17:47

he said he loved China as well He

17:52

Was Very adamant when I talked to

17:54

him that he not he was never

17:56

gonna publish anything politically provocative and he

17:58

explained himself. The talking

18:00

about how he ah is Serbian

18:02

but he was born. In by the

18:05

I had to flee during the fall of

18:07

Yugoslavia. He had lived through. A

18:09

War on. He.

18:12

Really didn't want. To

18:15

put anything into the world that

18:17

can be seen as politically divisive

18:19

and. I do still believe

18:21

that his motivations were sincere and that she

18:23

really doesn't want to put anything on here

18:25

at that. Politically divisive, but he

18:27

was definitely very unwilling to recognize.

18:30

The act of purchasing

18:32

a Pro Democracy website

18:34

and then emptying it

18:37

of it's political contents

18:39

and selling it with.

18:42

Insipid. Nonsense. Is

18:44

in fact a political. Thing.

18:46

To do And he didn't. Yeah, he

18:48

didn't really seem to acknowledge that aspects

18:50

of when he was doing at all.

18:53

I think Skate looks sick a quick break and will

18:55

come back and talk more about this. Many

19:01

put their home and Dr. Sarah Hot

19:04

company. It was worth half a billion

19:06

dollars. His research promise

19:08

groundbreaking treatments for Hiv

19:10

and cancer scientists, doctors,

19:12

renowned. Experts were saying

19:14

genius genius. Genius people that

19:17

knew him nor can then

19:19

says he say their life

19:21

as a brilliant doctor was

19:23

citing a secret Do Not

19:25

Cross This line that was

19:27

being message Us Do Not

19:29

Cross This Line A Secret

19:31

a doctor was desperate to

19:33

keep. This was a person

19:35

who's willing to whole heartedly

19:37

says lie to people's faces

19:39

when dealing with an international

19:41

fugitive from wondering the. makers of

19:44

over my dead body and the

19:46

shrink next door come to new

19:48

season of dr death sad magic

19:50

you can listen to dr death

19:52

bad magic ad free by subscribing

19:54

to wonder if plus in the

19:56

wonder yeah or on apple pie

19:58

power Kate,

20:05

how widespread are clickbait farms on

20:07

the web and is Vuzho representative

20:09

of the type of person who

20:11

runs one? There's actually not that

20:13

much quantitative data about how

20:16

commonplace this sort of thing is

20:18

now. I just actually recently interviewed

20:20

someone who works for NewsGuard because

20:23

I'm trying to get a handle of the

20:27

landscape here. And they did

20:29

say that they've seen a massive

20:32

uptick in AI generated

20:35

clickbait farms that they

20:37

found, but it went from like zero to

20:39

numbering in the hundreds for what they've been

20:42

able to track. I think that's

20:45

just the tip of the iceberg. I would love

20:47

to see Google do some sort of in-house

20:50

analysis, but right now there's just a lot

20:52

of stuff we don't know about, like

20:55

who the major players are. I

20:58

hope that people are like Vuzho

21:00

that are misguided, but not outright

21:02

malicious. But I

21:05

think he's the only one who's been interviewed

21:07

at this point, so I don't

21:09

know. The

21:12

person from NewsGuard who I

21:14

talked to for a sort of follow-up article that

21:16

I'm working on did mention

21:18

to me that they have found a

21:20

few different incidents where the

21:22

clickbait farmers do seem politically

21:25

motivated, but

21:28

that by and large they seem motivated by money.

21:32

Primarily this is a money-making scheme before anything

21:34

else. Kate,

21:36

you mentioned Google in there. I am curious how

21:38

good a job is Google doing at catching these

21:41

clickbait farms, at de-ranking them? I

21:43

mean, clearly Vuzho's making a lot of money still. Is

21:46

it a game of cat and mouse? And if so, what

21:49

more could search engines be doing?

21:53

It definitely seems like a game of cat

21:55

and mouse. A lot of the SEO experts

21:57

that I've talked to try to get a-

22:00

better handle on like what the larger landscape

22:02

looks like. A lot of them have actually

22:04

been more defensive of

22:07

Google than I thought they would be. Like

22:09

they've heard from several people

22:11

that you know they thought Google was trying

22:13

its best and that it was gonna hopefully

22:16

make big improvements soon. When

22:19

I talked to like Google reps

22:22

I was actually a little taken aback by

22:24

how they seemed to

22:27

downplay the issue. They

22:31

pointed me to pre-existing rules

22:33

that they have in place and

22:35

didn't seem

22:38

to be like they didn't

22:40

admit that they were working on any

22:42

sort of analysis that I'd

22:45

like to see them do. They

22:47

didn't they didn't seem

22:49

to be super on the ball. I hope they

22:51

get on the ball. I actually I'm concerned

22:56

by how far behind

22:58

the problem they seem to be

23:00

right now. So

23:03

what happens maybe all of us can weigh

23:05

in here. What happens when the entire idea

23:07

of SEO changes? It's how we've

23:09

been operating news sites for a very

23:12

long time now. Search engine optimization.

23:15

I mean we're publishing stories and headlines that

23:18

we think will basically get get page ranked

23:20

in such a way that it's it

23:23

our our work stands out on

23:25

the messy internet. But some

23:28

people are saying now that that's gonna go away with

23:30

the way that generative AI

23:33

is changing our browsing experience.

23:35

So like what happens to all

23:37

these clickbait firms in a post

23:39

SEO world? I think

23:42

that it all depends on

23:44

what Google does.

23:47

Like if Google

23:49

really does figure

23:51

out a way to downrank these sites

23:53

systemically then I think that they will

23:56

have to pivot because their business model

23:58

won't work. I

24:00

just I'm not sure that's

24:02

gonna happen like I haven't gotten any

24:05

sense that Google is actually taking this

24:08

Seriously, or is going to be able to get a handle

24:10

on it like unless unless

24:14

Search just ends as we know it all

24:16

together like I Yeah,

24:20

I really don't know but I think it

24:22

all depends on how the search engines Respond

24:25

to this issue and as of now,

24:27

I'm not super optimistic that they're gonna

24:30

respond in a way that actually Curbs

24:33

it I want to toss

24:35

this to Brian who I affectionately called Brian

24:37

GPT because you are very good at SEO

24:41

I don't I don't well intentionally,

24:44

you're very good at crafting

24:46

smart headlines for our stories

24:48

that also They

24:51

they're grabby and not in a

24:53

clickbaity way. Well, thank you Lauren I

24:55

and I and I guess I To

24:58

the extent I think about SEO. It's more like

25:00

do we have the product name in there? But

25:02

I do think like a grabby headline wins No

25:06

matter whether it's humans or robots I I

25:09

think what I find interesting about this

25:11

dynamic is the more

25:13

that Google and

25:15

others try to

25:18

Really foreground generative

25:21

AI in results and

25:23

as results, you know sort of Giving

25:25

you a summary of what you searched for with maybe a

25:27

few links at the bottom This

25:31

is going too far I'm not I don't actually want

25:34

to say this but I'm saying cuz it is that

25:36

that different from a site using generative AI To

25:39

turn out because everyone's just

25:41

drawing from internet chum to

25:43

turn it into a nice little package, right? So

25:45

whether that's Google or rather that's our whether that's

25:47

our friend in Serbia I do

25:50

wonder about the longer term effects of just sort

25:52

of these regurgitated pieces

25:55

of information Both

25:58

you know on every level I worry

26:00

about it. You know, professionally I worry about it,

26:02

but also just as a consumer of content and

26:04

someone who enjoys getting information

26:06

that is reliable and

26:08

consistent and comes from a

26:11

specific human rather than a

26:14

sort of melange of what

26:16

various sites have had to say along the way. I

26:19

don't know. So I am

26:21

anxious about, for

26:24

the same reason I'm anxious about what happened to the hairpin,

26:26

I am anxious about what is going

26:29

to happen to search. I'm

26:31

not saying that they are directly equivalent, but

26:34

it rhymes. If

26:37

you look at the tools that the

26:39

biggest players in search are building, like

26:41

Google and Microsoft primarily, they're building these

26:43

interfaces where you can ask questions and

26:45

get a result that is not

26:47

like, go read this article, it's a summation

26:50

of all the articles. So I think

26:52

what you're saying is that, you know, we're in a new

26:54

world now where we're going to be asking a computer

26:57

for information that is going to be looking

26:59

out at a sea of information generated by

27:01

computers to give us an answer. And

27:04

that answer is now muddied because all the data

27:06

out there that it's reading and that it's collating is

27:08

bad. Yes. I

27:11

think, yeah, I think so. I think you get into

27:13

sort of a cursive place where it's AI-generated

27:16

responses based on

27:18

AI-generated content, based

27:20

on AI-generated, it's all

27:23

the way down. So yeah, I worry about a little bit

27:25

of a spiral there. And Kate, you know,

27:27

Vujjo in your story, at the end of your story,

27:30

he told you that he thinks

27:32

that this is the future of

27:34

the internet, that the future where

27:36

AI-generated articles are like competing against

27:38

human-generated content for search engine rankings

27:40

and like winning more often than

27:42

not, he says that's inevitable. And

27:47

I can't imagine that that comment landed

27:49

with anything other than like an icy,

27:52

shattering thud. I

27:55

think it probably landed with me.

28:00

internally despairing, but I

28:02

don't know. It's,

28:04

you know, I don't

28:07

think he's wrong as

28:10

of now what's happening to the internet. And

28:12

again, like there is Google and

28:14

the other search engines permit AI

28:17

generated content and have not given

28:19

us any indication that they are actually

28:22

capable of quality control. What

28:24

Brian was just saying makes me think they really should

28:26

be more concerned about quality

28:28

control because the tools that they're creating

28:32

that are meant to keep you in their

28:34

search engine where they're collating the information that

28:36

they get off the web aren't

28:38

going to work well if the web is chock

28:41

full of AI generated nonsense. So

28:43

you'd think it would behoove them to clean

28:46

up the initial

28:48

search results. But again, I'm

28:51

not, I'm not seeing action

28:54

here that would suggest they're

28:56

taking it as seriously as they need to take it. I'd

28:59

love to be proven wrong about that. But

29:03

yeah, I think as if I had to

29:05

bet on this, I would bet

29:07

that Fuzhou is right. Never bet against

29:10

Fuzhou. He

29:14

does know a lot about search

29:16

results, unfortunately. Yeah,

29:19

like honestly, obviously, if

29:21

I was in charge of Google search

29:24

at this moment, I would be seriously

29:26

questioning just automatically

29:28

deranking all AI content, even

29:31

though some of

29:33

it is helpful. But until they

29:35

get some sort of quality control

29:38

going that works, I don't know. I

29:40

just don't see a way out of

29:43

the internet devolving into like the slime

29:45

fest that Fuzhou thinks it's

29:47

going to. All

29:50

right. Well, Kate, thank you for this uplifting conversation

29:52

about the future of the internet that

29:54

we're all going to be living in very shortly.

29:56

We appreciate your time. Maybe.

30:00

Every time. Stick around though because we're going

30:02

to take a break and we're going to

30:04

come right back for recommendations. How

30:11

does AI even work? Where

30:13

does creativity come from? What's

30:16

the secret to living longer? Ted

30:18

Radio Hour explores the biggest questions with

30:20

some of the world's greatest thinkers. They

30:23

will surprise, challenge, and even change

30:25

you. Listen to NPR's Ted

30:27

Radio Hour wherever you get your podcasts.

30:34

All right, welcome back. This is the last part of

30:37

our show where we go around the table and everybody

30:39

gets to recommend a thing that our listeners might enjoy.

30:41

Kate, as our guest, you get to go first. What

30:43

is your recommendation? I'm

30:46

recommending a novella by Ray Naylor

30:48

called the Tusks of Extinction.

30:51

Ray Naylor is a really terrific, pretty

30:54

new sci-fi writer and the Tusks

30:56

of Extinction is just bonkers. It's

30:58

about this scientist in the near

31:01

future who gets

31:03

murdered by poachers and

31:05

then her consciousness gets frozen

31:08

in a computer for however

31:11

many years and then she's

31:13

eventually, her consciousness is

31:15

revived and inserted into the

31:18

brain of a woolly mammoth that

31:20

they've brought back from a de-extinction

31:23

company has brought back. It's

31:26

really sad and I

31:29

loved it so you guys should read it. Nice.

31:31

You say novella, it's not a long book, it's a short book.

31:34

Yeah, it's like 80 pages. It's a

31:36

quick read that will make you probably cry if

31:39

you're like me. What's the name again?

31:41

The Tusks of Extinction by

31:44

Ray Naylor. Excellent. Thank you

31:46

for that. I hope that's not your rec,

31:48

Brian. No, no, no, no. Brian,

31:50

what is your rec? I'm

31:52

celebrating my return by once again recommending a

31:54

work of literary fiction because I know that

31:57

our listeners love it when I do that.

32:00

is The Beasting by Paul Murray. It

32:02

is a very long book. It's

32:05

approaching 700 pages. It follows

32:08

from shifting perspectives an Irish family

32:12

in modern times navigating various

32:15

personal, interpersonal, and

32:17

financial calamities. It's terrific. The

32:20

Beasting by Paul Murray. Wow.

32:22

Is this a new book or is this an

32:24

old book? It came out within the last year

32:26

or so. That counts as new. Does

32:29

it take place in Ireland? It sure does. Okay. What

32:31

part of Ireland? I'm going to say

32:34

not Dublin. Somewhere

32:36

outside of Dublin. I forget the town, sorry. I didn't

32:38

know there would be a quiz. When

32:40

did America? I didn't know there were towns outside of

32:43

Dublin. Some of it takes place in Dublin when

32:45

people go to college there, but it's great. He's

32:49

a brilliant writer. I've been a big fan for

32:51

a long time. Another book by him is Skippy

32:53

Dies at

32:55

the end. Please go ahead and

32:57

actually, can we cut out that last part? No,

33:00

that's great. Surely. That's great. Brian,

33:02

I'm in the middle of reading it. Yes.

33:05

Yes. Yeah. So we're really surprised.

33:07

Kate Nyer. Wow. Same way. It

33:10

is so good, but wait. Why does

33:13

he... Sorry. I know this

33:15

won't be part of that episode. No, this is the

33:17

podcast now. Why is Instagram in it? Why

33:20

not? It's set in

33:22

2009. Instagram didn't exist. Oh. Oh.

33:25

Did it not exist? I think it

33:27

was acquired in early 2012 or

33:30

2011, so it might have technically existed then as

33:32

bourbon, which was the precursor. It's an anachronism.

33:34

There isn't an anachronism going on. It's been bothering

33:36

me because I'm still in the cast section, and

33:38

I've been like, why are they on Instagram? I

33:40

remember interviewing Kevin in the early days, and I

33:42

think it was like 2009. Would

33:46

they have it in Ireland? I don't know what to say.

33:48

I don't mean that as a flex. I'm literally going back. I

33:50

was working at the Wall Street Journal, and I remember that was

33:53

the time frame. Well, hold on. Do they explicitly say

33:55

2009 in the book, or

33:58

are we just mapping that on the financial crisis? Oh,

34:00

I might be mapping it on the financial

34:03

crisis. Because I think the financial crisis started

34:05

in 2008. Well,

34:07

in Ireland. Oh. Or in Ireland,

34:09

yeah, 2008. So, 2008, 2009. But I

34:12

think part of it is just they're dealing with the

34:14

repercussions of the crisis. So, I'm giving it a little

34:16

bit of grace to say it. Okay.

34:19

But it is amazing. Early teens. Yeah,

34:21

it's great. Yeah. Okay.

34:23

Excellent. Sorry.

34:26

Okay. Good recommendations from you

34:28

both. Lauren, what is your recommendation? I'm really inspired by

34:30

Brian's visit to Wired. I'm trying to

34:32

give up heavy coffee drinks in

34:34

favor of more tea. Oh,

34:37

okay. Yeah. So, that's my recommendation.

34:39

I'm already a tea drinker, but

34:41

I was having tea and a lot of lattes

34:43

and cappuccinos and espresso drinks with

34:46

foamy milk. And then

34:48

recently, another friend of mine, shout out to Tomi,

34:50

who listens to this show, was

34:53

pointing out all of the ingredients that are

34:55

in some of the store-bought

34:57

nut milks that so

34:59

many people enjoy these days. And it

35:01

kind of freaked me out. I'm also very caloric,

35:03

not to be confused with caloric. Thank

35:06

you. And so, I'm

35:09

switching to, for a while at

35:11

least, switching to drip coffee or

35:13

batch coffee. And

35:15

yeah, just trying to... I was like having

35:17

like three or four coffee drinks a day.

35:20

So you're primarily concerned not about like

35:22

caffeine intake, but you're concerned about just

35:24

like all the stuff in the coffee.

35:26

All the stuff that's now in coffee.

35:28

And also, today happens to be the

35:30

start of Lent. So I

35:32

figured, why not give it up? Why not give up

35:34

the foamy coffee drinks? That's a good thing. I'm

35:38

giving up avoidance for Lent. I

35:41

appreciate you. Okay,

35:43

that's a good recommendation. So drink more tea. Drink

35:45

more tea and maybe cut back in your coffee if

35:47

it's something that you've been trying to do. I'll

35:50

report back on the level of headaches I have. Mike,

35:53

what's your recommendation? Blue sky. Oh,

35:56

say more. I've recommended it before in the

35:58

show. It is a social... network, it

36:00

looks a lot like Twitter. It

36:03

looks alarmingly, some would say embarrassingly

36:05

like Twitter. It also functions like

36:07

Twitter. Also some of the executive

36:09

leadership team is from Twitter. It

36:12

is a microblogging

36:14

platform where posts appear in

36:16

a feed that is organized in

36:19

reverse chronological order. There are

36:21

likes, there are comments, there

36:23

are no direct messages, but

36:25

it is a fun platform

36:28

that has sort of a vibrancy

36:30

to it now that people have started signing up

36:32

for it. Signups used to

36:34

only be available to people who had

36:37

an invite code, but within

36:39

the last week it's opened up and

36:41

now anybody can sign up for it.

36:43

And I highly recommend getting on the

36:45

blue sky train. You may ask, what's

36:48

wrong with Twitter? What's wrong with X?

36:50

What's wrong with threads? What's wrong with

36:53

mastodon? There's

36:56

quite a bit wrong with X

36:58

and Twitter, but as far as

37:00

threads and mastodon go, they are

37:03

like blue sky, all part of

37:05

the emerging fetiverse, which is the

37:07

network of networks where we can

37:09

freely exchange information between networks. So

37:12

I like blue

37:14

skies aesthetic. I also like the vibe there, the

37:16

people who hang out there, the people who I

37:18

interact with. It seems to me like the community

37:21

that is the most rich, the most fun, and

37:23

the most wide-ranging of all the

37:25

platforms. So that's why I'm recommending blue sky.

37:27

If you haven't checked it out because you

37:29

didn't have an invite code or you're just

37:31

like I'm over it, I'm over all

37:34

social networking, I recommend that

37:36

you log on and try it out. Kate,

37:39

you spoke to Jake Graber about blue

37:41

sky recently for wire.com. I did.

37:44

Jake Graber is the CEO of blue

37:46

sky and I

37:48

have been a blue sky fan

37:50

since its launch and talking

37:52

to her only

37:54

reconfirmed that I'm really rooting for

37:57

them. I think they're not perfect

37:59

at all but I think I think that they're trying to

38:01

do something really interesting with social networking, and I

38:03

want them to succeed. Nice.

38:06

Well, we can hang out there together. I'm SnackSight.

38:08

You can find me. I'm

38:11

just nibs. And

38:13

all those threads is boring. Yeah,

38:16

threads is really boring. And

38:18

they make you use an app on mobile. I don't

38:21

get that at all. It's supposed to be open to the web. Why

38:23

not just... What's wrong with the open web? What is wrong with

38:25

the open web meta? And threads? It's

38:27

not very good at threading. No. I

38:30

mean, part of the toxicity of Twitter was logging

38:32

on and seeing all the angry responses that people

38:34

had to the original tweet, the OT. But

38:37

you open threads and you can't... There's

38:39

no discourse. It's just like

38:42

a lifehacker posting a big chunk about how

38:44

they woke up at 4am and took a

38:46

cold plunge and successfully

38:48

raised just 10 million VC funding. There's

38:51

lulls. There are lulls. There are

38:53

lulls. I actually do appreciate what the brands are doing on

38:55

threads, having a lot of fun with it. Do

38:57

you now? CeraVe is... Yeah, I

38:59

do. I have to say. They're quite

39:01

clever. bookshop.org, throwing shade at Amazon all

39:03

the time. Love it. I'll

39:06

say too about threads. I have no followers there

39:08

and that feels like a threads problem. That feels

39:10

like... Because who wouldn't want

39:14

to read my threads? Truly. You're

39:16

guaranteed like one every two weeks or so. Threads

39:19

is interesting too because most Cera is just

39:21

threading through it. Oh boy. He's

39:24

just become customer support on threads. That's

39:26

the man who runs it, by the way. Okay.

39:30

Well, thank you all for your recommendations

39:32

and thank you all for joining us.

39:34

Kate, thanks for zooming in to talk

39:36

to us about Voujo and AI-fueled clickbait

39:38

farms. Hi. Thanks

39:40

for having me. You guys know I love talking to you.

39:43

You can read Kate's story on wired.com, including the

39:45

follow-up coming soon. Brian, thank you for joining us,

39:47

sitting down with us this week. Great

39:49

to be back. Thank you all. So great to have you in studio. And

39:52

thank you all for listening. If you have feedback for us,

39:54

you can duet all of us on TikTok. Just check the

39:56

show notes. Our producer

39:58

is the excellent Boone. We will

40:01

be back next week with a new show and

40:03

until then, thanks for listening. He

40:11

lived through a war and so he was

40:13

very adamant that he never wanted to pull

40:16

a breathing pull, a breathing pull, a breathing

40:18

pull, a breathing pull, a breathing pull, a

40:20

breathing pull.

40:27

You glitched. Sorry. You

40:29

glitched. A.I. Kate.