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0:51

I remember waking up, the alarm clock woke

0:53

me up like it had done for days,

0:56

quite early, and

0:58

looking out the window and it was overcast,

1:02

crisp, bright, and

1:04

just wondering what the day might

1:08

bring. In my mind,

1:11

I had no doubt that

1:13

social media had played part in

1:16

Molly's death, but of course

1:18

we didn't know what the coroner would conclude.

1:23

On Friday 30th September 2022, the

1:27

family of Molly Russell arrive at the

1:29

coroner's court for one last time. Molly's

1:32

dad, Ian, her mum, Janet, her

1:34

sisters, and the family's legal team.

1:38

Ian and one of their lawyers from

1:41

Lide's solicitors, Mary Varney, are frustrated

1:43

with the way the social

1:45

media companies, particularly meta, have

1:47

behaved during the inquest. What

1:51

are those three D's that I was warned

1:53

about? Deny, delay

1:57

and deflect. I was told that that

1:59

would be the case. the the approach of

2:02

the tech platforms. We

2:04

run our platforms safely, those

2:06

sort of denials. Delay

2:08

certainly because we struggle to get

2:11

any data at all from Molly's

2:13

digital life. As Ian

2:15

walks through the door he feels a

2:17

strange sense of relief. It's

2:20

almost over. Coroner

2:22

Andrew Walker reviewed thousands of pieces

2:25

of content. Some of the posts

2:27

Mary Varney showed me in her

2:29

office. He's heard witness

2:31

statements read out in court, listened

2:33

to testimony from family and representatives

2:35

of social media companies. Meta's

2:38

head of safety and well-being Elizabeth

2:41

Leggone said she believed nearly all

2:43

of the content Molly viewed was

2:45

admissive. She called it admissive

2:48

that a hashtag for example

2:50

hashtag I want to die

2:52

wasn't violating because it was

2:54

somebody wanting to express their

2:57

own feelings and

2:59

a complete denial that it

3:01

was an unsafe place for a child. But

3:06

a child psychologist also reviewed the

3:08

material Molly saw online. He

3:10

told the court that he found it so

3:13

disturbing that he lost sleep for weeks. Every

3:19

day of the hearing there had been some journalists

3:21

and members of the public present but

3:23

today it's different. And

3:27

as we entered the courtroom I'd

3:29

never seen it so full. It was

3:32

pretty full most days. Lots of the world's press seemed

3:34

to be there most days but

3:36

there wasn't even standing room only. The people

3:38

were sitting on the floor. They'd taken every

3:40

vantage point to hear what the coroner had

3:42

to say and the sort of low hubbub

3:44

that existed

3:47

in such a way that it just stopped as

3:49

we all walked in. There

3:54

was an air of formality about it because

3:58

even though it's an inquest it still happens. in a

4:00

court, but nonetheless it came

4:02

to a focus. Finally,

4:05

Andrew Walker arrives and the

4:07

court quietens to hear the

4:09

coroner's verdict. It

4:11

would not be safe to leave suicide

4:13

as a conclusion. She

4:16

died from an act of self-harm

4:19

while suffering from depression and

4:21

the negative effects of online content.

4:25

It is likely that the above

4:27

material viewed by Molly, already

4:30

suffering with a depressive illness and

4:32

vulnerable due to her age, affected

4:35

her mental health in a negative way

4:38

and contributed to her death in a

4:40

more than minimal way. It

4:48

doesn't feel like a victory for the

4:50

Russell family, of course, but

4:53

for Mary Varnie, the coroner's

4:55

conclusion is groundbreaking. For

4:57

a non-legal mind, what significance

5:00

does that language have? The

5:02

conclusion says that online harms

5:04

caused contributed to Molly's

5:07

death. It was a material

5:09

factor in why

5:12

Molly came to die, when and how she

5:14

did. And has that ever

5:17

been concluded before in an inquest

5:19

in the UK? Not

5:22

that we're aware of. How

5:24

significant is that conclusion

5:27

for what's coming next?

5:29

My view it's a really

5:31

significant conclusion. It's often

5:34

compared to the first finding of

5:36

a coroner who found that

5:38

asbestos had played a role in her death

5:40

and that that led to sweeping

5:43

changes and better accountability

5:46

for hundreds and hundreds of victims.

5:49

And our hope is

5:51

that the conclusion that Molly's family

5:53

fought so long and strongly

5:56

for will have that sort of

5:58

impact. Later that

6:00

day, the magnitude of what's happened hits

6:02

Ian. He gives a press

6:05

conference at a nearby church hall. We

6:08

should not be sitting here. This should not happen because

6:10

it does not need to happen. But

6:16

we told this story in the

6:18

hope that change would

6:20

come about. And I hope the

6:23

digital world particularly will be a safer place.

6:28

And the final thing I want to

6:30

say is

6:34

thank you Molly for being my daughter. Thank

6:39

you. Maybe

6:46

there's a part of

6:48

me that thinks she

6:51

should have lived her life. She deserved to live her life. But

6:57

however sad it is that she's no longer with us, she's

7:00

still doing the good that she was

7:02

always destined to do. It

7:09

all started with a dream to connect the

7:11

world. But growth and

7:13

engagement caused problems. They

7:16

were calling action. Here's a snake.

7:18

Go and drink his blood. And

7:21

efforts to keep these platforms safe

7:23

were divisive. A senior

7:25

White House adviser went on television

7:27

to accuse me personally of being

7:30

biased against conservatives and

7:32

biased against Donald Trump. Now

7:35

a court of law has concluded

7:37

that online content contributed to Molly

7:39

Russell's death. After 20 years, is

7:43

Silicon Valley's radical experiment to connect

7:45

the world About to

7:47

implode? The

8:05

Bbc Radio Four This Is

8:08

The Gate Keepers I'm Jamie

8:10

Bartlett. Episode eight: I Song

8:12

Of Chaos. Around

8:19

the same time as the

8:21

money Russell Inquest concludes a

8:23

strain story is unfolding inside

8:25

Twitter Hq in San Francisco.

8:28

Well I got am. I

8:30

gonna node from a person that

8:32

twitter and came out to on

8:34

twitter. And really wasn't

8:37

told anything. Deal

8:40

on Musk had only just bought

8:42

the company for forty four billion

8:44

dollars a now. Journalists Met Tiny

8:47

Be is sitting in one of

8:49

the twitter meeting rooms wondering why

8:51

the world's third richest man has

8:53

called him in on a top

8:55

secret assignment. Months

8:58

the season journalists to use to

9:00

be a political writer for Rolling

9:02

Stone Magazine. Now he runs his

9:04

own newsletter which he says gives

9:07

him the freedom to say what

9:09

he wants. Obviously he was picking

9:11

people who are not tied to

9:13

legacy media organisations and you know

9:15

there aren't a whole lot of

9:18

i would say investigative reporters were

9:20

working in and. After

9:25

Donald Trump's Twitter account is

9:28

suspended in Twenty Twenty One's

9:30

tensions around Sue and what

9:32

is allowed on the platforms

9:34

reaches fever pitch. Some on

9:36

the right believe that the

9:38

social media companies are using

9:41

their power to subtly persia

9:43

kind of establishment friendlies, liberal

9:45

worldview, musk

9:48

gibbs matt access to

9:50

hundreds of thousands of

9:53

internal twitter documents exchanges

9:55

between employees discussions about

9:57

content moderation minutes of

9:59

meetings emails. It

10:01

was so weird, Jamie and me,

10:04

and I can't even tell you how

10:06

surreal the whole thing was. There

10:09

was a moment in the first days of this project

10:12

where there were probably 10 people in

10:15

a conference room and

10:17

Elon, sort of faulty tower style,

10:19

kind of popped his head in the door at

10:21

one point and he said, anyone

10:24

need anything? Coffee? You

10:26

know? And then popped out. Over

10:28

the next few months, Matt sits

10:30

in a conference room at Twitter

10:32

HQ on Market Street, along with

10:34

a few other carefully selected journalists,

10:36

and pours through the documents. He

10:39

eventually posts his findings in a

10:41

series of very long Twitter threads

10:43

which become known as the Twitter

10:46

Files. The

10:49

fallout from the Twitter Files is

10:51

strange, because some people

10:53

think this is explosive, and

10:56

for others, it's nothing. On one hand,

10:58

you've got the New York Post blaring on

11:00

its front page today, Twitter scandal exposed. Then

11:02

there's the Rolling Stone, which calls it a

11:04

snooze fest. Even Fox

11:06

News went with the much

11:09

more neutral Elon Musk reveals

11:11

what led to Twitter suppressing

11:13

Hunter Biden's story. The libertarian

11:15

outlet reason- Matt says the

11:17

documents show that government agencies

11:19

and Twitter work together, taking

11:22

down election misinformation, censoring conservative

11:24

views, even deleting true stories

11:26

about the side effects of Covid

11:28

vaccines. You

11:30

call it a scarier model

11:33

of digital censorship. Absolutely. This

11:35

system assumes that the public

11:38

is too stupid to handle the

11:40

material, and it basically

11:43

approaches content moderation with this idea

11:45

that we have to shape

11:48

the information landscape so that

11:52

the audiences will come to the

11:54

correct conclusion and aren't

11:56

exposed to truth that might mislead

11:58

them. It just

12:00

annihilates the whole concept of what free

12:03

speech is supposed to be for and free speech culture.

12:08

There's one person named more than anyone

12:10

else in those files, Yoel

12:12

Roth. Twitter's former head of

12:14

trust and safety who played a key

12:16

role in banning Trump. Yoel

12:19

says Matt Taibbi is pushing

12:22

highly misleading conspiracies. Yoel

12:24

acknowledges that Twitter did sometimes

12:27

remove true information, but

12:29

only, he says, if it was

12:31

tied to inauthentic behavior, like

12:33

if it was part of a

12:36

coordinated Russian campaign using fake accounts

12:38

to target and influence Americans. If

12:41

you look at the content of the Twitter files

12:43

themselves, what you see are people

12:46

debating difficult decisions. And

12:49

while the right-wing press argue

12:51

that Twitter is censoring prominent

12:53

conservative voices, Yoel is

12:56

adamant the company didn't. If

12:58

anything, it was the opposite. What

13:00

you see actually is every time

13:02

I am personally asked about moderating

13:05

Donald Trump or moderating a

13:07

piece of content from a Republican, I

13:10

push back on moderating the Republicans.

13:13

I advocate against censoring

13:16

conservatives, and I do that

13:18

not because of my political opinions, but

13:21

because the content did not violate

13:23

Twitter's written rules. The

13:25

best evidence that Elon Musk's

13:27

cherry-picked writers could come up

13:29

with are a bunch of

13:31

examples of me personally, the

13:33

censor-in-chief, not censoring

13:35

conservatives. The

13:38

companies, the Yoel Ross of the world,

13:41

can talk all they want about how, yeah,

13:43

we didn't agree all the time. Like, we

13:46

push back. As a journalist,

13:48

the whole idea of the American

13:51

speech system is to prevent the

13:53

government from doing that sort of

13:55

thing. Matt and Elon

13:57

Musk are no longer on speaking terms. but

14:00

Matt carries on writing about this

14:02

new form of secretive digital censorship.

14:07

I haven't seen all the documents that Matt was

14:10

given access to. Most

14:12

other journalists who've looked into the

14:14

reporting don't think it's proof of

14:16

anything sinister going on. Critics

14:19

say Matt Taibbi himself has become

14:21

a conspiracy theorist, pushing an agenda

14:24

of his own, something he denies

14:26

of course. But

14:28

maybe what really matters is that

14:30

large numbers of people believe it.

14:34

For some, the Twitter files

14:36

stoked the fires of a

14:38

grand Silicon Valley conspiracy to

14:40

control information and therefore

14:43

the American mind. Yoel

14:50

Roth left Twitter in late

14:52

2022. He now works as head

14:54

of trust and safety for the match group

14:56

that runs dating apps Tinder and

14:58

Hinge. He felt

15:01

that all the work he'd been doing

15:03

at Twitter for a decade was being

15:05

undone. When I left

15:07

Twitter, I tried my best to

15:09

de-escalate things with Elon. And

15:11

so the day that I resigned

15:13

when he and I spoke on the phone and he

15:16

tried to convince me to stay at Twitter and I

15:18

turned that down, I

15:20

made it a point of trying to part, if

15:22

not as friends, than at least neutrally. I

15:25

stressed that I was on his side, that

15:27

I was rooting for his success and for

15:29

Twitter's success, and I did this

15:31

because I didn't want him to come

15:33

after me. And

15:36

then he did. And in that

15:38

moment, the threat succeeded even

15:40

what had happened after Donald Trump went

15:42

after me. Thousands

15:45

of tweets, many of

15:47

them still live on Twitter, told

15:50

me that I should be executed, that

15:53

I should be hung, that I should

15:55

be thrown in a wood chipper. And

15:57

this Wasn't just random. This

15:59

was... an attempt to keep me

16:01

from speaking about what my job

16:03

at Twitter had been and to

16:05

make an example of me. The

16:08

problem was date so comprehensively destroyed

16:11

my life that that point there

16:13

really wasn't an incentive not to

16:15

keep speaking publicly. And. Saw

16:17

an. Ex hasn't

16:19

replied to all requests for

16:21

comment. The.

16:25

Story is Molly Russell and the

16:27

Twitter files a really about the

16:29

same seeing. A ceiling

16:32

that some mysterious force decides

16:34

what we get to see

16:36

that we're not in control

16:38

anymore. The. right?

16:40

A Worried about Silicon Valley using

16:42

their immense power to push a

16:45

liberal worldview behind closed doors molest

16:47

to these massive companies? Just don't

16:49

care about the offline harms they're

16:52

causing to people like Molly Russell.

16:56

But both can agree they have

16:58

too much influence over our lives

17:00

and that something needs to be

17:02

done. On

17:10

January the Thirty first, Twenty Twenty

17:13

Four forces from this cold snap,

17:15

tic toc x and metre lined

17:17

up in Washington D C in

17:19

front of twenty or so angry

17:22

looking Us senators, both republicans and

17:24

democrats spivey of search of the

17:26

shirts really will come to order.

17:30

I thank all those in that

17:32

sense. These bosses had been called

17:34

to witness by a senate committee

17:36

looking into online child protection. Mark.

17:39

Zuckerberg and Tic Toc Boss

17:41

you Choose appears voluntarily. Linda

17:44

Yeah to Reno of eggs and

17:46

Evan Spiegel of Snap only attended

17:48

off the being sent government issued

17:50

subpoenas. and

17:52

in the gallery behind something no

17:54

one had ever seen before dozens

17:56

of parents holding up photographs of

17:59

their children 11-year-old

18:02

Selena Rodriguez, who died by

18:04

suicide after being solicited for

18:06

sexually exploitative content by a

18:09

stranger on Instagram and Snap.

18:12

Mason Bogard, who died aged

18:14

15 after a TikTok choking

18:16

challenge. Jordan

18:19

DeMay, who killed himself

18:21

aged 17 after being scammed on

18:23

Instagram. Mr.

18:26

Zuckerberg, you and the companies

18:28

before us, I know you don't mean it to

18:30

be so, but you have blood on your hands.

18:32

There's not a damn thing anybody can do about

18:34

it. You can't be sued. For

18:37

too long, we have

18:39

been seeing the social media companies turn

18:41

a blind eye when kids

18:44

have... We can no longer trust

18:46

Meta and frankly, any

18:48

of the other social media to...

18:51

Mr. Zuckerberg, what the hell were you thinking?

18:54

A couple of hours in, Republican

18:56

Senator Josh Hawley waves his arms

18:58

at the grieving families in the

19:00

gallery and turns to Mark Zuckerberg.

19:03

There's families of victims here today. Have you apologized

19:05

to the victims? They're

19:08

here. Would you like to apologize for what

19:10

you've done to these good people? Mark

19:14

Zuckerberg stands up and faces the families.

19:17

He says, sorry for everything that's happened

19:19

to them. No one should have to

19:21

go through the things that your families

19:23

have suffered. The

19:32

story of modern social media started back

19:34

in 1996 when

19:37

Congressman Chris Cox and Ron Wyden

19:40

created Section 230, that

19:43

immunity law that meant the platforms

19:45

aren't liable for what we post

19:47

on them. It's

19:49

always been the foundation on which all

19:51

social media is built. Now,

19:54

I didn't realize that Chris Cox

19:56

and Ron Wyden weren't really motivated

19:58

by technology. looking

20:00

for a subject that could unite

20:03

Republicans and Democrats. And

20:06

it just happened to be this exciting

20:08

new thing called the Internet. My

20:11

name is Christopher Cox, but

20:14

please call me Chris. This

20:17

is back in the 90s, but it was

20:19

very, very clear to us that there

20:21

was no mixture

20:24

of thought between the two

20:26

major parties. And my

20:28

hypothesis was that politics

20:31

focused constantly on the same

20:33

old questions. But if

20:36

we focused on what I called green

20:38

fields, on problems on

20:40

the horizon, then we could

20:42

force people to think about problems

20:45

that they hadn't already solved, problems

20:47

that were new to them, and they'd have to

20:49

reason it through. So that was sort of a

20:51

general approach and the way we went. And

20:54

now politicians in America from both

20:56

ends of the spectrum have found

20:59

that greenfield subject again. Except

21:01

this time they have a very different

21:04

goal. And they're

21:06

even contemplating the unthinkable.

21:09

In 1996 we passed Section 230

21:12

of the Communications Decency Act. This

21:15

law immunized the

21:17

then fledgling Internet platforms

21:20

from liability for user-generated

21:22

content. For the

21:24

past 30 years, Section 230 has

21:26

remained largely unchanged. That

21:29

has to change. Thank

21:31

you, Mr. Chairman. The Republicans will answer

21:33

the call. All

21:35

of us, every one of us, is ready

21:38

to work with you and our Democratic colleagues

21:40

on this committee. It

21:42

is now time to repeal

21:45

Section 230. This

21:47

committee has made up the ideologically most

21:49

different people you could find. I mean

21:51

we've found common ground here that just

21:54

is astonishing. For 25 years

21:57

this Section 230 immunity has

21:59

helped. fast. These

22:01

technology companies have powerful and

22:04

well-funded lobbying operations. If

22:06

I could just start with a little plain talk here

22:09

this morning. Big Tech is

22:12

the biggest most powerful lobby in the

22:14

United States Congress. They spend millions upon

22:16

millions upon millions of dollars every year

22:19

to lobby this body. And

22:21

the truth is they do it successfully.

22:24

They successfully shut down every meaningful piece

22:26

of legislation every year and I have

22:28

seen it repeatedly. We'll get all kinds

22:30

of speeches in committee. We'll get speeches

22:32

on the floor about how we have

22:34

to act and then this body will

22:36

do nothing. Why? Money. That's why. Gobbs

22:39

of it. Gobbs of it. Influencing

22:43

votes. A hammer hold

22:45

on this process. It is time for

22:47

it to be broken and the only way I know to

22:49

break it is to bring the truth forward

22:51

and that's why we are so glad that you are here

22:53

today to do it. Thank you Mr. Chairman. If

22:56

section 230 is ever

22:58

repealed social media as we know it

23:00

might disappear. That

23:03

law passed when I was still a teenager.

23:05

I never thought about it before this series

23:08

but it's defined my life, my

23:10

relationships, my work, my politics.

23:14

In the same way whatever we

23:16

do next will influence the lives

23:18

of people especially younger people for

23:20

years to come because

23:23

however chaotic and confusing the online

23:25

world seems now it's

23:27

about to get even stranger. In

23:32

order to make America great and

23:34

glorious again I am tonight announcing

23:36

my candidacy for President of the

23:38

United States. The UK will probably

23:40

have a general election sometime this year

23:42

but we still don't know when. And

23:45

voting is underway in

23:47

presidential elections in Russia which

23:49

will almost certainly see Vladimir

23:51

Putin extend his quarter of

23:53

a century in power. 2024

23:58

is a big year for elections around. the world,

24:00

you've probably already heard that, but

24:03

it's more than just elections, and

24:05

it's more than just this one

24:07

year. The harms of the

24:10

first human contact with AI haven't

24:13

been addressed, and it's gotten worse,

24:15

and it's going to get worse. Maria

24:18

Ressa, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning

24:21

journalist from the Philippines, tried

24:23

to warn the world about

24:25

election manipulation on Facebook in

24:27

2016. That experience turned her

24:30

from a passionate supporter of technology

24:33

to a skeptic, and then

24:35

an activist. She

24:37

thinks many of the problems she saw

24:39

nearly 10 years ago, emotional

24:41

manipulation and misinformation pushing people

24:44

to the fringes will be

24:46

made even worse by advances

24:49

in artificial intelligence, especially

24:52

something called generative AI,

24:54

where machines can produce

24:56

human-like content. Okay,

25:00

so what happens with generative

25:02

AI? If

25:05

they fed it social media, which

25:08

actually GPT-3, they admitted they

25:11

did, the garbage in is

25:13

garbage out. Generative

25:16

AI needs examples of human speech

25:18

to learn how to replicate or

25:20

mimic us, and

25:23

the biggest data set of human speech ever

25:26

created is on social media. What

25:30

are we using to train these AI? Everyday

25:33

human speech, or the speech

25:35

that social media incentivizes?

25:38

Character-limited, emotional, chasing engagement.

25:40

What if generative AI

25:43

becomes a self-perpetuating mirror of

25:46

our social media lives, filling

25:48

the internet with our own

25:51

dark impulses? It

25:53

can sound like it

25:55

is human, it

25:57

chats with you, but also it

26:00

does is it's pattern

26:02

recognition and it pulls it together.

26:04

In my words, it just

26:07

spews lives. Why

26:09

was this released into the public sphere?

26:11

Let me like moderate my anger and

26:14

like just go through right. So what

26:16

is going to happen with

26:18

elections in 2024?

26:21

If you do not have integrity

26:23

of facts, you cannot have integrity

26:25

of elections. This goes right

26:28

back to the vote, right? If we're

26:30

being manipulated through our emotions, we

26:32

change the way we look at the world and the

26:34

way we act through our

26:36

emotions. Early this

26:38

year, I was in Paris at

26:41

UNESCO and we counted

26:43

how many elections from 2023 to 2024.

26:45

There are nine

26:48

zero 90 key

26:50

elections we need to look at. And

26:53

if you look at the patterns

26:55

as they stand and we don't

26:57

change anything significant. In

27:00

January, Taiwan will have elections.

27:02

February, Indonesia, the world's largest

27:04

Muslim population. You have the

27:07

EU, Canada, you have the

27:09

US elections coming up. The

27:11

last factoid is V-Dem,

27:14

which is a think

27:16

tank in Sweden. Last

27:18

year, they said that 60 percent

27:20

of the world is now under authoritarian

27:22

rule. This

27:25

year in January, that number went

27:27

up to 72 percent. Maria

27:31

Ressa was right in 2016. She

27:34

tried to sound the alarm that

27:36

our information ecosystem was in danger.

27:39

What if she's right again? We cannot

27:43

be insidiously manipulated because

27:45

if we are, then

27:47

democracy really, there's no shared

27:49

reality first. Democracy

27:51

can't stand this. Democracy

27:54

will fail. I mean, I

27:56

don't know what else to say. I feel like

27:58

really truly, this is a good thing. Cassandra combined

28:00

right and yet the

28:03

technology is

28:05

running rampant. I was

28:07

much calmer in 2016. 2024

28:10

will be a tipping point. Yeah

28:14

I sound really dystopian

28:16

so sorry. We

28:19

wind up our interview and Maria rushes

28:21

off to another meeting before flying back

28:24

to the Philippines. Speaking

28:27

with her makes me think

28:29

about how fast technology changes.

28:32

How long ago 2016 already feels. And

28:37

in a decade from now we'll look back to 2024

28:39

and feel the same way. The

28:48

medium is not something neutral. It

28:51

does something to people. It takes hold of

28:53

them. It wraps them up. It massages them.

28:55

It bumps them around. In the 1960s a

28:58

brilliant media theorist called

29:01

Marshall McLuhan was thinking about

29:03

the dominant new communication technology

29:05

of his age. The

29:08

television. He said

29:10

that electronic communications like the TV

29:12

would change the world. Change how

29:15

we saw ourselves. How we saw

29:17

each other. It

29:19

would create a new global village.

29:23

But there would be a clash between

29:25

the old world and the new. The

29:27

global village is at once as wide as

29:29

the planet and as small as a little

29:32

town where everybody is maliciously engaged and poking

29:34

his nose at everybody else's business. It

29:42

wasn't TV that gave rise to that clash.

29:45

It was Silicon Valley's promise

29:47

to democratize information and connect

29:49

us all. And

29:51

in many ways they achieved that. Social

29:54

media created the global village.

29:57

But someone had to run that village. and

30:00

that fell to its creators, a handful

30:02

of people, ambitious and

30:04

idealistic and young. They

30:07

became our new gatekeepers. Legislation

30:10

freed them up to run this village

30:13

in whichever way they thought best, and

30:16

they used a mixture of

30:18

engagement-based ranking, complex algorithms and

30:20

content moderation. That

30:23

business model made the tech bosses rich,

30:26

but left many of

30:28

us feeling confused, disorientated

30:30

and manipulated. For

30:32

20 years we've all been part of

30:34

this global village. We were

30:37

drawn in by the possibilities this

30:39

new digital age offered up. Then

30:42

it turned into something darker, more

30:44

chaotic than anyone could have imagined. I

30:48

think this radical experiment is finally coming

30:50

to an end, and

30:52

we're about to find out if

30:55

Silicon Valley's utopian dream has

30:57

become just another paradise lost.

31:19

The Gatekeepers is presented by me, Jamie

31:21

Bartlett. It was written by me and

31:24

Caitlin Smith. The producer is Caitlin

31:26

Smith. Research by me,

31:28

Caitlin Smith, Rachel Fulton, Elizabeth

31:31

Anne Duffy and Juliet Conway.

31:33

The executive producer is Peter McManus.

31:36

Sound design by Eloise Wickmore

31:38

and the composer is Jeremy

31:40

Warmseley. The story consultant is

31:43

Kirsty Williams and the commissioner is

31:45

Dan Clark. This was

31:47

a BBC Scotland production for BBC Radio

31:49

4. If

31:56

you are suffering distress or despair and

31:58

need support, including urgent

32:00

support. A list

32:02

of organisations that can

32:05

help is available at

32:07

bbc.co.uk/action line. I'm

32:11

Alex Kratosky. And I'm Kevin Fong.

32:13

How do you feel about AI?

32:15

Does it scare you? Very quickly

32:17

that question comes up, you know, is it going to sink for

32:19

us? Does it excite you? I

32:22

say, how is the AI going to help us to

32:24

sink better? Do you worry about how it'll change

32:26

your life? Your job? Your

32:28

kids? AI is built into many

32:30

of the software applications that we now use

32:33

in the schools every day. In every episode

32:35

of The Artificial Human from BBC Radio 4,

32:38

Kevin and I are here to help. We

32:40

will chart a course through the world of AI

32:42

and we will answer your questions. It

32:44

doesn't just lie, but it lies in an incredibly

32:46

enthusiastic, convincing way. That ability to be able to

32:48

kind of sink critically is just going to be

32:50

so important as we move forward. The

32:53

Artificial Human with me, Alex Kratosky.

32:56

And me, Kevin Fong. Listen

32:58

on BBC Sounds. What

33:29

the next generation of Siri, Alexa, Google looks like.

33:31

And a lot more. Find

33:34

TED Tech on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

33:36

or wherever you listen.