PropagandA.I.

Summary

Podcast Summary: Next Comes What

Host: Andrea Pitzer
Episode: PropagandA.I.
Date: May 29, 2026

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Episode Overview

In "PropagandA.I.", author and host Andrea Pitzer explores the intersection of artificial intelligence, propaganda, authoritarianism, and democracy. Drawing parallels between the history of propaganda, the rise of strongmen like Trump, and the digital revolution, Pitzer examines how AI is weaponized in politics and society. The episode features voices including Pope Leo, propaganda pioneer Edward Bernays, media scholar Peter Pomerantsev, AI journalist Karen Howe, consumer advocate Erin Brockovich, and others. Central questions include how AI amplifies manipulation, how propaganda builds regimes of dehumanization, and what resistance—individual and communal—might look like.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Changing Landscape: AI as the New Propaganda Tool

• AI's Unstoppable Trajectory

  • "The question is not whether AI will shape the world, it will. The question is whether you will help shape artificial intelligence." (Andrea Pitzer, 00:00)
  • AI compared to the Industrial Revolution in the scale of its impact (Pitzer, 00:24).
  • Pope Leo's encyclical stresses AI's profound impact on society, war, and human coexistence (Pope Leo, 00:43; 00:59).

• Moral & Social Dangers

  • Technology is not neutral—it takes on the values and aims of its creators and users (Pope Leo & Pitzer, 01:45).
  • "Decisions about technology must never be separated from conscience and responsibility." (Pope Leo, 01:56)
  • The need to disarm AI lest it become a force for dehumanization and exploitation (Pope Leo, 01:24; 01:28).

• Parallels to Historical Propaganda

  • Discussion of Edward Bernays's origins of propaganda; not inherently evil but easily weaponized (Pitzer, 02:22; Bernays, 03:12).
  • Propaganda's roots in religious "propagation of the faith" and its transformation into modern manipulation (Pitzer, 02:51; 03:22; Bernays, 03:12).
  • Bernays’s own impact recounted—cigarette campaigns, U.S. foreign interventions, corporate manipulation (Pitzer, 05:51; 06:15; 06:42).

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2. Propaganda, Strongmen, and Concentration Camp Societies

• Revival and Repetition of Old Strategies

  • Historic figures like Father Coughlin and Nazi propagandists compared to today's manipulations (Pitzer, 15:32).
  • Social media’s rise as “relentlessly harvesting our attention,” amplifying modern propaganda (Pitzer, 18:31).

• Trump and Authoritarian Playbooks

  • Trump as the "physical manifestation of Edward Bernays’s work." (Pitzer, 13:31)
  • Shrinking but increasingly radical movement, growing threats to democracy, and reliance on mass propaganda and dehumanization (Pitzer, 09:12; 09:35; 10:03).

• Dehumanization Through Media

  • "A world of dehumanization, propaganda and a lack of human agency... all undergird a concentration camp society." (Pitzer, 10:03; 10:21)
  • Propaganda sets itself against a demonized "other," enabling horrific societal shifts (Pitzer, 16:02; 17:47).
  • Case studies: Facebook’s alleged role in the Rohingya crisis (Pomerantsev, 19:36).

Notable Quote

• "One of the most dangerous things about propaganda is that everybody believes that it affects other people but not them." (Andrea Pitzer, 13:57)

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3. Journalism, Community, and the Loss of Shared Reality

• Collapse of Shared Information Environments

  • Local and national news once provided a somewhat unified information space but is now fractured, reducing shared civic reality (Pitzer, 12:03; 15:06).
  • Journalism under attack; trust at "record lows" (Howe, 14:28).
  • "News is relevance, but previously could at least be reached through large scale stories and reporting tools." (Pitzer, 14:52)

• Rise of Corporate and Social Media Manipulation

  • Corporate consolidation and profit motives undermine journalism’s public service role (Pomerantsev, 13:00).
  • Media serves as both tool and target for propagandistic influence, especially amid societal polarization (Pitzer, 13:09).

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4. AI and the Propaganda Economy: Billionaires, Illusions, and Resistance

• Tech Billionaires and AI’s Political Economy

  • Tech elites, fused with the state, prioritize profit over public interest (Howe, 20:13).
  • "We’re minting the first trillionaire in the world while simultaneously so many Americans are just trying to afford their basic life." (Howe, 20:53)
  • AI's real creative, scientific potential sidelined in favor of myths and hype for mass adoption and profit (Pitzer, 21:07; 22:49).

• AI as Simulacrum and Dehumanizer

  • Products like AI “companions” are sold as replacements for real relationships, deepening disconnection (Pitzer, 22:34).
  • The AI industry's PR mirrors classic propaganda: exaggerated claims, continual mythmaking, and the engineering of consent (Pitzer, 21:30; Howe, 21:42).

Notable Quote

• "An AI that explains the world to you in an overarching way, that is designed to be a companion, that flatters you, is part of a propaganda mindset." (Pitzer, 23:10)

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5. Paths Forward: Reality, Community, and Resistance

• Embracing Complexity, Resisting Demonization

  • Don’t demonize political opponents by category; judge by specific actions (Pitzer, 27:12).
  • Community and positive culture-building are crucial: "focus on building something positive... whether that’s a book club or a sports rec league, or even church." (Pitzer, 27:50)
  • The “AI Resist List” showcases global resistance movements for a hopeful, participatory future (Howe, 27:06).

• Concrete Actions & Civic Participation

  • Erin Brockovich’s crowd-sourced data center map empowers citizens with local information (Brockovich, 28:35).
  • The importance of “saying what is actually happening” as a radical, anti-propaganda act—the example of a girl outside the ICE camp in Newark (Pitzer, 30:20; 31:16).

Notable Quote

• “Saying what’s happening in a literal way is an anchoring practice and a radical act of anti-propaganda. We should all be doing more of it.” (Andrea Pitzer, 31:16)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• “AI is rewriting production as we sit here… The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution. Today will be a strange ride, so buckle up.” (Andrea Pitzer, 00:17–00:24)
• “Artificial intelligence already touches many areas of our lives and affects decisions that shape human coexistence. … It is also dramatically changing how war is waged.” (Pope Leo, 00:43–00:54)
• "Ideas were weapons and were even more effective than bullets.” (Edward Bernays, 03:12)
• “We literally have a special place in hell for them … [but Bernays] probably did as much harm as any of them.” (Pitzer, 05:07; 05:31)
• “A group is extraordinarily credulous and open to influence, wrote Freud. It has no critical faculty.” (Pomerantsev, 13:42)
• "Journalism as a force for informing the general public has been shattered." (Pitzer, 14:25)
• “These really powerful tech billionaires have fused with the state and are trying to override what the people actually want.” (Howe, 20:13)
• “It’s not a naive dream. It is a direction. It is the path that Jesus Christ opens within history.” (Pope Leo, 08:04)
• “Listen, these people aren’t being heard, they aren’t being seen in their own backyard. And they deserve to know what’s happening.” (Erin Brockovich, 30:06)
• “Why are you so scared? We’re all here to just see our family members.” (10-year-old girl outside ICE camp, 31:39)

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• [00:00–02:22] — Introduction to AI’s revolutionary impact and Pope Leo’s encyclical.
• [02:22–06:42] — Edward Bernays, origins and ambiguities of propaganda, and its evolution.
• [10:03–11:45] — The link between propaganda, dehumanization, and authoritarian movements like Trump’s.
• [12:14–15:21] — Journalism’s role, decline of shared reality, and how misinformation thrives.
• [19:36–21:42] — AI’s role in global crises (Rohingya, social media), billionaire influence, and economic impacts.
• [25:13–28:35] — Ways to resist propaganda, ground oneself in values, and apply practical resistance (Brockovich’s map, AI resist list).
• [30:20–31:16] — Concrete, literal testimony as a radical act (10-year-old girl’s protest at ICE camp).

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Conclusion & Takeaways

Andrea Pitzer weaves a narrative connecting the histories of propaganda, the present risks posed by AI, the dangers of concentrated power, and the slow erosion of democracy via dehumanization and manipulation. The episode issues a call to action: resist the lure of easy explanations and demonization, ground yourself in real-world contact and community, speak plainly about injustice, and participate—collectively and concretely—in shaping what comes next. The path forward is vigilance, resilience, and relentless honesty.

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For Further Information:

• AI Resist List: Highlighted as a resource for global resistance to AI misuse (Karen Howe, 27:06–27:38).
• Erin Brockovich’s data center reporting map: Tool for local accountability (Brockovich, 28:35–29:43).

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Andrea Pitzer]

The question is not whether AI will shape the world, it will. The question is whether you will help shape artificial intelligence. We do not know. We do not know the precise contours of what this transformation will look like.

AI is rewriting production as we sit here. I know it.

[Edward Bernays]

Deal with it.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Like I said, it's a tool. The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution. Today will be a strange ride, so buckle up. I want to start with Pope Leo's encyclical that was published this week.

[Pope Leo]

Artificial intelligence already touches many areas of our lives and affects decisions that shape human coexistence.

[Andrea Pitzer]

It runs some 42,000 words.

[Pope Leo]

It is also dramatically changing how war is waged.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The society of A novella.

[Pope Leo]

I feel entrusted to look upon another huge transformation with eyes of faith, with lucidity of reason, with openness to mystery and with cries of the poor and the earth resounding in my heart.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Having been pretty busy since it came out, I'm not going to pretend I've read it all. But some passages I did read have stuck with me.

[Pope Leo]

Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The encyclical is about the dangers of artificial intelligence.

[Pope Leo]

The word is strong, I know, but deliberately chosen because this moment needs words capable of attracting attention, awakening consciences and indicating paths forward for humanity.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The Pope speaks of technology as not actually neutral because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it.

[Pope Leo]

Decisions about technology must never be separated from from conscience and responsibility.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Leo also mentioned the dangers that prior Popes have warned about of turning other human beings into a resource to be used and exploited.

[Pope Leo]

The person bears within him or herself a freedom, an interiority and a vocation to love and worship that no machine can replace or block.

[Andrea Pitzer]

All this brought to mind Edward Bernays book Propaganda. Edward L. Bernays, you're the father of public relations. What led you more than 60 years ago to see the need for public relations which opens with the definition of the word propaganda?

[Edward Bernays]

I was a member of the United States Committee on Public Information in World

[Andrea Pitzer]

War I. Bernays traces it back to the 17th century and another pope writing about how in 1622 Pope Gregory created a new office, the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. Propaganda fide, the propagation of the Faith.

[Edward Bernays]

And I found that ideas were weapons and were even more effective than bullets.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Bernays used this origin story to argue that propaganda in and of itself wasn't an inherently bad thing.

[Edward Bernays]

Because when Woodrow Wilson said freedom of the seas of the Swiss who had been neutral in the war recognized that they depended on freedom of the seas and came over to our side and

[Andrea Pitzer]

to say as he was writing the book in 1928 that only recently had it come to be seen as a bad thing.

[Edward Bernays]

I decided that if people wanted to meet their girls, which always depended on the public, even in the case of a hermit who had to be fed by somebody, that it was basically important to have actions considered as carefully as words.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But the view of the missionaries that the Catholic Church sent out into the world under the auspices of that office dedicated to propaganda fide. Hear?

Not a comment.

The devil has changed a lot in the centuries since Bernays wrote his book.

A spokesman, a spokesman for the Vatican said that this was all the devil's work. No, no, no, no no. Look, look, look. I do plagues, okay? I do earthquakes. I do all the training for Walgreens cashiers, all right?

And his example might be more of a counterexample for most people at this

point but I don't do no cover up for child molesters, man, okay? I can't wait for these priests to show up on my turf.

And honestly, there are other far more openly evil characters in the history of propaganda, particularly among the Nazis.

We literally have a special place in hell for them.

But as an extraordinarily mercenary character with less likely genocidal intent.

[Edward Bernays]

We changed the name of what we did from publicity direction to counsel which I took from lawyers. Advice on public relations which really means on their relationship with the public.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Bernays probably did as much harm as any of them.

[Edward Bernays]

And since everything in our society depends on the consent of other people than ourselves, it obviously was a field that would help people win their social goal.

[Andrea Pitzer]

He massively boosted cigarette smoking by women through strategic stunts and ad campaigns, actively tying cigarettes to beauty in the form of keeping women thin.

[Edward Bernays]

And I added the word social because I was not going to do this for the Ku Klux Klan or the Birch Society or Mr. Hitler who asked me to work with him.

[Andrea Pitzer]

He played a key role in the United Fruit Company debacle of US intervention in the Americas including the overthrow of

[Edward Bernays]

the Guatemalan Government or Mr. Somoza of Central America or Mr. Franco of Spain because I didn't think they fulfilled a social activity.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Bernays made use of a variety of tactics including psychological concepts from his uncle Sigmund Freud.

[Peter Pomerantsev]

A man buying a car may think he wants it for purposes of locomotion. He may really want it because it is a symbol of social position, an evidence of his success in business or a means of pleasing his wife.

[Andrea Pitzer]

He also happens to be the father of a former writing teacher of mine, he may have done more than anyone to create the world that we live in today, a world of deceptive messaging that seeks to control other human beings. Like I said, it's a tool.

[Peter Pomerantsev]

Hey, Like I said, you can hear me now or you can pay me later.

[Andrea Pitzer]

What to do about this world that we live in now is a big question.

Choose a diversity of perspectives, including, let me add, and if you'd let me make this point, please.

And the Catholic Church has plenty of blood on its hands, so I don't typically look to it for moral guidance.

[Karen Howe]

A trove of documents containing allegations and admissions of sexual abuse was kept locked up in what the Church calls its secret archives, with the only key in the bishop's hands.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Yeah. The Pope's encyclical is a fascinating example of a human being in charge of an institution taking the long view and asking, what kind of world are we building? And is it a good one?

[Pope Leo]

It's not a naive dream. It is a direction. It is the path that Jesus Christ opens within history. For this reason, the church wishes with humility and frankness to be part of conversations on artificial intelligence.

[Andrea Pitzer]

ICE arrests and abuses are still happening. They described filthy bathrooms, abusive guards, inadequate medical care, said prisoners were being threatened with deportation to Ebola stricken countries. Trump and his allies are inflicting violence at home and on those who live in other countries, whether through quiet extinction.

I believe that the shutting down of

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

USAID violated laws, violated court orders, violated

[Andrea Pitzer]

the intent of Congress, and has resulted

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

in untold unnecessary death and destruction around the world again for the sole purpose of soothing the ego of the world's richest man.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Or open war.

Oman will behave just like everybody else

[Edward Bernays]

who will have to blow him up.

[Andrea Pitzer]

They understand that these things have to be fought.

We're getting a new look this week at just how weak of a strong man Donald Trump is becoming.

Yet I do think it's worth it to step back and try to get a panoramic picture of where we're at, to try to see big things coming.

He's winning ever greater control over an ever shrinking political faction.

I've talked about Trump's end approaching before, and it seems easier to imagine now with his cratering poles and the criminal disaster that he's unleashed in Iran.

That's who's running things right now, this dwindling, smaller, concentrated group of people. It's the defining political dynamic right now in the country.

We can't take it for granted.

One that can really only be broken through mass mobilization and democratic elections.

We still have to delegitimize his entire movement and work toward ending it.

Which is why threats to upend democracy will only grow more intense as Trump's faction of MAGA diehards keep shrinking.

But we also have to be thinking about the country and the world that comes after that. I would suggest that the world currently being made is one of dehumanization, propaganda and a lack of human agency.

[Karen Howe]

Peter Pomperantsev needs no introduction.

[Andrea Pitzer]

These things all undergird a concentration camp society. So maybe it's no surprise that that's where we're at.

[Karen Howe]

He's the author of three very, very important books. The 2014 bestseller Nothing is True and

[Andrea Pitzer]

Everything is Possible, the 2019 this is Not Adventures in the War Against Reality, and his most recent, how to Win

[Karen Howe]

an Information War, which is absolutely fascinating,

[Andrea Pitzer]

but I want to talk about how to think beyond it and not to fall into the assumption that it's normal to live in this kind of society.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

The fears and the anticipation around AI tends to run ahead of the reality. If we're talking about a game changer with sort of the social media revolution, that was a game changer in terms of targeting, in terms of how we think about influence and audiences and how we think about our information environment.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Bernays created or fine tuned many of the worst aspects of the world we currently live in.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

A lot of the discussion about AI is how it'll undermine the human. Actually, you know, from where I sit, it's what it's going to tell us about the human, which is much more alarming.

[Andrea Pitzer]

For more than a century, countless US outlets, many with big budgets, in opposition to the kind of stuff he was doing, scrambled to cover the news in cities, states and counties.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

This is a very old debate. I mean, Lippmann and Dewey are having this conversation at the start of the 20th century.

[Andrea Pitzer]

That they did so in blinkered or even bigoted ways, kept vital stories from the light of day.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

So Lippman said, people can't handle the truth. Reality is too complicated. Media takes you away from the truth. Therefore we need, you know, Peter Thiel or some sort of elite to guide us through this world.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Yet those same outlets also covered corruption and daily events, large and small that conveyed useful information that could provide a significant service in a democracy.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

Dewey's response is, you're right, people can't handle the truth. They seek unreality. But we can create communities where truth emerges. There is no absolute truth we can arrive at, but we can have an environment where we're negotiating truths and a way to research them, we have somehow

[Andrea Pitzer]

lost so much of the latter.

Please welcome this year's Mike Wallace Scholarship recipient Santiago Campos, while keeping the previous downside.

[Peter Pomerantsev]

And while I want thank CBS News for funding this generous gift towards my education, I want to also acknowledge how the recent direction of the outlet stains the legacy of Mike Wallace, the namesake of this scholarship.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The creation of a Culture of lies

[Peter Pomerantsev]

and Stunts as corporate elites take hold over the very pipes through which our information flows, journalism that serves people becomes increasingly harder to come by, yet ever more crucial.

[Andrea Pitzer]

A flim flam con man selling the world on hate and fear in order to make the next buck and outrun any consequences for criminal behavior.

Construction is underway for an unprecedented spectacle. A cage fight at the White House. A massive arch taller than the building itself, part of a makeshift arena for an upcoming Ultimate Fighting Championship event.

Donald Trump is a physical manifestation of Edward Bernays work.

[Edward Bernays]

I have never seen anybody want anything

[Andrea Pitzer]

so much as people want those tickets.

We live in an increasingly propagandist society.

[Peter Pomerantsev]

A group is extraordinarily credulous and open to influence, wrote Freud. It has no critical faculty. The individual subordinates self analysis and a discerning search for the truth in favor of maintaining group interests and cohesion.

[Andrea Pitzer]

One of the most dangerous things about propaganda is that everybody believes that it affects other people but not them.

[Peter Pomerantsev]

Each group, Bernays wrote, considers its own standards ultimate and indisputable, intends to dismiss all contrary or different standards as indefensible.

[Andrea Pitzer]

While countless individual journalists and a few companies keep reporting in heroic ways, some

[Karen Howe]

are tuned out because they just don't trust the media.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Journalism as a force for informing the general public has been shattered.

[Karen Howe]

A brand new Gallup poll is showing that Americans are registering a record low trust in mass media. For the third year in a row more adults have no trust at all than trust it a great deal or even a fair amount.

[Andrea Pitzer]

That general public always held some inexplicable and unreal views.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

The problem that we've had is with

[Andrea Pitzer]

news is relevance, but previously could at least be reached through large scale stories and reporting tools.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

People have felt that there is a divide between the interests of the news organizations and their lives.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Now a majority of the country is unlikely to have a shared experience of news of any kind with the exception of occasional true crime stories.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

And in that space lots of very nasty propagandists have been very effective at intervening.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Instead, the last decades of the 20th century saw a revival of propaganda and

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

with the destruction of local news that that has only exacerbated.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And it saw the rise of people that echoed some from Bernays era. People like Father Coughlin.

New York Turns out 18,000 strong for a glimpse of Detroit's famous radio orator,

Father Charles E. Coughlin, who understood just as well as Bernays did how to use propaganda.

[Pope Leo]

Regardless of whether they agree with his views or not. They're here to see one of the outstanding figures in the public spotlight today.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Coughlin once counted nearly a quarter of the American public among his audience.

[Pope Leo]

Here is a typical utterance.

[Andrea Pitzer]

He spread anti Semitic and Nazi ideology widely in the U.S. remember that you're an American. And only the beginning of World War II led to authorities canceling his program and ending his influence. As I've said before, propaganda tends to go hand in hand with a concentration camp society. Because propaganda always sets itself against something and uses it to fear monger.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

One of the stories that I'm literally just finishing writing is about an evangelical preacher in Arizona called Father Caleb Campbell.

[Andrea Pitzer]

A thing can be promoted on its own virtues. When you're talking about propaganda, his whole

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

thing is bringing people out of Christian nationalism into his form of evangelicism.

[Andrea Pitzer]

It has to be recast as better than something else or as an antidote to some threat.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

He was actually a neo Nazi in his youth and he came out of that, became a preacher. And now, you know, he sees a lot of parallels between the sort of suburban fascism of his youth and Christian nationalism today. That's his comparison, not mine.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Propaganda tries to shut down critical thought.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

His methodology is very, very interesting. It actually reflects what Hannah Arendt wrote about fascism and many other things. But very simply his mission is to make the mind safe for reality or to make the world safe for reality

[Andrea Pitzer]

and foster groupthink that demonizes someone or something else.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

Essentially he finds that the people he talks to are drawn to Christian nationalism. And the way he was drawn to some far right movements was because it offers a total world, a totality.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Concentration camp societies can't exist without propaganda.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

An explanation for everything puts you in a position of privilege or your opponents are demons. You're on a mission from God and everything is purely explained.

[Andrea Pitzer]

I've said before that it usually takes years of it to demonize a group enough for the general public to see other human beings as such a threat that they should be put in camps.

What we're doing is we're providing a sanitary place for them to be detained. Remember, we're detaining murderers, we're detaining rapists, pedophiles, drug dealers, Gun traffickers. I mean, we have some real serious criminals there. Plus every one of them broke the law. That's why they're there to begin with.

The early 21st century has seen the rise of social media and digital worlds that are configured to relentlessly harvest our attention in ways that are difficult to break.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

He'll say, look, Aunt Betty, you're a Christian. You know, we're told to love migrants. And she'll say, well, I love immigrants and I love Jesus's story in the Bible. They were immigrants. I know, but these immigrants are all criminals.

[Andrea Pitzer]

More reaction, less thinking, less verifiable information and less real information come to us.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

I'm a patriot. I would never support rioting. But all those people at the January 6, they were trying to stop paedophiles who stole the election.

[Andrea Pitzer]

When that is paired with propaganda, it leads directly to a concentration camp society, as we saw with the kind of campaigns on Facebook against the Rohingya in Myanmar. For many in Myanmar, Facebook is the Internet. A new class action lawsuit accuses the social media platform of playing a direct role in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya.

[Peter Pomerantsev]

At the core of this complaint is the realization that Facebook was willing to trade the lives of the Rohingya people for better market penetration in a small country in Southeast Asia.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Now, artificial intelligence. We're joined by Karen Howe in the way that the oligarchs are pushing it and fooling people about it. Author of the award winning book Empire of AI Dreams and Nightmares. And Sam Altman's AI is poised to build the next world a worse world. Using the model inherited from political and corporate propagandists like Bernays and the compulsive attention grabbing models of social media.

[Karen Howe]

These really powerful tech billionaires have fused with the state and are trying to override what the people actually want. 80% of Americans in the latest polling are concerned about AI.

[Andrea Pitzer]

I'll take a moment to say that one of my kids is in an engineering program that involves a lot of computer work. And because of talking with him about all this and seeing what kind of work he does, I've got a glimpse of this other world where machine learning would have had a different existence as an extraordinary tool that could help a lot of scientific and tech projects. And that life as a tool appears to be taking place. But the field of AI itself has subsumed it.

[Karen Howe]

You know, we're minting the first trillionaire in the world while simultaneously so many Americans are just trying to afford their basic life and trying to put food on the table for their kids, and in come these data centers.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The people developing and selling AI have tried to turn it into a creative mind, a companion, a romantic partner, and things it is entirely incapable of being or doing.

[Karen Howe]

Their fiscal manifestation of this, because they consume an enormous amount of energy, they consume fresh water resources, they're hiking up people's utility prices and exacerbating that affordability crisis.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The propaganda they're pushing, and I mean, it's literally propaganda, makes bigger and bigger claims for what artificial intelligence can do now, will be able to do in the future, and what it even is

[Karen Howe]

all in the name of producing a technology that is concentrating yet more wealth in the hands of those very same billionaires.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Like all propaganda, it depends on fear and relies on lies that cheat people and divide humanity.

[Karen Howe]

One of the things that I think people misunderstand about these layoffs is they think that it indicates somehow AI is successfully replacing all of these workers.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But we're seeing the rise of AI psychosis.

[Karen Howe]

But what's important to understand is these tech companies, they're trying to get cost efficiencies now, in part because they're spending an extraordinary amount of money trying to develop AI technologies.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Then there's the deluge of shitty AI music and books.

[Karen Howe]

They're actually making a future bet that when they lay off the current human employees to gain current cost efficiencies, that they will hopefully then be able to automate them away later with AI.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But companies are now offering the false promise of AI companions who, if anything, will render you more unfit for the real friction of actual human encounters.

[Karen Howe]

But it's not, in fact, a representation of what AI can currently do.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The useful tool AI for specific tech and scientific tasks wouldn't have been profitable enough to satisfy the men who own it. So a broader myth of AI is being sold to much of the public. And it's an illusion and a lie. You don't have to accept it now. I haven't forgotten about the Pope in all this.

[Pope Leo]

Let us not sleep as others do, admonished the Apostle Paul, but let us keep awake.

[Andrea Pitzer]

I was baptized Catholic, became a Lutheran when my mother divorced and remarried, and during my early teenage years was swept by my mother's second husband into evangelical communities, but also briefly attended a Catholic junior high school. Then I wound up at a Jesuit university for my college years, which included some additional Catholic education. As I said, I don't generally look to the Church as my moral compass. I know it can produce a Father Coughlin, just as it can produce a Pope Leo and I don't have any illusions about the relationships to power you have to engage with to be a pope. But I think Pope Leo is right to be concerned about artificial intelligence in its current form. And it goes back to the propaganda fide, the propagation of the faith. Propaganda aims to bend free thought and will into service. That service typically limits someone's well being or rights and obscures the harm done. An AI that explains the world to you in an overarching way, that is designed to be a companion, that flatters you, is part of a propaganda mindset. It is being sold more heavily than anything in my lifetime. And there's a reason for that. Just as with propaganda, people want control of you for their own ends.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

In the middle of all these sort of ideologies, there's usually a huge contradiction.

[Andrea Pitzer]

These are bad actors.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

They're doing everything to push away the contradictory nature of these worldviews and pushing away the complexity of reality.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And so I want to think about the larger degree to which people are ceding control and understanding of their world to others and things that don't have their best interests at heart.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

He knows that just like hammering and hammering and hammering, that this is a lie, that this is untrue won't work.

[Andrea Pitzer]

I wrote a couple weeks ago that I don't want to treat machines like people and people like machines.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

All his work is getting people comfortable with reality again.

[Andrea Pitzer]

So it's important to be aware of what tools you're going to use and whose tool you might unwittingly become when you try to make people into things that serve you instead of human beings.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

He takes them to local community to meet real immigrants. He changes their diet so they watch less of the national news and do more local news. They read books together. It's a very kind of individualized process.

[Andrea Pitzer]

One thing about propaganda, whether it's over AI or immigration, it requires tremendous resources and it exacts a cost.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

I don't think it was very high.

[Andrea Pitzer]

It damages the people who accept it and even the people who use it, and even the environment.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

But he said something which I thought was a good credo to live by, which is that at least he himself has been true to himself.

[Andrea Pitzer]

These power holders weaken themselves, however, by coming to believe their own lies. And they underestimate their opposition because usually

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

when we meet somebody like that, we either try to sort of convince them, fail, and then we just talk about sports or cookies or neutral things, and that's dealing with the situation.

[Andrea Pitzer]

So ground yourself in a political or philosophical or theological heritage with some real teeth to it and use that to weigh the actual facts on the ground, not to explain them away.

[Unidentified Expert/Analyst]

And he's like, no, I've lived by my values. I haven't given up on what I believe in. And I've tried to get them to this point where they can embrace complexity.

[Andrea Pitzer]

How then do we plan for that other world, that world not built on false promises, fear and deception? Can you finally Karen Howe, in this last 30 seconds, talk more about the AI resist list? I would say don't demonize your political opponents in the way that they demonize trans folks or immigrants or other groups.

[Karen Howe]

This is a project that I did with a group of journalists, critical scholars and AI researchers documenting resistance movements around the world.

[Andrea Pitzer]

If you judge them and hold them in contempt, do it for specific things those people have done and not for a category that you can throw them into.

[Karen Howe]

It is meant to center hope.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Don't let this all get abstracted into some vague categories of bad people.

[Karen Howe]

It is meant to center action.

[Andrea Pitzer]

These are real people doing specific things. Don't fall into a propaganda mindset by letting everything seem abstract and inevitable.

[Karen Howe]

And it shows all the different creative ways that anyone can actually participate in applying pressure to the AI industry, holding it accountable, and in fact, shaping the trajectory of this technology.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And don't focus only on crises either, on the events that you find dangerous or troubling. Create community over the parts of the world that you like and the kind of connections you want to last, whether that's a book club or a sports rec league, or even church. If you're more devout than I am, a focus on building something positive is incredibly useful. I want to bring into the conversation consumer advocate Erin Brockovich. She launched a new public tracking website where residents can report concerns about data centers in their own communities. If you're active in the political realm, it's worth asking whether a strategy relies on fooling people or does it actively embrace the world you want in a way that will make sense to the people that strategy is directed at.

[Erin Brockovich]

I decided to create a map where people could self report who were living in and around these facilities, what was

[Andrea Pitzer]

going on in their own backyard, inviting them to be a part of that world that you want to build.

[Erin Brockovich]

I was shocked to see within three days that 49 states were all reporting the exact same issues.

[Andrea Pitzer]

I think that's the key difference between politicians who are clearly able to talk about and address our current crisis of

[Erin Brockovich]

democr local level non disclosures. They weren't included. There wasn't a seat at the table. And how did this happen?

[Andrea Pitzer]

Whether it's about ICE detention, the war in Iran, or about AI or any of a number of other deeply disturbing propaganda phenomena underway right now, it has become extraordinary to simply say what is unfolding around us.

[Erin Brockovich]

2. For people that are already in the areas and are up and running with data centers is the rise in electric bills.

[Andrea Pitzer]

So stay what you see happening and share it with those around you and in your community at school board meetings and city council meetings.

[Erin Brockovich]

And everyone has the same concern about what about the water, what about the loss of land? Noise is a big issue in the ones that are running and affecting people. What's going to happen to the wildlife?

[Andrea Pitzer]

Make concrete details and plans to do something about it rather than staying in the realm of ideas. It can be something small. Anyone can do it.

[Erin Brockovich]

Listen, these people aren't being heard, they aren't being seen in their own backyard. And they deserve to know what's happening. And I think shutting them out of that conversation is one of the biggest problems of all.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The 10 year old girl outside the Delaney Hall Ice Concentration Camp in Newark on the fourth day of the hunger strike did it beautifully over the weekend by going to visit her father and telling reporters outside exactly what was happening.

[Pope Leo]

What were you yelling at the guards

[10-year-old girl at ICE detention]

that they, they need to let all these people out. If they're such big and bad, why don't they just take their mask off? They want to work here. They wanted to work here. They want to work here. So let them show their face. They should show their face. They want to work here and show your face. Why are you so scared? Why? There's nothing to be scared of. We're all here. We all, we're all here to just see our family members. We're not here for trouble. We're not here for nothing. We're just here to just see our family members.

[Andrea Pitzer]

She witnessed the larger events unfolding. She went to offer relief from suffering, or barring that, to testify about it. Saying what's happening in a literal way is an anchoring practice and a radical act of anti propaganda. We should all be doing more of it. And that's it. Thanks for listening to Next Comes what?

[Karen Howe]

Please share this with one person who's looking for ways to survive this mess. To support this podcast, please become a paid [e-mail] and consider giving Next Comes what? A five star review where you get your podcasts.