← The 404 Media Podcast
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- [00:00]
A
I think that this will have reverberations across other cities because it shows how intense and vast the Flock network is. Hello and welcome to the 404 Media podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404Media code as well as bonus content every single week. Subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access to that content@404 Media Co I am hosting this episode. I'm Jason Kebler. Sam was trying to. I could tell. I could see it in her eyes.
- [00:45]
B
I was ready. I was ready to jump back.
- [00:46]
A
She did it last week. He did it last week. So my turn. So Sam is here, obviously, and I also have Emmanuel. What's up, Emmanuel?
- [00:54]
C
Hey, what's up, Joseph?
- [00:57]
A
I don't know. I don't know where he's at. He'll be back at some point in the future. Possibly as soon as next week, I think. Only housekeeping I have is my mom bought me this sweatshirt. If you're watching on YouTube and it has like a big time copyright infringement on it, she got 404 media embroidered in like the most basic font possible. And also there's a crab. So I don't know. Look forward to that lawsuit at some point.
- [01:30]
B
If you're in Maryland and you want one, let us know.
- [01:34]
A
Yeah, my mom will make you one. Okay. Should we get into it?
- [01:40]
C
Yeah, let's get into it and start with Jason's story. The headline for this one is citylearns Flock access cameras in children's gymnastics room as Sales Pitch Demo renews contract. Anyway, back to our favorite company, Flock. Jason. This all started with a FOIA request by a guy named Jason Hunyar. What did he find?
- [02:09]
A
Yeah, so kind of proud of this one because I talked to Jason Hunyar, who is a resident of this city called Dunwoody, Georgia, which is a suburb of Atlanta. It's like right outside Atlanta. There are many flaw cameras there. And he told me that he basically learned about Flock from our reporting and also learned about FOIA ing from us, more or less, which is cool. But he filed a lot of FOIAs with the city of Dunwoody about Flock, their contracts, and then these things called access logs, which basically show who is accessing different Flock cameras and for what purpose. So in addition to what we have written about in the past, which are audit reports, which are basically records of every time that a cop has searched the flock network. There's also these things called access logs, which show each time that a camera was tapped into. And these sort of show, like, the video cameras that flock has. So not necessarily the automatic license plate readers, but the actual, like, video cameras. And it showed what I thought was, like, a lot of interesting things. First of all, it showed that flock's network in Dunwoody is not just flock cameras owned by the city. There are flock cameras that are owned by the city and the police department, but then there were also all these cameras that are owned by private entities. So there were, like, gas station cameras, There were cameras at garage gyms, and then there were cameras at this Jewish community center that were all feeding into the police's what they call a real time data or real time crime fighting database, more or less, which we'll talk more about in a minute. And it shows each and every time that someone looked at these cameras and what camera they looked at and what time and for how long. And what Jason Hunyar found was flock employees were looking at a lot of cameras that were in the children's gymnastics room at the Jewish community center, as well as cameras that were at the pool, cameras that were at a fitness center. And he basically, like, dumped a lot of these documents and wrote a substack post that was like, why our flock employees monitoring our children? And that set off this, I mean, frankly, shit show, like, in Dunwoody where all the residents were like, why are flock employees looking at these cameras? Flock employees are not really supposed to be looking at these cameras. Why are these cameras connected to this network in the first place? We didn't know that this was happening. We didn't sign up for this. Like, what's the deal?
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C
I just want to pause and note
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A
that,
- [05:13]
C
like, we have this situation with Jason Hanyar, who, because of our reporting, did this very fruitful FOIA request. And then Joe was giving a talk in Berkeley, and he was just walking around there and saw that there was, like, an anti flock protest. And obviously, we've reported about many cities that are pushing back against flock now. And it's just interesting that there's been a sea change around flaw cameras at this point. It's like, it's such a different environment than when we first talked. First started talking about it, like, a year ago or something. And, yeah, proud mostly of Jason and Joe for the reporting that brought a lot of this to light.
- [06:05]
A
But I know also I feel like every time we talk about it, I've, like, explained what flock is, and I Mean, if you don't know, I'm sorry. But I feel like at this point, people actually know what it is. I, like, have brought it up to people in my life, and they're like, oh, yeah, I've seen Flock cameras. I know what you're talking about. And that's pretty rare for surveillance technology where it's reached this point where it's like, oh, I know what that company is and what they do. And, like, goes. Videos and articles about Flock have become somewhat mainstream on, like, Instagram and YouTube. Like, I see a lot of people making videos about it and these different, like, community groups opposing them and that sort of thing. And it seems like it's something where it's becoming this, like, actual mainstream ish issue, which is cool to see.
- [06:58]
C
Yeah, yeah. Very similar to the Ring arc that we saw. So, yeah. Back to the specific story. What does Floch say? Like, Jason Hunyar reveals all this information. People are not happy about it. What is their explanation for why this is happening?
- [07:18]
A
Yeah, so I think that this is important because there's, like, a city council meeting that we'll talk about in a second. But at the city council meeting, the outrage over Flock employees accessing these cameras is pretty intense. And some of the residents are like. I mean, these are their words, but they're like, why do they have, like, little Jeffrey Epstein's running around looking at our children?
- [07:46]
C
You guys want little Epstein's to have
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D
access to cameras all across your city?
- [07:51]
A
I mean, that's.
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C
That's crazy to me.
- [07:54]
A
That is like, what some of the coverage I've seen on social media has been like. And I think that Flock has been very upset at this framing. I think that to be fair to them, to just sort of, like, explain what they say is happening here and what, I mean, probably is happening just based on sort of how I know Flock works. I've, like, seen sales demos and things like this before that have either leaked or that I found unlisted on YouTube is basically, flock does these sales demos, where if you are a city and you're interested in buying Flock, you go watch and see how the technology works. And Flock sales employees who work at Flock basically, like, pull up cameras in real time that are from, like, cities that already have contracts with Flock. And Dunwoody, Georgia, is near Flock's headquarters. Like, Flock is based in Georgia. Flock was founded at Georgia Tech University in Atlanta. And they have, like, this really deep integration with the city of Dunwoody. And so what Flock says was happening is basically like, they were doing These sales demos, there's this real time crime center that the city of Dunwoody has, and it's basically like a desk with a gigantic television screen that has like 50 cameras on it all at once. And so what they are claiming, more or less, is that these sales employees were demoing this technology. They were tapping into that real time crime center, and they were showing like 30 cameras at once. And some of them happen to be in this children's gymnastics center at the pool, like, at these places that are quite sensitive. And Flock says that, you know, to imply that our employees were pulling up these specific cameras for their own, like, personal, creepy uses is wrong and not fair. And that, you know, it's not fair that these employees are being singled out. And they're also claiming that they are one of the most transparent surveillance companies that exists because these access logs exist at all. They're basically saying that, like, with other surveillance technology, this is not data that you would even have. You would never know. And, like, they have this. They have this system so that people can. So that, like, access like this can be held accountable in some way. And they were. Flock was basically like, this is our bad. We shouldn't have been demoing with these cameras. It's a mistake. Like, we're not going to do it anymore. And when we do sales demos, we're not going to use Dunwoody anymore. We're going to use other cities. And in addition, we're only going to use cameras that are, like, in parking lots that are away from populated areas. We're not going to use cameras that are, you know, at businesses that. That are in sensitive locations, that sort of thing. Like, that is what Flock is saying. And I think we'll get more into it. But that is like, I understand that. I think, like, I think that's probably what happened here, but that answer is not very reassuring. In any case, like, the. The fact remains that basically, like, Flock was using this city of real people and real children and real businesses as a sales pitch to other cops and pulling them up, you know, at random, just whenever they happen to have these, like, sales calls. And I think that if I were someone who lived in the. That city, I would wonder why we were being used as, like, a test tube while we were being used as a sales pitch, why these cameras are even on the network at all, that sort of thing. And so I think that there's, like, plenty of outrage to be had here. I think. I just wanted to explain why Flock says that, well, no, we're not. I Mean, frankly, like, Flock's blog posts about this are, like, our employees are not child abusers. Like, that's. That's the level that this got to. And that's, like, the rhetoric that. That sort of, like, ended up happening here. And I think that is probably an understandable place to be if you're a parent and you didn't know that this was happening. But that's sort of like, their general explanation for it. And that is, like, the explanation that the city of Dunwoody, like, its mayor and city council, has sort of taken back to its citizens at a city council meeting where for, like, three hours, people were yelling at the city for saying, like, how could this possibly happen? Why are you working with this company?
- [13:03]
C
I think it's totally understandable that Flock would put something out there in public saying were not creeping on kids. Like, standing up for their employees in that way, I guess, is fine. I do find the response to be contradictory in a sense that it's like, on one hand, we did nothing wrong. On the other hand, we're very sorry and will never happen again is pretty. Pretty weird. Do you want to talk more about what did go down at this point? City council? Like, what was the vibe?
- [13:44]
A
Yeah, so the vibe was basically, like, at any city council meeting or at many city council meetings, there's, like, time for public comment. And this city council meeting had Flock, the Flock contract on the agenda. Basically, like, the Flock contract was coming up for renewal. This all happened, and literally for almost three straight hours, like, citizen after citizen came up, they had three minutes to talk, and they said, like, we don't want this technology in our town. Why are they spying on our kids? How could you let this happen? They were also saying, like, this happened without, you know, us being consulted. Like, we didn't know this was happening. How can you, like, take. How can we take you seriously as our elected leaders and, like, how can you basically, like, work with a company like this? And, I mean, I found the city's response to be extremely underwhelming. Basically, the mayor was like, I was surprised to learn that this was happening. Flock has promised that it's never going to happen again. They're not using Dunwoody as a test demo anymore. But, like, y' all are overreacting. This was done as, like, a sales demo. Flock is an important surveillance technology that's keeping us safe, and we're going to, like, modify the contract slightly and renew it and, like, move forward. And it was clear from what the residents were saying that that's not what they were asking for, like, they did not want these cosmetic changes to the contract. They didn't want these, like, sorry, not sorry, apologies from Flock. I think that at previous city council meetings, Flock employees were there and they were sort of saying like, you guys are wrong about this. Like, you're mischaracterizing what actually happened. Here's how our technology works, like so on and so forth. And I think was very clear to me was that the residents actually do know quite a lot about the technology and they know all of the sort of privacy and security screw ups that Flock has had. They know that Flock data has been filtered up to ice. They know that it's been used to track a woman who had an abortion. They know that there's been like various security lapses. And pretty much like every time something like this happens, Flock will say, like, this is being blown out of proportion. This is being taken out of context. You know, these are like theoretical attacks. Like when we did that article about Flock Condor cameras, which are the video cameras that are at issue here being exposed to the open Internet, they said, oh, well, these were like in a testing mode. They were only exposed for a few weeks. This is not like we fixed it basically. And that's sort of like what they've been saying over and over again is like, yeah, this happened, but like we fixed it. And there. And by the way, there's like a concerted, like, I mean, they basically say, like, there's a concerted woke effort to like destroy Floch and you guys are overreacting. And I think that the citizens of Dunwoody, like, really didn't like how it. How it seemed like their concerns were being like, brushed off in this situation. And then basically, like at the end of the city council meeting, the city council voted to renew the contract with Flock. Like, not even a slap on the wrist. Like, I don't even know if they have the ability to do a slap on the wrist. But it's like, yeah, we tweaked the contract slightly. They said it wouldn't happen again. We're going to keep working with them.
- [17:30]
C
And at the end of this city council meeting, assuming this contract actually changed, like we had all this out, where do you think it lands? Like, what is the reaction to this now? Can you tell on social media how people are taking it? What's the aftermath?
- [17:52]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think the interesting thing is, and this is not. This is maybe not super heartening for the people of Dunwoody at the moment, but I think that as I mentioned, Dunwoody has, like, a really intense relationship with Floch. They've had a contract with Floch for a long time. They see Flock as being this, like, local company that they've worked with for a long time. And it seems like the politicians there are very kind of like, in favor of Flock, both, like in Dudwini, but also in Georgia more broadly, like the Georgia secretary of state or the Georgia attorney General. Posted on LinkedIn, like, I'm so proud that Dunwoody renewed its contract. Like, basically, like today. Law and order one. I mean, the post was insane. Let's see what it said. Actually, it said, mayor, thanks to council and you for supporting the use of Flock technology. Georgia's constitution says that the government has one paramount duty, the protection of person and property. I'm proud to say that Dunwoody's leadership lived up to their duty by continuing to partner with Flock.
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C
Flock.
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A
Flock's CEO also emailed the Jewish community center at issue here and basically said, sorry, won't happen again, and then said, I look forward to protecting the Jewish community center and the city of Dunwoody for years to come. So they basically are like, we're going to continue on with this, but there are a lot of cities and towns around the country that don't have as close of a relationship with Flock that are looking at this, that are looking at other things that are happening and are deciding to cancel their congress contracts. And I think that this will have, like, reverberations across other cities because it shows how. How intense and how vast the Flock network is. Just in this one city where it's not just Flock cameras, but it's all these private cameras as well that can be accessed basically at any time for any reason. And I think that it will have an effect. And I think that in Dunwoody, it has created this movement of people who are against Flock. And some of the people who stood up to speak actually said this. Like, we've organized really well to oppose this. Right now we're opposing something very negative, but we hope in the future we can organize for something more positive. And I do wonder, like, if people will run for office in Dunwoody on an anti surveillance agenda. It seems like that is ripe for. People are very interested in that at the moment. And so I don't know what happens necessarily in Dunwoody, but I think that the tide is kind of turning against these surveillance technologies and that people are going to start. People are pushing back, and it's sort of like in Dunwoody, they're starting from an extremely pro surveillance government stance, but in places where there's already skepticism, there have been wins against this technology. And over time, I mean, we might see the same in places like Dunwoody.
- [21:08]
C
Yeah. I think if people are literally in the street protesting about Flock, it's easy to imagine it becoming an issue in future local election. Then if you see that's the case, please get in touch. If you're FOIA ing your local government about Flock and you find something interesting, get in touch. If you're not, please subscribe to Four4Media and watch our FOIA forms. We teach you how to do this. Jason. I believe you guys already did like a one FOIA forum on Flock specifically. Right?
- [21:45]
A
We did. And also, like, people are in the streets in Dunwoody. Also, like, I got sent pictures and video of street protests and it's like people are holding up like, gtfo, get the Flock out signs. They're holding up, like posters that say Flock Out. Like, they're chanting like, this is not. This is a pretty small city and I mean, there's dozens of people there. Like, this is not something that I think is going away anytime soon. And I think, like, there is now, like, organizing against it. And so very curious to see sort of like where it all goes. And yes, please get in touch if you do know more about Flock. My signal is Jason404.
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C
Shall we break there?
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A
Yeah.
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D
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- [24:25]
A
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- [28:32]
C
Yeah. So the paper was published in a Nature journal called Humanities and Social Science Communications. Nature has a flagship publication called Nature, but it also has a family of journals. This is one of them and the title of the paper was. And I guess I should say if you don't know, Nature is like gold standard for science publishing. Very prestigious journal. The title of the paper is the effect of ChatGPT on students learning Performance, Learning Perception and Higher Order Thinking. Insights from a Meta Analysis. So the key term there is at the end. Meta analysis is something very common in academic journals, a common type of study. Basically it is not in the field doing research or collecting its own data. It is taking a bunch of studies on a similar topic and combining all the results from all those studies in order to provide kind of an overview or a meta analysis of what is happening. In this case, it is two researchers from a university in China. They took 51 research studies that were published between November 22 and February 25 on the effectiveness of ChatGPT in education. The bottom line is that they found that ChatGPT had a positive impact specifically on, again, as the title says, on students learning performance, learning perception and higher order thinking.
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A
Okay, so why was this retracted? This does happen sometimes, but it's been a year since this was published and then suddenly out of the blue it's gone. So what?
- [30:53]
C
In so we don't know exactly, but I've talked to some experts, I did some of my own digging and I read some other papers that talked about this paper and the methodology it uses and the similar papers like it with similar results. And basically this paper came out last year, it was very viral. It got a lot of attention because it made like a pretty definitive statement that ChatGPT is good for students. It's good in an education environment. That goes a little bit against even what we know as non experts on this subject and what we found in our reporting. I did a story a few months ago about AlphaSchool, which is an AI powered, a private school that's very expensive and their results are generally good. But the story goes through some of the problems with AI assisted education. AI makes errors that creates faulty lesson plans that frustrate students, et cetera. Not surprisingly, people in the education community, and specifically people in the community that is the intersection of education and technology and education and AI were very skeptical about this. They pushed back against their results. They made arguments about why the research is bad. We don't know exactly what the thinking was at nature, but at some point a few weeks ago, they put up a retraction note saying that they had doubts about the methodology and the data and that they approached the researchers about this and the researchers did not respond and they decided to retract the study, which means you can still read it, but it's kind of like a vote of no confidence in the findings. And if you download the PDF, I noticed you can get the full article, but it has like a big retracted sign across every page, which is kind of, kind of interesting.
- [33:16]
A
Yeah, yeah. So you talked to Ben Williamson, who's a senior lecturer in digital education at the University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh, Edinburgh. What did he say about this? And also I Think he's very smart here, but once he said it, I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. Like, what the fuck?
- [33:38]
C
Yeah. So like I said, nature doesn't make it clear, but I think it's pretty clear what the issue is. There are a few issues, but one that Ben pointed out is that if you recall I said it's a meta analysis of studies that were published as early as 2022. And if you think back to 2022, I think that's like Chachi PT. Is that Chachi PT2 like starting to make the rounds or it's like either two or three?
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A
I think, I think 2022 is when ChatGPT came out.
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C
It's when it became popular. It's like it's very early on in the whole generative AI madness.
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A
November 2022 is when ChatGPT was released, right?
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C
And it's like you're supposed to believe that someone as early as November 2022 noticed that people were using it in education or did some testing of using ChatGPT in an education environment, properly collected the data and probably analyzed the data and then was able to make some sort of credible claim about how it's impacting student. And not only that, that it's good for them. And in general that's just like not enough time to do that. And that's like, that's one, that's one group, that's one bucket of studies that are feeding into this meta analysis. And then another problem is that the standard that the researchers used essentially seems to be that any study that was peer reviewed was fair game to include in the meta analysis if it was about these subjects. And that sounds good. Like peer review is bare minimum for academic publishing. I think we all know that, but I think at this point a lot of us also know that the academic publishing industry is not perfect. It's kind of shady actually. And there's a lot of paper mills and there's a lot of not very credible journals where you can pay to get published or they just don't have really good, a very good peer review process. And it just like, it doesn't mean what you think. And then the people who dug into the actual studies found that a lot of these were like not reputable studies from reputable journals. And yeah, those are kind of like, basically it's like you have a meta analysis of peer reviewed papers and that seems like it's a legitimate pool of data to look at. But when you dig in, actually each individual study is not that credible.
- [36:38]
A
I Think just to put a little bit more context here, I did an article few months ago about a foia. I got back from different schools around the country, different school districts around the country, because when ChatGPT was released, I FOIA'd school districts for what they're saying about ChatGPT. And this was like mid 2023, something like that. And I did an article basically about how like, no schools actually knew what this was like. There was always a teacher or two who was like, oh, chatgpt, like we should look into this. This is scary. We should like consider doing something about this. And almost none of them actually knew what was going on. So the idea again that there was like all this very good science being done about whether ChatGPT could help students and was being published at this time is it defies belief. And so I think that is like, important to set up, I guess. Last, what do you take away from all of this? It's kind of a mess. I feel like there's been a few different cases where there's kind of a highly hyped study that says AI is good and then it makes the rounds. And then at some point in the future that study is retracted or wasn't quite right. And then it's unclear whether the coverage of it, of it being retracted, or of that being bunk science actually has the same level of impact that the original study did.
- [38:22]
C
Yeah, it's funny because I think at least half the story here is about the state of academic publishing, but I think it's probably two years ago at this point. But generative AI is also really crushing academic publishing. We wrote some stories about how. The peer reviews seem to be AI generated. So they're getting it from all ends. But I guess the other thing, and we can get into this a little bit when we talk about Sam's story, but it's like, believe your eyes and ears and believe what students and teachers are telling us about this and they're not loving it. And it's like we didn't do an academic peer reviewed study unless you include our editing to be a peer review process. But Jason talked to a bunch of teachers about how this is going. It's not going good. I don't think you would have been able to do that story and come to the conclusions you did if ChatGPT was incredibly helpful in an academic environment.
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A
Speaking of AI being incredibly helpful in an academic environment, let's talk about an article Sam did yesterday. OpenAI, Google and Microsoft backed bill to fund AI literacy in schools. That's Exciting. That's exciting. So basically, like, the AI companies are pushing a bill that would chase their
- [40:07]
B
situation with these two stories. So this bill, which was introduced by Adam Schiff, who's a senator in California, and also Mike Rounds, who is a South Dakota senator, Republican, it's a big bipartisan bill which is always such a delight to see. But the bill would essentially fund the NSF National Science foundation to allow schools to change the K through 12 curriculum and encourage AI literacy. So building in AI literacy. And this is in major air quotes because we'll get into why that's bizarre and vague in the bill. But the bill would allow the director of the NSF to grant awards to support educational curriculum that would advance AI literacy in school. Yeah, I mean, this is, it's just a layer cake of what the fuck.
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A
Generally, can I ask what AI literacy is? Do we know? Is it defined?
- [41:24]
B
It's defined in the bill. The bill as it's written right now is five pages long. One page of that is the title, I guess we should say the title of the bill. The title of the bill is the Literacy in Future Technologies Artificial Intelligence act. The LIFT Act. I'm always in awe of their ability to make an acronym in these bills, but one page is the title, one whole page is definitions that are very vague. And then there's only a couple pages of actual policy here. But they define AI literacy as having the age appropriate knowledge and ability to use artificial intelligence effectively to critically interpret outputs to solve problems in an AI enabled world and to mitigate potential risks. So that's both short and stupid. Literacy by definition is not using a thing that's onboarding. This is just teaching kids how to use ChatGPT by making them use ChatGPT or Gemini or any of these others that helped fund this bill, which, let's see who funded the bill. In total it was Google, which obviously runs Gemini, OpenAI, which is ChatGPT, Microsoft, and then there were a couple others, the American Federation of Teachers. I don't know a ton about them, but they did have this big push for a $2 million partnership with Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic last year to build this big AI training hub, which I guess is going to be a physical space like the Pokemon arena or something. Very scary to think about this, but they're, they're sloshing money into AI with the help and the support of all these other AI companies, which is just
- [43:18]
A
the, the American Federation of Teachers is like the, is the massive, massive teachers union, like, second largest.
- [43:25]
B
Yeah.
- [43:26]
A
And the president of it is Randy Weingarten, who has been this like, figure in like, teachers unions for a long time. And I mean, I have no idea, like, what her relationship is here, but she's been like, quite controversial in general. I feel like, I feel like AI is probably not that popular with teachers based on what I've said. But there's like a long, long history in general of they do lobbying. In addition to just being a union, they do lobbying. And there's a long history of lobbying organizations kind of like selling out their members for whatever purpose. Like Farmers Lobby has sold out its farmers, like over and over and over again on rights repair and things like this. So it's not, it's disappointing, but not like terribly surprising that this massive teachers union is like pushing this.
- [44:23]
B
Yeah. And has been for, for a while. This is a big part of their agenda at this point. Another part of this bill that I think is important to note. And this is something that I didn't really realize until Matthew Gault, one of our contributors, pointed this out while I was writing the story. But the nsf, they. Last week, Trump fired every single board member that was responsible for guiding the nsf. And the NSF right now is without a director and has been for a while, for about a year. So right now it's kind of like who's going to lead the NSF next? And the leading name, like the Trump pick at this point is a guy named Jim o'. Neill. And he is not a research guy, not a science guy. He just is a former employee of Peter Thiel and is of that world. And I think there's some speculation among the science community that Jim is nominated and is probably going to be the NSF director because it'll be kind of like a hat tip or like a consolation to Peter Thiel, who Trump is very invested in staying good with. So that's all very cursed because the person who is responsible for applying this funding. So even if we could imagine a war where this bill might fund actual literacy and actual learning about what AI is and what it does and what it can't do, the person responsible for handing out that money is this rich guy financier who's just like a teal buddy. And I can't imagine that going anywhere.
- [46:10]
A
But worse, I mean, this is like the knock on effects also of fully gutting the NSF and just like science research and medical research and all that sort of thing in the United States in general, because the NSF has like a very long history of Researching and doing, like, very important things and also funding like, you know, critical research and doing standards and all that sort of thing. And now, I mean, it's not without fault, but it's generally been like a very important organization. And now it is like a rubber stamp for industry. And, you know, it's pushing it would, like, help these tech companies do what they want to do. On the interview podcast this week, earlier this week with Brian Merchant, he raised the point that AI companies have been lobbying a lot more. I mean, they, they've been lobbying for a long time, especially because AI companies are like Microsoft and Facebook and Google, which have traditionally just been massive lobbyists in general, but OpenAI increasingly doing lobbying, anthropic increasingly doing lobbying, like different effective altruists increasingly doing lobbying. And one thing that they've been doing is they have been pushing these bills that are extremely friendly to them. Of course, like, that's what lobbyists do. But they've been pushing basically for legislation that would funnel money and reduce regulations on the AI industry. And then they're also pushing for bills that restrict states from putting restrictions on AI and from hampering them in any way. And so I think just the fact that there is like a lobby that is pushing this very controversial idea that AI is going to be good in schools, when as Emmanuel just said, and as our reporting has shown, and there's lots of reporting has shown, it's not clear whether AI is going to help in schools. And in fact, it's like a lot of evidence suggesting that it's not good. And here you specifically have companies pushing to integrate AI more deeply into schools. I guess the last thing that I am curious what you all think is about this idea of AI literacy in general, as in, I think that's something that a lot of people have been kind of beefing about is whether you actually need to teach people how to do this stuff. Because at the beginning of the Internet, there were computing classes and typing classes and how to use the Internet classes. But if this technology is going to be so deeply integrated into our society and all that, it's like people are like figuring out how to use it on their own just because it's something that you'll encounter and need to know and all of that. And it's not like you need advanced skills to use ChatGPT or Claude or whatever. I feel like we've probably phased out. I don't think we have how to use an iPad class. It's like babies learn how to use an iPad. Naturally. I'm just curious, sort of what you think of this idea of we need classes to show how AI works.
- [49:37]
C
Did you guys do typing classes?
- [49:40]
A
Yeah, I did. Yes.
- [49:42]
C
Yeah. Did you think that it helped?
- [49:45]
B
No. I can't type for shit, so, no. I use these two fingers.
- [49:49]
A
It's funny because I also use two fingers, and I type super fast. And I'm a very good typer. And I feel like I was cheating at, like, Mavis Beacon teaches typing. I also had Mario teaches Typing shout out to that game. Very fun. And I, like, the teacher would sit there and make me use home row and all my fingers, and I couldn't do it so well. And then I would go back to, like, my two and a half fingers, three fingers typing, and I would, like, crush it and be amazing. And so I feel like often when they're like, you have to do these following rules. Here's how you do it. It's like, often you do it worse because it's antiquated. And kids figure out how to use technology because they're, like, smart and they have good brains.
- [50:34]
C
I had private typing lessons, which is so funny to think about, but my parents were like, you have to learn how to type really fast because it's like the future or something. And I went to this lady who, like, taught me typing, and it didn't work at all. Like, this is, like, I don't know, late 90s or something like that, mid-90s. And I just, like, wasn't using a computer a lot, and it didn't take. And then as an adult where I had to use a computer, it's like, I learned to type very fast, but it wasn't because of the class. I'm only saying this to agree with Jason, where it's like, I don't know if you need to teach people how to use a technology that is made to be a mass consumer product. The people who make iPads or the people who make AI or the people who make phones make them in a way that, like, assumes that they have to teach you how to use the thing. Like, that's, like, part of the whole effort, right? Like, an iPhone is, like an intuitive device. That's why they make it the way that they do. So I don't think it's necessary. And then I would also note, just as a footnote, it seems like the worst time ever to push something like this, because it is also the time where schools are really warming up to the idea of phone bans and getting computers out of school and people starting to question the Whole Chromebook for every child policy and all of that. And I think parents are digging it and it does make sense to me. So I don't think this is going to go down so well like that. Like they assume, I think just when people are realizing that classrooms need less technology rather than more, trying to get chatgpt in the hands of every child is like not a good pitch.
- [52:33]
B
No, I mean they, the, these companies need kids to use it. That's, the kids don't need it at all. The companies need the schools to do this. It's very classic market capture from a young age. Like they'll be, they'll get their favorite chatbot and that's what they'll rely on until, you know, they're adults. I assume is the idea is this, I assume is the thinking. It's, I mean it's the same way with like the Chromebooks. Apple immediately got into schools when they, as soon as they had a computer that they could put into schools, they did. And now you have, you know, people who are like, oh yeah, I've used, I've been using an Apple computer since I was a child and that's always what I've used. And it's something that brands do all the time. I think it's also, it's an interesting, I think they're too late. I think like you said, it's like this isn't a weird time to be doing this because they're a little too late. I think maybe if there was less skepticism against these things at this point, maybe they would be, they would have an easier time of it. But I think people are already realizing just on their own that this is not something that kids should have access to or need in a learning environment. I think they're probably like a little bit behind the ball, but they're also desperate at this point. I feel like this is such a desperate move to go, to go the legislation route is always like, it didn't work in the free market of capitalism so we're gonna buy a senator and make this happen on our own is just last gasp vibes, but it works sometimes.
- [54:03]
C
So to go back to the previous story, I think like the good research is going to come out and I think it's going to be like abysmal for AI companies. Like I can't think of anything that's more detrimental to like the development of a young brain than just having a machine do all your thinking for you. It's not good. And there's already some research that show that kind of like cognitive atrophy and all this stuff that we've talked about previously.
- [54:30]
A
It's funny also just because like I got a push notification from the New York Times yesterday that was like, teachers are making students write essays in class by hand because of AI and that sort of thing. And it's like, I mean, that's something that we heard from teachers a year and a half ago, which is fine. Welcome New York Times. I'm sure it's happening more and more now and there's been a lot of really good articles about AI in schools from like New York Mag, L.A. times, New York Times, et cetera. Like it's become a very mainstream thing to talk about how AI is changing school and how teachers are not doing well, students are not doing well. Like all this sort of thing. It's not something that's like flying under the radar in any way, shape or form at this point. It's like kitchen table conversation in the biggest media outlets, et cetera. So I think that this is not something that like, it's not good. It's not good for the AI companies, I don't think. And I think to Sam's point also, I don't know if this is still the case, but every year for the last few years there's been a spike in ChatGPT usage and signups in like late August as school gets back in session and then people unsubscribe over the summer. And I wonder if that's like holding true. But it's like the these companies do need to capture these students like early on, I feel, and addict them. Okay, let's leave that there. If you are listening to the free version of this podcast, that is the end of the podcast. But if you want to hear us talk about RightsCon and the shit show that has occurred with the world's largest civil rights conference, you can get that in the subscribers only section which you can gain access to by going to 404 Media Co and subscribing. You'll get a top secret RSS link that is ad free and also includes these bonus segments every week so you can find it there. As a reminder, 404 Media is a journalist founded company and is supported by subscribers. If you wish to subscribe to 404 Media and directly support our work, please go to 404 Media co. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You'll also get to listen to the subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story every week. This podcast is produced by Alyssa Midcalf. Our theme music is by Alyssa as well. Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for the podcast. That really helps us out. I like hearing the five star reviews from Joseph. I don't read the negative ones. They hurt my feelings. Please don't leave them. Okay, we will be back next week. Goodbye. The right window treatments change everything. Your sleep, your privacy, the way every room looks and feels. @blinds.com We've spent 30 years making it surprisingly simple to get exactly what your home needs. We've covered over 25 million windows and have 50,000 five star reviews to prove we deliver. Whether you DIY it or want a pro to handle everything from measure to install, we have you covered. Real design professionals, free samples, zero pressure right now. Get up to 50% off with minimum purchase plus get a free professional measure. @blinds.com rules and restrictions apply.