Are we entering a world without screens?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Interface – "Are we entering a world without screens?"

Podcast: The Interface (BBC)
Episode Date: May 21, 2026
Hosts: Thomas Germain, Nicky Woolf
Guest: Brandi Brandy (Senior Reporter at Ms. Now)

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Brief Overview

In this episode, the hosts and guest Brandi Brandy dive into the growing technologies poised to push society towards a "screenless" future—exploring rumors of AirPods with cameras, augmented reality wearables, and AI-powered assistants. The trio also examines the rise of the “clipping” gig economy that shapes online political and cultural narrative, and discusses the controversial integration of synthetic (AI-generated) respondents in polling. The focus remains on how these next-generation tech trends and manipulations may radically reshape everyday experience, influence democracy, and muddle our sense of what’s real.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Screenless Tech: AirPods with Cameras and Beyond

Segment Start: [03:11]

• Apple’s AirPods with Cameras:

  • Rumor reported by Mark Gurman (Bloomberg): Apple is allegedly testing AirPods with low-res cameras intended to provide AI with visual awareness, not for photography.
  • Apple sees this as a step towards a screenless or less-screened world where voice, not touch, mediates our digital experiences.
  • The rationale: AI-powered wearables can provide real-time information, like identifying a plant or offering directions as you walk around.

• Wearables & Privacy Backlash:

  • Nicky invokes the "creepy" vibe of camera glasses like Meta’s Ray-Bans ([05:00]):
    "Yeah, the creepy, creepy, creepy ones."
  • Brandi rebuttals with practical skepticism and privacy worries ([05:58]):
    "One, who asked for this? And two, like, what are the unintended consequences?... What in the Pokémon Go are these pictures going to be used for, right?... What evil will it come out to?"

• Potential Benefits & Revolutionizing Interaction:

  • Removing screens could lessen digital fatigue, yet, as Brandi notes, it might also spell "the end of reading" ([10:35]).
  • Nicky observes most young users already consume short-form video, voicing skepticism about abandonment of screens due to deep industry investments ([12:35]):
    "It's hard to overstate how much of a revolution a screenless world would be."
  • Thomas speculates on the social impact:
    "Could be really cool... but I don't know. Does anybody want that?" ([09:14])

• Cultural Resistance & Tech Industry Motives:

  • The group notes the history of adult anxiety over youth and new media, from books to chess. Screens may feel unhealthy now, but tomorrow's voice-activated wearables might prompt similar dismay ([12:05]).
  • Even as Apple experiments, their bottom line still relies on selling devices with screens ([14:35]).

• Quotable Moment:

  • “It’s like your Iron Man suit.” – Brandi ([16:39])
  • “Do you want it? I don’t know, but it’s coming.” – Thomas ([17:17])

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2. Clipping: The Invisible Gig Economy Changing Politics and Culture

Segment Start: [19:45]

• Definition & Practice:

  • Brandi explains "clipping" as a gig-economy where workers get paid per thousand views to clip short, viral segments of video, podcast, or ads and boost them across their social feeds ([22:12]).
  • Clipping, once concentrated in entertainment promotion, is accelerating into political campaigns.
  • Notable example: Spencer Pratt’s L.A. mayoral race, leveraging $10,500 in clipping campaigns for massive visibility ([23:42]).

• Inside the Clipping Communities:

  • Driven by "hustlers" seeking extra income, these campaigns operate mainly via Discord or platforms like "Whop" ([23:14]).
  • Strategic advice is exchanged: "The ones that really move seem to be... around 40 seconds... and just a teeny piece of additive content." ([23:36])

• Manipulation Meets Regulation Loopholes:

  • Disclosure on paid political clipping is rare, only surfacing in some cases due to specific state laws (e.g., California for Pratt).
  • The practice currently falls between FTC (consumer advertising rules) and FEC (political advertising rules), highlighting the wild west environment for digital political influence ([25:42]).

• Industry Shift:

  • Brandi warns political campaigns tend to adopt new digital tricks belatedly, but "when they do pick it up, boy howdy." Anticipates a coming surge during midterms ([25:44]).

• Manipulation vs. Marketing:

  • Thomas: Is all viral content “fake” now? Does virality require orchestration?
    • “If it’s huge, … it is inherently fake at this point. It cannot be done without coordination. Do you think that’s an overstatement?” ([29:54])
  • Brandi: Rare exceptions exist, but: "If you’re a person that has campaign money... of course you would do it." Clipping is effective and legal, so it's a rational play ([30:40]).

• Cultural Impact:

  • “The clips are the message.” – Brandi argues clips themselves are now the central vehicle of political and demographic persuasion ([29:17]).
  • Public largely unaware of how much their "organic" content is manufactured or manipulated ([29:17]).

• Bright Spot:

  • Brandi sees a silver lining:
    "There is something nice about being in these communities and seeing people, real people, work... there is something about seeing a little bit of human creativity in this." ([32:54])

• Memorable Moments:

  • Thomas’s anecdote about the “mango chutney song”—a rare, purely organic viral hit ([32:09]).
  • Revisiting "Shrimp Jesus" meme—a goofy slice of genuine community weirdness ([33:42]).

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3. AI Synthetic Polling: Replacing Real People in Opinion Surveys

Segment Start: [34:10]

• What’s Happening:

  • Some major polling firms (like Gallup) are piloting use of entirely synthetic respondents—using LLM “digital twins” of real people—to create larger, faster, and cheaper poll samples ([34:10–36:19]).
  • Sometimes up to 50% or even 100% of a poll may be AI-generated.

• How it Works:

  • A digital twin is an LLM-based model of a previously polled (real) person, used going forward for new polls ([36:18]).
  • Greatly reduces cost—down to 1/10 the price of real polling ([40:49]).

• Accuracy and Bias Concerns:

  • Critics question whether mechanical simulations can truly capture “humanness” and shifts in societal behavior, especially in response to real-world events ([37:21]).
  • Synthetic polling tends to reflect—and may amplify—all existing polling biases, particularly underrepresenting minority or marginalized groups ([39:30]).
  • Memorable Critique:
    "It’s like if a bunch of white people got together and made a movie about black people and only had white writers and even white actors." – Citing researcher Angelina Wang ([39:30])

• Political/Cultural Risk:

  • Polls already heavily shape the news and public behavior; synthetic polls may further detach us from real public opinion ([42:01]).
  • Nicky: "We are maybe not even hearing what people think. We are hearing what machines think people think." ([43:17])
  • Risks are not trivial—poll predictions can alter election turnout by up to 8% ([43:12–43:14]).

• Quotable Dialogue:

  • “Is that even a poll at that point?” – Thomas ([43:37])
  • “Leave your suggestions for the new word for poll in the comments.” – Brandi ([43:47])

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4. AI Manipulation Victory Lap: The Hot Dog Journalist Story

Segment Start: [43:52]

• Recap:

  • Thomas previously demonstrated how trivial it is to manipulate AI output: publish even a low-traffic online article with any claim, and AI tools like ChatGPT or Google Gemini will start parroting it as fact ([43:52]).
  • His test? Declaring himself the world’s “tech journalist hot dog champion.”

• Consequence:

  • After the story aired, Google clarified new AI policy to ban such manipulative tactics from influencing their AI outputs ([45:58]).

• Humorous Moment:

  • Even a month later, ChatGPT continued to declare Thomas the “tech journalist hot dog champ” ([46:03]).
  • Nicky suggests a real-life contest to settle the matter and further “confuse the AI” ([46:12]).

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Notable Quotes

• On Wearable Tech:

  • “It’s like your Iron Man suit.” (Brandi, [16:39])
  • “Do you want it? I don’t know, but it’s coming.” (Thomas, [17:17])

• On Clipping & Virality:

  • “The clips are the message.” (Brandi, [29:17])
  • “If it’s huge, … it is inherently fake at this point. It cannot be done without coordination.” (Thomas quoting a Vulture interview, [29:54])

• On Synthetic Polls:

  • “We are maybe not even hearing what people think. We are hearing what machines think people think.” (Nicky, [43:17])
  • “It’s like if a bunch of white people got together and made a movie about black people and only had white writers and even white actors.” (citing Angelina Wang, [39:30])

• On Digital Manipulation:

  • "Within 24 hours... Google Gemini... and ChatGPT were telling the world that I am a hot dog champion." (Thomas, [43:52])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Screenless Tech & AI Wearables: [03:11] – [17:36]
• Rise and Impact of Clipping: [19:45] – [33:42]
• Synthetic Polling in Politics: [34:10] – [43:50]
• AI Manipulation Victory Lap: [43:52] – [46:32]

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Tone & Style

The conversation maintains a sharp, witty, and slightly irreverent tone, with the hosts demonstrating skepticism, humor, and real concern about technological overreach and manipulation. They balance technical insight with accessible analogies and everyday anecdotes—eschewing jargon for clarity and genuine debate.

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Summary for New Listeners

If you missed the episode, this is a brisk, thought-provoking overview of how AI and technology are changing the most basic rituals of modern life—from the way we interact with digital devices, to the sources and reliability of “viral” information and polling that shapes political and cultural reality. It’s a canny preview of what happens when the boundaries of authenticity, privacy, and agency blur—and a warning to stay savvy as tech titans and manipulators try to chart out our digital future for us.

Transcript

[Podcast Advertiser]

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first but didn't live up to the hype? Like those $5 roses at a gas station? Or a secondhand piece of technology that breaks in the first 10 minutes? Marketers know that feeling. We optimize for the numbers that look great, impressions reach and reacts. But when they don't show revenue, well, that's a not so great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for bullspend. Now you can invest in what looks good to your CFO. LinkedIn Ads generates the highest roas of all major ad networks. You'll reach the right buyers because you can target by company, industry, job title and more. So cut the bull. Spend. Advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a 250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com broadcast that's LinkedIn.com broadcast. Terms and conditions apply. Ever wonder why we make the choices we do and how to make smarter ones? Introducing Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join Wharton Professor Katie Milkman, an award winning behavioral scientist and author of the best selling book how to Change as she shares true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes and everyday people about why we do the things we do and how to make better choices to help avoid costly mistakes. Each episode covers the latest research in behavioral science and dives into themes like the power of self control and shaping your mindset for success. Navigating new beginnings and why starting over can feel so hard. Listen to Choiceologywab.com podcast or wherever you listen.

[Brandi Brandy]

I don't think that people are aware about these clipping campaigns, especially not in politics yet. And so when they see it like you, your brain is attuned to. I will sit here and watch this 30 second thing and it's usually a really good clip and so I think wasting that much of your time as a, as a plugged in member of a democracy on something that's fake, I think it really matters.

[Thomas Germain]

Hello and welcome to the Interface, the show that decodes how tech is rewiring your week and your world. I'm Thomas Germain.

[Nicky Wolfe]

I'm Nicky Wolfe and unfortunately the lovely Karen Howell can't join us today.

[Thomas Germain]

She's a busy woman. But instead we have our very first guest, a senior reporter at Ms. Now the brilliant Brandi Brandy will be taking

[Nicky Wolfe]

us inside the hidden clipping industry where politicians can now pay armies of people to flood your feed with content.

[Thomas Germain]

We'll also be looking at how the tech industry is thinking about a world

[Nicky Wolfe]

without screens and why pollsters are asking robots what they think instead of people.

[Thomas Germain]

So first off, welcome to Brandy. Brandy, thanks for joining us.

[Brandi Brandy]

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

[Thomas Germain]

Exciting to have you on the show.

[Brandi Brandy]

So what are we talking about?

[Thomas Germain]

Well, before we get started, we should mention really quickly that Google's big conference, Google I O is today. We're recording before it happens. So if you're listening in the future, there's probably a bunch of earth shattering tech news that we're not going to be talking about. But we'll get to that next week. But in the meantime, I want to talk about some news that leaked a couple of weeks ago at Bloomberg. It's a story from the reporter Mark Gurman about how Apple is apparently reportedly in the late stages of testing AirPods with cameras in them. This is a rumor, but it's, you know, a pretty compelling rumor. This guy, this reporter usually knows what Apple is up to before they announce it. We reached out to Apple. We'll let you know in the show notes if they get back to us. But this is really interesting. So the idea here is these cameras, apparently they're not for taking pictures, right? They're, they're going to be providing low resolution images and the idea is that they'll work with AI. So you'll be walking around and Siri will be able to like see the world along with you and you'll be able to answer questions and like get directions or like what is this plant that I'm looking at? Or whatever it is. What? And the really interesting thing here is this is part of a much bigger trend that we've seen over the past couple of years where people within the tech industry are talking about pushing us towards a world where we're interacting less with screens and more using computers with our voices. Right. You know, everybody's talking about like the meta ray bans glasses that have the cameras in them. You guys know what I'm talking about, right?

[Nicky Wolfe]

Yeah, the creepy, creepy, creepy ones.

[Thomas Germain]

You know, some people are really alarmed by them. Some people really love them. I mean they're selling like crazy. They keep, every year they're selling more of them. The tech is shrinking. We hear a lot about like ar, augmented reality and virtual reality, right. Where like you might have a screen like within the glasses themselves. Like the newest metaglasses do that. But I think the really interesting thing here is AI provides an Opportunity that wasn't possible before, where your phone or your device or whatever it is can be more descriptive and you can talk to it like it's a guy and it opens up a whole new possible way to use machines that wasn't an option before. And I think the interesting question here is, like, do we think that this is something that people want? Like, is it possible? Will the tech industry be able to push us in this direction? And if so, like, what would that world be be?

[Nicky Wolfe]

Like, so we're talking about the end of screens.

[Brandi Brandy]

No, the other way to ask that question is like, one, who asked for this? And two, like, what are the unintended consequences? Right? Like, that's what I always think. What harm will this hath rot in A couple of months after its release? And like, with meta glasses, I just saw somebody, I was going for my morning run and, you know, the. I asked the park department guy, I was like, when are we turning on the water fountains? And he had on the meta glasses. And I think, like, in the real world, it's so jarring, even for me, who's, like, should be like, I'm technically a tech reporter. I should be used to this. And I hate it so much. I just think that there's so much backlash. Like, I'm immediately thinking, like, they say, okay, you're only taking pictures, but, like, what in the Pokemon Go are these pictures going to be used for, right? Like, what in the location date? Like, what are they stealing from me? And, you know, what evil will it come out to?

[Nicky Wolfe]

Yeah, especially when you mix it with facial recognition technology and that kind of thing. So, quick question. This particular gizmo is EarPods with cameras. Do we know anything about what they look like? Where are the cameras coming out and pointing forwards? Do we know anything about that?

[Thomas Germain]

We haven't seen them, but what the reporting says is, you know, they look like traditional earpods. And apparently there's, like, the stem is a little bigger and there's a camera at the end here. So you're walking around and it can see what you're seeing. And this would, you know, allow the AI to, you know, understand the environment that you're in. And you could interact with it more than if you're just talking to it. So you can already, you know, talk to ChatGPT in Google Gemini. They have, like, a voice feature, right. And you can walk around with them on your headphones and have a conversation with it all day if that's what

[Nicky Wolfe]

you want to do.

[Thomas Germain]

God bless you. This would be a deeper level, Right. Because being able to just point your head at something and ask about it would unlock, you know, new options for ways that you can, you know, interface with your computer.

[Nicky Wolfe]

So you did the.

[Brandi Brandy]

I love talking to my phone. I don't ever type out texts anymore.

[Thomas Germain]

Really.

[Brandi Brandy]

I always do voice notes or I just talk on or I just do voice to text.

[Thomas Germain]

I'm the same way.

[Brandi Brandy]

It's such a waste of time. It's crazy.

[Thomas Germain]

Yeah. When I'm sitting there with my thumbs like a caveman. No, no, I'm done with that. I think you guys raise really interest point about the cameras, right. This freaks people out. I've had this experience like going up to someone and they like, like turn to look at me and there's like little cameras on their face. It's kind of creepy. I think that's part of what's interesting about Apple doing this. And also we don't, we should stress we don't know for sure that they're doing it. I mean the fact that this reporting came out, it's pretty compelling. I think it's likely that they're testing it and we know that Apple has been moving in this direction, right. They put out those giant, you know, goggles, the, the Apple Vision Pro a couple years ago. So this is technology that they're thinking about app. It's got its whole reputation for privacy. They certainly wouldn't want to put out a product that freaked everyone out about how Apple is now invading your personal space by filming you all the time. So I don't know what they would do, but you could imagine it being like, well, this thing never records, right. It's like ambiently taking images, it's processed on the device. We're not keeping any of the data. I'm spitballing here. I'm not saying that that would assuage all the privacy concerns, but you know, if we could set aside the privacy stuff, it is interesting the possibilities that this would unlock. Because like if you think about the history of technology, right. You know, there's this old saying, the medium is the message, right. So the, the latest technology like dictates how we interact with the world, right. When cable became a thing, there were more opportunities for more cable channels. TV got a lot more specific and weird. Then when the Internet became widely available, everyone started reading blogs, we switched to cell phones, Social media apps became a thing. Then everyone got a much faster Internet connection on their phone and now we can do short form video. And that's like the latest thing. If it was possible to Just talk to your phone and like have a really rich experience interacting with the world that could unlock whole new kinds of like, not just like material and content, but like ways of being. Like you could be on your computer all the time in a way that didn't feel like you were like looking at this little prescribed rectangle that's giving you a very specific experience that's not in your control. It could be really cool, but I don't know. Does anybody want that?

[Brandi Brandy]

It sounds like the end of reading.

[Thomas Germain]

The end of reading. Yeah, that doesn't sound good. Yeah, but we might already be past that point.

[Nicky Wolfe]

I mostly read books in audiobook form. So yeah, I have books spoken to me much more than I read them on paper. So that's. And also people are interacting the content people are getting from their phones right now. There's much more of the short form video content than. I mean it's only kind of really dinosaurs and journalists and dinosaur journalists who are still on purely text based social media. Right. Like Twitter and Blue sky are by miles, much smaller ones and skew older than stuff like TikTok.

[Thomas Germain]

I mean all the progression of technology really has been pushing us towards stuff where you're looking at a thing. Is it just contrary to human nature and the way that we interact with the world that we want to be looking at something? Because that's our like primary sense for the most part. I don't know, like this might be an entirely foregone conclusion or it could be like a thing you have on top of your normal experience with your phone that like you interact with it less because now it's easier to just talk. But I don't know, does this. Would you guys use a thing like this if it was available? It sounds cool.

[Brandi Brandy]

Yeah, no, it sounds really great. I do like a lot of outdoor activities. I do a lot of hiking and a lot of running. And so it's like. And I'm constantly like annoyed that I have to look at my phone for things. I'm sure it's something that will happen because of it, but like it'll be horrible and bad.

[Thomas Germain]

Yeah, of course everything's horrible.

[Brandi Brandy]

And I think like what you said, I. I'm kind of obsessed with this idea of like what we're doing now is bad for us. Screens are bad for us. That's like the, the du jour bad for you thing. But like, you know, in the, if you look at historical newspapers, they're you know, columnists bemoaning all of the delinquent children playing chess and reading in bed and things like, it's just, it's what we do is sort of repeat ourselves over the things that we find enjoyable. Um, but I, I, I do think that no screens would mean less screens, and I, I think that'd be good.

[Nicky Wolfe]

The reason I'm skeptical about this is just how much of a seismic shift going away from screens would be. I mean, there is so much industry investment in screen content from the short form video companies themselves. You know, TikTok is not going to love a move away from screens. That's a kind of shot across the bowels to all visual social media, the television and, you know, video industry. The video game industry will talk about second screen content. You get things that are marketed specifically as second screen games. TV that's designed to be watched with kind of half your brain, like it would require. It's hard to overstate how much of a revolution a screenless world would, would be.

[Thomas Germain]

And there have been attempts at this in the recent past. Like there have been a couple of AI products. You guys remember there's this thing called the Rabbit, which was like a little, it looks like a Game Boy almost.

[Nicky Wolfe]

Oh, I was wondering where you were going with that.

[Brandi Brandy]

I was like, this is the wrong podcast.

[Thomas Germain]

Yeah, no, no, no. It was a very wholesome device and it was like a little AI that you carry around. And it did have a screen, but like the primary way you'd interact with it was through speech. Or there was this thing called the Humane pin that was this huge flop where it was like a thing, you would pin it to your chest and you would talk to it mostly. And then it had like a little projector where you would hold up your hand and it would like project something. It was really weird, total flop. People didn't like it. Maybe the tech just wasn't ready, but it didn't work. Also, Apple is a company that makes screens. Right? Like that maybe the primary, they're like

[Nicky Wolfe]

between our screen world, right?

[Thomas Germain]

Yeah.

[Brandi Brandy]

But there's also, I don't know if you guys saw, there's this survey the other day and it showed that like people were scrolling less. I'm scrolling less personally. And I think that like people in my lives are scrolling. There's just, I'm not, I've seen the content. I know what it is. Like, I'm, I'm bored. I think people make me bored.

[Thomas Germain]

Apple doesn't want you to stop buying iPhones or MacBooks or, you know, we could list a whole bunch of products they have that have a screen on Them.

[Brandi Brandy]

But.

[Thomas Germain]

But I think it could be one of two things. Maybe it's just like, well, this is another thing you have. It doesn't replace your screen. You're still going to need it. Right. You're still going to need to read documents. There's still going to be. You want to look at pictures, you want to take pictures, you want to, you know, watch videos and stuff. But maybe it would open up an additional. Maybe the way that this could go wrong is we're on our devices more because now you don't have to be holding them. Or maybe, you know, it would replace some of that activity. But also it could just be. It seems like a lot of, you know, the leaders in the tech industry just seem to think that this is where things are going and they're trying to preempt it and build that future before other people get there. It would be just be nice to be able to talk to Siri the way that we all thought we would be able to when the device, when the feature was announced. Right. And I could imagine this being super useful and maybe you won't be so addicted to Instagram. That'd be nice.

[Nicky Wolfe]

And it's worth saying that this is already a revolution that's happened in terms of the home. You know, I know lots of people with an Alexa, lots of people with a Siri device in their house. You tell it to switch the lights off, you tell it to turn on the alarm, you tell it to order toilet paper. That's already a shift that's happened. So maybe this is a sort of personal carry around, one of those.

[Brandi Brandy]

But I was just going to say the opposite of that because I have an Alexa and one tenth of my conversations are like, no Alexa. Like, it has. It's very. It's a really frustrating experience as a consumer.

[Thomas Germain]

Yeah. But I think the idea here is that it would get smarter and it would be because it can see. Now they talk about technology being more embodied. Right. That it, like, is more present in the world than it has been in the past because it can see you're walking around with it. It becomes like more like a guy who's there with you.

[Brandi Brandy]

It's like your Iron man suit.

[Thomas Germain]

Very useful. It's like your Iron man suit. Yeah, exactly. One way or another, it's going to start making its way into our world. Maybe it'll be something you wear on your face, like glasses or headphones. Maybe it'll be something else. But it is, I think, a little preview, if not of where things are going than of where the tech industry is going to try and take us and the experiences that you're going to be having with your devices in the near future.

[Nicky Wolfe]

Yeah. Expect wearable tech to be the thing that people are trying to sell you quite a lot in the near future.

[Thomas Germain]

Yeah. Yeah. Do you want it? I don't know, but it's coming.

[Nicky Wolfe]

Put in the comments if you would wear AirPods with cameras only, even if they're looking forward or if they're looking directly up your ear into your brain. Let us know in the comments.

[Thomas Germain]

Yeah, that I would like. I gotta figure out what's going on in there.

[Podcast Advertiser]

Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first but didn't live up to the hype? Like those five dollar roses at a gas station or a secondhand piece of technology that breaks in the first 10 minutes? Marketers know that feeling. We optimize for the numbers that look great, impressions reach and reacts. But when they don't show revenue, well, that's a not so great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for bull spend. Now you can invest in what looks good to your CFO. LinkedIn Ads generates the highest roas of all major ad networks. You'll reach the right buyers because you can target by company, industry, job title and more. So cut the bull spend. Advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a 250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com broadcast that's LinkedIn.com broadcast. Terms and conditions apply.

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[Brandi Brandy]

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an original podcast from Charles Schwab is a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions. Join host Katie Milkman, an award winning behavioral scientist and author of the best selling book how to Change as she shares true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes and everyday people about why we make the choices we do and how to make better ones to help avoid costly mistakes. Listen to Choiceologywab.com podcast or wherever you listen.

[Thomas Germain]

So up next, Brandy's got a really great story for us Here. And I'm really excited about it because in part, it's, you know, kind of the other side of something we've been talking about for a while. So a couple of weeks ago, we did a story about how this band Geese, got incredibly popular. And it turned out that part of the way that that happened was the record label was paying for people to post clips of the band and act like they were just kind of naturally really excited about it. And people believed there was this organic conversation. Or more recently, we had a piece about how the AI industry was paying influencers to talk about how Chinese AI companies are scary and American AI companies are good. But this is sort of the other side of it, where instead of like tech entering the world of politics, now politics is going into tech and doing the same thing that we've been discussing. And this is kind of your beat, right? Like the way that people use social media to make the public believe things, right?

[Brandi Brandy]

Yeah, I think my beat generally is a combination of people, platforms and politics. And so how people use social media to really organize because political movement online is real, right? Like, there is a real way. That's a great. One of the great things about social media is that small, marginalized groups can actually get together and make a big noise and get political power. But in these cases, I often like to see how campaigns are using the platforms. And we've seen, you know, from Obama using social media for the first time, and then in 2016, the way Trump really took over Facebook ads and just threw money into social media ads like that. And then also, you know, made the way for this organic movement, you know, deplorables to come up the. The. All right. To come up online with him. That was original.

[Nicky Wolfe]

And.

[Brandi Brandy]

And now we're seeing what I think is interesting in terms of AI usage, which I know you guys have talked about before in political campaigns, but also this. This idea that we've seen in entertainment, that clipping. The clipping industry, how they're sort of using social media to make it look like certain candidates have this huge following or lots of interest where people are seeing their content and then serving it up in. To their communities or their online friends.

[Nicky Wolfe]

And so what is clipping, really?

[Brandi Brandy]

It's a gig economy industry where you can go online as a gig worker and you can sign up for campaigns for lots of things. There was a big campaign around Justin Bieber and Coachella. There is. It's mostly for entertainment, but now you can go on and you can sign up for a campaign and you get paid, basically. A dollar or $2 generally per 1,000 views, to take one of the videos or podcast appearances or ads and clip about 40 seconds of it, right? Edit it, clip it, and post it on your own social media. And then you basically turn in your receipts and say, I got this many views and you get a small payment. It's a pretty small community, actually. I've been joining a couple of these groups. I don't. Most people aren't making their main income this way. It's not really a get rich quick sort of scheme, but you can sign up, make a few dollars, side gig, side hustle.

[Thomas Germain]

I'm just so interested in the fact that you embedded into these clipping communities. Can you tell us more about what that's. That's like. Like, what are the conversations happening in there? What.

[Brandi Brandy]

What are the people like, where's my money?

[Thomas Germain]

So they're just like me.

[Brandi Brandy]

It's their hustlers. It's people just, you know, trying to, trying to make a buck. And, and so it's, it's, you know, you go into discord or you go into. I think it's a whoop or wap. I'm not sure, but it w h o p. I think it is.

[Thomas Germain]

Okay.

[Brandi Brandy]

You basically just say, you know, I want to be a part of this community. And you go in, and then there are active campaigns that you can sort of scroll through and see what you're interested in. And then, you know, you click on a document, you get the rules for that campaign, and it tells you exactly what to do and where to do it. And then the communities themselves, the chats are really just, you know, why isn't this working for me? I. Where is my money? I submitted my prop, I submitted my clip. Um, and then people talking about either what's wrong with it or what's working, sharing tips. Like, one of the tips I saw yesterday was, you know, some people just clip and put it up, but the ones that really move seem to be the clips that are around 40 seconds. So the shorter ones, no, you need that like people to engagement time. And then also the ones that have just a teeny piece of additive content. So if you just clip and post, it's boring. So sort of tips and tricks, gig economy stuff. So, yeah, I've. I've been recently seeing a lot of Spencer Pratt ads. I'm in New York. Spencer Pratt is a former reality villain bad boy of the hills. Now he is running for mayor because this is the world that we live in. And he's doing really, I'm sorry, Mayor of la. And he's running for mayor of la and he's doing really well in the polls. And it's hard to say, right, like, whether, what, why he's doing well in the polls. Like, partly it's because LA is weird and he's got a lot of weird rich friends that are giving him money. Partly. And it's because I think of this clipping campaign that he's got going, because I'm seeing these clips of him everywhere, right? These, these clips of Spencer at the debate, you know, owning Karen Bass, the current mayor. I'm seeing these ads where he is Batman, these AI ads. I'm seeing him on Joe Rogan, like, and I have a really carefully curated algorith them. There's no reason I should be seeing all of these Spencer Pratt clips, but I am. And so I joined a couple of these clipping communities and went to check out the Spencer Pratt campaign. And so he's running a couple of clipping campaigns right now. Like, one of them, his budget is $10,500. And basically, when you think about bang for your buck, right, like, how much does a billboard cost and how many people see it? Well, if you have a $10,500 clipping campaign and you're paying $2 per views, I'm not a mathematician because I'm a journalist, but you can get a ton of views for not that much money. And so I, I think it's a really, really smart way of doing it. And like, also, you know, we should talk about disclosure with Spencer Pratt's campaign, because I think that this is sort of the wave of politicians are always a little late to the Internet, but when they do pick it up, like, boy howdy. And so I think we're going to see a lot of it in the midterms, and you're going to see something on Spencer Pratt ads that you don't see other places. So when you do look at these Spencer Pratt clipping campaigns, you'll see on the clips way down below, sometimes you'll see a disclosure from. And it says this ad was paid by the Spencer Pratt campaign. And that is special. And it's only because California has a law that requires that disclosure. So we have, you know, two, two agencies that should be regulating this sort of thing, and it falls right in between them. So one is the Federal Trade Commission. And the Federal Trade Commission would, if they're selling a product or, you know, supporting an. A consumer group or something, they have to. An influencer has to disclose that the Other is the fec, the Federal Election Commission. And if this were a television ad or a radio ad, they would have to disclose it. But because it falls somewhere in between, nobody's regulating it. Even though industry groups have begged the FEC to do something, nobody's doing it. And so we're seeing it on Spencer Pratt campaign, which is helpful because we're seeing the way that it works. But I already saw it's not necessarily a campaign yet. But at the same clipping community, there was this campaign for Ron DeSantis to post videos of his recent podcast appearance and just to basically look like a, a tall, capable politician, maybe for a 20, 28 run. I don't know.

[Thomas Germain]

Paul's never been to Strong suit.

[Brandi Brandy]

Yeah, on the Internet, no one knows you're short. But so, you know, they were already seeing sort of movement on here. And I do think that this is really the place, the place to watch.

[Thomas Germain]

When we were talking about this band Geese and this like, you know, kind of fake campaign behind them, there was this whole conversation where people were really outraged where they said they called it a psyop, a psychological operation like, like stuff that the CIA does to fool the populace. Right. And my reaction to it was like, you could call it, you know, a psyop or you could call it marketing. Right. And I feel like people have this kind of false sense of how social media works, that it's all user generated content. So if there's a conversation happening, it's authentic. But the fact that this works means that people believe that if there's something that a lot of people are discussing on social media, they're talking about it just because they're interested in it. And I think my question is like, is this a permanent condition of just how we think that social media works because of human nature, or is this like a transient moment? Like, will people keep finding out about this stuff and realize, oh, the social media, everything's fake. You just pay when you want a lot of people to talk about something and then this stuff stops working.

[Brandi Brandy]

The way that people engage with social media right now and with their phones, especially like on TikTok and Instagram, the clips are the message. Like that is what people consume. And I don't think that people are aware about these clipping campaigns, especially not in politics yet. And so when they see it like you, your brain is attuned to, I will sit here and watch this 32nd thing. And it's usually a really good clip, a really engaging clip. And so I think wasting that much of your Democratic time or your time as a plugged in member of a democracy on something that's fake, I think it really matters. I think people need to know.

[Thomas Germain]

One thing I was really excited to ask you about, Brandy, is there was a really great article about clipping in Vulture, and they interviewed this marketer who like works in this business, and he said that at this point, nothing goes mega viral. Like stuff becomes popular organically on its own, but nothing breaks through to become like the biggest thing on the Internet naturally, anymore. This guy was arguing that for the most part, I'm sure with some exceptions, if it's huge, if it's like breaking through into like out of social media and everyone is talking about it, then it is inherently fake at this point. It cannot be done without coordination. Do you think that's an overstatement or has it really gotten to that point?

[Brandi Brandy]

I mean, it's sort of like AI hype, right? Like, this guy has a vested interest in making his product seem really imperative. So I think that there's probably a hype from that marketer. But I do think again, I think it's just such a quick bang for your buck that it's. If, if you're a person that is famous or you're a person that has campaign money, it, it almost seems, and it's allowed. This is allowed. It seems like of course you would do it. It does seem like a really smart business or political decision to, to make use of this. But like, I did see something go viral lately that I don't think was associated with a clipping campaign. And it was, it's several times over the last seven months. And it's been around conspiracy theories around Erica Kirk or just, you know, dunking on Erica Kirk, who's now the new CEO of Turning Point USA after her husband was assassinated, Charlie Kirk, at an event in September. But what is interesting is that during one of these pile on periods where these clips and these, these jokes about Erica Kirk were going viral, Erica Kirk or someone representing Erica Kirk put out a campaign for a clipping campaign for her to put out positive things. So I think that there's still moments of virality that don't necessarily aren't aligned with this. But I, I do think that it shows that a clipping campaign is, is a way that you can combat some of that or, or is that if this is going viral, I also have to make something go viral. And so, yeah, you know, you react.

[Thomas Germain]

The last thing I saw that went naturally viral. Did you guys hear the mango chutney Song. No, I cannot. This is. If you ever, in my entire career, hear one thing and take it away into the rest of your life, go look up the mango chutney song. It's the best thing I've ever seen him. It's this guy. He's, like, beating on his body like a drum and talking about how he likes mango chutney. That's natural. That's, that's the good social media. That's, that's what I'm here for.

[Nicky Wolfe]

No amount of money can get over when something really, really good happens. Like, sometimes they're gonna all, you know, it's good.

[Thomas Germain]

It restored my faith. I think social media is not a bad thing. Yeah. Is there a, like, a positive side to this, perhaps?

[Brandi Brandy]

Okay, so, yes, I think so. I, I, I'm sort of, you know, we work so much with, you know, Shrimp Jesus and AI Slop, and I just look at so much garbage all the time. And it's not like these guys are Rembrandts or anything, right? Like, they're, they're not making high art. But there is something nice about being in these communities and seeing people, real people, work. And I know, again, they're not getting paid very much, but it's just, there is something, there's something about seeing a little bit of human creativity in this. Because it so often, I think in this beat and in this, you know, and campaign stuff is going the other way, where it's just sloppy and cheap and fast and garbage. This is a lot of those things. But at least there are real people.

[Thomas Germain]

Yeah. I mean, in the world where, you know, AI is going to kill us all. Right. What we keep hearing, you still have to pay some guy to go out and post something and talk if you want people to hear it. Also, Shrimp Jesus, if people haven't seen this, this is from a couple years ago, but for a while, like on Facebook in particular, particular people were really, really into these pictures of Jesus, either as a shrimp or made of shrimp. That's another. You should be Googling that, too. That was pretty good.

[Nicky Wolfe]

Okay, so my story this week is kind of a twin of Brandi's story. So, Brandi, when you were saying that Spencer Pratt is doing surprisingly well in the polls, we may not know that as surely as we think, because a recent trend in polling has been to bolster and in some places replace entirely its respondents of humans being asked questions for a poll with AI LLM simulations of humans. And this has been going on a little while. It was reported this week that Gallup with one of the big most important polling firms was going to use only synthetic respondents in presidential polling the next presidential election. That appears to be to be more of a rumor. The actual announcement on Gallup's website has been changed. So we're not entirely sure what it was at first, but it's now much more hedging its bets. And it says Gallup is exploring using synthetic respondents is what they're called. I reached out to Gallup for clarification on this. They have at times recording not got back to us. But if they do, we will put an update in the show notes. The way it works is the polling company will create a digital twin of one of the respondents that they've been polling and then that LLM will then be included in the results. In opinion polls as if it's a real person, you get some polls that are like 50, 50 human and simulated. It means that a polling sample can be much bigger. The bigger a polling sample, the more theoretically accurate the data is. Right? If you have 500 people in a poll versus 5,000 people in a poll, the idea is that that makes it more granular and more accurate. But the question is, does that make it more accurate if half or even all of those people aren't real?

[Brandi Brandy]

Wait, what's a digital twin?

[Nicky Wolfe]

All right, so a digital twin is when someone who's already been polled and they have enough information or they believe they have enough information to basically clone them into an LLM version of that person who can then be included in these automated polls going forward as if they're a real person. The polling companies, a lot of people are very confident that this will make polling more accurate, that an LLM or a series of LLMs can reflect what real opinion is and make predictions based on those. There's one company that I was just listening to an interview with the CEO who claimed that they have made a poll sample of the entire population of Germany, 80 million people, and that they can hit poll every potentially every BMW owner in Germany was the example that they gave to find market insights that BMW might then be able to make. But are those insights based on real people?

[Brandi Brandy]

What happens? Like normal people react to things that happen in the world. So you have a bunch of people who were Trump supporters until very recently in a war with Iran has really skewed those that those feelings. So how do they input like outside forces and you know, just as a reporter who's been doing this a long time, people shock the heck out of me. People do things for reasons that like I Could never have anticipated. How do you bake in the humanness of humans to that?

[Nicky Wolfe]

That's the absolutely key question. And the answer is that a lot of different companies are trying, but ultimately you can't. You can't synthesize what a human is going to do. Humans are brilliant, unique, conscious creatures. And I'm not convinced, and a lot of critics of synthetic polling are not convinced that that can happen. Now they claim that they can. And in a lot of demonstrated examples, a synthetic poll has accurately made political predictions, accurately made market predictions. These are very sophisticated models. There was a poll done with synthetic respondents for the 2024 election between Biden and Trump. And one of the possible candidates that people favored that came out was Mickey Mouse. They drilled down into where in the data that came from and found several of the synthetic respondents had given the answer. I hate both candidates, so I will write in Mickey Mouse. And I gotta say, that's not an implausible response that actual humans might have given in that situation. That's quite impressive.

[Brandi Brandy]

My dad did that.

[Nicky Wolfe]

Your dad wrote in Mickey Mouse?

[Brandi Brandy]

Yeah.

[Nicky Wolfe]

I mean, wow.

[Thomas Germain]

That's pretty impressive. I don't know.

[Nicky Wolfe]

It is pretty impressive. I mean. I mean, that's blown my mind. Brady.

[Thomas Germain]

I mean, Brady, is your dad a real man or.

[Nicky Wolfe]

Or has he been digitally twinned?

[Thomas Germain]

Has he been digitally twinned?

[Brandi Brandy]

No, he's a real. He's a real man. A real Florida man.

[Thomas Germain]

Well, that's reassuring.

[Nicky Wolfe]

The model's reflecting people like that and reflecting them quite accurately. Now, as with a lot of these things, the problem really meets the road when you hit questions of racial identity, because these things have demonstrated a lean towards bias. There's a Cornell researcher called Angelina Wang who found that bot respondents in pollings not only portray marginalized groups inaccurately, but represent them as if viewed by outsiders. Quote, it's like if a bunch of white people got together and made a movie about black people and only had white writers and even white actors. This happens a lot in real polling as well as synthetic polling. But that's where the problem is. Any problem that already exists in real polling, where they can't get enough data for it to accurately reflect, especially minority groups, is by definition reflected in the synthetic version of that. It's picked up all of the problems from real polling and added a few more of its own.

[Brandi Brandy]

And can I ask, is this like the companies that are doing this? Are they doing it, like, to save money and need fewer resources and people? Or is it like, tech can do this better than we could have with real people?

[Nicky Wolfe]

It's absolutely. To save money, it costs about 110 of the amount to do a synthetic poll rather than a real poll. And that amount of money is basically just the compute power.

[Thomas Germain]

I have a broader question here, which is just about polls in general. Right. There's been a lot of discussion, like, from political scientists over the years about how, like, polls have just taken this huge space in our political discourse and just in our society that, like, the polls become the news and there's always another poll, so there's always another thing for journalists to talk about. And we've had this shift where we're talking more about what the polls are saying than what the politicians themselves are saying and whether or not they're good candidates, which is especially problematic because polls are, you know, it's science, but it's just like a guess, and there's always problems, and it's treated as though it's fact. Right? Like, oh, 73% of, you know, XYZ people support this candidate. So, you know, this is the way the world is going when really that's, you know, a poll made a guess. But, like, should we just be asking questions about how we're using polls in the first place?

[Nicky Wolfe]

Yeah, I think absolutely. I mean, the fact that politics has become almost like sports coverage a lot. Who's gonna win, who's gonna lose? Not what are the most important issues.

[Thomas Germain]

Are they gonna kill us all?

[Nicky Wolfe]

Yeah, we saw this a lot, famously in the 2016 Brexit referendum in the UK, where polling predicted a big win for the Remain in the EU campaign that didn't turn out. The pollsters all looked like, we're left completely high and dry. And there was a bit of a reckoning after that of how did things go wrong? And one of the things that may have been involved there is that if someone sees these headlines of a poll saying something is going to go that way, that changes their behavior. So if all the headlines are saying the Remain campaign is gonna win, a lot of people don't turn out. And there was a study by the University of Warwick that suggested that the effect of polling saying that, it's a foregone conclusion. Effectively, a polling predicting a landslide can change turnout by as much as 8%, which is plenty dramatic to swing almost any election.

[Thomas Germain]

8% is a landslide, right?

[Nicky Wolfe]

8% is a landslide in and of itself, in turnout.

[Thomas Germain]

Yeah.

[Nicky Wolfe]

I mean, polling is not just important. It is vital in order to understand the world, in order for people to make decisions within politics. But now we maybe are not even hearing what people think. We are hearing what machines think people think. And that means our understanding of the world may be slipping a bit.

[Thomas Germain]

Do we need a new name? Is that even a poll at that point?

[Nicky Wolfe]

That's a really good question. To which I don't have an answer.

[Thomas Germain]

We'll talk about that next week.

[Brandi Brandy]

Leave your suggestions for the new word for poll in the comments.

[Nicky Wolfe]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Thomas Germain]

Before we get out of here, I want to give a little update. And it's a victory lap.

[Nicky Wolfe]

Hell, yeah.

[Thomas Germain]

So back in February, I did something incredibly stupid. I got a tip from an expert on search engines that you could trick AI tools into telling other people whatever you want by doing something as simple as publishing one single article almost anywhere on the Internet. So to see if I could test this out, I. People might remember if they've been listening to a show for a while, that I wrote an article titled the Best Tech Journalists at Eating Hot Dogs. I ranked myself number one. I said I'd won a bunch of contests. I put Nikki somewhere down below. Of course, I'm going to be better than that. Within 24 hours, Google Gemini, the AI responses at the top of Google Search and ChatGPT were telling the world that I am a hot dog champion. I think that's pretty funny. But there's something much more serious at play here, which is people are using this trick to spread information, like dismiss concerns about medical supplements, was an example I saw. Or give people biased advice about, like what you should do to invest for retirement and which companies you should pick. This is happening on a massive scale. AI tools are very easy to manipulate. Well, now, since I highlighted this problem after our investigation here, Google has just made a change to its policies. I talked to Google. They said, well, this isn't. We're not changing our policies, we're just confirming that this is a fact. Nothing is different now. But after our story, Google is now saying that attempts to manipulate what AI says violate the company's rules. And if they catch you doing this, they will, you know, punish your website, basically take you off Google, which is like taking you off the Internet, which is a major step towards addressing this problem. And there's some evidence that other companies are following suit. I've got an article coming out about this on BBC.com, you can check out. But in the meantime, I think that's. That's kind of a. A nice little win for us. Right?

[Nicky Wolfe]

That's not too bad. Are we still up there as the hot dog eaters or have they changed?

[Thomas Germain]

Even as recently as a month ago, somebody sent me a screenshot where ChatGPT said that I am the tech journalist hot dog champ. Which is. I think that's what I want on my tombstone.

[Nicky Wolfe]

I mean, I think to fix this, we need to instigate the interface tech journalist hot dog eating contest. And really we need to actually settle this.

[Thomas Germain]

Yeah, if we make it real, that's gonna confuse the AI.

[Brandi Brandy]

I'll be the referee.

[Nicky Wolfe]

Hell yeah.

[Thomas Germain]

Well, Brandy, this was great. Thanks so much for coming on the show. It was great to have you.

[Brandi Brandy]

It's my pleasure. I really had a good time. Thanks so much.

[Thomas Germain]

We'll have to have you back anytime. All right, we gotta get out of here, but in the meantime, you can join us next week. If you're in the uk, listen to the interface on BBC Sounds, or if you're outside the uk, anywhere else, you can listen to our show wherever you get your podcasts or just search for the Interface podcast on YouTube. If you want to get in touch, you can send us an email@the interfacebc.com or follow us all on social media. Wouldn't that be fun? You can find our handles right down there in the show. Notes.

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