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The Interface
Can Pope Leo save us from AI?
00:46:46
Google’s new version of the Internet search; The Pope vs AI; child safety on Roblox.
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- [00:00]
Advertisement Voice
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. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. But what policy changes should investors be watching? Listen to Washington Wise, an original podcast for investors from Charles Schwab to hear the stories making news in Washing host Mike Townsend, Charles Schwab's managing director for Legislative and Regulatory affairs, takes a non partisan look at the stories that matter most to investors, including policy initiatives for retirement savings, taxes and trade, inflation concerns, the Federal Reserve, and how regulatory developments can affect companies, sectors and even the entire market. Mike and his guests offer their perspective on how policy changes could affect what you do with your portfolio. Download the latest episode and follow@schwab.com WashingtonWise or wherever you listen.
- [02:05]
Thomas Germain
Websites are in a free fall right now. This is going to be an absolute crisis. The way that the Internet works, that is ending.
- [02:16]
Karen Howe
Welcome to the Interface, the show that decodes how tech is rewiring your week and your world. I'm Karen Howe.
- [02:23]
Thomas Germain
I'm Thomas Germain.
- [02:24]
Nikki Wolfe
And I'm Nikki Wolfe.
- [02:25]
Thomas Germain
Today on the Interface, we'll be talking about whether or not Google is about to destroy the Internet.
- [02:32]
Karen Howe
Can the Pope save us from AI?
- [02:35]
Nikki Wolfe
And is Roblox finally facing a reckoning?
- [02:43]
Thomas Germain
So last week as we were recording our podcast, Google had its big developer conference. It's called Google IO. We couldn't report on it because we were doing our show. So we're a little bit late, but we're going to talk about it now. And Google made so many announcements, they put out a blog post that said the top 100 things that we announced at this year's IO. But I think it's really difficult to overstate how significant the changes that Google has made are going to be. And before we get to, like, the major headline about what this is going to do to the web and to the Internet, I mean, let's talk about what's changing. So the big thing from Google, they've made this kind of sort of pivot where they're not talking about AI as much as they are specifically talking about agents.
- [03:35]
Nikki Wolfe
Right.
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Thomas Germain
People have probably heard this term AI agents. It's like a little AI that goes out and does stuff in the world, or at least on the Internet, on your behalf. Google has announced a bunch of new agent tools. It's got this thing called Google Spark, which Google calls a 247 personal AI agent that's going to be able to run around and, you know, you can set up. It's sort of like a fancy Google alert where it'll go do things for you. It'll look up if your favorite band is in town, It'll help you monitor stocks. They've got new AI smart glasses. They're putting Gemini in everything. Like, everything from YouTube to your Gmail is going to want to talk to you now. But I think the biggest change is how they are altering the experience that you're going to have on Google search. And I really think this is probably the biggest tech news that you're going to hear all year in terms of, like, the consequences that this is going to have. People probably noticed, you know, AI overviews, right? You guys know this, like, AI answer you get at the top.
- [04:38]
Nikki Wolfe
Yeah. It gives you a kind of answer before you start getting to the search results.
- [04:42]
Thomas Germain
Yeah. So when this came out, everyone was like, oh, it gets things wrong. Right. It, like, told. It was telling people you should put glue in your pizza or saying you should eat rocks every day because it's good for your health. That was funny, right? And also not funny because it's like, you know, not a big problem. It's a big issue if Google is spreading misinformation. But the real shift is that for 30 years, almost, Google has been a search engine where they give you a list of 10 blue links and they send you to another part of the Internet that's been changing over time. With AI overviews, that was a pretty radical shift. And instead of sending you to another part of the Internet, it gives you an answer and then the search results, right. Those blue links get kicked farther and farther down the page. Now the search box is going to be this dynamic AI platform where you ask a question and you will get a completely different experience depending on what you're asking for. So not just an AI overview, but Google literally says, for a lot of searches, we are going to build an app in real time. You're going to ask a question and there's an AI that will build an app right then and there to answer your queries. So they gave an example. Like, you know, if you're asking, how do black holes work, it might build you an app that has like a 3D represent representation where you can check boxes and move sliders to, like, learn more about the universe. Google also says that they're going to have agents, right, little AIs that do things for you built into Google search. So you can like, eventually, like this is going to be available immediately, but you can, like send a little AI out to do things on your behalf and you can make purchases right from Google even more so than you are right now. The big way to think about this is when Google announced AI overviews, they had this sort of tagline in their big conference where they said, let Google do the searching for you. Now, their tagline with this new AI stuff, where it's this whole shifting experience, is ask Google, right? You're not asking the Internet, you're asking Google, you're interfacing directly with Google. And this is like an asteroid that is pointed at the center of the way that the Internet has run for our entire lives. And the big change here is that more and more, and this has already started happening, your experience on Google is going to end on Google, right? It used to be Google would send you to another part of the Internet. Increasingly, you're just going to go to Google, you're going to get what you need. You will never visit another website and you're going to stay there. And here's why that's such a big deal. Essentially, if you have a website, there's three ways you can make money. You can sell things, you can sell products, you can show people ads, or you can charge people for a subscription. That's basically it. But for the entire history of the Internet, more or less, or at least the modern Internet, all of that activity has started on Google. So something like 80% of all of the activities, all of the stuff that happens on the Internet right now begins on Google. Search starts with somebody going to Google and then going and doing another thing. Like the majority. For some websites, it's all the traffic that they get comes from Google. And Google is sending out less and less and less of that traffic, less people to other parts of the Internet than ever before. The editor in chief of the Verge came up with this term. He calls it Google Zero, which is we're trending towards a world where Google is sending zero traffic to most of the other parts of the Internet. What that means is websites are in a free fall right now. This is going to be an absolute crisis. I was talking to an expert about this a couple years ago and I was saying, we're going to have an extinction event on the Internet. And he was like, extinction is too strong of a word. I think we should use the word decimation instead. I think that's a little more accurate, that's a little too strong. But in practical terms, what this means is, is the way that the Internet works. Like if you have something that you want to say, if you have a business that you want to create, providing information, used to be you would do that with a website that is ending.
- [09:16]
Nikki Wolfe
Right.
- [09:16]
Thomas Germain
The model that has supported that is going away. And this ecosystem of the open web is in a serious crisis. And I don't think it's really going to turn around. And I think we are at, in a very dramatic way, the end of an era.
- [09:33]
Nikki Wolfe
And to think about the sheer scale of this, right. For a media company. When I was working on the Guardians news desk, there was a whole part, like a whole department, I think lots of media companies had this. Whose entire job was optimizing headlines for search engine in order to get search engine optimization. Yeah. For a long while. Say you are having a dinner party and you want to cook, you know, spaghetti Bolognese. Right. You go on Google, you say spaghetti Bolognese recipe. And a lot of the time you will find nine pages of essay about the concept of spaghetti Bolognese. Before you get it right.
- [10:14]
Thomas Germain
It's like, what is the history?
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Nikki Wolfe
People have been like, what's going on there? Pasta. And that is. Yeah. And that is because part of the Google page rank, which is how found it was, was responding well to something structured that way. So that's, that's how much Google's way of doing things affects all content. That needs people to find it.
- [10:36]
Thomas Germain
Yeah, people often, I always hear this term people call like talk about mommy bloggers, which like not just condescending but also super sexist. Right. They're like, oh, these idiot mommy bloggers with their recipe website, they don't know that I don't want to hear about how, you know, their family liked the spaghetti.
- [10:55]
Nikki Wolfe
Right.
- [10:55]
Thomas Germain
They're not stupid. They know that you don't want to read that. It is in order to please Google. It is because Google has created the system where you have to play by its rules if you want Google to send people to you. Basically, the whole game of having a website was pleasing Google. Of course Google would disagree with this, but the courts in the US has said that Google has an illegal monopoly over the search engine business. You have to play their game or you're going to die. And now even if you do play their game, you're going to die. The CEO of Conde Nast recently, and like, maybe this is little journalism insider baseball, but Conde Nast is one of the biggest media companies in the world, certainly one of the most important. They own the New Yorker and Vogue, like a bunch of like the big publications that you can think of. Recently said that he's operating under the assumption that Google will be sending his websites zero traffic and they need to completely change their business model in order to, you know, work with that new paradigm. And on a recent interview with the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, he was asked about this and he, and they were like, you're kind of like, you're going to kill the open web with all these products. He's like, no, no, no, the, the web is going to be great. But basically what he says is like, you know, websites can charge subscriptions and we'll send people who are more likely to subscribe to websites. So that, that's one of the big changes that I think you're gonna see. It's already started, right? You know how more and more websites have a paywall up where if you want to access their content used to be free. It used to be free because of a business model that Google was supporting. Right? That Google would send people to your site, enough of them that you could, they could look at the ads and you could make money. That's getting harder and harder to do and you are going to have to pay for stuff that used to be free. That's one of the things that's going to be different for you.
- [12:40]
Karen Howe
I think it's important to underscore to people who don't really, you know, recognize the economics of the Internet, that the production of high quality information is really expensive. I mean, journalism is a canonical case because I think people generally are more familiar with how journalism works, is you need, you need either subscribers or you need ad revenue to pay your reporters to go out into the world to collect news and information. But it's not just journalism. This is How a lot of websites online are able to keep their content completely open is that they are getting some kind of revenue from that open model. And that's what you're saying is ending, Tom, is that if there's no more revenue from keeping your websites open, and in fact it's undermining your business by keeping that information open because Google can just scrape it wholesale, ingest it into their AI model and deliver it directly to the user without driving traffic to your site. Then you have to put up a paywall, you have to put up some kind of blocker, and that's what kills the open web. Google also thrives off of an open Internet. You know, especially in the age of AI, they need to, they scraped all the open Internet in order to train their models and have continued doing that to train the next generation of their models. If Google's own actions are leading to the complete shuttering of that open Internet, is that also going to come to bite Google in its back?
- [14:12]
Thomas Germain
It's a great question and I think there's two answers. One is like, it isn't going to be a complete shuddering, right? Like the open web, the parts, the websites that exist outside of the coffers of a tech company, it isn't going to be completely gone. There will still be millions of websites. There'll be a lot of them. I think the big players will survive, right? People are going directly to the New York times and the BBC and maybe recipes.com because they like those sites, they're seeking out their content, you know, one to one, without an intermediary. But yes, like AI models, you know, writ large. And also Google's whole thing is built on taking this information that people are putting, putting online and there's going to be a lot less of it. So you might think like, oh, well now Google's screwed. They're sowing the seeds of their own demise. Well, not really because they have YouTube. This is what's going to happen, right? People who used to be like, it used to be like, oh, I want to start making media. I want to start, you know, make like writing or whatever it is. Used to be you'd start a website. Now what you would do if you were doing that today is you would start a social media account. You would go on TikTok, you go on Instagram, you go on YouTube. Google, I think can just scrape the contents, you know, of whatever Internet, whatever open web survives and YouTube and be perfectly fine and have all the information they need. And by the way, they're also taking all of the YouTube videos and scraping that content for their AI without compensating or like giving users any option there. And they also have this new thing where like you're going to be able to ask YouTube questions the way you talk to a chatbot and it will pull information from the videos, give it to you directly and you know, sometimes send you to like a particular moment in a video and other times just give you the answer. And then the people who made the YouTube videos, who get paid for views or whatever aren't going to get those views. So the economics of that is changing in a really dramatic way.
- [16:11]
Karen Howe
I feel like while there is this dire demise of the open Internet, simultaneously we are seeing this other trend where more and more people are actually willing to pay directly for high quality information now. And obviously newsletters is also a huge, not just independent publications, independent journalism, but newsletters where you just subscribe, you know, five bucks a month to the person that is going to then use that money to create that high quality information. So and, and of course podcasts, subscribing directly to the podcast and having it delivered to you rather than through Google. I think there are all of these other different ecologies of information that are kind of popping up that are, I think have, have made is, is a symbol of people recognizing that the original game of getting high quality information for free was always a little bit not quite sustainable. And people are starting to actually just put their money where their mouth is in terms of supporting real people, real creators that are delivering them value.
- [17:22]
Thomas Germain
I do think that's kind of hopeful. It is not necessarily all terrible, right? It's not the apocalypse. Maybe it's just the asteroid.
- [17:35]
Advertisement Voice
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 second hand piece of technology that breaks in the first ten 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 that. 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 bullspend. 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. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. But what policy changes should investors be watching? Listen to Washington Wise, an original podcast for investors from Charles Schwab to hear the stories making news in Washington right now. Host Mike Townsend, Charles Schwab's managing director for legislative and Regulatory affairs, takes a non partisan look at the stories that matter most to investors, including policy initiatives for retirement, savings, taxes and trade, inflation concerns, the Federal Reserve, and how regulatory developments can affect companies, sectors and even the entire market. Mike and his guests offer their perspective on how policy changes could affect what you do with your portfolio. Download the latest episode and follow@schwab.com WashingtonWise or wherever you listen.
- [19:31]
Karen Howe
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- [20:04]
Nikki Wolfe
Karen what do you think God would make of that story?
- [20:11]
Thomas Germain
Well, now we know.
- [20:12]
Karen Howe
I don't know that I can really get into God's mind, but there's someone who does. We do. But we do have a window now into the Pope's mind because he just wrote an over 80 page opus on all of his thoughts on AI and essentially how he thinks all Catholics and pretty much all people around the world should be thinking about AI and in its current form and how that form challenges human dignity itself. It's the first encyclical that Pope Leo XIV has put out as part of his papacy.
- [20:52]
Thomas Germain
And what's an encyclical?
- [20:53]
Karen Howe
Yeah, so an encyclical is an extremely important document in the Catholic tradition that is essentially a, it's sort of like a directive that the Pope issues to Catholics all around the world, saying this is how you should approach a particular subject and people.
- [21:13]
Thomas Germain
It's like an all hands memo.
- [21:15]
Karen Howe
Yeah, it's like an all all hands
- [21:17]
Thomas Germain
company meeting Catholic like Google Alert.
- [21:21]
Karen Howe
People might remember that when, when Pope Leo XIV chose to be called Leo, it was actually a direct reference to AI because Pope Leo XIII was the Pope during the Industrial Revolution. And Leo XIV said, I'm adopting the name Leo because I, I believe we are in another industrial Revolution where there will be great challenges facing humanity. And I have to say, I am really obsessed with this document. It's called Magnifica Humanitas. I don't. My life is not great.
- [21:57]
Thomas Germain
It's so dramatic. Magnifica Humanitas. Yeah, I like that.
- [22:02]
Karen Howe
But it is actually such a deeply considered document on AI development and its state today. It talks about many, many of the themes that we've touched on in this podcast, including the concentration of power in the hands of a few corporations developing this technology, the. The datafication and quantification of human existence, the exploitation of labor and the human. The hidden human supply chains that exist behind the production of this technology. It talks about data centers. My favorite topic, Pope after my own heart. It talks about the corrosion of economic opportunity and specifically also this idea that there needs to be more public education and more journalism to counter the way that AI is spreading misinformation and eroding the. The information ecosystem. And one of the most validating ones for me personally was it also articulates this idea that AI, as is currently conceived as a power concentrating force for Silicon Valley, is essentially threatening to turn the world into a new colonial world order. Which is basically the argument of my book, Empire of AI.
- [23:15]
Thomas Germain
So it does seem like the Pope or some of his vice popes read your book for sure. Looking at this document.
- [23:22]
Karen Howe
Yes, the vice.
- [23:23]
Thomas Germain
The assistant Popes. Yeah.
- [23:26]
Nikki Wolfe
And this is also not the first time this Pope has addressed the concept of AI. Right. He put out their pronouncement.
- [23:33]
Karen Howe
Yeah.
- [23:34]
Nikki Wolfe
Earlier on, saying that AI should not be used in writing sermons.
- [23:39]
Thomas Germain
Years ago, the. The Vatican, like, put out this document and then like, put me on the phone with a priest to like, get his take on AI. It's like something they're taking very seriously and have been for a while.
- [23:50]
Karen Howe
Wait, sor. What?
- [23:52]
Thomas Germain
Yeah, so like, I think like two or three years ago, the Pope announced the. I don't know what they call Pope projects. Right. Like an initiative where they were going to be taking AI really seriously. And I wrote an article about it. I reached out for comment. They, oh, we would love for you to talk to one of our guys. Usually when it's like a company, they put you on the phone with an executive, but because it's the Catholic Church, they put me on the phone with a priest.
- [24:17]
Karen Howe
That's incredible.
- [24:18]
Thomas Germain
And I was like, do I. Am I supposed to call this guy Father? You know, like, it was, it was weird.
- [24:23]
Nikki Wolfe
Can I ask a super dumb question? Was that under this Pope, actually, previous Pope?
- [24:28]
Thomas Germain
This is the Catholic Church has been thinking and like focused on AI for a while. Yeah.
- [24:32]
Karen Howe
So under Pope Francis, the previous pope, there was this effort to essentially start a series of conversations and convenings with AI experts around the world about how the Catholic Church should think about AI. I know a number of professors that have actually been part of these conversations and they also called Silicon Valley executives to come and have these conversations. That was all under Pope Francis. And Pope Leo basically took all of the ongoing convenings and discourse and has continued to add on to that. But he's really made AI a central feature of his papacy. Whereas Pope Francis thought it was an important thing to keep track of, Pope Leo is like, it is the thing to keep track of. And this document is essentially his manifesto on how everyone else should be thinking about this. And frankly, you know, like, I'm not Catholic, I'm not religious, but I think that everyone should be reading this document. It is a really, really great articulation of not just the concentration of power in, in profit seeking actors, but it's actually this, this essentially reminder that technological progress needs to always be in service of strengthening human dignity, which frankly, we just don't hear as a perspective enough in society. And he's essentially calling out all of the ways that currently technological progress is undermining human dignity. And he's trying to assert, hey, that is actually literally the opposite of what we should be doing here. And we should re. Engage in the collective pursuit of making our lives better.
- [26:18]
Nikki Wolfe
Which is, which is, I assume what is meant by that is summed up by the name Humanitas.
- [26:23]
Thomas Germain
Magnificent.
- [26:24]
Karen Howe
Exactly.
- [26:25]
Thomas Germain
Yeah. Magnificent humanity. I assume that's what it means. The question that I have here, it's kind of like, what's the goal? What he's trying to do is provide like a moral and ethical framework upon which he hopes that regulations will come like that. Like governments will look at this and be like, okay, this, we're gonna. Here's the Pope said this is bad and that we should be upset. So here, like, is this gonna work right? Like, do you think that this is gonna have the influence that he wants it to or that the media is acting like it will?
- [27:00]
Karen Howe
This is such a good question because the Catholic Church is such a weird institution. I mean, like, for a very long time in recent years, it completely lost its moral authority. Right. There were a lot of these investigations about the horrible depravity of the Catholic Church and the abuses that were happening to children within the Catholic institutions. And this led to the Catholic Church really losing its influence, particularly in The Western world simultaneously, I believe Catholicism is actually increasing in terms of the number of followers globally, apparently.
- [27:34]
Thomas Germain
Yeah. People. More people are converting than they have in a long time.
- [27:37]
Karen Howe
Yeah. So. So it is in this weird place, like the Catholic Church is simultaneously waning and influencing certain corridors of the world while gaining influence in others, and still just a massively influential institution. And it is kind of. It, it plays an interesting role in the AI discourse because there are really only a few authorities in the world that, you know, society organizes itself around. There's the nation states, there's like, I don't know, sports teams, there's like religious institutions. Right. Like that they. Religious institutions are the ones that transcend nation states and are meant to try and cohere many different factions of people that share a particular common belief. And so I do think that there is something really important and influential that comes of a Pope making a stand like this and saying, by the way, peoples of the world, Catholics of the world, we need to remember that human dignity is like the ultimate purpose that we are trying to sustain and help flourish. And. And we should not ever lose sight of that. And technological progress for technological progress's sake is in fact, just not the point. So I think that is, that is like why this matters so much is it is one of the extremely influential forces in the world that is the only one taking this stance at them at this moment.
- [29:15]
Thomas Germain
The Pope is kind of the ultimate influencer.
- [29:17]
Nikki Wolfe
Right.
- [29:18]
Thomas Germain
Like, I hope that's not disrespectful. Yeah. I mean, not to take light of his religious role, but like, when he talks, people listen.
- [29:26]
Nikki Wolfe
Right.
- [29:27]
Thomas Germain
Like if nothing else, but here's the
- [29:29]
Nikki Wolfe
other thing, is that this is being framed in some ways as the Pope versus AI. Right. But that's not the correct framing as it count because there was representation of anthropic, the big AI company that spun off from OpenAI, co presenting this document.
- [29:50]
Karen Howe
Yes. So this is the most bizarre aspect of the Pope's encyclical. The document itself incredibly well written. The presentation of the document was done side by side with the Pope and one of the co founders of Anthropic, named Chris Ola, who I previously interviewed years ago. And this is very strange because as far as I understand from speaking with other people knowledgeable on this issue, like there has never been a corporate representative present at the presentation of an encyclical.
- [30:32]
Thomas Germain
Yeah. It's not like the CEO of Walmart is showing up with the Pope, you know?
- [30:36]
Karen Howe
Yeah, exactly. And the way that the Pope framed it is we need to ultimately, like he says in the encyclical, this is not like an entreatus that's against technology. Right. Technology has been a fundamental part of human, human development. And when technology development is well considered, it has been essential to human flourishing. And so he's saying, like, we need to bring everyone along, including the people that are making this technology itself right now. And, you know, the document doesn't pull any punches in terms of talking about companies like Anthropic being part of the problem. And so it is kind of interesting that then Anthropic is also standing there. You know, they were. They were sitting on a panel and they were talking. It wasn't just Anthropic. There were also two academics that were invited to share their thoughts as well. And interestingly, Chris Ola, when he gave his remarks, he also framed this encyclical as a critique of the. His company and of the industry. He said, we exist in an incentive structure that is, you know, shaped by capitalism. It is shaped by geopolitics. And this incentive structure means that even when we as people within these companies want to be moral actors and do good by the world, the incentives might push us to actually go the opposite way. And so it is important for critics that exist outside of this incentive structure to continue holding us accountable. And this document represents one of those critiques. And so he's actually, like, in the speech, they kind of frame themselves as a bit antagonistic to one another and yet still willing to stand, to sit side by side to present this document. And so there's been this whole discourse about whether or not this is a moment in which Anthropic has somehow successfully been able to leverage the Pope's influence to gain more influence for itself, or whether it's the Catholic Church trying to leverage its influence to further influence and get in line. These very companies that they are trying to critique in the document, it's a collab.
- [33:02]
Nikki Wolfe
I mean, maybe a peace offering.
- [33:04]
Thomas Germain
So, yeah, I mean, there's often this term that gets thrown around, particularly in the tech industry, where, like, you know, companies will, like, buddy, like, buddy up with politicians, and they call it regulatory capture. Like they influence the people who are making the rules. Karen, just the other day you were saying that, like, before we got this document, before we knew what it was going to be, you were saying that this seems like it might be Pope capture, that they're, like, buddying up with the Church and, like, influencing what the Popes could say. But it seems like that's not what's happening. Like, this is not painting the executives at the top of these companies or the companies themselves in a flattering light whatsoever.
- [33:40]
Karen Howe
I'm honestly having a hard time figuring out whether or not it is or is not Pope capture. I mean, certainly you could see from Anthropic's perspective that these religious institutions are yet another facet of society that they should be seeking to capture. Right? Like they've, they're, they're working on capturing the policymakers, they're working on capturing the public, they're working on capturing the media. And religious institutions are one of the other main players that could hold them accountable that they should then try to wrap up into their narrative. And in a way, Anthropic has been engaging in this in a lot. For a long time. They have been courting religious leaders and Christian leaders in particular under this narrative that they are seeking advice, they are seeking a moral authority to help them with crafting the morality of their systems. And in a way, to be fair to Anthropic and to these, these other AI companies that are doing this, I don't want to say that it's entirely just a narrative. They aren't entirely doing this just because it looks good. I do think that there's this weird phenomenon happening in Silicon Valley right now where a lot of people are turning to religion because they feel a little bit unmoored by the sheer power that they are grappling with now. And they are turning back to like the oldest institutions that asked questions about morality to try and have some kind of foundation upon which to stand. So there is this, like, inter, this strange interplay where Silicon Valley is turning to religion. And, and they're also framing AI as a religion and they're also trying to potentially capture these institutions.
- [35:35]
Nikki Wolfe
Right.
- [35:35]
Thomas Germain
And if nothing else, it looks good for Anthropic to have one of their executives standing next to the Pope. And like, even if they're being very critical, Anthropic's whole thing is like, oh, we're the good guys, we're the good AI company. We take this all very seriously. I mean, they have a philosopher on staff who's trying, apparently their job is to like, instill moral values into their AI clause.
- [36:00]
Karen Howe
Yeah. I think the ultimate question for me is will what the Pope's document actually says, like, the substance of it, which is this very well written, well researched critique of how AI is currently being developed. What will what it says ultimately trump the fact that there was also a little bit of whitewashing and reputation laundering with having Anthropic side by side with him. And, and ultimately, to go back to what you were saying, Nikki, is some people are framing this as Pope versus AI. But. But to me, the most fascinating thing is it's sort of like real old institutional religion versus new Silicon Valley religion.
- [36:54]
Nikki Wolfe
Yeah, Right.
- [36:54]
Karen Howe
Where Silicon Valley is trying to use religious themes, religious rhetoric increasingly to frame the quest of AI that if you let us build this thing, it'll be like a God it will become. It will deliver us to heaven, to this kind of utopic state. If you don't let us build it and someone else bad builds it, it will damn us to hell. And so that is the ultimate battle that we are going to be seeing now. These two extremely powerful forces, one of the old world, one of the new world, that are vying for attention. Yeah, I just wanted to read one last thing from the document, because one of the things that stood out to me most was the Pope taking some of the ideologies that undergird this crazed quest for AI head on. And he just says simply like, these are not the right ideologies to be doing anything by. And particularly he calls out transhumanism and this belief that somehow AI is meant to perfect humans. There's this pursuit of wanting to rise above the limitations of humans and humanity. And that is part of what is driving all of this AI development. And what the document says is we must remember that humanity flourishes not just despite limitations, but often through them. It is precisely within our limitations that the following. Find a place. Compassion, generosity, spiritual experience.
- [38:30]
Nikki Wolfe
I think that's really beautiful. You gotta say, Karen, that it is the second best thing I've ever read about AI after your book.
- [38:38]
Karen Howe
Oh, thank you, Karen.
- [38:40]
Nikki Wolfe
Newsburn. It was a bank holiday. Both the US and the. And the uk, Right? It was the holiday Monday. Karen, you spent your holiday reading papal announcements. I spent mine a lot of it playing a game called Roblox. Now, have you guys heard of Roblox? I think a lot of people will have this. It's one of the largest. It's not actually a game. What it is is a set of creator tools by which people make games within it. So there's thousands and thousands of user created games on there, some of them open worlds. They'd sort of noodled around in an open world for a little while. Some of them are more storytelling, so some of them, you get someone who's written a horror story in a game and put that together, and then some of them are more competitive. So it's really like a YouTube for user generated games more than it is its own kind of game. So it has 150 million daily users. A lot of children especially play this game. And a lot of people may have heard of Roblox because there'd been a lot famous issues with it at various points in history. But it does seem to be suddenly having what may be its big tobacco moment. A lot of child safety groups have started lobbying the Federal Trade Commission in the US to take action against Roblox. The issues that they have with it are multifold. One is safety in terms of content. Kids seeing things that they shouldn't. Seeing adult themes within some of these games that are inappropriate for children. One issue is that it has been, some people have called it a predator's heaven. There have been stories where children have been lured in, taken off the platform and then abuse has happened. And the third is that it is teaching kids gambling because there is in game currency called Robux. What the parents are worried about and what these groups allege is that the way the game is designed kind of feeds children in towards allegedly buying more and more of these in game currencies. One of the examples in the complaint, one of the parents said that their 10 year old daughter spent more than $7,000 on in app purchases in two months. They say despite their attempt to limit them again. In response the company Roblox said that they display clear warnings and I did come up against a warning that said beware, this transaction involves real money. But that's not the only issue that people have had with Roblox. There's also an element of exploitation that's being accused because people are making their own games. Roblox owns those games that they make. And there are some examples of kids who are making quite a lot of money if they make a successful game. People are buying their Roblox. Roblox, a company takes a cut of those. But it's, it's in some ways a kind of a work simulator.
- [41:43]
Thomas Germain
Yeah, I mean there was a story a couple years ago where a reporter like asked his son to take him on a tour of Roblox. Like he knew his kid was playing and he found out that like the kid had like a literal job, like they went to work in a factory in the game and they were being paid by you know, presumably some other child who was employing him with like in game currency to manufacture. I mean I, I don't remember the details, I haven't played the game. But like there is very, I mean in a couple of different senses, right like there's kids doing labor for each other. But then there's this big criticism that Roblox, the company, is profiting off the labor of children, that children are making these games. And then Roblox gets to use those games to make money. It's totally bizarre. I don't think there's ever been anything like this.
- [42:32]
Nikki Wolfe
Yeah, one of the most insane examples I've heard of something that happened inside Roblox was this cult called Spawnism. Now, this was 2025. It came from. Originally, there was one of the games of the thousands and thousands that somebody had made within the Roblox creator industry called Forsaken. This was a horror game. It was designed to tell a horror story. So you get these horror writing genres. And then in this particular case, it developed a fandom. Now, if you're a fan of this ongoing piece of horror fiction, you then go on places like Discord or TikTok or X, places where people discuss the story. And then what happens, what seemed to have happened in this case is that that storytelling has. This has a duality where some people are talking about it in a meta storytelling sense, but some people are understanding it as real, as a real piece of mythology, in some cases as a real demon. And you get people who are unscrupulous, who enjoy messing with people, who will push those people in the direction of actual belief. And so what was reported was that children had started carving into their skin, literally cutting into their skin, the logo
- [43:59]
Thomas Germain
of this demon were people push like they were doing that on their own or like, why were they doing that?
- [44:05]
Nikki Wolfe
So there will be people in these discords that are pushing people to do it. It does not seem like it was part of the original game that the first creators intended it to be. The researchers linked it to a cybercrime exploitation troll group called Comm Network, who seem to have taken this story and gone, we're going to mess with people. And that's. That is how something can evolve from a story into something that looks more like a cult through this kind of organic. Everyone's sort of. Yes, ending a little bit, pushing in a direction that ends in real life harm. So you've had a lot of these kind of nightmare stories coming out of Roblox for a while now. And it does seem like they're trying to address some of these concerns. We reached out to Roblox and got a statement saying that Roblox strongly disputes these claims. They say our platform is designed to provide positive, healthy and enjoyable experience. They say that while no system can be perfect. They have a set of safeguards designed to support a safe and civil environment. They also say that most of the games on Roblox are free to play and you don't need to purchase any of the in game currency in order to play it. That's true. I didn't spend any of my old BBC's money while noodling around on there. But they also say they have clear policies prohibiting simulated or actual gambling. So they're coming out pretty strongly in response to what these groups have been saying.
- [45:49]
Thomas Germain
And yet all these complaints persist. And it might be worth bringing up. There was this very weird combative interview that the CEO of Roblox gave with the New York Times last year where they asked him about the child predator issue. And one of his responses he said, well, I see this not just as a problem, but an opportunity. Which was just very weird corporate speak. Yeah. And it wasn't even really clear what he's saying. He's like, oh well, it's an opportunity to create like a super safe system. And then he like kept interrupting the interviewers to be like no, I completely disagree. We do. I, I don't agree that we have a child predator problem. That's not a real issue. Just very strange posturing. Not just like, oh, we take this very seriously, but like we don't agree that it's a big problem in comparison to other platforms.
- [46:43]
Nikki Wolfe
It does look like in response to some of these complaints that Roblox is making some changes. They told us that in June, starting in June, they will launch an age based matching service that will make sure that younger players have the age appropriate content. And they've also said that this year they started requiring age checks for players to access the chat features. It also seems very kind of late on in the game to have started requiring that. And direct chat, they say is off by default for players under the age of nine. That seems very young, doesn't it?
- [47:25]
Karen Howe
Obviously there are these problems despite the company's denials, or at least many, many people are think that there are these problems because they're suing the company and leveling these allegations. So do you feel like there's an inflection point that we're seeing now where there might actually be real accountability for roadblocks? And if we are at that inflection point, what would that mean for just child safety on the Internet in general?
- [47:51]
Nikki Wolfe
Certainly if this ftc, if these groups are successful in lobbying the ftc, then there could be real consequences for roadblocks. If there are regulations within the U.S. a lot of the problems that people have with Roblox, a lot of the things that have happened with it in the past are core functional elements of how it operates.
- [48:10]
Thomas Germain
It's a really interesting regulatory question. You know, there are some critics, I'm sure, who would argue it just shouldn't exist. Then if like, if it's not safe for it to operate, this isn't a trade off that we should make. On the other hand, I mean like just trying to wade through like what a government might actually do here. Right. They're not going to say Roblox is illegal. Yeah. You could level the same criticisms at any platform where it's easy to like reach out to people.
- [48:41]
Nikki Wolfe
Right.
- [48:41]
Thomas Germain
That like it may not be safer, but especially one where it's like kids are supposed to use it.
- [48:45]
Nikki Wolfe
Right.
- [48:46]
Thomas Germain
Like you're saying there's an inherent danger. I don't know what like a law that would address this issue would necessarily do. I think you could have an argument and it seems like that's what these child safety groups are doing, saying that like, regardless of like, you know, whether Congress should do something like there's an inherent responsibility to protect users, that this platform is abdicating.
- [49:12]
Nikki Wolfe
Right.
- [49:12]
Thomas Germain
That they are not doing enough and kids are getting hurt because whatever it is they should, they should be doing, they're not doing it. Roblox of course disagrees with that. They say they work very hard and kids are safe on there.
- [49:24]
Nikki Wolfe
As you say, you can't ban it. Bringing in permanent full independent age verification comes with all of its own data protection problems. Regulating in game currency as a currency. Unclear if that's an ftc. How do you even do that? It is not in game. Micropayments is a widespread practice across the video game industry and it is the business model.
- [49:52]
Thomas Germain
There's probably no, especially for young children. There's no tech company that has a bigger influence, that's a bigger part of more people's lives here. So it is at like the locus. If something's going to happen here, that's probably where we're going to see it. And like we called on the FTC to address this.
- [50:11]
Nikki Wolfe
Will they unclear, as we've said, whether anything they could feasibly do with a platform this size would allay all possible concerns. But we will be following the story as it develops and we will keep you updated.
- [50:27]
Thomas Germain
Well, I certainly am not going to be playing Roblox. Then again, I'm not eight years old, so perhaps I'm not the target audience for this. But in this lack of regulatory enforcement era that we're living in. It's a question you're going to have to wrestle with for yourselves. You know, it's something that people have asked me a lot about, like, should I let my kids play Roblox? We'd love to hear from you. If it's an issue you've had to deal with in your family, like how did you decide? A lot of ins and outs. But in the meantime, if you're in the uk, you can catch us on BBC Sounds, or if you're outside the uk, you can listen wherever, wherever you get your podcasts, or just search for the Interface podcast on YouTube. If you want to get in touch with us, you can reach out over email. The address is the interfacebc.com or you can find us on social media. Links are right down there in the show Notes.
- [51:22]
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- [52:27]
Karen Howe
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