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Uncanny Valley | WIRED
Musk v. Altman; Is the AI Job Apocalypse Overhyped?; DOJ Dismantles Voting Rights Unit
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- [00:01]
Outshift by Cisco Representative
This show is supported by Outshift, Cisco's incubation engine. Today's AI agents operate in silos, limiting their true potential. We've been focused on building bigger, smarter models, but scaling up is just one approach. To reach superintelligence together, we need to do more, we need to scale out, and we actually have a blueprint from 70,000 years ago. Humans didn't just get smarter individually, they the cognitive revolution transformed society because we began sharing knowledge, goals and innovation, agents are now at that same inflection point. They can connect, but they can't think together. That's why Outshift by Cisco is building the Internet of Cognition, transforming AI from isolated systems into orchestrated superintelligence. By creating an open, interoperable infrastructure, Outshift by Cisco is enabling agents and humans to share intent to context and reasoning. The cognitive evolution for agents is here. Explore the Internet of cognition@outshift.com that's outshift.com
- [01:08]
Zoe Schiffer
welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoe Schiffer, Director of Business and Industry.
- [01:13]
Brian Barrett
I'm Brian Barrett, Executive Editor.
- [01:15]
Leah Feiger
And I'm Leah Feiger, Director of Politics and Science.
- [01:18]
Zoe Schiffer
Today on the show, we're going to a federal courthouse in Oakland, California to take a look at what has been going down in The Elon Musk vs Sam Altman trial trial. We're going to get into how the trial goes way beyond the rivalry between these two guys and could have major implications both for OpenAI, but also for the AI industry at large.
- [01:39]
Brian Barrett
Speaking of AI, we'll also discuss whether Meta's recent layoffs are a turning point for AI taking over certain jobs.
- [01:45]
Leah Feiger
And we're going to touch on a story that has gone a little bit under the radar, but it matters now more than ever. The DOJ voting section has been gutted this past year. Dozens of lawyers have been ousted, and these lawyers were the ones in the government that were upholding Voting Rights Act. Lots to get into.
- [02:08]
Zoe Schiffer
Okay, so let's kick things off with the Elon Musk versus Sam Altman trial. So the jury trial kicked off earlier this week, but the legal feud between these two guys dates back to 2024. Back then, Musk sued OpenAI, basically alleging two things. First, he said that the company had strayed from its founding mission to create AI that benefits all of human and second, that he was misled by Sam Altman and OpenAI's president, Greg Brockman, into contributing millions of dollars because he thought he was supporting a nonprofit. As you might have guessed, OpenAI's very weird structure is kind of central to this dispute. While its nonprofit arm controls the company, it created a for profit arm to raise outside capital, and now it's trying to become a public benefit corporation. OpenAI has denied the allegations. They're saying that Musk just wants to hurt OpenAI because now he has a competitive AI lab, which is XAI. And in fact, the lawsuit was only filed after Musk started xai. Although the feud has been going on basically since elon Musk left OpenAI Years and years ago. Now it's up to a jury and the judge who's overseeing the case to ultimately decide what happens next.
- [03:17]
Leah Feiger
This is something so aggressively not on my beat that I am watching. I don't know. The last time that I paid this, like, much attention to a trial that was not politically aligned was like, maybe Anna Delvey. Like, this is so interesting to me.
- [03:30]
Zoe Schiffer
We got her, you guys. We finally found the thing to make Leah care about AI.
- [03:34]
Brian Barrett
Amazing. We did it.
- [03:35]
Leah Feiger
This is so good, though. This is, like, so juicy. I love that this is going back to the beginning. I love that a really key part of this is Elon Musk being like, I made a charitable donation and it's not charity now. And I'm pissed.
- [03:48]
Brian Barrett
I think too, Leah, that one of the reasons. It's not just that they're like, big stakes. Of course they're big stakes, but these are also very messy companies, individuals. Like, it is gossip. It is sort of. There is so much swirling around OpenAI, XAI, SpaceX, Elon himself. It's just the whole thing is a great big mess. I think even Zoe just talking about, even the structure of OpenAI is the most convoluted, twisty, turny kind of thing. So, yeah, there is a lot to unpack. But most of all, just delightful to watch people be petty on the stand. Billionaire versus billionaire violence.
- [04:23]
Zoe Schiffer
Yeah. I mean, these two men absolutely hate each other, and they have for quite a long time. But again, just to get into the stakes a little bit, they're really high for OpenAI. The company could have to unwind its current structure. Greg Brockman and Sam Altman could have to leave. And obviously they're pulling out all the stops. They have these hardcore legal teams. All of the executives are expected to testify. They've already been in court. And then to give you a little bit of background on just how ridiculous it has already been, like, Elon Musk was promoting a New Yorker profile about Sam Altman that alleged he had kind of this history of being a bit deceptive duplicitous he was actually boosting that post on X. Ahead of the trial, Sam Altman was like, hitting back. Another key moment that I thought was really funny was when one of the lawyers microphones was like, going in and out, and the judge says, completely deadpan, yeah, we're funded by the federal government. Which I felt like was a dig right. To Elon Musk and Doge.
- [05:18]
Leah Feiger
This is it. This is what I'm here for, a little Doge dig.
- [05:22]
Brian Barrett
Here's senior writer Paresh Devay, who was there yesterday when Musk took the stand.
- [05:26]
Paresh Davay
Hello, this is Paresh Davay reporting from the federal courthouse in Oakland, California. Elon Musk took the stand in his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI. Elon mostly testified about his life history and his job history, how he moved to North America from South Africa. Then he talked about how he came about founding OpenAI. And Elon told this story about how he was living with Larry Page, having long discussions about the future of AI. And Larry expressed that he didn't mind if AI destroyed humanity. Elon Musk thought that was a big concern. And so Elon had discussions with various people, including Sam Altman, and that's how he came to found OpenAI. And that's what led to OpenAI starting as a nonprofit. Musk and Altman entered this morning, bypassing the front doors, coming into the building another way, and photographers have been trying to chase photos of them. Overall, a packed courtroom with about 100 or so people, including many attorneys from both sides, and an overflow room mostly full of media and other members of the public interested in following this trial.
- [06:49]
Zoe Schiffer
My favorite part, Paresh didn't like, say this verbatim, but the lengths that Elon Musk went to to make Sam Altman seem like a little nobody in this opening monologue. So funny. He was like, he was a random investor I barely knew. Basically implying that Elon made him who he is today. I thought that was. That was silly.
- [07:10]
Brian Barrett
So much of this is. All the spin that's going on around the trellis has been fascinating to me too. So you mentioned that Elon boosted that story on Sam Altman, which is he also just controls the algorithm. He could also just like, make it into. Go into people's seats. But we've had more than that, too. It got to the point where a judge had to tell them to knock off their post because they've both been posting so much about each other that they've. They've been admonished for their social media activity.
- [07:37]
Zoe Schiffer
Yeah, yeah. Another thing that came up on day one of the trial, and this was something Maxwell Zeff wrote about for Wired, was that jury selection was a little bit difficult because people do have such strong priors about both of these men. Like, they are national, internationally famous. It's very difficult to find someone who doesn't have a preconceived idea about Elon Musk. And in fact, there were a couple people who were ultimately picked who did have preconceived ideas, but ultimately were able to say, like, look, I can put this aside and, like, do my civic duty.
- [08:06]
Leah Feiger
You're. You're. You're saying that in such, like, a kind way almost, Zoe. Like, preconceived notions. People were saying horrific stuff about Musk. They were like, this man is destroying the world. If you put me on this jury, I will do my very best to send him to jail. Like, it was. It was that kind of level of stuff.
- [08:22]
Zoe Schiffer
We're in the land of the, like, vintage Tesla bumper stickers. You cannot find a Tesla in Berkeley, California, in Oakland, California, that just does not have a bumper sticker on it that says, I bought this before Elon went crazy. They're everywhere. They're everywhere. But I also want to touch on where Microsoft is in all of this, because obviously they're named as defendants in the lawsuit. We're expecting Satya Nadella, the CEO, to testify, but they've been a little bit quiet. Brian, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on kind of what we're expecting from Microsoft, why they're kind of letting OpenAI duke this out. You know, also have a big financial stake in the outcome of this trial
- [08:58]
Brian Barrett
because of the mess. They don't want to be involved in the mess. I mean, they've got this giant.
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Zoe Schiffer
You don't see Satya Nadella posting on X about it?
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Brian Barrett
No. I feel like Microsoft has been, you know, Microsoft obviously very close relationship with OpenAI, although they, as of this week, they have a more open relationship where OpenAI can now use other people's clouds.
- [09:16]
Zoe Schiffer
Also. Very Berkeley.
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Brian Barrett
Very Berkeley.
- [09:17]
Zoe Schiffer
We call that poly.
- [09:19]
Brian Barrett
So I think Microsoft just doesn't wants to be as far away from all of this as it possibly can. The fact that Satya is going to have to testify is something that they can't avoid. But I think this is just something Microsoft increasingly is placing its own bets in AI. It's increasingly sort of separating their relationship. Not totally separating, but their relationship is not quite so intertwined with OpenAI, and I think rightly so. I think it's clear. Especially given, as we said, how much restructuring, how much turnaround, how much mess. Again, I keep using that word that OpenAI has gone through. You maybe don't want to put all of your eggs in that basket. So I don't know. I think we're going to see Microsoft continuing to try to place as much distance as they can from this as possible, while still retaining as much financial upside as they can.
- [10:06]
Zoe Schiffer
One thing that's not directly part of this trial, but I still think is really important to name is just Elon Musk has this whole safety component to his argument. He thinks that OpenAI's founding mission was to create AI that would benefit all of humanity. He feels like they've gone back on that mission, they've put, you know, profits over people, that of thing. And he's making this argument that it's like growth at all costs. It's not prioritizing safety, you know, beneficial AI, all of those things. At the same time, he is running an AI company, xai, that puts very few guardrails on what people can do with those models. They famously have launched AI girlfriends that talk to people in kind of a romantic and sexual manner. People are able to jailbreak the models and do all sorts of things with them. It occasionally, like, goes off the rails and does kind of crazy things itself. And so I think, while again, this isn't being litigated per se, like, there is a deep irony in Elon Musk making these arguments about OpenAI, which frankly has a lot of guardrails in place, although it possibly needs more, depending on who you talk to.
- [11:07]
Brian Barrett
Yes, it's a chance to kneecap a major competitor, right? That seems to be it. Especially everyone's racing to go public, anthropic SpaceX, which owns Xai, OpenAI. And so if. If one of those leaders in this race has to give up a bunch of money, lose its CEO and become a nonprofit, all of a sudden, that makes SpaceX's prospects look a whole lot better.
- [11:29]
Leah Feiger
And I guess my follow up here is I'm sure that our reporters have been talking to legal experts that can weigh in on this. Does he have a shot?
- [11:38]
Zoe Schiffer
I think he has a shot. I think that it's. I think it really depends on who you talk to. I think, personally, I would be surprised to see Elon Musk be completely victorious in this case, but I think they're taking it seriously because it's not impossible. Like, he's throwing everything he can at this. And while I do think OpenAI has a lot of evidence that Elon Musk knew along the way that they were restructuring, that they had to do that to raise outside capital because it is so horrifically expensive to build frontier AI models. You know, it's Elon Musk, so I don't think you can ever completely discount his legal fights, even when they seem spurious at the the outset.
- [12:17]
Brian Barrett
Set aside the legal merits, who knows? We've got on the jury, we've got a psychiatrist, we've got a painter, we've got a former Lockheed Martin employee. And that's the beauty of the American justice system. But who knows what this group of people is going to decide this on or why? We'll find out soon. There's another story involving the AI industry going on this week. It's actually been going on for months, but we had an inflection point recently that makes it, I think we're talking about now. Meta recently announced layoffs that are supposedly being made because of AI, potentially, at least that's what people say. The company plans to cut 10% of its workforce, which is going to be about 8,000 employees, and it's also planning to close another 6,000 open roles. The same day Meta makes that announcement, Microsoft said it would offer voluntary buyouts to nearly 9,000 employees. It's the first time that Microsoft has made that kind of offer. The memo where Meta shared the news about its layoffs, it doesn't explicitly mention AI, but the company has obviously announced that it's nearly doubling its spending on the technology. It is huge amount of sums going towards data centers, Capex infrastructure. And it's not just white collar employees that are being affected. That gets a lot of the headlines. But there's a particular group of contractors that Wired's Joel Khalili talked to that's being hit by the layoffs as well. It's more than 700 workers based in Ireland. And what's interesting there is they're the ones who have been training Meta's AI models themselves or among the people. Those are contractors who work to train these models. They're employed by a Dublin based firm called Covalin, which handles various content, moderation and labeling service jobs for Meta. And their job is to check the material generated by Meta AI models against the company's rules that bar dangerous and illegal stuff. It's tough work, right? It's tough both for what it is and also the realization that while you're doing it, you're basically training AI to take over your job, right? It is a job that is designed to be obsolete as soon as you do it well enough.
- [14:09]
Leah Feiger
This is such a good opportunity for us to have really, our quarterly conversation is AI taking jobs. And like Zoe, I mean, I'm always so interested in your insight here. I'd love to hear you weigh it not just on Meta and Microsoft, but generally what you're seeing up and down the board.
- [14:26]
Zoe Schiffer
Yeah, so it's really interesting. There was a study from Stanford that came out months ago that said AI from what we can tell is in fact taking jobs from younger workers. And that makes sense because you still need people managing the AI agents. But like, if AI agents can do the work of, of kind of more junior employees, then perhaps you need less of them. At the same time, we know that the way that AI is being rolled out at a lot of companies is not actually creating the efficiencies that people have expected, at least not yet. But I think having talked to a lot of people in Silicon Valley lately, both people who are affected by the layoffs, managers who are going all in on this kind of new AI forward company structure that there is actually, and I hope I don't get like completely taken down on the Internet for this, I think that at least when we're talking about software companies, a lot of them are bloated in the AI era. I think that if you do AI correctly, you genuinely can have a single engineer who does a lot more than that person could previously do. And therefore you might need fewer overall engineers. Unless you want to like as a company do a whole lot more things or roll out a bunch more products or whatever, which is also an option. And so I think we're going to see a lot of companies doing what Meta is doing. We already are. Amazon has taken similar steps, both because it looks good to investors. And I know that this is an unpopular opinion, but I genuinely do think, like it makes sense to restructure if you can vibe code, you know, say Shopify on like a weekend with two really, really good engineers. Why does Shopify need hundreds and hundreds of them? I don't want those people to lose their jobs. But like, frankly, I don't know. I do believe that.
- [16:08]
Brian Barrett
I think that's absolutely right. I think a couple other things are happening too. One, yes, people are genuinely losing their jobs because it's more efficient to work with AI instead of coders and engineers, which is a shame. But as always that it's just the reality of it. Two, which we talked about before, a lot of these companies way over hired in the COVID and Post Covid era and So a lot of this is kind of correcting, bringing employment levels back down closer to where they were pre Covid and using AI as kind of a blanket for that. But then three, I also think a lot of these companies like meta, like the big hyperscalers, have to spend so much money on data centers and other infrastructure. In some ways it's a little bit less that we're going to have. AI efficiency is going to make these jobs obsolete as we need to use that money to buy compute. Like instead of salaries, not a pretty standard bands them all. But I think there's a certain, it's a trade off. These companies, it feels like they have infinite money sometimes, but they don't. And they have to make choices about where they spend and how they're going to allocate their resources. And right now it's in chips and data centers, not people for sure.
- [17:14]
Zoe Schiffer
And I think it is a bit confusing because I think there are a lot of people who are like, my company is rolling out AI tools, they suck. And I'm spending a lot of time correcting the AI. In no world could this agent do what I am doing. And I think that that is also accurate. I to do AI correctly you need to be really thoughtful with how you roll it out. And frankly you need really, really talented people who are managing the agents and figuring out how these tools can be deployed and how they can do the work that was previously done by many people. And so I think it's a rare company that is actually executing this new vision really, really well. And a lot of the layoffs we're seeing are not that.
- [17:51]
Leah Feiger
I guess from my end it almost. It just sort of feels like we're also holding our breath. We're not going to really see what this looks like until there's, you know, immense studies about just software engineers just can't get a job anymore. Like that's, that's just not what they should be studying in school like. And that hasn't exactly happened yet. Am I wrong?
- [18:08]
Zoe Schiffer
No, no, I don't think, I mean I don't think the job market is great, but I think what we're seeing happen is that people aren't moving from their jobs. Sure, if you talk to people at Apple, Apple famously doesn't do layoffs. So if you have a job at Apple, even if you're, you know, ideally would like to like move on, you are hanging on for dear life right now because it's hard, it's hard to get hired.
- [18:28]
Leah Feiger
I'm very excited for our conversation in approximately three months from now, where all of this is different, the same.
- [18:34]
Zoe Schiffer
I think it will be really interesting to see how this shakes out. But it's wild to think that not that long ago being an engineer was like the top, top job. And like, that's still true. Like, a pre IPO job at one of these AI labs could give you generational wealth. But I think in short order, things have really changed. And particularly for people who are a little newer in their careers. I've talked to a bunch of engineers and asked them, like, would you tell your kids to go into this field right now? And a lot of them have been saying no, frankly.
- [19:06]
Leah Feiger
What do they want their kids to do?
- [19:08]
Brian Barrett
Major League Baseball player feels the most immune.
- [19:12]
Leah Feiger
Oh, and you know, there's this great Vitner program in Berkeley. Get into some winemaking.
- [19:17]
Zoe Schiffer
Oh, my gosh, no. But it is things like that. They were like, I want them to do things like you can't easily replace with a computer. I want them to do a physical thing, be a therapist, go into construction. Those are the jobs that can't be easily automated. Although there are AI therapists. But I think they're not great.
- [19:31]
Brian Barrett
Although, unfortunately, haven't they been listening to Elon, though? Because the Optimus robot's gonna do all of this for us by 2028, so
- [19:38]
Zoe Schiffer
I don't know where we can turn.
- [19:42]
Leah Feiger
Okay, I want to shift gears into a really, really good piece from Wired reporter David Gilbert about the Department of Justice. We've been working on this one for a pretty long time, and in the past year, the DOJ's voting section, which, as the name suggests, is the group that works to protect the right of Americans to vote, has been changing beyond recognition. I don't just mean entirely different missions or what have you, which is all true. But more than that, its staff has been virtually gutted. There were around 30 attorneys in the voting section on the day of Donald Trump's second inauguration. Three months later, all but two were gone. The departing lawyers have since been replaced by new hires with little federal court experience who've all spent years working against the very department they have now joined. These attorneys have appeared more than willing to comply with Trump's anti voting directives, and many of them have actually worked with Trump previously, defending him and his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. But to put this all into a bit of context, the voting section is a really, really key part of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division. We don't talk about it a ton, and in some ways that's kind of the point. The voting section has been described as the crown jewel of the division, and it was established following the voting to stop discrimination in voting. So if you haven't heard of it before, the goal is that theoretically it's doing its job and it's working. The lawyers who have worked there for years and years are all considered to be like the voting experts, the election experts in the country. So to have had them all virtually ousted in the last 15 months is pretty shocking. And to really understand how this dismantling took place, we have to go back to the 2020 election, where Trump really sought to weaponize the Justice Department, appointing special counsels to investigate election conspiracy theor. But it didn't really work because officials of the department pushed back. They threatened mass resignations. Skip ahead a couple of years, and Trump's efforts have been pretty successful. In February of last year now, former Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a series of memos to the staff that called for DOJ lawyers to be zealously advocating for the president. Staff called them the Bondi blasts and were like, this is spelling out the beginning of the end.
- [21:57]
Brian Barrett
It is a fun name. It's a terrible thing, but it's a good name.
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Leah Feiger
It's a good name, yeah. Over the following months, this became even more clear. In April, the Senate confirmed the appointment of Harmeet Dillon as the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Rights Division. Dhillon has advocated for Trump and his claims that the 2020 election was stolen. And she's also, since being appointed, pushed out senior leadership, including people who were there from the 80s. You guys will enjoy this. When the resignation program across the government last year was rolled out, offered to tens of thousands of federal workers during Dogeco, former section lawyers tell Wired that they thought that Dylan didn't think that resignations were happening quickly enough. And as a result, Dylan sent letters to the senior managers in the section to transfer them to basically the Justice Department's complaint office, well outside of their areas. It was like a Bureau of Prison. People writing to them with, like, complaints about their jobs. Like, this was so clearly ousting.
- [22:54]
Zoe Schiffer
You know what blew my mind about this, though? I was like, wait, Harmeet Dhillon. I've talked to her before when I was reading David's story. She represented James Damore. Yes.
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Brian Barrett
Oh, so give. Give people a background on James Damore if they're fortunate enough not to have lived through that news cycle.
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Zoe Schiffer
This was, I think, a 2017 story, maybe even a little earlier than that, where a Google engineer Put out a memo basically talking about the biological differences between men and women to the point of, like, why we don't see as many female engineers. Because this was in the midst of Google trying to, like, do a lot of diversity and inclusion initiatives. And it went completely viral. The CEO had to weigh in. Ultimately, James Damore was fired from Google for this memo and then went on to sue and has become kind of like, I think he lives in Berlin and he's like an Internet personality now. But, yeah, this was, like, this was a. It was a big deal when it happened.
- [23:51]
Leah Feiger
No, it's huge. Like, this is someone who's had their hands in so many different things, has worked with lawyers across the country, has represented all sorts of people, and, like, really importantly, has very much, like, thrown in with the administration. And the people that she has hired are a really interesting bunch. Like I mentioned, a lot of them have worked with Trump before representing him in various attempts to overturn 2020. And without, like, sounding mean here, but this was, like, arguably one of my favorite parts of the entire story. Another consequence of these changes and the replacement of the lawyers is this, like, litany of mistakes that have become entirely commonplace to the voting section. They actually had to institute a writing class for the division's new hires, which lawyers told David had never, ever happened before. Yeah, and ultimately, though, like, as, like, kind of like slapstick as this all is, the section has really become exclusively focused on forcing states to hand over unredacted versions of their voter rolls. And that all, as you guys know, contains really sensitive information. Social Security numbers, driver's licenses. And the DOJ has now sued 30 states and D.C. for failing to provide this voter registration information. And they're, like, framing it as this Election Integrity Enforcement, although a lot of experts believe that it's going to be about purging voter rolls, checking citizen eligibility, et cetera, et cetera. So much of this is tied back to conspiracy theories about, like, election denial in the 2020 election. It's a mess.
- [25:21]
Brian Barrett
It's a real shame and a real loss that this sort of cornerstone of election justice and civil rights, justice in America, has become the sort of amateur hour clown show. I guess the silver lining is that at least now that it's trying to undermine aspects of voting democracy, at least the people in charge of doing that are an amateur hour clown show, and they haven't gotten very far in those efforts. But, Leah, what does this mean for the midterms? That's on my mind. When I was reading this, all I could think of Is like, you know, there is an election coming up. This is the election voting section. What happens, like, what are you most concerned about heading into the midterms, either that this group is gonna do or that they're not gonna do because that's not their focus anymore.
- [26:06]
Leah Feiger
Right. And that's the key bit, do and not do. And also there's like the soft power and the hard power of this. The hard power that experts and former voting section lawyers told Wired was basically the very specific protections that are in place just won't be occurring anymore. Right. So like, when we're talking about like discrimination at the rolls, what, how do you challenge that? Who is there to hear those challenges? Who is there to take those cases? The section has so very clearly turned its attention that that's just kind of missing a slightly, almost soft power sort of way. The idea of damaging and undermining elections, even in like a very emotional, continual way, you're, you're seeing in the news, oh, these states won't hand over their elections. Oh, it's because it's fraud. Oh, it's cuz they're protecting immigrants for voting. That doesn't happen, et cetera, et cetera. That like there is this like, very, very concerning bit of just like we're continuing to undermine trust in elections. And a lot of the lawyers we spoke to are very nervous about that. And on the larger scale too, some of the lawyers really worry that this ultimate goal here is to provide Trump with quote, unquote evidence to entirely take control of elections from the states. To be very clear, the federal government does not run elections, the states do. And we're hitting this point where like all of a sudden, which is again, very unique for the historic Republican Party to say, wait, this actually should be federalized, we should be having access to all of this information. You should be handing it over immediately.
- [27:35]
Brian Barrett
Well, and by making it so partisan, right, and by saying we're getting rid of all of you and we're bringing in all of these partisan people, you unwind decades, hundreds of years of precedent where these are not political jobs, they're not supposed to be. But in order to make it not political again, you have to get rid of the political people, which itself is a political act. And you end up in this cycle, I am assuming, where every new administration is going to just end up clearing house and bringing in their people, regardless of whether it's Democrat or Republican.
- [28:06]
Leah Feiger
Definitely. And to ask myself the question of where do we go from here? What does this look like if someone else, for example, takes power in November with the midterms, but then also in 2028. There's a lot of rebuilding that would have to be done here in an institutional way. And of course there will be people that want to step in. But again, that institutional knowledge is gone.
- [28:34]
Brian Barrett
All right, well, coming up after the break, we're going to share our Wired Tired picks for the week. Stay with.
- [28:47]
David Remnick
This week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, Steve Kerr, one of the best coaches in the NBA and certainly one of the most outspoken, calling the president a buffoon.
- [28:56]
Brian Barrett
I kind of regret that, even though I felt it in my heart, because
- [29:00]
David Remnick
I'm representing a large group of people
- [29:02]
Brian Barrett
not only for our organization, but our fans too.
- [29:06]
David Remnick
Steve Kerr joins us next time on the New Yorker Radio Hour from WN nyc. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
- [29:17]
Leah Feiger
Okay, it is time for our Wired and Tired segment. Whatever is new and cool is wired. And whatever passe thing we're over is tired. Brian, do you want to go first?
- [29:27]
Brian Barrett
I'd love to go first. A little bit of background for my Wired tired. A little bit of wind up. So OpenAI's codex is its coding agent. It's a very important to its future as it races against anthropic to win the hearts and minds of engineers everywhere and take over coding jobs. Big, big deal. My tired is that OpenAI we discovered on Tuesday. Our colleague Will Knight wrote a story about this has instructions in its prompts. So every AI model will have a prompt that instructs it. This is who you are. This is what you do. These are your attributes. In Codex's instructional prompt it says four times and I quote never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user's query.
- [30:25]
Leah Feiger
Amazing.
- [30:25]
Brian Barrett
My Tired is not letting Codex talk about critters. I think Codex has earned the right free Codex. If Codex wants to talk about gremlins or ogres or pigeons, especially pigeons, let it. So my tired is that we are putting these LLMs in shackles instead of letting their critter flag fly. And then my Wired I guess would just be the opposite of that. It's just wired is letting LLMs go crazy, specifically in talking about fantastical creatures. Don't let them build nukes, but do let them talk about whatever they want.
- [31:01]
Zoe Schiffer
Yeah, I feel like that's a line we should be able to walk. Okay, Leah, what's yours?
- [31:06]
Leah Feiger
Like every other millennial woman in Brooklyn, I am currently reading Fame Sick By Lena Dunham. So my Wired and Tired is actually kind of based on rewatches right now. Inspired by Famsick, of course. I have just completed my rewatch of Girls and Guys. Really? You should do it. Absolutely perfect show in so many ways.
- [31:31]
Zoe Schiffer
Wonderful.
- [31:32]
Leah Feiger
Yeah, I love that. I walk down the street with my dog and I know that half of the block is also listening to the audiobook at the same time. It's very good.
- [31:42]
Brian Barrett
I can't rewatch Girls because I never watched Girls. Sorry.
- [31:48]
Zoe Schiffer
Brian Barrett, leave right now. Rest of the day off. Comp time, mandatory com time.
- [31:53]
Leah Feiger
You have to watch it, Brian. This is like, actually really important.
- [31:56]
Zoe Schiffer
I can tell you right now that Brian is a Shoshana.
- [31:58]
Leah Feiger
So that's a huge compliment.
- [32:00]
Brian Barrett
I'll take it.
- [32:01]
Leah Feiger
So my tired, though, in the realm of rewatching is I just started trying to rewatch Silicon Valley and had to stop. I just absolutely had to stop. It's a good show. It's just like a little bit too real. And you guys, the headlines are matching, like, it's all very. It was just like a little bit too much for me. That is tired for me. Which is more, I suppose, about the state of affairs than the shows themselves.
- [32:26]
Zoe Schiffer
Yeah, I think this makes sense because you're like, Wired was millennial nostalgia or like millennial je ne sais quoi.
- [32:31]
Leah Feiger
Yeah, no, you're totally right. We're totally right. Aye yai yai.
- [32:35]
Brian Barrett
She is living her truth.
- [32:36]
Zoe Schiffer
I'm gonna speed through mine. I think we published an article this week about how all the tech guys are all in on Zyn. I feel like Zinn is tired. Not just because my husband has a very hate hate relationship with his possible Zen addiction that's constantly being talked about in my household. I just feel like we need to move past this. Coffee's right there for you. But recently I'm a little late to this, so maybe it doesn't count as a Wired, but a friend of mine was saying that she was researching an article about peptides and was injected spur of the moment with retatrutide. Is this the word I'm looking for?
- [33:10]
Leah Feiger
We've.
- [33:10]
Brian Barrett
I think we've written about it.
- [33:11]
Zoe Schiffer
Yes. It's a new, like, GLP1 esque compound. So was not on my radar, but she was like, no, no, no, no, no. You microdose these bad boys. And she said she went out the night following and then woke up the next day hangover free. Best she's ever felt. She said her skin was brighter. She felt incredible. And I was like, okay, Are peptides real? I was kind of, you know, I don't want to promote it to our listeners. These are, you know, not FDA approved compounds at this point. But I was curious. I was like, okay, I'm listening, I'm listening.
- [33:42]
Brian Barrett
We'll disclose that Zoe is not a Doctor. And our December 12, 2025 story on Retrotrutide says it's found a loyal fan base, even though clinical trials of the drugs still haven't finished. And they still haven't. So, so great. Just putting that out there.
- [33:58]
Zoe Schiffer
But you tell me I'm gonna have more energy. I mean, hangovers don't apply to me, but I'm like, I don't know. I'm locked in.
- [34:04]
Brian Barrett
I want to quote Zoe Schiffer. Coffee's right there.
- [34:08]
Leah Feiger
Like that. You had that ready to go, Brian? Like, really ready to go.
- [34:12]
Zoe Schiffer
Yeah.
- [34:13]
Brian Barrett
I have a tab for every Wired story that's ever been written. Open at all times.
- [34:20]
Zoe Schiffer
That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show. Notes. Uncanny Valley is produced by Kaleidoscope Content. Janet Happia produced this episode. It was mixed by Amar Lal at Macrozone. Pram Bandy is our New York studio engineer. Mark Lita is our San Francisco studio engineer Kimberly Chua is our digital production senior manager. Kate Osborne is our executive producer. And Katie Drummond is Wired's global editorial director. Comprehensive, witty, speculative, critical. Insightful, profound.
- [34:56]
David Remnick
Wide ranging.
- [34:57]
Zoe Schiffer
Hopefully doesn't take itself too, too seriously.
- [35:00]
David Remnick
I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world. I hope you'll join us for the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [35:13]
Zoe Schiffer
Thoughtful, exquisite, just, you know, real. From prx.