Why Amazon Dropped Its OpenAI Movie; Data Center Workers Are Fighting Back

Summary

Uncanny Valley | WIRED
Episode: Why Amazon Dropped Its OpenAI Movie; Data Center Workers Are Fighting Back
Date: June 25, 2026

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Episode Overview

This week's episode of Uncanny Valley dives into the intersection of AI, Hollywood, and tech industry power, focusing on:

• Amazon’s unexpected move to drop a biographical film about OpenAI and Sam Altman
• The controversial intertwining of tech giants and the film industry, highlighted by Google's DeepMind-A24 partnership
• Escalating backlash against data centers – not just from communities, but from workers themselves
• A major privacy fiasco and internal crisis at Meta involving employee surveillance
• Anthropic’s regulatory standoff with the U.S. government, and how executive personalities can sway policy negotiations

WIRED’s Zoe Schiffer, Brian Barrett, and Leah Feiger bring together original reporting, analysis, and inside perspectives on Silicon Valley’s most pressing power struggles.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Amazon Drops the OpenAI Movie: Tech Power Meets Hollywood

• [04:09] Zoe Schiffer introduces "Artificial," a biopic about OpenAI’s Sam Altman ("The Blip"—his 2023 firing and rehiring saga), with Andrew Garfield cast as Altman and Monica Barbaro as Mira Murati.
• Amazon’s MGM Studios dropped the nearly-finished film, stating it “would be better served by another studio.” Many interpret this as Amazon protecting their $50 billion investment in OpenAI and their personal ties to Altman.
• The episode underscores growing concerns over how tech titans are shaping Hollywood:
  • Brian Barrett [05:34]: “All these sort of tech billionaires are now totally intertwined with the movie industry… It’s really going to determine what movies get made. This is a glaring example.”
• The film reportedly portrays Altman negatively, while Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI’s former Chief Scientist, now running a safety-focused AI startup) is cast as the hero.
• [07:32] Personal relationships matter: "Sam Altman was a guest at Jeff Bezos' wedding last year. Like, it's personal, it's financial, it’s all of these things." (Brian Barrett)
• Takeaway: Editorial decisions in Hollywood are increasingly influenced by Silicon Valley power and financial entanglements.

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2. AI in Film: Google DeepMind Partners with A24

• [08:50] News emerges of Google DeepMind investing $75M for AI tool development with indie studio A24.
• Leah Feiger [09:08]: Critiques A24’s signature “algorithmic” style, joking it was "already an algorithm waiting to happen."
• Zoe Schiffer [09:31]: AI is helping with “storyboarding, rotoscoping...very labor intensive, specific areas” of film production, not end-to-end filmmaking—at least for now:
  • “There’s an ick factor in realizing that something you engaged with was AI generated and you didn’t know. …Can it actually create something quality enough to appear in that type of context?”
• Brian Barrett [11:01]: Clarifies that the DeepMind/A24 deal is about building specific support tools—not harvesting A24’s creative output to train AI models.
• The segment highlights wider anxieties about AI’s influence on art and hints at eventual mainstream adoption of AI-generated film elements—but not without resistance.

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3. Data Center Backlash: Worker Dissent Joins Community Protests

• [12:13] Leah Feiger covers the “sustained and increasing backlash” to data center construction, accelerating due to massive AI infrastructure needs.
• Brian Barrett [13:08]: Cites WIRED’s reporting on electricians now refusing to build data centers, questioning if it’s a “sellout” move.
  • Memorable Moment [13:41]: Zoe: “Once [the electrician] tells people he works on data centers, it’s like owning a Cybertruck.”
• Communities rebel over electricity costs, water scarcity, and noise. Economically, locals often see minimal direct benefit from these projects.
• Even some Amazon employees have lobbied for regulation, highlighting a rare instance of funders and workers questioning AI expansion’s social contract.
• Politically, opposition crosses party lines:
  • Leah Feiger [16:14]: “The thing I've been most shocked by is the bipartisanship of this.”
• [17:26] Zoe Schiffer: “They just misread the moment. They did not realize how toxic this issue was going to be.”

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4. Meta’s Privacy Crisis: Employee Surveillance Fiasco

• [19:29] After aggressively tracking employees’ every keystroke and screen for AI training, Meta accidentally exposed this sensitive data internally.
  • Brian Barrett [19:29]: “If you are a Meta employee, everything you did on your screen could be viewed by any of your coworkers. Can you imagine?”
• Internal morale sinks as layoffs coincide with surveillance.
  • Zoe Schiffer [20:21]: “Mark Zuckerberg feels like he is behind in the AI race… Then they say, ‘You’re going to have surveillance tech installed…to train the models that that fancy AI lab…is trying to build.’”
• Meta pauses the program after Wired’s reporting, but positions it as a “temporary” measure.
• CTO Andrew Bosworth, previously reassuring about privacy, is now under fire:
  • Brian Barrett [21:52]: “Which makes you worry about the other sensitive data sets Meta is sitting on completely.”
• Notable Quote – Mark Zuckerberg (clip) [22:49]:

  "The average intelligence of the people at this company is significantly higher than the average set of people you can get to do tasks. So... having people internally build tools... we think is going to dramatically increase our model's coding ability."

• Panel’s take: Meta asking engineers to train their own replacements sticks out as especially self-defeating.

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5. Anthropic & the Government: How Personalities Shape Policy

• [24:00] Leah Feiger recaps Anthropic’s standoff with the Trump administration over their most powerful AI models, which were restricted after the NSA found possible security vulnerabilities (“jailbreak” risks).
• Memorable Quote (on CEO Dario Amodei) [25:10]:

  “Thom Browne is not being a weirdo like Dario and can actually engage.” — U.S. Official, as shared by Leah Feiger.

  • Team agrees: Dario is an “oddball,” and the government vastly prefers dealing with Anthropic’s other executives.
• [25:43] Zoe Schiffer succinctly outlines the stakes:
  • With export controls in place, Anthropic is desperate to get models back on the market; the government wants guarantees they’re safe.
  • Technical challenges persist, and “Anthropic has spent so much time publicly saying AI is really dangerous, that maybe they’ve trapped themselves.”
• The hosts note this dynamic is likely to repeat across other frontier AI firms. Success in policy may come down less to technical fixes and more to “who can explain things in English”—and listen to the PR team.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamp Highlights

• On Amazon dropping "Artificial":

  “When they say ‘the movie will be better served by another studio,’ I think what they really mean is the studio will be better served by another movie.”
  — Brian Barrett [05:34]

• On expanding data centers:

  “Working on a data center is the new owning a Cybertruck.”
  — Brian Barrett [13:51]

• Explaining the spread of data centers:

  “Data centers in some ways feel like all we have. …AI is the big thing that America is betting on.”
  — Zoe Schiffer [13:55]

• On the Hollywood/Tech power web:

  “Warner Brothers about to be owned by the Ellison family. Just a lot going on in terms of everybody owned by anybody related to everybody.”
  — Brian Barrett [11:48]

• On Meta’s employee surveillance crisis:

  "If you are a Meta employee, everything you did on your screen could be viewed by any of your coworkers. Can you imagine?"
  — Brian Barrett [19:29]

• On negotiating with regulators:

  “You really need someone who can get through an explanation without saying ‘Fermi’s paradox, orthogonal’... they gotta be able to speak the English language.” — Zoe Schiffer [27:27]

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Wired/Tired Segment – [31:45]

Wired:

• Leah: Caroline Calloway, “back on our feeds” [32:06]
• Brian: Cheap EV trucks (The Slate EV truck for $25,000) [34:08]

Tired:

• Leah: Emily Sundberg, her recent newsletter with Mark Zuckerberg styled as cringeworthy [33:48]
• Brian: Expensive, feature-bloated cars [35:55]

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Additional Pivotal Moments

• On worker pushback changing data center trends:

  “I would be very surprised… the pushback we’ve seen from the hourly workers has been minimal when you look at the entire workforce…”
  — Zoe Schiffer [18:13]

  • But historical precedents (e.g., Project Maven at Google) prove it’s not impossible.

• On Anthropic’s handling of regulation:

  “If they had listened to their PR person two months ago... I think we wouldn’t be here in the first place.”
  — Brian Barrett [27:49]

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Conclusion

This episode is a must-listen for anyone tracking the battle over tech and AI’s expanding cultural, financial, and social influence, and who is really calling the shots—from Hollywood boardrooms to government back channels and the tech industry's trenches.

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Related Stories/Links

• [WIRED reporting referenced in episode]
• [Anthropic and AI safety regulation background]
• [Recent data center opposition analysis]

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[Ad, intro, and outro sections omitted for clarity and relevance]

Transcript

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[Brian Barrett]

uncanny hey, this is Brian. Before we start, two quick things. If you've been enjoying listening to the show, we would appreciate it if you took a second to rate it in your podcast app of choice. It really helps us reach more people. And second, if you have any questions related to tech, privacy or politics that you would like Zoe and Leah to take on, now is the time to submit them to uncannyvalleyired.com it doesn't matter how big or how small, we want to hear from you and get your answers. Okay, onto the show.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoe Schiffer, Director of Business and Industry.

[Brian Barrett]

I'm Brian Barrett, Executive Editor.

[Leah Feiger]

And I'm Leah Feiger, Director of Politics and Science.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Today on the show AI and Hollywood, we're discussing Amazon's MGM Studios sudden decision to drop the OpenAI biographical movie just as they were wrapp up production. At the same time, Google's DeepMind is investing $75 million to develop AI tools with a film studio, A24. The AI and film industries are becoming increasingly intertwined and we're ready to take a look at where this is all headed.

[Leah Feiger]

We'll also dive into some recent controversies regarding data centers. As national and local backlash against data center construction increases. Some electricians are even refusing to work on them. And they're not alone. A group of Amazon workers claim they are being investigated for speaking out in favor of regulation.

[Brian Barrett]

And if you've been listening to the show in recent weeks or reading Wired, you know that we've been covering the unfolding internal crisis at Meta very closely. This week we had another scoop. The controversial system that tracked employees. Every keystroke and screen activity has been paused after the company leaked sensitive data from it internally. We'll get into whether this series of frustrating incidents could actually lead to change within the company.

[Leah Feiger]

And later in the show, we'll get an update on how talks between Anthropic and the government seem to be improving now that CEO Dario Omadai isn't in the room.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Okay, guys, I am so excited to talk about the business with this movie Artificial, which was suddenly dropped by Amazon's MGM Studios. So to get everyone up to speed, Artificial is a film by the director of Call Me by youy Name and Challengers. Two great movies if I do say so. And it's a biographical drama about OpenAI and specifically the Blip, which was moment in November 2023 when Sam Altman was abruptly fired by his board of directors and then swiftly rehired after basically the whole company revolted. I genuinely cannot believe they made an entire movie about this. It's been described as the Social Network, but for the AI age. The movie features a star studded cast with Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman and Monica Barbaro as the former OpenAI CTO Mira Morati. The movie was like mid budget. I think they spent $40 million on production, but it was basically almost done when Amazon announced that the film saying, quote, it would be better served if it were released by another studio. The decision has been drawing criticism because it's seen as Amazon basically doing a solid for Sam Altman, who the movie portrays pretty badly. I have to know what you guys think.

[Leah Feiger]

I have so many thoughts. Immediately. One, Andrew Garfield. We knew that we knew it was always going to be him. Like, playing whiny tech bros is absolutely in his wheelhouse.

[Zoe Schiffer]

He famously played the Facebook co founder who was kind of pushed out by Mark Zuckerberg in the Social Network.

[Brian Barrett]

I think too, there's some context here too, which is that Amazon has $50 billion invested in OpenAI. Right. So like, in terms of, like, when they say, you know, the movie will be better served by another studio, I think what they really mean is the studio will be better served by another movie. Right. This is really like arm's length at this. What really strikes me about it is something that we've known is coming and like, has been happening. But the extent to which the film industry and the tech industry are intertwined right now. Amazon owns mgm. Paramount is being acquired by the Ellison family. Larry Ellison, obviously the founder of Oracle. So all these sort of tech billionaires are now sort of totally intertwined with the movie industry, which is really going to determine what movies get made and what don't. And this is like a really glaring example of that.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Yeah, I mean, I can speak firsthand that there were many a Twitter Elon Musk film project that were, you know, in talks, but very difficult to get that to the screen for obvious reasons. You know, I do think the film was. Everything we heard was that it was going to be unflattering for Sam Altman. In fact, the blip is pretty unflattering for Sam Altman because the reason that a lot of Sam Altman's executives turned on him and orchestrated what has been called like a coup was that they perceived him to be duplicitous, to lie, to tell different people different things based on what he thought they wanted them to hear. And in the film, it really seems like Ilya Sutskever, who is the former Chief Scientist of OpenAI, really comes off as the hero. He's gone on to found another company that's really focused on safe artificial intelligence. And so it, you know, it doesn't entirely surprise me that this was going to be a complicated project for Amazon to champion. In addition to the investment that you just talked about, Brian, they've also struck a $38 billion compute deal somewhat recently.

[Brian Barrett]

And Sam Altman was a guest at Jeff Bezos wedding last year. Like, it's personal, it's financial, it's all of these things.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Right.

[Brian Barrett]

And you sort of hope like the idealized version of this. Right. Is the same, that they would treat it the same way as they maybe treat the media industry. When you have these billionaires taking over these companies where it's sort of a hands off, you do what you do. I trust the art. I'm doing this because I believe in it. That's not the case. It's less and less the case in the media industry as well. Jeff Bezos obviously has made some pretty big changes at the Washington Post that there's sort of this exertion of influence that you in an ideal world would not be happening. Like, powerful interests have owned Hollywood companies for a long time. But, you know, this is sort of just such an overt case.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Yeah. And I think that for OpenAI, they're really sensitive right now to public opinion. They feel like. And they're not the only ones, Anthropic feels this way too, that AI is increasingly unpopular. There's already been some talks about like Sam Altman being ousted again before OpenAI goes public as soon as this year, probably next year. And so I think that they're, you know, while you might say, like, oh, they can just like brush this off, they're focused on other things, like they're used to bad media articles and, you know, perhaps negative portrayals, I think that they're increasingly trying to control the message

[Brian Barrett]

and also the medium. Right. I think there's the other deal that happened this week that drew a lot of EyeBrows was Google DeepMind announcing a 75 million investment in a 24 beloved indie darling to create AI tools. Leah, I know you've. I know you feel strongly and sadly about this.

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Yeah.

[Leah Feiger]

But like, the thing is, is I kind of hate a 24. Like it's already like so programmatic anyway, I'm like, ah, yes, another film in this exact, like sepia tone that has like these exact actors playing these exact roles. The minute that I saw that it was a 24 getting into bed with Google DeepMind, I was like, perfect. This was like already an algorithm waiting to happen. Of course they're going to give it to the bots.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Well, this content is made for me. I'm a huge fan of a 24. However, I've talked to a lot of people in Hollywood about this because there have been all of these deals and yet, you know, we've seen OpenAI and Anthropic, like these big AI labs kind of hint that we will be able to produce films with AI really soon. And then you actually see an AI generated film and you're like, certainly not. But what I am hearing is that AI is being used more and more for like, very specific purposes. It's things like storyboarding and I believe that in the Press release Google DeepMind and a 24 kind of mentioned that as like a possible use case. It's things like rotoscoping, like basically very labor intensive specific areas of the film development process that used to take a lot of human labor and were really expensive and you can genuinely automate. Those are, you know, as far as some people think like really good use cases for AI. And I think we will start to see more and more shots, like specific shots on the big screen that are AI generated. I think I would be very surprised if we see like a feature length film on the big screen that's AI generated start to finish and is anything other than like a one off gimmick. There's an ick factor in realizing that something that you engaged with was AI generated and you didn't know that. I actually think is important not to dismiss. And then there's the like can it actually create something that is quality enough to appear in that type of context?

[Brian Barrett]

I do think too one thing that this gets to your point earlier Zoe, that when people see that there's a deal for $75 million, you assume that it's to train AI. You assume that it's, that it's going to be oh, now Google's going to absorb all of a 24 stuff into the Borg and like. But it's not that it is so it is like it's interesting that it's still controversial obviously but that it is really for those like trying to find those purpose built tools to support the creation of non AI film which gets

[Zoe Schiffer]

lost and is, yeah, you need a human. I think there was fear that like Google would be training its models on the A24 catalog and that's specifically not part of the deal. I think probably Google wanted access to that IP if I had to guess. But like it would be a really bad brand move for a 24 to give them that access.

[Brian Barrett]

We've talked about how everything's connected. File One more connection under this A24 has Thrive Capital as one of its investors. That is a venture capital firm owned by Josh Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner. Thrive has OpenAI as a major investment, holds a major stake in SpaceX Warner Brothers about to be owned by the Ellison family. Just a lot going on in terms of everybody owned by anybody related to everybody.

[Leah Feiger]

Film industry trying to cozy up to AI. There are other people that hate it for all sorts of different reasons too. Beyond creativity concerns. There is an ongoing pattern that we've been keeping an eye on the sustained and increasing backlash against data centers across the country. Today, more than 40% of homes in the US are within five miles of an operating data center, according to a Pew Research center analysis. And the construction boom just keeps going as the big AI companies devote billions and billions of dollars towards infrastructure to keep up with the demand. Wired has reported about residents pushing back against data center construction in their communities, from everything that it brings, from higher electricity bills to water, scarcity, noise, you name it. So workers that are, in theory, the ones implementing these projects are actually pushing back, too, in any way they can. Have you guys been following this?

[Brian Barrett]

Yeah, it's been interesting to see this evolution. I think we've talked a lot about communities pushing back, and that remains an important story. But we've had a couple stories on Wired, and there have been stories elsewhere about, you know, people who are directly involved. Carolyn Haskins, Wired staff writer, had a great look at how electricians, right before electricians are crucial to building data centers. Some of them are now saying, wait a minute, does this make you a sellout? Does working on a data center mean that you are kind of betraying broader principles? Not just electrician principles, just human principles.

[Zoe Schiffer]

You're missing the best part of that story, which was when the electrician said that it's really hard to date. Once he tells people that he's an electrician who works on data centers, it's like cybertrucks.

[Brian Barrett]

It's like owning a cybertruck.

[Zoe Schiffer]

It really did remind me of that.

[Brian Barrett]

Working on a data center is the new owning a cybertruck.

[Zoe Schiffer]

The difficult thing about this, I think, I mean, so, yeah, people don't want to live near data centers. Like, they spike your energy bills, they're loud and bright and take all sorts of resources. Like, I think that makes a lot of sense in terms of countrywide economic initiatives. Data centers in some ways feel like all we have. Am I going to get skewered for saying that? I'm just like, this is like, the big thing. AI is the big thing that America is betting on. And I think it's complicated to, like, try and slow that down or roll that back, rather than try and push for them to, like, be less horrible to live near.

[Brian Barrett]

But I think here's the thing. I agree. This is what's like the building of data centers and investment in AI is the US Economy at this point. And when that goes away, it's going to be really, really painful. I think a lot of the pushback, though, which is that there's not really much Direct economic benefit for you locally. If a data center comes, usually when you have like, oh, they're, they're bringing a railroad into town, at least you get added commerce from the railroad. Right, Right. This is what happened. I'm old enough.

[Zoe Schiffer]

This is the one railroad example that all.

[Brian Barrett]

Yes, good. I made it. So I think that's part of it. I think at the same time, you know, you've got people inside these companies who are leading the charge. So it's not just people directly affected, it's people who actually stand to benefit from this stuff. Both the electricians, people inside Amazon, for example, some Amazon employees recently urged the Seattle City Council to regulate data centers. So even people with presumably a financial interest in this stuff are pushing back. I get what you're saying, Zoe, but I think there is a certain, it makes sense to me that people are saying, wait, hold up, because it's not, it's not an economic, it's not an economy that everybody's able to participate in.

[Zoe Schiffer]

No, totally. I completely, I want to be clear. Like, I completely understand the pushback. If one of these were built in my neighborhood, I would be pushing back. Like, I think it's totally legitimate not to want to live near them. I just think the situation is complicated when so much of our economy now hinges on this industry. It's not a reason not to regulate, but I think it's going to be very complicated to roll it back. I've also been curious and Lee, I'm curious on your perspective on this, just to see which politicians have really, like, I've been, I was like, kind of struck that Bernie Sanders has become a really vocal opponent to data centers.

[Servol Sponsor]

Yeah.

[Leah Feiger]

Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, AOC they introduced the Data Center Moratorium act, which would halt the construction of new AI data centers until there were like actual national safeguards. This sounds in so many ways like a very baked for left wing issue. But shockingly, this is pretty bipartisan. There are folks from all sides of the aisle getting involved because their constituents are reaching out and going, what are you doing in my name? What are you doing in my backyard? How is this benefiting me? How is this hurting me? So it's, I think the thing that I've been most shocked by is the bipartisanship of this.

[Zoe Schiffer]

It's interesting because I feel like, and this is, you know, purely my speculation, but just based on like how open I talked about, data centers really came out in front during like the first day of the Trump administration, kind of championing Big data center, build out projects. I was like, I'm reading Chris Lehane, the company's chief global affairs officer, previously very high up at Airbnb and a political fixer before that as like this was something that he and OpenAI might have thought was going to be really beneficial for the company. It was like an America first, build baby, build kind of message.

[Leah Feiger]

We're giving jobs to everyone.

[Zoe Schiffer]

They just misread the moment. They did not realize how toxic this issue was going to be. And now it's very hard to kind of change their stance when they've been releasing press releases every time there was a new data center. Now it's like, oh, we got to, you know, keep it quiet. Cuz people really don't like this.

[Brian Barrett]

And to your point, they can't roll it back either way until you can put data centers in space because they

[Zoe Schiffer]

need the compute, which by the way is going to be really difficult to

[Brian Barrett]

do, if not impossible. Zoe, is there any chance that the sort of internal dissent, right. Electricians saying I don't think so, workers inside a company saying, hey, we don't like data centers either. Any chance that that changes anything at all in terms of the trajectory for these build outs for these companies, for the spending?

[Zoe Schiffer]

I would be very surprised. I don't want to say. Absolutely not. Because we have seen examples where, you know, famously Google workers kind of all came together, pushed back on Project Maven, some of the like censored search projects for China and what have you, and actually got those launches paused.

[Brian Barrett]

Just real quick, Project Maven was working with the Pentagon, basically. Right. Using Google tech for the, for the dod.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Exactly, exactly. So yeah, it's, it's happened before, it could happen again. What I would say is two things. One, the pushback we've seen from the hourly workers has been minimal. When you look at the entire workforce, they are bringing in thousands of people. I've heard that they're paying much higher rates than people typically get on these jobs. And so I think for an industry that has historically like needed a lot of work, I think there will be people who are willing to like work on these projects. And then we'll hear little pockets of dissent and pushback, which again is newsworthy and relevant and it's not no one. But like I still think they're able to hire thousands and thousands of people. I would also say that on the corporate level, while we are starting to see more pushback, more vocal opposition from corporate workers in terms of what their companies are doing, it's still at A far lower level than it was around

[Brian Barrett]

2018, especially when the job market is radically different now for these engineers. And I think a few years ago there was a turning point too, where Google fired a bunch of people for protesting, whereas before they had sort of allowed it, you know, tacitly sort of let it happen. I will say there is one thing that will get management to list new employees and that is a colossal screw up, which we saw at Meta recently. We've talked before about how Meta installed software on employee devices to track every keystroke, all the screen activity, basically full surveillance on its employees to help train AI. This week Wired broke the news that the company apparently left potentially sensitive information from those sessions exposed and accessible to anyone inside Meta. So if you are a Meta employee, everything you did on your screen could be viewed by any of your co workers. Can you imagine?

[Zoe Schiffer]

No. And I feel like we have to just like back up a little further even and lay this out for people. So Mark Zuckerberg feels like he is behind in the AI race. He invests billions of dollars in building up this new AI lab, spending so much money on specific talent, giving them so many resources to like catch up and build frontier models. Then the company says, we're spending so much on the AI build out that we actually have to lay off a whole bunch of you, 10% of the workforce. Then they say, 8,000 people, right, 8,000 people. Then they say, by the way, you're going to have surveillance tech installed in your laptop to track your keystrokes whether you like it or not, to train the models that that fancy AI lab that just, you know, was connected to all these layoffs are trying to build. And then, oh, by the way, we left all of that data exposed accidentally,

[Brian Barrett]

but we will be holding a hackathon in a few months to increase morale. The one thing that came out of this, that is maybe a silver lining or a good thing, is that Meta did announce that they are pausing the data gathering program while they investigate what exactly happened here. But it's a pause. It's a pause.

[Zoe Schiffer]

They did say pause. Then we updated that story later that very night and like they made it very. They had not said anything company wide about the leak. We had been hearing about it from a bunch of different sources. They were still keeping it pretty locked down. Then late at night we finally got the message that they had sent out and they very much said, we're going to evaluate, you know, what happened here, make sure it doesn't happen again before we relaunch kind of the tools was the message.

[Brian Barrett]

The guy who's been the face of a lot of those apologies is Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, known as Boz. And it sort of burns a little bit extra because before this happened, before this internal leak happened, people had asked him straight up, like, isn't this potentially dangerous from a privacy perspective? And he told employees, actually, it's tightly controlled and we use the same protection standards and storage systems and access controls as other sensitive data sets, which makes you worry about the other sensitive data sets.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Truly, that Meta's sitting on completely. I'm excited for the feature that we assign that's titled Boz and his Metamates. I feel like Brian, I don't know, it just seems like a story that you would say yes to.

[Brian Barrett]

That's right. Can't stress enough that Metamates is what people call each other inside of Meta. Do you guys want to hear leaked audio of Mark Zuckerberg discussing the training initiative with employees last month and why he thought it was essential?

[Leah Feiger]

Always.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Absolutely.

[Brian Barrett]

We're in a phase where basically the AI models learn from having. From watching really smart people do things. In general, the average intelligence of the people who are at this company is significantly higher than the average set of people that you can get to do tasks. So if we're trying to teach the models coding, for example, then having people internally build tools or solve tasks that help teach the model how to code, we think is going to dramatically increase our model's coding ability faster than what others in the industry. Industry have the capability to do who don't have thousands and thousands of extremely strong engineers at their company.

[Zoe Schiffer]

It's giving. You're actually so good at taking meeting notes that we just. We wanted to. You're just. You're great at it, so we had to give you that job.

[Brian Barrett]

Like you. You all are. You all are going to be so good at replacing yourselves with AI that we're going to let you do that even faster.

[Leah Feiger]

Can we talk about another AI company, you guys? Leah, your dream.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Zoe, you go away for a little bit of time and you're ready to just talk AI.

[Brian Barrett]

One of us. One of us.

[Leah Feiger]

Well, it has to do with Anthropic and the US Government. As we know, Anthropic has had a bit of a dust up with the Trump administration over their most advanced models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, after the National Security Agency affirmed that there were ways to jailbreak and disable the security guardrails in these models. Since then, both sides have been trying to find a way forward. Sometimes There has appeared to be movement, other times less so. But recently Wired's Hugo Lowell reported for his newsletter Inner Loop, that the administration has had multiple calls with Anthropic in recent days, appears to be making some moves, some encouraging moves, but it's mainly all due to the fact that they don't have to interact with the company's CEO anymore, Dario Omadai. This. This quote is gonna stay with me forever, you guys, because the administration is very excited that Tom Brown, Anthropic's co founder, and Anthropic's public policy chief, Sarah Heck, have been leading the outreach. This is the quote about this that we have from an official. I'm never gonna get over it. Thom Browne is not being a weirdo like Dario and can actually engage.

[Zoe Schiffer]

I mean, no one was ever saying that Dario wasn't very weird. I mean, that man is an oddball.

[Brian Barrett]

I love this quote for us. I feel so bad for him.

[Zoe Schiffer]

I feel so bad for him.

[Leah Feiger]

But it was also just like this incredible, like, what's changed here? No, no, it's not. It's not like the technical issues.

[Zoe Schiffer]

It's the.

[Leah Feiger]

The who the interactions are with.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Right.

[Leah Feiger]

Which is, I don't know, perhaps the Trump administration. In a nutshell, These talks have been happening at the high level, working group level, technical staff.

[Zoe Schiffer]

I feel like we need to lay out those stakes really quick for people who haven't been following every twist and turn of this saga, which, wow, your brain must be so healthy and I'm jealous, but nice. Yeah, that must be nice. The US Government, after the nsa, basically alleged that there are ways to jailbreak the models, implemented export controls on those models, and basically said that it was not okay for Anthropic to allow foreign nationals to access the model. There is no, you know, technical way for Anthropic to do that. And so what they had to do was roll back access to both of those models for everyone. It's a really big deal for the company. And so these talks have basically been trying to hash out from Anthropic side, like, what do we need to do to get those models back on the market? And from the U.S. government side, like, what do we need from Anthropic to feel comfortable that these models can launch and they won't be like a huge cybersecurity nightmare?

[Brian Barrett]

Well, especially, it seems as though, also like the Trump administration, from our understanding, is that they're asking for something that's basically not possible. They're asking for a model that you cannot jailbreak, which is just Not a thing. The nature of these models, the best you can do, which Anthropic has said, hey, we can do this, is to sort of make it nearly impossible to do a universal jailbreak where you can get it to do anything you want it to do. But you can see how for a conversation especially like this, having someone who can talk about these issues on a non technical level and on a political level, and someone who's maybe able to suppress their highfalutin ideas about AI, you can see how it really matters in situations like this and is going to continue to matter for all of these companies. They're all going to have to go in front of the White House at some point and make a case for why this super powerful model should be released.

[Zoe Schiffer]

You really need someone who can get through an explanation without saying Fermi's paradox orthogonal. Like you just, they got to be able to speak the English language.

[Leah Feiger]

So is that what this is going to come down to? Like, are national security concerns alleviated by like someone that actually listened to their PR person for longer than three minutes about how to talk in public?

[Brian Barrett]

I mean, yes, I think and I think and I think, and I'll go even further. If they had listened to their PR person two months ago, or if their PR person has taken a different attack, I think we wouldn't be here in the first place.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Yeah, but I mean, but this is the interesting thing because Anthropic has spent so much time publicly saying AI is really dangerous, AI could end humanity. Our models are so scary and so good at cybersecurity and hacking that like we can't release them publicly. And so I do feel like they have, and Dario Amadei in particular has positioned himself and the company in this very specific position, actually also saying that we need a lot of government regulation when they're saying all those things and they don't have strong relationships with the Pentagon, they are walking a very, very fine line. It is not that long ago that there was this big falling out because Anthropic was trying to put a line in the sand and say, you can't use our models for any type of military action that you want. You can't create autonomous weapons with them or what have you. And the Pentagon was saying, you don't get to decide what we do with these models. Like, this is American AI and we want to do what we want to do.

[Brian Barrett]

Coming up after the break, we'll share our wired tired picks for the week. Stay with us.

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when we stop and ask questions. That's what Shortwave, NPR's science podcast is all about. Shortwave spends each episode answering a big question like why do we have nightmares? How does AI affect my energy bill? And how can trash be good for the environment? In under 15 minutes, Shortwave follows a question wherever it leads and brings you along for the ride. It's science, but not the kind you remember from school. It's surprising, playful and full of wonder. Science isn't just for PhDs of the world. It's for everyone, including those of us who didn't realize we love science. At Wired, we love a good rabbit hole. We recommend listening to their recent episode where did the Moon Come From? Earth didn't always have a moon. In the beginning of the solar system, when the planets were still forming, something happened that would change Earth's night sky forever. Co host Regina G. Barber takes you on that journey. Follow NPR's shortwave podcasts and exercise your

[Brian Barrett]

right to wonder this week on the Political Scene. From the New Yorker, Trump's rupture in the world order.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Europe caught between two adversarial great powers. That's basically dialing back the clock to not only Pre World War II, but really its own a pre 20th century view of the world. And I would say it's a world of permanent insecurity that we're looking at.

[Brian Barrett]

Join me, Evan Osnos, and my colleagues Jane Mayer and Susan Glasser every Friday on the Political Scene, available wherever you get your podcasts.

[Zoe Schiffer]

It's time for our Wired Tired segment. You know the drill. Whatever is new and cool is wired. Whatever passe thing we're over is tired.

[Leah Feiger]

Okay, I'm gonna start on a positive. My wired is Caroline Calloway. She is back on our feeds. Back on our feeds. People just going through a terrible breakup and posting through it.

[Brian Barrett]

Give people two senses on Caroline Calloway. Cause I. I have been online too much for the last decade, but not everyone has been. So give them, like, a little bit of who this is and why it's so exciting.

[Leah Feiger]

Caroline Calloway is like an o erstwhile grifter now downtown Dime Square gal. I encourage you if you don't know who this woman is, to jump down the rabbit hole. Very, very fun. Couldn't recommend more.

[Zoe Schiffer]

So she's wired.

[Leah Feiger]

Yeah, she's my wired and my tired is Feed me's Emily Sundberg.

[Brian Barrett]

Leah, you are. Leah's just going for it.

[Zoe Schiffer]

We're torching.

[Brian Barrett]

Going for it.

[Leah Feiger]

We're torching. Zoe has known I've had inklings of this for a while. Emily Sundberg's substack used to be one of my favorite substacks. I think that she was doing something very, very cool. She was making business news and tech news and cultural news recently. In the last, like, couple weeks, months, a lot of people have also really taken note of Emily Sundberg. She has gotten a lot of press and collaborations and I'm trying really hard to phrase this correctly and kindly anyway, but her recent newsletter from this week where she interviews Mark Zuckerberg from Meta about his style and time at Harvard, made me want to die. So tired. Emily Sundberg, I'm so sorry. I think you could pull it back out. I really do. But everything you write is embarrassing now, and I'm over it.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Okay. That's a Leah specific opinion. Emily, I still love your newsletter.

[Brian Barrett]

Leah does not necessarily speak for Uncanny Valley as a whole.

[Zoe Schiffer]

No, we're very divided, actually. We've realized during the course of this pod. All right, Brian, let's go to left. I hope you have the most tepid Wired.

[Leah Feiger]

Tired.

[Brian Barrett]

Follow that.

[Leah Feiger]

No.

[Brian Barrett]

Wired is making friends and tired is keeping. No, I'll give. Mine is. Mine is boring compared to that, but I'll say it anyway. Leah, you should have gone second. You should have insisted. My word is cheap EV trucks. Cheap EV trucks. There, I said it. Don't look at me like that. The Slate is a new EV truck that has just. It's been in the works for a while. It's had a lot of hype behind it, but they're going to sell it for $25,000, which is still a good chunk of Change. But the average new car price in the US does anyone know what it is? $50,000 is the average new car price. So they're coming in with an electric truck. It's all gray. It's very boring. It is no frills, but it's $25,000. So it is an accessible electric truck that anyone can buy. And the reason they're able to do that is because this car has nothing. You have to crank the windows. You have to pay extra for every. It's like the spirit airlines of EVs, where you have to pay for.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Wait, this is tired. We don't have. No.

[Brian Barrett]

This is Wired. I love this. I think it is wired that there is an affordable EV that you can buy and then you can just add. There are over 200 accessories that you can add to this. So if you want other things on this car, you want like the car to have a color, for example, or you want automatic windows or whatever, you can add that piece by piece and distinct to each car. Instead of automatically you walk in and have to pay $50,000 for stuff you may not want or need. I think these days, especially as the government is pulling back incentives for EVs as there's this big push toward oil, to see something that people can actually buy and actually customize, that actually has decent range, I think is really nice, unexpected. That's my wire tired is whatever the opposite is.

[Zoe Schiffer]

I know when you said Spirit Airlines, I just got. I was like, that sounds like a negative. I do really want to get the Rivian as my next car. I'm all in on the. The electric.

[Brian Barrett]

I'm waiting for the R3, which apparently won't come out until 2030.

[Zoe Schiffer]

Oh, my gosh, guys, hang in there.

[Leah Feiger]

Subaru. I want a Subaru Eevee.

[Zoe Schiffer]

That's.

[Leah Feiger]

That's what I'm putting that out into the universe. Come through Subaru.

[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. Adriana Tapia produced this episode. It was mixed by Amar Lal at Macrosound. It was fact checked by Daniel Roman Pram Bandy is our New York studio engineer. Mark Laita is our San Francisco studio engineer. Kimberly Chua is our senior digital production manager. Kate Osborne is our executive producer. And Katie Drebin is WIRED's global editorial director.

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[Brian Barrett]

Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love, it helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate trading value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at capital1

[Zoe Schiffer]

from PRX.