This Machine Kills

We cruise through a few topics: talk about the anti-China alliance between Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill pushing to ban TikTok; the bizarre post-mortem on SPACs published by their biggest booster, Chamath Palihapitiya; and the regular beat of people having no idea how to understand AI, while also being absolutely positive that they can harness it to [fix democracy]. Articles we discuss ••• Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill Build an Anti-China Alliance https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-and-capitol-hill-build-an-anti-china-alliance-e508c75e ••• 2022 Annual Letter | Chamath Palihapitiya https://chamath.substack.com/p/2022-annual-letter ••• Another Crack at Chamath Palihapitiya’s Letter to SPAC Investors https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-04-06/another-crack-at-chamath-palihapitiya-s-letter-to-spac-investors ••• Can A.I. and Democracy Fix Each Other? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/05/opinion/artificial-intelligence-democracy-chatgpt.html ••• Special Report: Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sensitive-images-recorded-by-customer-cars-2023-04-06/ Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

It’s a fan cam episode for our favorite tech columnist, Brian Merchant, who had two pieces come out recently that are back-to-back bangers. First is about why all the people making and selling AI keep talking about being afraid of their own creations. It’s Frankenstein meets sorcerer's apprentice but as a marketing strategy for their own power (and their unique ability to control that power). Second is about what all these people should actually be afraid of. As history shows us, there is more than one way to crash a computer. Article we discuss ••• Afraid of AI? The startups selling it want you to be | Brian Merchant https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-03-31/column-afraid-of-ai-the-startups-selling-it-want-you-to-be ••• Silicon Valley elites are afraid. History says they should be | Brian Merchant: https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-03-24/column-how-afraid-should-silicon-valley-be Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We give ourselves a concussion by talking about yet another opinion essay about AI written by three “experts” and published by a major newspaper. How is AI doing neuro-linguistic programming? What happens when your analysis is all idealism, no materialism, all superstructure, no base? Will AI soon use its godlike powers to hack civilization and create militant groups at its command just by telling us the right story? Wait, you’re telling me we have to take this shit seriously because the authors have direct lines of influence to people who have actual political power and control capital? Goddamnit. Article we discuss ••• You Can Have the Blue Pill or the Red Pill, and We’re Out of Blue Pills | Yuval Harari, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/24/opinion/yuval-harari-ai-chatgpt.html Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We are joined by Abeba Birhane — Senior Fellow in Trustworthy AI at the Mozilla Foundation — for a critical discussion about the release of GPT-4 and OpenAI. We also get into the excellent work that Abeba and colleagues have done mapping the specific values encoded into, and the surveillance pipeline that influences, the vast majority of AI/ML research. ••• Abeba’s twitter: https://twitter.com/Abebab ••• Abeba’s paper – The Values Encoded in Machine Learning Research https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3531146.3533083 Stuff we referenced ••• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says AI will reshape society, acknowledges risks: 'A little bit scared of this' https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/openai-ceo-sam-altman-ai-reshape-society-acknowledges/story?id=97897122 ••• GPT-4 Technical Report https://cdn.openai.com/papers/gpt-4.pdf ••• Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4 https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12712 ••• The Sparks of AGI? Or the End of Science? https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/the-sparks-of-agi-or-the-end-of-science ••• GPT-4 and professional benchmarks: the wrong answer to the wrong question https://aisnakeoil.substack.com/p/gpt-4-and-professional-benchmarks Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We discuss the clear and present danger throughout the global financial system, with crises happening in the banking sector that have not been seen since the 2008 crash. However, these are not sudden and surprising explosions—at least not to industry and regulatory insiders—they are instead the slow motion ticking of bombs that are under review. We also get further into the failures of the VC industry and the fact that reforms—even severe ones that cut deep—are not enough to fix an industry, let alone bring it to heel, which is structurally incapable of serving the social good. Some stuff we reference ••• How Venture Capital Can Avoid the Next Silicon Valley Bank Fiasco | Del Johnson https://www.wired.com/story/to-save-the-innovation-economy-break-big-venture-capital/ ••• Enmeshment in Venture https://www.laconiacapitalgroup.com/blog/enmeshment ••• A Death in the Valley: What the End of SVB Reveals About VC Class Solidarity | Doug Henwood https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/svb-bank-interest-rates/ ••• Fed Blocked Mention of Regulatory Flaws in Silicon Valley Bank Rescue https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/business/fed-regulation-svb.html ••• Before Collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the Fed Spotted Big Problems https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/19/business/economy/fed-silicon-valley-bank.html ••• UBS Agrees to Buy Credit Suisse for More Than $3 Billion https://www.wsj.com/articles/ubs-offers-1-billion-to-take-over-credit-suisse-bfac51fa Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We've unlocked this episode for the free feed. It's been a long time since we’ve seen a good old fashioned bank run lead to the collapse of a venerable financial institution, but leave it to Silicon Valley to rediscover something old and call it new again. We are joined by Brian Merchant — LA Times tech columnist and author of Blood in the Machine — for a post-mortem on Silicon Valley Bank, breakdown its events and effects, and hold Ed to account for his incitements to violence against the most marginalized and traumatized people of them all: venture capitalists. ••• Brian’s column: https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-03-12/column-silicon-valley-bank-is-broken-because-silicon-valley-is-broken ••• Brian’s book: https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/ ••• Brian’s twitter: https://twitter.com/bcmerchant Some stuff we reference ••• The Incredible Tantrum Venture Capitalists Threw Over Silicon Valley Bank | Ed Ongweso Jr. https://slate.com/technology/2023/03/silicon-valley-bank-rescue-venture-capital-calacanis-sacks-ackman-tantrum.html ••• Silicon Valley Bank profit squeeze in tech downturn attracts short sellers https://www.ft.com/content/0387e331-61b4-4848-9e50-04775b4c3fa7 ••• Startup Bank Had a Startup Bank Run https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-03-10/startup-bank-had-a-startup-bank-run ••• How Bad Was the Silicon Valley Bank Bailout? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/14/opinion/silicon-valley-bank-bailout.html Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

Been a long time since we’ve seen a good old fashioned bank run lead to the collapse of a venerable financial institution, but leave it to Silicon Valley to rediscover something old and call it new again. We are joined by Brian Merchant—LA Times tech columnist and author of Blood in the Machine—for a post-mortem on Silicon Valley Bank, breakdown its events and effects, and hold Ed to account for his incitements to violence against the most marginalized and traumatized people of them all: venture capitalists. ••• Brian’s column: https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-03-12/column-silicon-valley-bank-is-broken-because-silicon-valley-is-broken ••• Brian’s book: https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/ ••• Brian’s twitter: https://twitter.com/bcmerchant Some stuff we reference ••• The Incredible Tantrum Venture Capitalists Threw Over Silicon Valley Bank | Ed Ongweso Jr. https://slate.com/technology/2023/03/silicon-valley-bank-rescue-venture-capital-calacanis-sacks-ackman-tantrum.html ••• Silicon Valley Bank profit squeeze in tech downturn attracts short sellers https://www.ft.com/content/0387e331-61b4-4848-9e50-04775b4c3fa7 ••• Startup Bank Had a Startup Bank Run https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-03-10/startup-bank-had-a-startup-bank-run ••• How Bad Was the Silicon Valley Bank Bailout? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/14/opinion/silicon-valley-bank-bailout.html Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We are joined by Nick Sever – author of the new book Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation – to discuss his excellent ethnographic research on the creation of algorithmic recommendation systems. Nick spent a long time getting to really know the people who make these systems and his book offers so much original, granular detail about the various practices, theories, and relationships that influence the engineers behind these algorithms. Nick’s book also contains extremely interesting and surprising applications of classic anthropological theory to contemporary algorithmic technology. ••• Nick’s book – Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo183892298.html ••• Nick’s twitter – https://twitter.com/npseaver Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

Disclaimer: this episode was recorded before Silicon Valley Bank collapsed. We will do a post-mortem on that debacle in the next premium episode. In part 2 of our discussion on venture capitalism, we dig further into an excellent (and very long) new law article that is crucial for understanding VC. How did this very particular model of investment, which is guided by its own idiosyncratic interests and structural imperatives, come to hold the reins of our global innovation system? And what does that mean for how key decisions are made about technological development? Article we discuss: Enhancing the Innovative Capacity of Venture Capital | Peter Lee https://yjolt.org/enhancing-innovative-capacity-venture-capital Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

In this week’s episodes, we dig into an excellent (and very long) new law article, which is crucial for understanding the history, mechanics, constraints, and consequences of venture capitalism. How did this very particular model of investment, which is guided by its own idiosyncratic interests and structural imperatives, come to hold the reins of our global innovation system? And what does that mean for how key decisions are made about technological development? Article we discuss: ••• Enhancing the Innovative Capacity of Venture Capital | Peter Lee https://yjolt.org/enhancing-innovative-capacity-venture-capital Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)