Cyber’s intro music has clips from various movies. The first is from WarGames, a 1983 film where a hacker squares off against an artificial intelligence that’s in control of the nukes. Almost forty years later and AI is beating people at Starcraft 2, which is not quite the organization of a nuclear war but can still feel scary. But how smart are these systems really? Is AI, or “machine learning” as practitioners prefer to call it, the next big thing or just another in a series of promises about the future that hasn’t quite materialized? What are the actual dangers of these systems?Here to help us answer this question is Os Keyes. Keyes is PhD student at the University of Washington’s Department of Human Centred Design & Engineering and an occasional Motherboard contributor. Their area of expertise is, broadly, how technology constructs the world we live in.It’s a wide-ranging conversation that covers everything from Henry Kissinger to Human Centipede and the hard limits of artificial intelligence. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Encrypted messaging apps. We all love them. You don’t have to be doing anything shady to want to make sure your messages are end-to-end encrypted. And for most people there’s dozens of options. Signal, Wicker, even WhatsApp boasts end-to-end encryption.But what if you need something a little more secure? That’s where encrypted phone companies like Sky Global and Phantom come in. These companies cater to a more discerning clientele with a need for a more secure messaging environment. Which is part of how they get into such trouble with the feds.With us today is Motherboard journalist Joseph Cox. He’s gonna tell us about his newest feature: Crime Boss or Tech CEO? An Encrypted Phone Company Sues the Government to Save Itself.We’re recording CYBER love on Twitch. Follow us on Twitch to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience. Yours just might end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we are sharing an episode from one of our newest series -- A Show About Animals. This season, we tell the strange and wonderful story of the wildly famous Koko the “talking” Gorilla. In the early 1970s, a grad student named Penny Patterson set out to investigate a big question: is language unique to humans? So she begins an ambitious experiment -- with the help of a young gorilla named Koko. Pretty soon, Penny says Koko is learning sign language. But, of course, that’s not the whole story. You can listen to our weekly series, A Show About Animals, in all the places you get your podcasts. A Show About Animals is hosted and reported by Arielle Duhaime-Ross and produced by Julia Nutter and Pete Lang-Stanton. Our associate producer is Leily Rezvani. Sound design and original score by Pran Bandi, with additional support from Steve Bone. Annie Aviles is our executive editor. Our executive producer and VP of Vice Audio is Kate Osborn. Special thanks to Maximo Anderson for fact-checking. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Apple recently announced a plan to sell customers manuals and parts that will let them fix their own iPhone 12s and 13s. It’s a huge win for the right to repair, but what are the specifics of the plan and what does it mean for the future of the repair movement in America?This week on Cyber, Matthew Gault and Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler sat down with heavyweights of the right-to-repair movement to answer that question. This conversation between iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens, Repair.org’s Gay Gordon-Byrne, and U.S. PIRG’s Nathan Proctor covers everything from John Deere tractors to lies Apple tells when it’s lobbying against the right-to-repair.A non-comprehensive list of the Motherboard reporting mentioned in this episode:Half the Country Is Now Considering Right to Repair LawsFTC Formally Adopts Right to Repair PlatformApple Is Lobbying Against Your Right to Repair iPhones, New York State Records ConfirmApple Is Telling Lawmakers People Will Hurt Themselves if They Try to Fix iPhonesWhy American Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors With Ukrainian FirmwareJohn Deere–Backed Lobbying Groups Host Anti-Right to Repair ConferenceDepartment of Commerce Says We Need Fewer Repair RestrictionsApple Said It Will Stop Breaking Face ID on Independently-Repaired iPhone 13s Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Metaverse. The term was coined by author Neal Stephenson in his book Snow Crash. It was a digital playground where people were only limited by their imagination.Facebook has changed its name to Meta and says it’s trying to make the metaverse a reality. Now, other companies are rushing to get a piece of Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of the future. Here to help me puzzle out the nightmarish world Silicon Valley billionaires want for us is Motherboard Senior Editor Janus Rose and panopticon expert and professor of English at Macomb Community College Chris Gilliard.This wide-ranging conversation starts with Rose’s recent piece, “Zuckerberg’s Meta Endgame Is Monetizing All Human Behavior”, but it gets into the deeper and systemic issues around machine learning, artificial intelligence, and the kind of future we want.We’re recording CYBER love on Twitch. Follow us on Twitch to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience. Yours just might end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’ve all gotten phone calls from someone trying to talk to us about our car’s extended warranty, even if we don’t own a car. But has a robot ever called you to try to get the code your bank sends you when you log on? If it hasn’t happened, it might very soon.It’s the subject of Motherboard staff writer Joseph Cox’s new piece: The Booming Underground Market for Bots That Steal Your 2FA Codes.We’re recording CYBER love on Twitch. Follow us on Twitch to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience. Yours just might end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

BONUS SERIES: Dune is out! And it's the biggest movie in America. In this special series, Motherboard and friends dissect all things Dune. In this episode, we look at how Frank Herbert approaches war, geopolitics,and desert power and how Denis Villeneuve handles it in the blockbuster movie. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

BONUS SERIES: Dune is out! And it's the biggest movie in America. In this special series, Motherboard and friends dissect all things Dune. In this episode, we look at how Frank Herbert approaches mysticism, spirituality, spice, and psychedelics and how Denis Villeneuve handles it in the blockbuster movie. Note to CYBER listeners: We're doing this series in addition to our normal CYBER episodes, which will still be released this week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

BONUS SERIES: Dune is out! And it's the biggest movie in America. In this special series, Motherboard and friends dissect all things Dune. In this episode, we look at how Frank Herbert approaches eugenics and race in the book series, and how Denis Villeneuve handles it in the blockbuster movie. This episode features: Hood Feminism author Mikki Kendall, Edward Ongweso Jr., Gita Jackson, Jason Koebler, Brian Merchant, and Tim Marchman. Note to CYBER listeners: We're doing this series in addition to our normal CYBER episodes, which will still be released this week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

BONUS SERIES: Dune is out! And it's the biggest movie in America. In this special series, Motherboard and friends dissect all things Dune. In this episode, we look at how Frank Herbert approaches oil, environmental destruction, and what it can tell us about how we treat our planet. Note to CYBER listeners: We're doing this series in addition to our normal CYBER episodes, which will still be released this week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.