For about 24 hours, Grok, Twitter’s AI chatbot, went berserk. You could ask it about puppies, sports, or movies, and it would reply with a bizarre diatribe about white genocide in South Africa. If you’ve already heard of this, you’ve probably seen people dunking on Elon Musk, and, well, that’s understandable. But Max Read, today’s guest, explains why this brief peek into a weird conspiracy theory might have actually been a good thing.

Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up [email protected], or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.

Read: Max’s Substack article on the whole thing.

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Almost two million people watched a horrific story of a murder in Colorado: the “grisly” death of a real estate agent who had a secret affair with his stepson. The problem is, there was no crime. Dexter talks to Henry Larson, the reporter who tracked down the guy behind the video, about where the story came from and what it means for the “True Crime” genre. He also asks True Crime podcasters, Lauren Bright Pacheco and Bob Motta, about how this trend is a threat to more than just their livelihoods.

Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up [email protected], or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.

Read: Henry’s article, A ‘True Crime’ Documentary Series Has Millions of Views. The Murders Are All AI-Generated

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About 48 hours after the US National Security Advisor was spotted using a weird cloned version of Signal, someone said they’d hacked it. It took them all of 15 minutes. We now know that TeleMessage is ‘cartoonishly hackable,’ but we still don’t know why top White House officials were using it. And what about the investigation to find out if this Israel-based app is bad on accident, or on purpose? I called up my friends Evan McMorris-Santoro of NOTUS and Joseph Cox of 404 Media to get some more context on how bad this might actually be.

Here’s the links promised in the episode:

Evan’s daily newsletter in NOTUS
Joseph’s article in 404 on the Telemessage hack
And here’s Micha Lee’s technical breakdown of Telemessage’s security problems

Our guests:
Evan McMorris-Santoro: @evanmcs.bsky.social
Joseph Cox: @josephcox.bsky.social

Got something you’re curious about? Hit up @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky. See you on the next one.

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Have you seen Shrimp Jesus? What about the Hollywood sign burning? It probably feels random, but it’s not. There are real people behind AI Slop, and there’s real money to be made. Dexter talks to Jason Koebler from 404 Media who’s been tracking AI slop since its beginnings, and they compare notes to try to figure out where the money is coming from.

Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up [email protected], or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.

Read + watch: 

Jason’s article, Facebook's Shrimp Jesus, Explained

Dexter’s article, Inside the Economy of AI Spammers Getting Rich By Exploiting Disasters and Misery

Dexter’s video: people made money doing this. (so did Instagram)

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While you were going about your life, we all narrowly avoided a complete disaster. This is the story of how one lone Microsoft engineer saved all of us. Dexter talks to Alex Stamos, Chief Information Security Officer at SentinelOne, about how it all went down and why this story still terrifies him today.

Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up [email protected], or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to our first episode of kill switch, where we’re diving right into the deep end – investigating how police departments are implementing AI technology. Can AI facial recognition be a magical solution to the unreliability of witness identification? Or is it just making things worse? Dexter talks to Douglas MacMillan, a reporter from the Washington Post, who has been tracking the spread of the technology, and where it seems to (repeatedly) break down.

Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up [email protected], or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.

Read: Doug’s article, Arrested by AI

Listen: Post Reports podcast episode, Arrested by AI

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Sleepwalkers is now Kill Switch, where we explain the right now of living in the future. Everything from making money on saving fake baby animals to how you could get arrested by a police algorithm. Every Wednesday we talk to people to help us understand how our tech-focused society works …or doesn't work.

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Were we sleeping when everything changed? Not if you listened to the first season of this podcast, because a whole lot of what we explored is now reality. Seems like the technologically driven future is already here. So we've decided to bring the show back -- with a new host, Dexter Thomas Jr  and a new perspective. 

On Kill Switch, we explain the right NOW of our super charged technological lives. Examining the ways we shape and are shaped by our ever-changing technology.

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After a historic 355 days in orbit, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei returned to Earth on March 30, 2022, breaking the record for the longest single spaceflight by an American. In this episode of Smart Talks with IBM, Malcolm Gladwell and Mark Vande Hei discuss conducting experiments in space, the impact of extended spaceflight on humans, and the spiciness of space chili peppers.

This is a paid advertisement from IBM.

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When Mangesh Hattikudur (Part-Time Genius, Humans Growing Stuff) set out to do a big, sweeping show on astrology, he didn’t realize the first interview would change the course of his life. But as he tries to put his world back together, he realizes the incredible ways astrology presents itself in modern society: from NASA employees who keep their belief in astrology in the closet, to world leaders who’ve used astrologers to guide foreign policy, to moneyball statisticians who use astrology more than statistics to build baseball teams, to a little shop in India where your fortune was written for you centuries ago, and is waiting for you to come claim it. Over the course of 8 episodes, Mangesh tries to decipher why we keep looking to the stars for answers, and what happens when you don’t believe in astrology, but astrology keeps happening to you. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/867-skyline-drive-104974284/

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