The biggest fight in AI isn't about chatbots anymore, it's about who gets to control the future of artificial intelligence. 

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Is Anthropic trying to lock down AI before their IPO, or are open-weight models genuinely a threat to global safety? In this episode of Power User, Matthew Berman, co-founder of the tech media outlet Forward Future, breaks down the explosive debate rocking Silicon Valley and Washington DC.

After the release of China's powerful Kimi K3 open-weight model, OpenAI's autonomous hacking benchmark, and a growing push from Anthropic to restrict open AI models, Silicon Valley has erupted into one of the biggest technology battles in years. 

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Microsoft, Meta, Google, IBM, Hugging Face, Mozilla, Palantir, Dell and dozens of other massive technology companies have all come together to publicly back open weight AI models, while Anthropic argues against them. 

Whoever wins will control the future of the tech landscape for decades to come. 

I break down: 

What open weight AI actually is

How Kimi K3 changed the AI race

The OpenAI benchmark that escaped containment

The Hugging Face security incident

Anthropic's campaign against open models

Why Jensen Huang and all of Silicon Valley is pushing back

The growing debate inside Washington over regulating AI

Why this fight could determine who controls AI for decades

The Secret Court Case That Could Destroy Super PACs Forever

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You've been told that Citizens United created Super PACs… but that's not the full story. In this episode of Free Speech Friday, Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig reveals the obscure lower court ruling (SpeechNow v. FEC) that actually unleashed unlimited billionaire money into American elections, and the groundbreaking legal strategy that could end Super PACs by 2028 WITHOUT overturning Citizens United.

Backed by an unlikely coalition including Mark Cuban and Reid Hoffman, Lessig and his group Equal Citizens helped Maine voters pass a historic ballot initiative banning Super PAC contributions. Now the case is headed to the First Circuit Court of Appeals on July 29, with famed Supreme Court litigator Neal Katyal arguing that nothing in the Constitution protects billionaires' "right" to buy elections. If the appeal succeeds, this case could reach the Supreme Court by 2027 and revive existing federal limits on campaign contributions nationwide.

We break down: ▶ Why SpeechNow v. FEC — not Citizens United — created the Super PAC system ▶ How the Menendez bribery indictment exposed the "no quid pro quo" myth ▶ The originalist argument designed to win over conservative justices ▶ Billionaire outside spending's explosion from 0.3% to 19% of election money ▶ The AI Super PAC trying to block Congress from regulating artificial intelligence ▶ Why an Article V constitutional convention may be the backup plan ▶ What happens if the First Circuit rules on July 29, and the road to SCOTUS

If you care about money in politics, campaign finance reform, and getting billionaire money out of elections, this is the most important legal fight you've never heard of.

🔒 Get 20% off DeleteMe by going to https://joindeleteme.com/TAYLOR20 and use code TAYLOR20 to protect your privacy! 🙌

🚨 Apple is officially suing OpenAI and the allegations are insane. 🚨

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In what might be the most shocking Silicon Valley lawsuit of the year, Apple has accused OpenAI of corporate sabotage, trade secret theft, and orchestrating a massive campaign to poach over 400 former Apple employees to build its secret AI hardware division. From ex-employees using security bugs to access secret Apple folders, to candidates allegedly bringing physical Apple prototypes to job interviews for "show and tell", this legal battle gives us a rare, cutthroat look at the AI hardware arms race.

In this episode of Power User, I sat down with tech reporter and Big Technology founder Alex Kantrowitz to break down everything you need to know about the Apple vs. OpenAI lawsuit. Will this kill OpenAI's hardware ambitions and ruin its upcoming IPO? Will we ever actually get a ChatGPT phone? And why is Apple taking such aggressive legal action now? We break down why this isn't just another tech lawsuit, it's literally a fight over who will own the future of AI.

We discuss:

• Why OpenAI hired Jony IveWhether an OpenAI phone is actually coming
• The future of AI glasses, AI pins, and wearable devices
• Why Apple may be trying to stop OpenAI before it can compete
• The race to control the next generation of computing
• Whether AI hardware is the future or another Silicon Valley flop
• Why OpenAI tried to copy Apple's hardware roadmap instead of building from scratch.
• How this lawsuit could cripple OpenAI's valuation and delay its IPO.
• The future of AI hardware: AI pins, smart glasses, or will the iPhone remain king?
  

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Affiliate marketing is one of the biggest industries on the internet, and according to researcher Ben Edelman, one of Silicon Valley’s hottest AI startups may have been abusing it.

In this bonus episode of Power User I sat down with Edelman to break down what’s happening with Phia, the shopping startup co-founded by Phoebe Gates that has raised over $43 million from famed Silicon Valley investors like Kleiner Perkins Sheryl Sandberg, along with a slew of celebrities including Sydney Sweeney, Khloe Kardashian and Hailey Bieber.

We break down allegations that Phia’s browser extension secretly inserted affiliate tracking codes, how this compares to the Honey controversy, why retailers could have lost millions, and what this means for the future of AI-powered shopping.

The government is using powerful AI tools to build massive digital dossiers on everyday citizens, and it’s happening with zero oversight.

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In this episode of Free Speech Friday, I sat with Matthew Guariglia, Senior Policy Analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), to expose how generative AI has democratized mass surveillance. 

From the FBI’s massive physical paper filing hangars of the 20th century to modern AI models that scrape your social media, track your geolocation, and predict your political affiliation in seconds—the barrier to entry for government surveillance has officially collapsed.

We dive deep into Guariglia's recent congressional testimony on the AI security landscape, revealing how the Pentagon is blacklisting tech companies like Anthropic for trying to restrict AI from being used in autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.

 In this video, we cover:

• How AI is automating mass surveillance at an unprecedented scale.

• The secret government contracts and the battle for unrestricted AI use.

• Why your social media history, geolocation, and purchases create a permanent record.

• The historical lessons from Ferguson and the Japanese-American internment that prove data is vulnerability.

• What you can do to protect your digital rights (hint: it starts with turning off your geolocation).

We are never going to Mars. And the billionaires selling you the dream are lying to your face. 

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The idea of living on Mars has become one of Silicon Valley's biggest promises. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and other tech billionaires claim humanity's future depends on becoming a multi-planetary species. But what if nearly everything you've been told about colonizing Mars is quite literally scientifically impossible?

In this week's episode of Power User, I sat down with physicist and science journalist Adam Becker, author of More Everything Forever, a fantastic book that I absolutely loved, to break down the biggest myths about Mars colonization, SpaceX, AI, and Silicon Valley's vision of the future. 

We discuss why Mars is far more hostile than most people realize, the scientific barriers that make permanent settlement nearly impossible, and why billionaires continue selling this vision despite knowing it will never become reality. 

We cover:

• Why humans will literally NEVER live on Mars

• The biggest scientific problems SpaceX can't solve

• The truth about Elon Musk's Mars colony plans

• Why Silicon Valley keeps selling science fiction as reality

• How AI and space colonization became part of the same billionaire narrative

• Why investing in Earth may matter far more than escaping it

Is social media actually destroying a generation, or are we in the middle of a massive political moral panic?

For this week's Free Speech Friday I sat down with one of the world's leading researchers studying young people, technology, and mental health to answer one question: Did social media really create a generation-wide mental health crisis?

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For years we've been told that smartphones and social media are fueling anxiety, depression, loneliness, and suicide among teenagers. Politicians, bestselling authors, and news outlets have treated that idea as settled science.

But what does the actual research say?

Developmental psychologist Candice Odgers has spent decades studying how young people use technology. In this interview, we break down what the evidence actually shows, why many experts disagree with the popular narrative, and how the social media panic is influencing online safety laws, censorship, surveillance, age verification, and internet policy around the world.

We discuss:

• The real relationship between social media and teen mental health

• Why correlation is often mistaken for causation

• What studies actually find about screen time

• The debate around The Anxious Generation

• Why many scientists reject claims that phones are driving a mental health epidemic

• Online safety laws and age verification

• Privacy, surveillance, and internet censorship

• What parents should actually focus on

• The future of social media regulation

Are we living through the dawn of a permanent Surveillance Summer?

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Kylie Jenner is the new face of Meta's AI smart glasses and suddenly, mass surveillance is a fashion trend. Influencers are declaring a "hot surveillance summer," West Village fashion girlies are posting AI glasses selfies, and for thousands of people (not me! lol), cameras on your face have officially gone from creepy to chic. How did we get here?

In this episode, I sit down with iconic fashion journalist Amy Odell, author of the Back Row newsletter covering fashion, culture, and power, to unpack how Big Tech used the fashion industry to normalize wearable surveillance. We trace the full history of smart glasses, from the Google Glass disaster and Snapchat Spectacles vending machines to Ray-Ban Stories, Oakley Meta glasses, and the rhinestone-studded AI glasses taking over your feed.

We discuss why the Kylie AI glasses are a turning point for wearable tech, and how this could be the moment personalized AI surveillance becomes permanently woven into public life. 

Subscribe to Amy's newsletter here: https://www.backrow.net/ 

We get into: ▸ Why Meta chose Kylie Jenner as the face of its AI glasses campaign ▸ How Mark Zuckerberg rehabbed his image through influencer interviews ▸ The "hot surveillance summer" discourse and why some women are embracing being recorded ▸ How fashion makes surveillance tech palatable — from GoPro to AI hair clips ▸ Meta's facial recognition plans, data harvesting, and what it means for privacy ▸ The Meta Gala, OpenAI's fashion world infiltration, and Snap's $2,000 AR flop ▸ How anti-phone and anti-screen sentiment is fueling the rise of ambient computing, AI pendants, pins, and camera-equipped AirPods

 ▸ Who actually owns the data Meta's AI glasses collect

Most people hand their ID to a bouncer without thinking twice. But what if your local bar was monitoring way more than your age?

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 Cydney Hayes is a tech and business reporter at the Gazetteer SF.and she joins me for this week's Free Speech Friday to discuss her investigation into Patronscan, a creepy biometric surveillance system being integrated into bars and restaurants across the country. 

We examine how these systems collect personal information, photograph and surveil patrons as they move from bar to bar, build databases, and raise serious questions about privacy, biometric tracking, facial recognition, and data collection.

We discuss:

• How PatronScan works

• Why bars are adopting these systems

• What information is collected

• Privacy concerns surrounding biometric data

• Facial recognition and surveillance technology

• How customer databases are created

• The legal controversies surrounding PatronScan

• Why surveillance is expanding into everyday spaces

• What this means for the future of privacy

As surveillance technology spreads from airports and retail stores into restaurants, bars, and nightlife, it's becoming increasingly important to understand how these systems operate and what tradeoffs they create.

The internet has entered a terrifying new era where reality itself has become a marketplace. Adam Aleksic (Etymology Nerd) & Aidan Walker join me to break it all down.

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Pump Fun GO is a new service that lets anyone pay anyone to do anything, and the results are terrifying. From paying people in poor countries $13 to get forehead tattoos to offering $95 for degrading acts, the platform has become a marketplace for human exploitation disguised as "meme coin marketing."

From meme coins and viral stunts to political influence campaigns, prediction markets, and user-generated marketing, this episode explores how financial incentives are reshaping online culture and even the offline world.

Joining me are Adam Aleksic (Etymology Nerd) and meme researcher Aidan Walker to unpack why platforms like Pump Fun, Polymarket, and the rise of the "bounty economy" could fundamentally change how the internet works.

Topics covered:

• How Pump Fun Go is literally recreating Black Mirror episodes in real life

• The terrifying rise of the "bounty economy" and what it means for society

• Why people in developing countries are being targeted for these stunts

• The connection between prediction markets, UGC marketing, and political manipulation

• What happens when EVERYTHING becomes a marketing stunt (and why that's breaking trust online)

• The psychology behind why people participate in these challenges

• How this platform is warping our physical reality and making us question everything

• Pump Fun Go explained

• Meme coin marketing

• Black Mirror becoming reality

• The new attention economy

• Polymarket and prediction markets

• User-generated advertising

• Political influence online

• Why everything feels fake

• The future of social media

• The internet's next evolution