Microsoft has been testing out their new artificial intelligence on their long-ridiculed search engine Bing. The results? A chatbot that lies brazenly and confidently, and has a penchant for manipulation. What are the risks and rewards of letting bots loose on the world?

Guest: Drew Harwell, Washington Post tech reporter covering artificial intelligence 

Host: Emily Peck

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Why A.I. Says the Darndest Things

Every Friday and Sunday, Slate’s popular daily news podcast What Next brings you TBD, a clear-eyed look into the future. From fake news to fake meat, algorithms to augmented reality, Lizzie O’Leary is your guide to the tech industry and the world it’s creating for us to live in.

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In theory, crowdfunding sites offer an opportunity for anyone to give to any cause, including, say, strangers facing huge medical bills. In practice, crowdfunding suffers from many of the same inequities that led to someone needing to crowdfund to begin with.

Guest: Nora Kenworthy, author of Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare, associate professor at the University of Washington, Bothell.

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The Dark Side of GoFundMe

The 2021 subreddit-coordinated effort to raise the price of Gamestop stock was, in some ways, a proof of concept: the little guy can get into the market and make some noise. Because even though that “meme stock” rose and fell, the idea of the meme stock went has changed the way our stock market works.

Guest: Alex Kirshner, contributing writer for Slate.

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Too Stonks Too Furious

The ability to choose the sex of your child through IVF is banned in most of the world. In America, however, parents can—and do—for a price.

Guest: Emi Nietfeld, writer and software engineer, author of “The Parents Who Want Daughters—and Daughters Only” for Slate.

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Would You Choose Your Child’s Sex?

You might not know Brad Parscale by name, but you know his work: he was the digital campaign operative behind Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential victory. This election cycle, he’s back—and advising conservatives on how to utilize A.I. in their campaigns. 

Guest: Garance Burke, global investigative journalist for the Associated Press.

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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Patrick Fort, Cheyna Roth and Anna Phillips.
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Meet the Trump Campaign’s A.I. Guy

The California Journalism Preservation Act would make companies like Google and Meta pay publishers for the news content appearing in their feeds and search results—and force news organizations to spend that money on their journalists. How have similar laws worked in Canada and Australia? And could it solve journalism’s on-going revenue problem?

Guest: Matt Pearce, former LA Times journalist, the president of Media Guild of the West.


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Why A.I. Says the Darndest Things

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