Fixing the Web by letting it fix itself?

Professor Kurt Gray talks about his research on how we might use AI to moderate AI

I’m battling some sickness, so am keeping this issue limited to my latest podcast interview and a list of some of the news that really jumped out at me over the last two very interesting weeks.

First, I interviewed Professor Kurt Gray who directs the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding at the University of North Carolina and just released his second popular-press book 'Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics.' Our conversation focused on some of his research on artificial intelligence and how he’s co-developed a method to use large language models to study morality of people, even if those people have been deceased for hundreds or thousands of years. We also discussed topics from sex robots’ impacts on human relationships to building evil generative AI models to moderate the widely-released major generative AI models. One of my YouTube subscribers had this to say about the episode:

“I’m amazed that the subject of Chads and katanas came up in this. This was a wild talk -- Real Dolls, morality, replicants -- If I was worried about my children venturing out into the uncharted territory of the web before, now I’m really terrified.”

If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel yet, please do. It’ll be a tremendous help to me, and I’ll be so grateful to you.

What I’m reading

• Kids Online Safety Act could leave homeschooled kids without crucial resources -- Lauren Barton, Teen Vogue

• Instagram and Facebook blocked and hid abortion pill providers’ posts -- Claire Cain Miller, New York Times

• Instagram hides search results for ‘Democrats’ -- Tom Gerken, BBC

• Instagram blocked teens from searching LGBTQ-related content for months -- Taylor Lorenz, User Mag

• ‘Neo-Nazi madness’: Meta’s top AI lawyer on why he fired the company -- Kate Knibbs, Wired

• Zuckerberg lawyer skewers his ‘toxic masculinity and Neo-Nazi madness’ as he drops Meta as a client -- Michelle Del Ray, The Independent

• Unleash your masculine energy the Mark Zuckerberg way! -- Arwa Mahdawi, The Guardian

• I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down -- I just didn’t expect them to be such losers -- Rebecca Shaw, The Guardian

• Meta agrees to pay Trump $25 million to settle lawsuit over Facebook and Instagram suspensions -- Bobby Allyn, NPR

• Report: Majority of US teens have lost trust in Big Tech -- Sarah Perez, TechCrunch

• Elon Musk Reddit ban: List of subreddits blocking X links -- Theo Burman, Newsweek

• Bluesky now has 30 million users -- Jay Peters, The Verge

• Meta’s pivot to the right sparks boycotts and calls for a user exodus -- Kat Tenbarge, NBC News

• How to delete Facebook, Instagram, and Threads -- Rebecca Bellan, TechCrunch

• Bluesky is getting its own Instagram alternative called Flashes -- Thomas Maxwell, Gizmodo

• Free Our Feeds wants to build a social media ecosystem ‘resistant to billionaire influence’ -- Emma Roth, The Verge

• Former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg sanctioned by judge for allegedly deleting emails -- Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch

• Custom feed builder Graze is building a business on Bluesky and investors are paying attention -- Sarah Perez, TechCrunch

• Donald Trump rescinds Biden-era executive order on AI safety -- Justine Calma, The Verge

• Zuckerberg ‘loves’ AI slop image from spam account that posts amputated children -- Jason Koebler, 404 Media

• Stripe accidentally sent an image of a duck when notifying some employees they were getting laid off -- Jyoti Mann, Business Insider

• Measuring political preferences in AI systems -- David Rozado, Manhattan Institute

• Add f*cking to your Google searches to neutralize AI summaries -- Thomas Maxwell, Gizmodo

• Meta workers are quietly rebelling against Mark Zuckerberg after he eliminated DEI initiatives by bringing their own tampons to men’s bathrooms -- Alena Botros, Fortune