Journalist Taylor Lorenz joins us to discuss Section 230, how Big Tech is already tracking everything from eye movements to finger presses, the ongoing erosion of online privacy through right-wing tech policy and identity verification.

Find Taylor on YouTube @TaylorLorenz and her publication UserMag on Substack.

Further Reading

• Taylor Lorenz, Usermag, The Media Lied About the Social Media Addiction Trial

• Taylor Lorenz, The Biggest Lies About Section 230

• Mick Masnick, TechDirt, Everyone Cheering The Social Media Addiction Verdicts Against Meta Should Understand What They're Actually Cheering For

• KWCH, AI-powered cameras on Wichita school buses raise privacy concerns for one driver

• WBAL, 'Just holding a Doritos bag': Student handcuffed after AI system mistook bag of chips for weapon

David Ramírez Álvarez, secretary at the embassy of Cuba in the US, joins us to understand the escalating blockade on Cuba.

Find Part 2 coming soon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/DystopiaNow

This week we dive into Emile's area of expertise, the ethics of human extinction and how these ethics are shaping Silicon Valley.

Further Reading

• https://www.realtimetechpocalypse.com/p/making-sense-of-the-human-extinction

Books Mentioned

• The Last Man, Mary Shelley

• Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation, Émile Torres

Support the show at https://patreon.com/c/DystopiaNow

Researcher and journalist Dylan Gyauch-Lewis joins us this week to discuss the views behind ongoing data center buildout for AI despite community resistance.

Find Dylan's work at the American Prospect and https://therevolvingdoorproject.org

Further Reading

• Dylan Gyauch-Lewis for The American Prospect: More AI Means More Cancer
• Dylan Gyauch-Lewis for The Revolving Door Project: Support for Data Centers in Shor Supply

This week, we discussed the biography of the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and his brand of tech doomerism.

Further Reading

• Émile's article: https://www.realtimetechpocalypse.com/p/eliezer-yudkowsky-and-the-unabomber

While profit motivates all companies under capitalism, why are the wealthiest tech companies so focused on AGI? This week, we dive into the relationships, ideologies, and claims behind the four biggest players claiming to build artificial general intelligence: Google DeepMind, OpenAI (partly owned by Microsoft), Anthropic, and Elon Musk's xAI.

Further Reading

• https://www.realtimetechpocalypse.com/p/tescrealism-and-the-race-to-build

Book mentioned

• The AI Con - Emily Bender & Alex Hanna

We're joined again by Dr. Alexander Thomas, author of The Politics and Ethics of Transhumanism, to discuss current events and how the Extropians' libertarian transhumanist fantasies connect to today's efforts to meme right-wing authoritarianism into reality.

Books Mentioned

• Hayek's Bastards by Quinn Slobodian

• The Politics and Ethics of Transhumanism by Alexander Thomas (open access)