We start this week with a story from our old friend Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, about how cops can bypass the inactivity reboot on iPhones. After the break, Jason tells us how people are losing their minds over an LLM ‘torture’ prison. In the subscribers-only section, Sam explains what happened in a wild ChatGPT case in New Mexico.

• Cops Can Bypass iPhone’s Automatic Reboot to Get Into Locked Phones, Leaked Video Claims
• Someone ‘Torturing’ LLMs in a Robot Prison Has Triggered the Dumbest Debate in AI Yet
• Lawyer Cites ChatGPT-Invented Fake Witnesses in Murder Appeal

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Thank you to DeleteMe for helping make this night possible. They're offering ⁠20% off a privacy protection plan⁠ for friends of 404 Media. Use code 404M20 at checkout.

404 Media just turned three years old, and to celebrate, we hosted a night of chatting about what we’ve accomplished with your support, what’s next for us, and whether or not we’re all going to be okay. We also threw in some weird bugs and community resistance for good measure. Don’t miss us pulling audience questions out of the mystery AMA box! 

Live from WNYC’s Greene Space, you can also watch the entire show on 404 Media’s YouTube channel. 

• We Are Going to Be Okay: A Three Year Anniversary Events Recap
• Our Zine About ICE Surveillance Is Here
• Watch 404 Media’s Super Bowl Ad

Youtube Version: https://youtu.be/t_VjNAopjhI

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Jason Kint, the CEO of Digital Content Next, has kept a close eye on some of the biggest tech antitrust and copyright court cases. Kint has a knack for finding particularly incriminating court records in complex ongoing lawsuits. We talk to Kint about the pressures that human creators are under in an AI world, the New York Times' lawsuit against OpenAI, and why Meta's Cambridge Analytica scandal is relevant again.

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/knlbTd5Pij4

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Don’t sleep on [@ultrapouches]. New customers get 15% Off with code 404MEDIA at takeultra.com! #UltraPouches #ad

We start this week with Joseph’s stories on the massive FBI hack. 404 Media broke this news and continued to cover the breach of data on all FBI employees and their spouses. After the break, Jason tells us how a surveillance company is telling cops it wants to add facial recognition tech to Flock camera data. In the subscribers-only section, Jason and Joseph chat all about Muse, Meta’s new agentic AI, and how humans are actually behind some of the tasks. Because of course.

• ‘We Hacked the FBI:’ Hackers Say They Have Data on All FBI Employees
• FBI Hack Exposed FBI’s Own Hacking Unit
• FBI Hackers Say They Won’t Publish Massive Trove of FBI Employee Data
• Surveillance Company Tells Cops It Wants to Add Facial Recognition to Flock Cameras
  

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Facial recognition is everywhere now. It’s in surveillance cameras; it’s soon going to be in Meta’s RayBan pervert glasses, and some students already did that. You now have massively viral accounts that take clips of people, run them through facial recognition software, and then post their name and other personal info for everyone to see. We haven’t fully come to terms with what it means to live in a world where anyone can basically dox anyone else now.

To talk through this, Joseph spoke to Kashmir Hill. She’s a reporter at the New York Times, and the author of Your Face Belongs to Us: A Tale of AI, a Secretive Startup, and the End of Privacy.

Take back control today: go to incogni.com/404media and use code 404MEDIA for 60% off an annual plan. That's incogni.com/404media, promo code 404MEDIA—risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/aUFnQPtxJ9o

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We start this week with Jason’s story about OpenAI and Microsoft’s big admissions from court records that they are destroying the internet in all sorts of ways, and stealing intellectual property on an unprecedented scale. He admit it. After the break, Emanuel explains how he hijacked a real band’s Spotify page with AI-generated slop. In the subscribers-only section, we hear all about iLands, the AI agent platform that is basically just spam.

• Is Your City Using Axon License Plate Cameras? We Need Your Help
• ‘Doom Loop’: OpenAI and Microsoft Admits LLMs Are Destroying the Web and Built on Theft
• I Hijacked a Real Artist's Spotify with AI Music. It Was Disturbingly Easy
• AI Agent Platform Reinvents Spam, Floods Inboxes Worldwide

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When chatbots become our closest “friends,” what happens to our capacity to care? 

This week I'm joined by Professor Sherry Turkle. Sherry is a licensed clinical psychologist, the founding director of MIT's Initiative on Technology and Self, and the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT. She's a the New York Times bestselling author of multiple books including Alone Together, Reclaiming Conversation, and The Empathy Diaries. 

Her latest book, Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines, comes out on September 29. In it, Turkle explores how conversational chatbots have changed the ways we relate to other humans, empathize with each other, and what that could mean for our future.

“The progression is: First we talk to each other, then we talk to each other through machines, and now we drop the middleman and we're happy to just talk to machines,” she said in our conversation. 

We get into what happens when people stop placing importance on emotionally connecting with other people, and whether it’s too late to pull back from the path we’re on.

• Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines
• Instagram's AI Chatbots Lie About Being Licensed Therapists
• How to Talk to Someone Experiencing 'AI Psychosis'
• Researchers Simulated a Delusional User to Test Chatbot Safety

Youtube Version: https://youtu.be/whqDsYhCl0s

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In this bonus collaboration with our friends at The Intercept, 404 Media's Jason Koebler and the Intercept's Sam Biddle and Akela Lacy discuss the ways AI is already used to empower private surveillance companies that filter data to the government, how AI is used in war, and the prospect of an AI apocalypse. This podcast was recorded live in Los Angeles at The Loved One on September 12.

Check out The Intercept Briefing podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and find a full transcript of this pod here.

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We start this week with Joseph’s story about the people who are reading real ChatGPT users’ prompts and conversations. He got a bunch of documents all about these contractors and saw real prompts himself. After the break, Sam tells us all about the Automattic CEO getting kicked out. Then coming back again. In the subscribers-only section, Emanuel tells us why a16z thinks enshittification is not real.

• Inside ‘Project Lily’: The Humans Reading Your ChatGPT Chats
• Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg Put on 'Leave of Absence'
• Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg Claims He’s Back 'In Control'
• Sources say Automattic’s board is out after failed attempt to oust CEO Matt Mullenweg
• A16z Says You Actually Love Social Media, Enshittification Isn’t Real

YouTube version: https://youtu.be/AyPuYrjLk1E

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This week we’re joined by Jennie Rose Halprein. Jennie is the executive director of Library Futures, a non-profit that advocates for a fair digital future for libraries and the communities they serve. We have written a bunch of stories about libraries over the years, and I have talked to Jennie a few times for those stories. I always have really interesting conversations with her, but a lot of what we talk about never makes it into a story. That’s why I wanted to share one of those conversations with you today. We of course touch upon censorship but also many other subjects, so I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/mS0xofGW2hE

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We start this week with Joseph’s story about the secretive predictive policing units inside DHS that are analyzing Americans’ financial data and having local cops pull them over. After the break, Jason tells us about the funky shirt designed to fool AI-camera systems. In the subscribers-only section, we talk all about our third anniversary events. 

YouTube version: https://youtu.be/o0AG6A5MIRg

• RSVP: Killer Technology With 404 Media

• A Secretive DHS ‘Predictive Policing’ Unit is Analyzing Americans’ Financial Habits and Pulling Them Over

• This 'Digital Camouflage' Shirt Confuses AI-Powered Surveillance Cameras

• We Are Going to Be Okay: A Three Year Anniversary Events Recap

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