What if being buried under a mountain of debt isn't actually all your fault? After gaining a sizable social media following for sharing her years-long journey to pay down her debt, then starting a podcast about personal finance, @RealGirlProject knows a thing or two about being broke and changing her lifestyle to take control of her finances. The co-host of Debt Heads joins @chafkin and @svaneksmith on the Everybody's Business podcast to discuss who she thinks is partially to blame for America's debt crisis and why she has stopped trying to get to debt zero. Listen and watch at bit.ly/4diMcN4

Tech insiders and senior executives have spent recent weeks issuing loud warnings about the risks posed by artificial intelligence software. Some are even causing concerns that AI models could lead to eventual human extinction. But what if the real existential risk is more subtle — albeit powerful — than we imagine? @vauhinivara joins @chafkin and @svaneksmith on the Everybody's Business podcast to unpack warnings for "cognitive surrender” and how a startup called Pangram is promising to help identify AI generated slop. Listen and watch at bit.ly/4diMcN4.

'AI has been marketed horribly to the American people,' LinkedIn co-founder says dlvr.it/TVW3xT

I'm going to throw up a question about the investigation of the Hugging Face incident. When you do an investigation of any dangerous incident, one key element to examine is human error. But the Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR) institution didn't do that. They seemed only interested in what the agents were doing. That is, they anthromorphized the agents, while turning the humans into non-player characters. Did OpenAI researchers and executives know the risks they were taking and take steps to manage them? What kinds of human discussions were happening internally around these models? How did they mitigate these risks internally? Did they discuss legal liability? Was the board or were executives involved? These are the kinds of questions to ask if you are a real regulator. I don't see where or if METR asked them. Mostly they footnoted that these questions are 'out of scope.' They saw this project as a technical inquiry into the capabilities of intelligent models, not as an analysis of a dangerous accident. They interviewed eight researchers. Any executives? Any board members or lawyers? From the Silicon Valley Bank fiasco to the Space Shuttle explosion to the 737 Max, we've always realize that human behavior is the foundation of how complex systems behave. That is true here too. I don't see any analysis of the actual people at OpenAI making decisions about the tools used for hacking. Am I missing something?

Every tech person I know has said for years that AI is unlike any past tech shift/revolution -- exponentially more powerful/impactful. Thus the old fallback paradigms of "regulatory capture" and "antitrust" and more (on all sides) don't really apply. Novel frameworks needed for novel tech.

As the AI boom continues, America's legal system finds itself grappling with cases where chatbots act as lawyers, witnesses or even allegedly help plan a mass shooting. @ev_rat joins @svaneksmith and @chafkin on the Everybody's Business podcast to discuss how US courts are dealing with AI's involvement in crimes. Listen and watch at bit.ly/4diMcN4.