Algorithm Shrugged

In this week’s roundup of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike is joined by guest host Zeve Sanderson, the founding Executive Director of the NYU Center for Social Media & Politics. Together, they cover: If algorithms radicalize a mass shooter, are companies to blame? (The Verge) Large Language Models Are More Persuasive Than Incentivized Human Persuaders (Arxiv) A dangerous plan to ‘win’ the AI race is circulating (Washington Post) Texas governor signs law to enforce age verification on Apple, Google app stores (Reuters) AB 853: California AI Transparency Act.(CalMatters) Regulators Are Investigating Whether Media Matters Colluded With Advertisers (NY Times) Anthropic’s new AI model turns to blackmail when engineers try to take it offline (TechCrunch) Why Anthropic’s New AI Model Sometimes Tries to ‘Snitch’ (Wired) This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund, and by our sponsor Modulate. In our Bonus Chat, we speak with Modulate CTO Carter Huffman about how their voice technology can actually detect fraud. Follow us on Instagram, YouTube, and Bluesky. Ctrl-Alt-Speech is the podcast where we make sense of the major debates shaping online speech, platform power, content moderation and the future of the internet. It’s co-hosted by Mike Masnick (Techdirt) and Ben Whitelaw (Everything in Moderation).