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Quinn Slobodian, historian of neoliberalism, and Ben Tarnoff, internet and technology writer, join us to unpack how Musk's fears and fantasies are shaping our world.

Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed is available now in the United States (Harper) and UK (Penguin).

Quinn Slobodian is professor of international history at Boston University, and the author or editor of seven books translated into ten languages including, Hayek's Bastards: Race (winner of the NBCC award for criticism), Gold, IQ and the Capitalism of the Far Right, Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World without Democracy, and Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism. In 2024, the Prospect Magazine (UK) named him one of the World's 25 Top Thinkers.

Ben Tarnoff is a writer and technologist based in Massachusetts and is the author of Internet for the People and the co-author of Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do—And How They Do It. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, and has also written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, and the New Republic, among other publications.

Prof. Emily M. Bender, linguist, and Dr. Alex Hanna, sociologist join us to discuss their 2025 book The AI Con and how Big Tech spun marketing around "stochastic parrots".

Find lots more from Emily and Alex on their podcast Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 from the Distributed AI Research Institute!

Books Mentioned

• Emily Bender & Alex Hanna, The AI Con

• Rua M. Williams, Disabling Intelligences: Legacies of Eugenics and How We are Wrong about AI

Further Reading

• Bender, et. al, "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?", https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922

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