The 404 Media Podcast

The logic behind Polymarket, Kalshi and sports betting apps can be traced back to the inner workings of the slot machine. 

How did we get to a point where it’s legal for anyone to bet on anything? Be it the results of a baseball game or a land war in Europe, if you have access to a credit card and a computer you can try to predict the outcome of anything that’s happening in the world and win a little bit of money if you’re right. If we know that gambling can lead to high rates gambling addiction and financial ruin, why does it seem like our culture has suddenly embraced it?

For years, anyone who has reported on our increasing addiction to technology has found their way to Natasha Natasha Dow Schüll’s book Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas. The book is an ethnography of slot machines. It is based on many interviews with the people who make them and play them, a deep investigation of how they work, and how they fit into the larger context of casinos, Las Vegas, and gambling more broadly. 

Since it was published more than a decade ago, the logic of slot machines has extended far beyond Las Vegas. Every notification on our phone, trading platforms like Robinhood, the crypto craze, and now prediction markets, can be understood through the lens of slot machine design and Schüll work. That’s why I was incredibly happy she agreed to come on the podcast this week to discuss our current gambling-obsessed culture. 

https://www.natashadowschull.org

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/2kRAXeKhzNY

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This week we start with Jason's story about Flock accessing cameras in a children's gymnastics room as a sale pitch demo. After the break, Emanuel tells us why Nature retracted a paper about the alleged benefits of ChatGPT in education. In the subscibers-only section, we talk all about the cancellation of RightsCon after pressure from the Chinese government.

City Learns Flock Accessed Cameras in Children's Gymnastics Room as a Sales Pitch Demo, Renews Contract Anyway

'Nature' Retracts Paper on the Benefits of ChatGPT in Education

OpenAI, Google, aÍnd Microsoft Back Bill to Fund ‘AI Literacy’ in Schools

World’s Largest Digital Human Rights Conference Suddenly Canceled

China Pressure Canceled World’s Largest Digital Human Rights Conference

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/hLR8MOOhRCo

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This week, we talk to Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine, about a rash of people physically destroying AI and surveillance infrastructure. Brian puts this wave of attacks in the historical context of the Luddites, who are notoriously misunderstood and fought for worker protections against automation during the Industrial Revolution. Over the last few months, we have seen people in San Francisco and Los Angeles torch Waymos, bash delivery robots with baseball bats, destroy Flock cameras, and threaten AI data centers and the politicians championing them. This type of political violence doesn’t and cannot occur in a vacuum, it happens because people feel they are being taken advantage of and that their representatives aren’t listening to them. Given the current state of things, we can likely expect more of these sorts of attacks to occur.

Blood In The Machine

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This week, Jason explains the conspiracy theory circulating behind a trippy stock image that went viral after the White House Correspondents’ Dinner—was it sent here by a time traveler? (Spoiler: It was not.) Then Sam unpacks what’s happening at Arizona State University with a messy rollout of a new AI-powered tool that generates lessons by scraping professors’ lectures without their knowledge. In the second for subscribers at the Supporter level, Emanuel gets philosophical with a discussion about the question of machine consciousness and how it relates to a new paper from a Google-affiliated scientist.

⁠University Professors Disturbed to Find Their Lectures Chopped Up and Turned Into AI Slop⁠

⁠Did a Time Traveling Superintelligent AI Try to Warn About White House Correspondents Dinner Shooting? An Investigation⁠

⁠Google DeepMind Paper Argues LLMs Will Never Be Conscious⁠

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/VOo0ZpIagP0

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This week Joseph talks to Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, a journalist at TechCrunch. Lorenzo has possibly the deepest understanding of one of the wildest cybersecurity stories in years: how an employee of Trenchant, a government malware vendor that is supposed to only sell to the ‘good’ guys, secretly sold a bunch of hacking tools to a Russian company. Those tools, it looks like, then ended up with the Russian government and possibly Chinese criminals too. It’s a really insane story about how powerful hacking tech can fall into the wrong hands.


Inside the story of the US defense contractor who leaked hacking tools to Russia


US military contractor likely built iPhone hacking tools used by Russian spies in Ukraine

Youtube Version: https://youtu.be/MWxLqopMo5o
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