transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] They're calling this a SIAF.

Speaker 2:
[00:04] To go to the point where you're actually creating fake fans, that's where things kind of cross into a kind of betrayal.

Speaker 3:
[00:13] Hello, and welcome to The Interface, the show that decodes the tech, rewiring your week and your world. I'm Nicky Woolf.

Speaker 2:
[00:20] I'm Karen Hao.

Speaker 1:
[00:21] And I'm Thomas Germain.

Speaker 3:
[00:23] Today on The Interface, Apple's Tim Cook is resigning. What does that mean for your smartphone?

Speaker 1:
[00:29] Is the world's biggest new band a Psi-Op?

Speaker 2:
[00:33] And has the AI boom finally met its match, the people?

Speaker 3:
[00:37] Apple's Long Time CEO Okay, so big news broke this week that Tim Cook, Apple's longtime CEO, is stepping down. He'll be replaced by John Ternus, who was the head of engineering at Apple. This is a seed change. So the CEO of Apple is a role in Silicon Valley, almost like kind of king of Silicon Valley. Would that be a...

Speaker 1:
[01:05] I don't know if he's the king of Silicon Valley, but he's definitely one of the most influential people in the world. Like if you just think about the sheer number of people who use iPhones alone, but when you add all of Apple's other products, and the fact that so many other tech products are designed to work with Apple, like the level of influence is just enormous.

Speaker 3:
[01:27] Yeah, and the fact that the way phones are, the way we use all of our technologies, Apple's kind of led the way in terms of hardware at least, right?

Speaker 2:
[01:35] Yeah, totally. And it feels like, because Tim Cook has been in this role for 15 years, that he was a mainstay within the upper echelons of the tech industry, that is going to be changing it. And that doesn't change often for any of the companies. So it is a pretty big shakeup.

Speaker 3:
[01:57] Tim Cook took over from...

Speaker 1:
[02:00] From Steve, right?

Speaker 3:
[02:02] From Steve Jobs. Yeah, that's just blanked on Steve Jobs. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[02:08] So there was this guy named Steve.

Speaker 3:
[02:10] Steve Jobs. You may have heard of him. But yeah, we don't yet know exactly what this means for Apple. We have seen that they're doing a major shakeup of the engineering division. They're merging technologies with platform engineering. That... I'm clear exactly what will change of that now. But they have said they're going to hire, quote, thousands more engineers. So it seems like this will be a doubling down on hardware.

Speaker 1:
[02:37] This probably comes as a surprise to a lot of people who don't follow this stuff closely. But there have been rumors for years now that Tim Cook is getting ready to step down. I think being the head of Apple has got to be one of the most intense jobs in the world. It's the biggest, most valuable company on earth.

Speaker 3:
[02:55] It's a four trillion dollars.

Speaker 1:
[02:57] Four trillion dollars.

Speaker 3:
[02:59] Mind-bending amount of money.

Speaker 1:
[03:01] Unbelievable. It's an amount of money that doesn't even make sense if you think about it. But Apple's been at this kind of precarious, edgier moment than it's been in quite a while. And there's this conversation happening that AI, large language models, you know, the technology that runs tools like ChatGPT is going to completely change the way we interact with our computers. And there was this huge debunkal where Apple announced that it was going to launch a new revamped Siri that was going to run on the latest AI and then it never arrived. There was like a class action lawsuit because they said if you buy our new phone, then you'll get this new tool and then it never came because they just couldn't get it together. Inside the company, apparently. But also there's been this other shift where they became one of the biggest companies in the world from selling the iPhone more than anything else. But over time, the technology has gotten so good that it's hard to make a new exciting phone. Like for a while, like years and years and years, the CEO of Apple would get on stage, whether it was Tim Cook or before him Steve Jobs, and announce some new phone and it would be like way different and really exciting, but it just got so good that they like hit a wall. And iPhone sales have slowed down. They're lasting longer. People are keeping them for longer. And there's this fear that Apple needs to make a major change. And there have been a number of things that Tim Cook kind of bungled, right?

Speaker 3:
[04:35] Yeah, the vision.

Speaker 1:
[04:37] The Apple Vision Pro.

Speaker 3:
[04:39] Was it kind of a disaster?

Speaker 1:
[04:41] Yeah, they launched this product. It wasn't like really clear who it's for. Sales were terrible. Then, last year, usually Apple launches a big new product at its developer conference. But as we got closer and closer, people didn't know what that product was going to be. And then it turned out the big thing they were announcing was iOS 26, a new operating system for the phone, which was kind of universally panned, right? You might remember, like it was this weird, like they called it liquid glass, like it was clear. People really didn't like it. It seemed like it was kind of thrown together at the last minute. I'm not sure it wasn't literally. They've probably been working on it for a while. But there's been this perception that the company is faltering. And I think what's happening now is they're trying to signal to the world and to investors that Apple is entering a new era where everything is going to change. And it's a critical moment for the company. Like basically right now, it's sink or swim. They need to prove that they've still got a vision, that they're going to continue to change the world the way that they have for decades now and they aren't falling behind. Which is something that inevitably happens. If you look at all the biggest companies in the world, they reach the top and then they kind of fade away. They don't always disappear. But it's hard for one company to stay as big as Apple has for this long. And I think the message they want you to take is that everything's going to be different now. We're switching it up.

Speaker 3:
[06:07] And what struck me was reading through the announcement, reading through Cook's letter that you sent out to the team, no AI play was announced in this thing. We've just become so used to every big announcement from every big tech company being like, we're going to pivot to AI. And I think it's kind of notable that Apple didn't mention AI once in any of these hints and announcements at what they're going to do. They're very big on doubling down on hardware. And I think that's a very loud silence on AI in terms of part of their plans.

Speaker 2:
[06:47] There's been such a series of weird bungled attempts with Apple trying to catch up to AI without an actual clear articulated vision of what that would actually bring to the product. So in addition to the upgraded series that failed, there was also that attempt to create Apple Intelligence with these news notifications, do you remember this, where they were supposed to summarize the news and send it out on notification as part of a new AI feature. And one of the first weeks, I think, that the feature was deployed was during Luigi Magione's unfolding trial. And it summarized a headline about shooter Luigi Magione, something, something, something, into Luigi Magione shoots himself. And it was actually a BBC story that it was summarizing. And it branded the notification with the BBC logo. So it looks like the BBC had actually pushed that out. And there was such a backlash that they actually had to pull that feature almost immediately after it was launched. And so I think Apple's probably being a lot more cautious now because of these series of mishaps. And at the end of the day, like that's not really the company's strength. So it is, yeah, to me, it's personally refreshing. Like I recently was in an Apple store just buying some new accessories for my various Apple products. And the sales rep tried to upsell me on the latest iPhone and the latest Mac and whatever, da da da, by saying, hey, these new products are going to have Apple intelligence and it's going to be AI enabled. And I looked her straight in the eye and was like, and that is why I want nothing to do with them and walked out of the store.

Speaker 1:
[08:36] Yeah, you're talking to the wrong...

Speaker 3:
[08:37] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know who I am?

Speaker 1:
[08:40] Yeah. All right. The other thing that's interesting about the AI stuff is like our relationship with apps, everyone is expecting is about to be completely different. Like until a couple years ago, if you wanted to do something on your phone, it required a guy or a team of engineers, sometimes a huge team, to make a little computer program, to make a little app that would do the thing that you wanted. And Apple's App Store was a huge, I think $100 billion a year business, right? Like, you know, not the biggest money maker in Apple's toolkit here, but pretty significant. And there's some speculation that that's all about to change, that if AI gets a little better and you can just ask ChatGPT or whatever AI tool you're using to go do stuff for you, that you won't need as many apps, you won't need to go through the App Store, like one individual app or one device will be able to take on a lot of those projects. So, you know, there's all these different parts of Apple's businesses, because there are many of them that it's in, are changing. And then simultaneously, Johnny Ive, who's Apple's, like, famous designer, Golden Boy, who left the company a long time ago, has now partnered up with Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI. They are apparently working on a hardware product that, no matter what it is, will be a direct competitor with Apple. And then if we could talk about one more headwind, China, enormous, you know, important factor for Apple here, both because all of its products, for the most part, are manufactured in China and because Chinese tech companies like Huawei are eating into its market share in Asia, that's another big wild card. And I think we're about to enter a really, you know, kind of rocky period for the company. And it'll be up to this new guy, John Ternus, to be like, no, no, no, everything's fine.

Speaker 3:
[10:37] Don't worry.

Speaker 1:
[10:37] We've got it under control. We'll see how things go.

Speaker 3:
[10:40] Yeah. His first job is definitely to kind of steady the ship, steady the ship for investors, steady the ship for customers, and then see exactly what is needed in order to bring this behemoth company into this uncertain future.

Speaker 1:
[10:57] I think the one thing we have to look forward to is Apple's going to have this big event in the fall. Around the time that Tim Cook says he's stepping down, he's going to take over as, you know, the leader of Apple's corporate board. John Ternus steps in, he's going to give a speech. He's going to address the public for the first time. And one thing I think is absolutely certain is he's going to paint a picture of a way that this company is changing in radical ways. And that will have a big impact in the way that you stare at your phone and what kind of phone you're staring at in the future. So I think this is something for people to look forward to because he's going to present a big new vision.

Speaker 3:
[11:38] And don't worry, we will be following that very, very closely as it unfolds. So stay tuned.

Speaker 1:
[11:44] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[11:47] Now let's talk about Geese.

Speaker 1:
[11:49] If you hadn't gotten enough of me talking on this episode yet, I've got great news because now we're going to shoot over to my story.

Speaker 3:
[11:55] Because now Tom is going to sing.

Speaker 1:
[11:57] Take it away. Finally, I get a minute to speak. You know, I want to talk to you guys about this band Geese. Have you heard of Geese?

Speaker 3:
[12:07] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[12:08] Not until you brought it up.

Speaker 1:
[12:11] I think Geese is kind of a pretty cool band. I heard about them for the first time, maybe, I don't know, six months ago or so. They've been around for a while. They've been putting out albums for years. Never heard of them before. Over the course of a month, it felt like they had become the biggest thing in the world. They went from, I think, a band that almost no one, not no one, but they certainly weren't a household name to like playing Saturday Night Live. They just played one of the biggest slots at the music festival Coachella. They exploded.

Speaker 3:
[12:51] Everywhere. Yeah, there's been a bit of a backlash to this, right?

Speaker 1:
[12:54] People were saying, this is an industry plant.

Speaker 3:
[12:56] How could this be organic? How could something go from zero to absolutely everywhere? And in our age where what you experience is a lot of the time algorithmically determined, the question is how much can the industry, how much can a record label game that system to put a band that they want in front of everyone and get it into that sudden superstardom non-organically? And that's what the backlash is about is because people feel like there's no longer any choice. And there's also no longer that feeling of kismet, where you discover something. And a lot of the time this is kind of pretentious, where you get like music snobs. But music as a genre is all about that kind of feeling of discovery, you know, going into record stores, finding something obscure. And if that is gone, if basically the music we like is just the music that has been decided will be the big music of this month, of this year, people are really angry about that. And I can totally see that anger.

Speaker 1:
[14:11] Yeah. So this conversation was happening. People were suspicious. Turns out their suspicions were correct. There's a marketing company called Chaotic Good. And at South by Southwest, which is this big, you know, music festival and now also like a tech conference that happens in Austin, Texas, the head of this company, Chaotic Good, got on stage to talk about their new techniques. And he explained that it was his company that was behind the rise of Geese. They said they had this coordinated campaign where they set up all these like fan accounts, essentially, to promote a band, in this case, Geese, but they've done it for plenty of others, and make it look like they've got this kind of organic attention that it's just like people posting about how much they love this band. And he essentially said, we can make anything go viral. And through this coordinated campaign where they had, according to him, thousands of fake accounts that they're running, like posting and commenting.

Speaker 3:
[15:19] When you say a fake account, are these people who are being paid to have these opinions, but they're real people, or are they completely fake accounts?

Speaker 1:
[15:28] Yeah, so there was some discussion about, is this bots, right? Are these like automated, you know, fake accounts that are operating on their own? Chaotic, good, like stop short of saying that. They didn't say they're using bots, but it's like accounts that the company is running, and they're posing as just like some regular guy who likes to post about the band Geese, but there's like one or a couple people that are running hundreds, add up to like, you know, a thousand or a couple thousand accounts. They aren't real, and people are saying, they're calling this a Psyop. That like, Nicky, can you explain what a Psyop is? I think you're probably a guy.

Speaker 3:
[16:07] A Psyop is a kind of conspiracy theory term. It's like psychological operation. Basically, it's a catch-all term for when your attention, when the body of human culture and human communication is being gamed, essentially. And there's a specific word for what's going on here, which is astroturfing, which is fake grassroots campaign. And it's not just in music. You see this when a movie comes out, for example. You also, this has been a point of controversy for at least 10 years now. You see it a lot in politics. So you get this in almost everywhere, where there's that old saying, on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog. It's sorry, what?

Speaker 1:
[17:00] You haven't seen the comic that might not translate.

Speaker 3:
[17:02] Yeah, it's a far-sighted comic, I think.

Speaker 1:
[17:04] No, it's The New Yorker. It's like a little dog, he's sitting in a computer, he's talking to another dog. He says, on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog. It's like the funniest thing in the whole world.

Speaker 3:
[17:14] Yeah, because you don't know whether what you're seeing at any given point is authentic or paid for or what the backstory might be of any piece of content you're seeing. It's very easy to make fake support for something, like a band, like these.

Speaker 1:
[17:31] Well, the funny thing here, right, if you've started a fake grassroots political movement that doesn't exist or if, you know, like the government is convincing people to believe something that isn't real, some crazy conspiracy, that's one thing. In this context, there's another word for PSYOP and it's marketing. And what I think is so interesting about this is people were shocked, outraged that this band grew and it wasn't just the fans, it wasn't real people promoting this, it didn't just get big because it's great. And what I think is so interesting about that is we've got this idea that social media is a meritocracy, that things rise and fall because the algorithm is in general, most of the time, responding to people liking or not liking something. And that is just not true. 20 years ago, Justin Bieber became super famous because he was just posting great, people loved it songs on YouTube and he became the biggest thing in the world and then he got so many views, they invited him on Ellen DeGeneres. That's not how it works anymore. There's a formula to this, there's a reason that some things go viral, there's people whose whole job it is to figure it out and make it happen again. Here's where I think we disagree. If we go back 20 or 30 years ago, if you go back to the 90s, no one would be shocked to hear that a band that was playing on Saturday Night Live had manufactured attention through a coordinated marketing campaign. That they'd gotten people to write and talk about them on TV and in print. But social media feels like you're just talking to another person. It feels like it's real. There's this veneer of authenticity. And I think that's what it is. I think it's a veneer. I think it's not real and that's not actually how the world works. And we've all gotten a little bit mixed up about what is happening when we go on the Internet.

Speaker 2:
[19:52] At the end of the day, there's sort of a spectrum with how much marketing involves fake accounts. Like I think most people would say it's totally acceptable to pay for ads for marketing, and maybe it's also accessible to pay for influencers, like real influencers for marketing. But then to go to the point where you're actually creating fake fans, that's where things kind of cross into, okay, people know that that happens, but to find out that a beloved band used those kinds of tactics, I think it gives this sense of this feeling of, oh, that's kind of dirty, you know, like there's certain brands, certain, yeah, certain personalities, certain celebrities, whatever, that you want to feel like a feel-good story about their rise. And if they lean into that brand as well, and say like, you know, we're the folksy one, that like we worked really hard, this was all based on pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps, and then you discover actually they're one and the same with all of these other inauthentic brands that kind of gamed their way to the top. That does make, it's a kind of betrayal.

Speaker 1:
[21:05] No, you're not wrong. And I also, I want to defend these here. Like, it wouldn't have happened if they, you know, weren't good at what they were doing, if their music wasn't interesting. And they do have this kind of indie outsider feel. I think people felt like, oh, I'm latching onto this thing, it's special. It's just for me, I get it, and other people don't. Which you don't feel, I don't think anyone would be shocked to find out that something like this was happening with Sabrina Carpenter. It might be like, oh, well, yeah, sure.

Speaker 2:
[21:30] Right, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[21:31] It's a major act.

Speaker 2:
[21:32] Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[21:33] But on the other hand, the shock and the outrage, I think people know this happens, but I don't think they get the scale that it's happening on.

Speaker 2:
[21:46] I mean, so one of the things that's kind of, because I didn't really know this story, I didn't realize until you just mentioned it, Tom, that the people found out about the quote-unquote site that was happening because the marketing firm just went on stage and announced it at South by Southwest. So the other thing I would say in defense of Geese is, this marketing company could also just be really tooting their own horn and ascribing way more of Geese's popularity to their tactics than the music of the band. And so, this is kind of an extra layer of intrigue here, which is why would they have announced this to the world? I mean, one, probably because it is so normalized for them, for people who work within this industry. But the second one is that they are also just trying to get more clients. They're trying to talk themselves up. So they might also convey an outsized impact of the work that they're doing. And to your point, Tom, people could all sort of, they could just like the fact that Geese's music is good. You know, so like, so it is kind of an interesting situation where there's, it's really hard to determine in hindsight how much of these inauthentic coordinated campaigns might have actually floated Geese to the top or whether Geese would have floated to the top anyway. Maybe they just simply got to the top faster and a little bit bigger. But yeah, it's, it's because everything is so enmeshed now, the authenticity and the inauthenticity, it's impossible to disentangle.

Speaker 3:
[23:26] It's the fact that it's unfair, I think, is what's got people really upset about this. And with Geese and every time this kind of thing comes up, is that it is unfair. It's pay to play. It's if you aren't cheating, then you're going to get pushed out by someone who is. And rightly, people are upset about that.

Speaker 1:
[23:50] I would love to hear from people, there's definitely people who are listening to this, who like this band, that have feelings about this. If you're upset about how Geese is a Psyop, reach out, our email is theinterface at bbc.com. I kind of feel bad for Geese. I think they're almost like a victim here. Probably some people are upset about that, but like, you hire somebody who says, hey, we want to help your band go viral, we think your music is great. Sure, go ahead, this probably stings if you're like a real indie musician. There's some people who are legitimately outraged about the way that the music industry manipulates things and makes it impossible for the little guy to succeed. That's absolutely real. But Geese, they're just what big bands are doing right now, and they're paying the cost. This is serious reputational damage. I mean, it's hard to get your street cred back as an indie band after something like this, but they're pretty good. I really like the song where he yells about how there's a bug in his car over and over. It's a pretty good lyric.

Speaker 3:
[24:48] How much are you being paid to say this, Tom?

Speaker 1:
[24:52] Well, they told me the check's in the mail. I'm actually not even a real guy.

Speaker 3:
[24:56] Are you a dog, Thomas?

Speaker 1:
[24:58] This is a wig. So I guess what I'm saying is just like what you like. If it's a marketing ploy and that's bugging you, just go listen to the music and decide if it's resonating with you or not. Isn't that what really matters?

Speaker 2:
[25:14] So I wanted to talk with you guys about my favorite topic in the world, data centers.

Speaker 1:
[25:22] We're doing a segment on data centers?

Speaker 2:
[25:25] As you both know. Specifically, there was news recently that Maine is about to become the first state in the US to temporarily ban data centers by law. This is temporary because it is meant to only be a moratorium until November of 2027. The legislature has already passed it and it's on the governor's desk. The reason why this is so interesting is because this is a pretty big inflection point in a broader array of data center protest and data center resentment that is sweeping across the US and also around the world. So at least 12 other states right now are also considering similar data center moratoriums according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and 62 percent of Americans in one of the latest polls say that data centers, the costs outweigh the benefits and they don't actually want them anymore. This is a pretty big shift from just a few years ago when a lot of communities were in fact welcoming data centers in with open arms, especially in the state of Virginia, which is the data center capital of the world. There were all these tax breaks for data centers. There was this idea that data centers would bring in economic benefit, economic opportunity, and a lot of tax revenue as well. In that state in particular, there's also been this massive plummet in public opinion against data centers and it is getting to the point where this state is considering rolling back some of the privileges that they gave to data centers before to prevent more of them coming in.

Speaker 1:
[27:10] Yeah, there was, we did a really great story. I had this freelancer named Aidan Walker go to a battlefield in Virginia, like a major historic Civil War battlefield. It's called the Manassas National Battlefield Park, which is, was going to be the site of one of the biggest data center projects in the world. And the local government rushed the approval through. And these Civil War reenactors, these guys who dress up in period correct uniforms and do a fake battle, because I think it's so awesome.

Speaker 2:
[27:49] I love these guys.

Speaker 1:
[27:52] They were protesting because they're going to, on this historic battlefield, they're going to like tear down this land and build these giant closed off data center campuses. And they pushed back, you know, like Civil War reenactors and a lot of other local. Pushing back in costume. That I don't know, but we did. You got to check this story out. We went down and took a bunch of photos of these guys in their costumes, like firing cannons. Like really some of the best images that we've published in quite a while. Highly recommend this story. But yeah, there was this local grassroots movement that pushed back against what was going to be one of the biggest data center projects in the world, and they just canceled it. They just pulled it back, because the public's sentiment about this issue is changing. The whole data center issue has become, like, I think, maybe not the, but one of the most important inflection points in the conversation about AI, and things are really changing.

Speaker 3:
[28:57] And it's worth recapping, right, I think, why people exactly have come to hate these data centers, and it's, one, that they have very little staff, they don't bring a huge amount of employment. Two, they eat up extraordinary amounts of electricity. I mean, they are just draining the grids from a lot of these places.

Speaker 2:
[29:19] That is the very issue that has stalled, actually, an OpenAI data center in the UK, because there's just not enough electricity to power the facility. So that's kind of like why people are angry. I mean, there's kind of very little benefits to the community, but then there are all of these very visceral costs. And so to the story that you commissioned, Tom, I mean, this is playing out across the country. This is a crazy stat. Apparently, Grassroot Org's fighting data centers has doubled over the past year to now 400 different grassroots organizations. This is according to Data Center Watch, which is a project, a kind of a curious project that is tracking data center resistance activity across the country that's actually funded by an AI company. So a little bit interesting there. But yeah, so like just in the last few weeks, I mean, if you just search all the news articles about data center resistance in either the local level, state level or even the national level, there's just an insane number of articles. Like I was going to compile a list of all of the things that have been happening and it got too long just in the last few weeks. So there was resistance against data centers in Missouri, Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Michigan, Texas, California, New Mexico within 14 days. Like it's nuts out there.

Speaker 1:
[30:53] This is becoming a big issue in the midterm elections, right? We're like halfway through the presidential term, like all these congressional seats are up for grabs. Data centers are like now a focal point.

Speaker 2:
[31:04] Yeah. The way that one policy analyst put it is that data centers are becoming a kitchen table issue, which I thought was such a good way of putting it. It's also kind of nuts to think about. We're talking about massive pieces of computational infrastructure, these inert giant buildings, and people are talking about that at their kitchen table and getting extremely fired up about this because of the way that it consumes and extracts all of these resources from these communities. You're right to say, Tom, that this has become also a gateway issue into a much broader resistance and resentment towards the AI industry because people are starting to make the connection. Wait a minute, the reason why all of these facilities are popping up at such speed and such scale and with a complete and total lack of transparency is because Silicon Valley is just trying to land grab all over the country, all over the world, and put up the facilities that they need, supposedly need to train the next generation of their technologies that are then potentially automating away a lot of jobs. So now, like in the latest polls, 80% of Americans are also feeling either very concerned or concerned about AI.

Speaker 1:
[32:26] Like, that's pretty remarkable.

Speaker 2:
[32:29] 80%!

Speaker 3:
[32:30] That is, that is the kind of political unity that you...

Speaker 1:
[32:34] I'd hate to be a chatbot right now.

Speaker 3:
[32:36] You don't see that outside, like, you know, 75%, 25% of Americans will disagree that, like, up is down. Like this is...

Speaker 1:
[32:46] Right, yeah. Yeah, right.

Speaker 2:
[32:47] Like the last time Americans, like 80% of Americans read on anything is, you know, beyond our recollection. It was sign-file.

Speaker 3:
[32:55] Yeah, it was hating the British in 1776.

Speaker 1:
[32:58] Right, we did kind of all get on board with that.

Speaker 3:
[33:00] So for me, the takeaway of this is that it is kind of an amazing example of people power actually working. Like, people are rejecting to this. And people in power, politicians are taking note and are actually listening to people. And real change is coming from these objections and these protests. It's like the opposite of the astroturfing type stuff we were talking about in the music industry. This is real people expressing real views and enough of them doing so that it's being listened to. It's kind of a really outful story for me.

Speaker 1:
[33:36] The fact that this data center issue has pivoted here, how are things going to change? What does this mean for the way the next couple years are going to play out?

Speaker 2:
[33:45] Yeah, so this is what's been so remarkable about seeing this rapid growth of data center resistance and the backlash against the AI industry more broadly, is it is actually having a direct effect now on the ways that these AI companies operate and the strategies that they have. So a couple, a few weeks back, OpenAI announced quite dramatically that it was shutting down one of its products, Sora, which is its video generation tool, which originally there was a lot of fanfare from the company about, and they just completely terminated the product line. The reason was, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, that the company is deeply constrained on computational resources. The reason why they're constrained is because they are not able to build out these data center facilities at the speed and scale that they need to to support the full portfolio of projects. Of course, there were other reasons that OpenAI had shut it down as well. It also just was flatlining and usage. It wasn't that popular. But they were directly being squeezed by this bottleneck in computational resources. This goes back to what you were saying, Nicky, about how this is a really optimistic story. I 100% agree, because this kind of resistance leading to real, tangible changes in the trajectory of AI development is one of the ways that I think really illustrates how anyone, anyone in the world, can actually have a significant say in the future of technology and the future of AI development.

Speaker 1:
[35:32] And it's this thing you hear all the time where it's like, call your representative, and it feels so impotent, like oh yeah, like they're going to listen. It's like, no, these guys, if you reach out to politicians, it actually can make a difference, because they need you to be pleased for them to get re-elected. It's not necessarily going to change everything every time, but it actually does matter, and I think that's what happened here.

Speaker 2:
[36:03] That is exactly what happened here.

Speaker 1:
[36:04] You know, elected officials picked up on the fact that people are upset about this and changed their tune.

Speaker 2:
[36:10] Politicians actually are starting to get unelected from their seats because of this issue. This has already happened in multiple localities across the US. There was one that just happened recently in Festus, Missouri, this month, where four city council members were unelected, half of the city council members, because they had approved a data center. And so, this is, I mean, like, I've talked with representatives myself who say, it doesn't matter how much money ends up in politics. If you ultimately hear from your constituents that they will fire you from the job, that is the best way to counter even millions, hundreds of millions of dollars of moneyed interests being pumped into a campaign.

Speaker 1:
[37:00] It may be some people have forgotten, but if you've been on the ride with us from the beginning, one of our first episodes, Karen said that data centers were going to become one of the biggest issues in technology. And I think we should take all the credit for this happening, right? Like we like a little bit on our show. No one had ever spoken about the subject before. And we showed up and we told people to call their representatives. It was pretty world-changing podcasting that we're doing right here. So, I mean, I guess, like, have you guys heard from the Pulitzer Committee yet? Maybe that comes later. But no, Karen, you called it.

Speaker 3:
[37:41] The one thing we didn't call is the involvement of the Civil War reenactors. That one was inspired by...

Speaker 1:
[37:48] That was kind of a curve ball. We didn't see that one coming. So, join us next week if you're in the UK. You can listen to us on BBC Sounds. Or if you're outside the UK, anywhere else, you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. Or just search for The Interface Podcast on YouTube. And I want to give a shout out to everyone who's been getting in touch with us and sending us messages. We really appreciate that. It's been a lot of fun. If you want to get in touch with three of us, you can reach out on email at theinterface at bbc.com. Or if you're into WhatsApp, you can send us some messages there at plus 44-333-207-2472. Or if you really want to follow along with us, you can get us on social media. The links to our accounts are right down there in the show notes.