Yesterday I had the absolute pleasure of going live with Jacob Ward, veteran technology journalist who runs The Rip Current—a Substack about the invisible forces shaping our lives. We made a TV show together 17 years ago and recently realized we’d both spent the intervening years thinking hard about the same questions from different angles. So we got on Substack Live, took your questions, and compared notes.
It’s a wide-ranging conversation that covers platform accountability, social media lawsuits, what it actually means to have agency over your own mind (shoutout to Nita Farahany), and where genuine hope lives in all of this. Jacob is one of the clearest thinkers I know on this stuff, and I think you’ll find, like I did, that the conversation ends up somewhere more optimistic than you’d expect going in.
Some of what we got into:
Why the recent verdicts against Meta and YouTube matter beyond the dollar amounts
Why infinite scroll is anti-life: everything ends except the Instagram feed and the YouTube homepage
The term “clanker” as cultural antibody and what it tells us about young people’s allergic reaction to AI efficiency propaganda
And what AI should genuinely be used for–hint: not AI girlfriends and marginally better PowerPoints
Watch the conversation above. Then subscribe to The Rip Current.
And if this conversation made you want to actually do something: the AI Go Bag is our step-by-step guide to migrating away from ChatGPT and taking yourself with you when you go. Grab it now and get moving!
We’re doing a part two soon. What do you want us to cover? Drop your questions and topics in the comments.
Thanks to Ariel Meadow Stallings, Damian Sol
Looking forward to next time!
— Baratunde
P.S. Remember BLAIR, our custom AI co-producer? We just got nominated for a Webby for Best Creative Use of AI & Technology because of BLAIR! Baby robot’s first nom 🥹. We couldn’t be more proud. Vote for BLAIR below (and the human team behind them) and if they win we’ll do a little interview where they can wax poetic about their “feelings” and accomplishments.
If this is your first intro or you need a refresher what they’re capable of, check this out:
Thanks to the entire Life With Machines team, especially Layne Deyling Cherland and Alie Kilts for editorial and production support.
