We check back in with John Vanderslice, the subject of our limited series Keep the Dream Alive (soundcloud.com/trueanonpod/sets/keep-the-dream-alive), a year after its release. We chat about scraping by in the music industry, the Bay Area scene, and John's new record.

Check out John's upcoming tour dates on his instagram: instagram.com/johnvanderslice/ 

The final performance of TrueAnon's Year of the Smile will be on April 15 in Austin, TX: prekindle.com/event/53167-trueanon-austin

Keep the Dream Alive: One Year Later w/ John Vanderslice

To hear the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/TrueAnonPod
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We grease up the night sticks and put on the peaked caps and head over to the grey bar hotel in order to prepare the bed for our newest guest: Donald J. Trump.  We also discuss Stormy Daniel’s and Micheal Cohen.

Episode 278: Storm Is Coming (trailer)

Charles and Alex worry that A.I. listicles may threaten the integrity of Eric Alper's prompts. Plus there is news of an 8-year-old rap god emerging in Pakistan. Fortune Kit on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fortunekit

154 - Eric Alper Cheat Sheet

We are joined by Abeba Birhane — Senior Fellow in Trustworthy AI at the Mozilla Foundation — for a critical discussion about the release of GPT-4 and OpenAI. We also get into the excellent work that Abeba and colleagues have done mapping the specific values encoded into, and the surveillance pipeline that influences, the vast majority of AI/ML research. 

••• Abeba’s twitter: https://twitter.com/Abebab
••• Abeba’s paper – The Values Encoded in Machine Learning Research https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3531146.3533083 

Stuff we referenced
••• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says AI will reshape society, acknowledges risks: 'A little bit scared of this' https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/openai-ceo-sam-altman-ai-reshape-society-acknowledges/story?id=97897122 
••• GPT-4 Technical Report https://cdn.openai.com/papers/gpt-4.pdf
••• Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4 https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12712
••• The Sparks of AGI? Or the End of Science? https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/the-sparks-of-agi-or-the-end-of-science
••• GPT-4 and professional benchmarks: the wrong answer to the wrong question https://aisnakeoil.substack.com/p/gpt-4-and-professional-benchmarks

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills   

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

243. GPT-4 and the Politics of OpaqueAI (ft. Abeba Birhane)

It’s a fan cam episode for our favorite tech columnist, Brian Merchant, who had two pieces come out recently that are back-to-back bangers. First is about why all the people making and selling AI keep talking about being afraid of their own creations. It’s Frankenstein meets sorcerer's apprentice but as a marketing strategy for their own power (and their unique ability to control that power). Second is about what all these people should actually be afraid of. As history shows us, there is more than one way to crash a computer.

Article we discuss
••• Afraid of AI? The startups selling it want you to be | Brian Merchant https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-03-31/column-afraid-of-ai-the-startups-selling-it-want-you-to-be
••• Silicon Valley elites are afraid. History says they should be | Brian Merchant: https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-03-24/column-how-afraid-should-silicon-valley-be 

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills   

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

245. Shook Ones (Tech Style)

Matt Christman goes off live on http://www.twitch.tv/chapotraphouse
Topics: papal elections, Mormonism and frontier, anti-Masonic party, collective action, nuclear weapons

Grill Stream

244 - Always Rootin' Never Tootin' 03.31.23

Charles and Alex find out that Motley Crue is feuding, Amazon sells cool hats, and the OK Go guy is making a Beanie Baby movie with Al Gore's daughter. Fortune Kit on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fortunekit

156 - Kelly Singer Clarkson Hat Flat-Brimmed Hat

We go in-depth on an article that has not received the attention it is due: an investigation into an automated welfare fraud system in the Netherlands, which is based on unprecedented access to the machine learning model, its training data, and operational handbooks. Through a deep analysis of the systems mechanics, this investigation goes beyond validating what we already know to be true about how such algorithms discriminate. It shows how these systems are complex and targeted in their discrimination, while also being simplistic and arbitrary in their decisions.

Articles we discuss 
••• Inside the Suspicion Machine https://www.wired.com/story/welfare-state-algorithms/ 
••• Welfare surveillance system violates human rights, Dutch court rules https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/05/welfare-surveillance-system-violates-human-rights-dutch-court-rules 

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills   

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

247. Automated Welfare – the Simple Violence of Complex Machines

Returning champion David A. Banks joins us for a supersized discussion about his new book, The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America. How do cities have to act like social media influencers to attract new flows of capital? How are fundamental dynamics of capitalist urban development — growth machines, rent gaps, spatial fixes, destructive renovation, entrepreneurial competition — updated and upgraded to fit into the techno-financial conditions of today? Why does every downtown have the same damn wine bar now? Join us for answers to all these questions and much more.

••• David’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520383456/the-city-authentic 
••• David’s twitter: https://twitter.com/DA_Banks 
••• David’s substack: https://otherday.substack.com/ 

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills   

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

249/250. We Built This City on Authenticity (ft. David A. Banks)

Cory Doctorow — returning champion, friend of the show, and author of the new novel Red Team Blues — joins us to chat about fiction (science), finance (crypto), forensics (accounting), and much more. You never knew forensic accounting could be so radical and thrilling, but Red Team Blues is an immanent critique of techno-financial capitalism in the guise of a page ripping novel. We cover a lot of ground, all of it fascinating, as we always do when Cory comes on TMK.

••• Buy Red Team Blues: https://craphound.com/shop/
••• Follow Cory: https://twitter.com/doctorow 
••• Cory’s blog: https://pluralistic.net/ 

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills   

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

257. Red Team Blues (ft. Cory Doctorow)

Charles and Alex catch up on OK Go's cereal lawsuit, Rivers Cuomo's visit to the Rock Hall of Fame, and guys who still talk about Bored Apes every day. Fortune Kit on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fortunekit

165 - Perfect Score

A podcast about technology and political economy /// Agitprop against innovation and capital /// Hosted by Jathan Sadowski and Edward Ongweso Jr., Produced by Jereme Brown /// Hello friends and enemies

Listen anywhere that fine podcasts are distributed. Subscribe at patreon.com/thismachinekills to get premium episodes every week.

243. GPT-4 and the Politics of OpaqueAI (ft. Abeba Birhane)

This Machine Kills

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