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This week on Uncanny Valley, our hosts look at what’s at stake for Anthropic after the company sued the Department of Defense. They also take a look at the strategy behind the Trump administration sharing action-filled war memes on social media and share a scoop about how a controversial company is taking in millions in government contracts by helping organize America250 celebrations. Plus: Could AI come for the jobs of venture capitalists?
Articles mentioned in this episode:
- Anthropic Claims Pentagon Feud Could Cost It Billions
- A Trumpworld Events Company Is Raking In Millions in Federal Contracts
- OpenAI and Google Workers File Amicus Brief in Support of Anthropic Against the US Government
- Can AI Kill the Venture Capitalist?
You can follow Brian Barrett on Bluesky at @brbarrett, Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer, and Leah Feiger on Bluesky at @leahfeiger. Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com.
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Transcript
Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.
Brian Barrett: Hey, it's Brian. Zoë, Leah, and I have really enjoyed being your new hosts these past few weeks, and we want to hear from you. If you like the show and have a minute, please leave us a review in the podcast or app of your choice. It really helps us reach more people, and for any questions and comments, you can always reach us at uncannyvalley@WIRED.com. Thank you for listening. On to the show.
Zoë Schiffer: Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoë Schiffer, director of business and industry.
Brian Barrett: I'm Brian Barrett, executive editor.
Leah Feiger: And I'm Leah Feiger, senior politics editor.
Zoë Schiffer: This week, we're diving into Anthropic's lawsuit against the Department of Defense after the company was labeled as a supply chain risk. We're also discussing why on earth the Trump administration is sharing action film memes about the war in Iran and how a little known events company formed by some of the organizers of the January 6th rally is making bank in Trump's second term in office. Also, we'll talk about whether venture capitalists should be worried about AI taking their jobs. OK. We have a ton to get into, so let's just dive right in. The saga between Anthropic and the Department of Defense is far from over. I actually think we're going to be hearing about this for many, many months to come. On Monday, Anthropic filed a lawsuit against the DOD pushing back against the agency's decision to label the company as a supply chain risk, which is pretty detrimental to Anthropic's business. Anthropic is basically arguing that the government is infringing upon its free speech rights, saying, quote, "The Constitution does not allow the government to wield its enormous power to punish a company for its protected speech." Now, that's the lawsuit that Anthropic filed in San Francisco, but there's another accompanying lawsuit that it filed in DC, which accuses the DOD of unfairly discriminating and retaliating against Anthropic. In the meantime, the company is also seeking a temporary restraining order to continue working with its military partners.
Brian Barrett: This continues to be just a fascinating face-off and I think really unprecedented. What's interesting about the lawsuit to me too is I think it was our first look at Anthropic acknowledging, "Yeah, this is actually going to potentially cost us hundreds of millions, maybe billion dollars because you're making it so that nobody wants to work with us." It's been a look at just how actual the impact has been in the week or two since this started.
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. The government actually doesn't need to win the lawsuit, I don't think, for this to really impact Anthropic's business, because the company is claiming that already a bunch of its contracts that were about to close, very, very lucrative contracts, are falling apart as potential partners are saying, "Wow, we have other options and it's frankly way too risky to work with you."
Leah Feiger: No, they've made them a lightning rod. And I don't know that even in a year from now, I'm not sure that they're going to be able to get the stink of this off them. No matter how the lawsuit resolves, no matter if these contracts end up coming their way back, just because Claude happens to be better, X, Y, and Z. It doesn't matter if there are two competitive bids, Anthropic is one of them, you might as well go with the people who aren't pissing off the president right now.
Brian Barrett: And on the other end of it, you've got consumers rallying around Anthropic and saying, "This is the good one." And so their usage in terms of they're selling a lot of monthly subscriptions to your average Joe, but I don't see a world in which those make up the gap.
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. Enterprise sales are the vast majority of Anthropic's business. And I want to say one other thing, Brian, and sorry to cut you off, but it's driving me insane because we've been talking a lot about branding and perception as this fight has gone on and how the Anthropic has come out looking really good. But I have to bring your attention to that blog post that Dario Amodei, the CEO, published that was basically where things stand with the Department of War. And he did say Department of War. He used that language all throughout. I don't think the average person looked at that and thought he's grappling, but I looked at it and was like, "Oh, no, he can't even use the proper name for the agency because he is so desperate to get back in their good graces." And I actually think he's doing a lot more of that than people think right now.
Leah Feiger: The Anthropic Chief Commercial Officer, Paul Smith, specifically said the commercial partners are concerned in backing out or hesitant to make deals. This quote stayed with me. He said, "A financial services customer paused negotiations over a $15 million deal because of the supply chain label, and two leading financial services companies have refused to close deals valued together at $80 million unless they gain the right to unilaterally cancel their contracts for any reason." I think that it's lovely that consumers might be rallying around them, but I'm not sure that any sort of subscription push is going to make up for this.
Zoë Schiffer: No. Katy Perry signing up for Claude Pro, or whatever that tier is called, is not going to save Anthropic's business.
Leah Feiger: I'm sorry. That was an unbelievable moment on social media. I love when celebrities get involved. I love when it's Katy Perry that gets involved. There's just so many different parts of that. It scratched every single itch for me.
Brian Barrett: Yeah. Of all the things that take a stand over in this moment, it is a fun, "You know what? Anthropic." I will say in terms of taking a stand too, we've seen a lot of other companies in Silicon Valley come to Anthropic's defense here. I think maybe less out of a sense of buddy-buddiedom than a sense of, "Oh, if it can happen to them, it can definitely happen to us." So we had more than 30 employees from OpenAI and Google, including Google DeepMind's Chief Scientist, Jeff Dean, filed a brief on Monday in support of Anthropic. Microsoft followed up, filed their own brief in support of Anthropic. I don't know that that's going to actually do anything in the long run, but it does signal at least that this is a fight that more than just Anthropic is willing to have.
Leah Feiger: What are the chances here that they get the Trump administration to back down, that they get DOD to back down?
Brian Barrett: I think very, very small. I think just because the way that this is structured, and when you go to designating the company as a supply chain risk, the mechanisms that do that, there's not a clear, at least as far as I'm aware, way to legally challenge that. Emil Michael, who has been at the center of this for the Pentagon, has said, "We don't see a way in which this shakes out where Anthropic has a case," which of course he's going to say that, but I do think DOD seems very confident.
Leah Feiger: That label is so serious to me. It really feels like the people that get the XXX on their airplane tickets. And even if it ended up being some clerical error, you can't get those taken off for a long time. You're a supply chain risk, that doesn't just get expunged if you're able to prove otherwise.
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, that's the stuff that I think is beyond the outcome of the lawsuit. It's already damaging Anthropic's relationship with potential partners, like we said. And I think because the product is so close, even if you're talking about coding models where Anthropic seems to have the lead, the best Codex model is actually quite close to Claude Code at this point. And so I do think partners have a very real alternative to turn to if they don't want to take on the risk of working with Anthropic in this moment.
Brian Barrett: And a bunch of government agencies have already made the switch or are making the switch and in some ways just showing that it's possible to do. They're providing case studies that it's maybe not that bad.
Zoë Schiffer: No, no, it's not that bad. And there's not a huge lock-in effect to switch everything over to OpenAI. I'm sure some, there's been custom tooling that's built, but for the most part, if you as a business want to switch from Anthropic to OpenAI, 30 minutes. It's not a huge technical task.
Brian Barrett: All right. Well, we're going to keep an eye on what happens with the lawsuits and any future anthropic DOD developments. But the DOD has more on its mind than AI companies. Obviously, the war on Iran continues to unfold with increasing uncertainty of how long it will last. It seems as though even the Trump administration is surprised that it has gone even this long—which, how is that possible? Trump administration being criticized for more than 1,000 casualties inflicted so far in this conflict—many of them civilians—seven US service members as of this recording. Markets are falling, oil prices spiking. Through it all, the administration has been posting. They've been posting like there's no tomorrow, which I say that almost literally.
Archival Audio: Welcome home, sir. Strength and honor. Strength and honor. What will you do without freedom? Maverick's inbound.
Brian Barrett: The official White House X account has been posting memes incorporating clips from action movies, TV shows, video games. You've got Dragon Ball Z, you've got Top Gun, you've got Yu-Gi-Oh. There's just a lot going on here. Here's a little example of the kind of stuff that's hitting their feed.
Archival Audio: … to find out. Maximum effort. Here it comes. Now, take this. Flawless Victory.
Brian Barrett: That's just one example. They're all kind of like that, and they are being rightly criticized. I think what to say other than that, quite a statement on where we are at societally. Can you imagine Winston Churchill posting memes?
Leah Feiger: Brian, you're being so casual about it. This is horrific.
Brian Barrett: Oh, yeah.
Leah Feiger: This is really, really horrific.
Brian Barrett: I wouldn't say casual. I would say I am—what is it? Inured, just broken down.
Leah Feiger: Used to it.
Brian Barrett: Used to it. Yeah.
Leah Feiger: Broken. I did like the, "Would Winston Churchill be posting these memes?" It's really the question of the day for me. The Trump administration—between different federal X accounts—the White House accounts have been pushing really unhinged stuff for a very long time now. Since Trump returned to office, the amount of things during DHS and ICE's takeover of Minneapolis and Chicago, their response to that was very much meme-y, it was very much trying to hit the zeitgeist in very creepy ways. It was all of these like, "The Jetstar holiday," but about immigrants. It was horrible—about immigrants! This is a new one for me though. Even I am inundated with this content on a daily basis and I've been shocked.
Zoë Schiffer: I have a question though, because war propaganda is not new.
Leah Feiger: For sure.
Zoë Schiffer: I hope this isn't the dumbest take ever, but what is a podcast for, if not sharing your dumb takes? I loved the book In Memoriam—gay historical romance from 2023. It was one of my top books. And one, my takeaway from that book was, wow, young men during World War I were inundated with information about how glorious and amazing the war was. And then they went out to fight and they were in trench warfare, which is literally hell. And they were just completely emotionally, physically, spiritually brutalized by that experience. They had no idea what they were getting into. And that's obviously a very extreme example, but I'm just saying, a government saying, "Look how amazing this is"—what is the difference here? I know there is one, but I want you to articulate what it is.
Brian Barrett: No, I hear that. I think that's a really smart point that it's the evolution of propaganda. I would say, if I'm going to draw a distinction in real time, which is always dangerous, I think there's a difference between recruiting efforts, which maybe those were, where this feels more directionally toward just to get reposts and likes for their own sake. It feels a little bit nihilistic in that sense. And if anything, they use a lot of clips without permission, and that's intentional too, to generate outrage from the libs so you can own them. It just feels like it is caught in the cycle less about saying, "Come join the war effort and support this," and more about, "Look how mad we can make people."
Leah Feiger: And I think that's exactly it. This isn't just a World War II, "Women, it's time for you to get to the factories. This is your patriotic duty while the men are off fighting." This is not League of Their Own, split screen, everyone's doing their part. And that's not even what they're asking for. They're asking for that outrage. They're asking for that anger that perhaps distracts from the fact that seven service members have died thus far, distracts from the fact that this doesn't appear to have an end in sight, that Trump actually changes his mind with every other press conference, as does Pete Hegseth. To me, it's a very strong man approach. I'll give you that, Zoë. Absolutely. This is wartime propaganda. And so perhaps then the conversation is like, "To what end?"
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I think that that's the difference that makes sense to me as you guys are talking. If the purpose of World War I propaganda was support for the war effort, they're saying the purpose of this propaganda is also—they're not calling it that—but is also support for the military effort. But if it's in fact outrage, that's a very different aim.
Brian Barrett: I think it's a combination of that. I think it's the outrage. And then I might be contradicting myself here too, but I think there's a do it for the LOLs kind of attitude about it where nothing means anything. So we're going to rile up the libs by using their stuff. And at the same time, we're going to have this winky ironic detachment from war where none of this actually means anything. And if you get upset, it's because you're triggered, which just feels debasing. Obviously, there are problems with glorifying how great war is. This seems to be more just like—
Leah Feiger: This isn't glorifying it. It's gamifying it.
Brian Barrett: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yep, 100 percent.
Zoë Schiffer: Trust Brian Barrett to find a copyright angle on the war in Iran.
Brian Barrett: I'm obsessed with that.
Leah Feiger: Ben Stiller was angry about Tropic Thunder being used, but that is the important difference to me. There is something, whereas for better or for worse, the idea of, if you go off to fight for this very just cause, this is what you're fighting for. You're fighting for freedom, you're fighting for patriotism. And this is saying people aren't real. We're using cartoons here. These deaths are not real and more than that, they're kind of funny.
Brian Barrett: But not that funny.
Leah Feiger: But not funny. Really, really not funny, you guys. This is very, very sad.
Brian Barrett: Yeah. No. Yeah, yeah.
Leah Feiger: So as the Trump administration is posting their way through the Iran war, I want to talk about a different WIRED scoop that we have that's been looking at Trumpworld and looking at a number of government contracts that I am obsessed with. Zoë and I did this story along with David Gilbert and Matt Giles on WIRED.com published this week. And it's about how an events company whose associates helped organize the January 6th, 2021 rally has been majorly benefiting from government contracts. The company, called Event Strategies, is based in Virginia and has signed contracts worth over $26 million with the US government. That's without taking into account a more long-term contract with the General Services Administration that could be worth up to $100 million over the next 15 years. If you're wondering why on earth should I care about this events company and the fact that they're making money, this to me is one of the first big examples we've seen of associates in Trumpworld benefiting from the grift. And this company—it's a 26-year-old company—it received about $50,000 in government contracts over the past decade before getting all of this money once Trump reentered office. And now they're making millions from contracting bids that have received very little competition according to our reporting. A lot of these contracts are related to America250, which is an 18-month-long commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Brian Barrett: I want to say two things. One is you say that this is one of the first apparent grifty relationships in the second Trump administration. I think we should qualify that by saying outside of Trump's own family, a lot of deals with the boys—
Leah Feiger: For sure.
Brian Barrett: —that you could raise an eyebrow at. The second thing is, what struck me about this is that it feels so clearly a reward for putting on the Jan 6th rally that led to the Jan 6th riot that was one of the darkest days in democracy and recent memory. And the idea that this company is now getting tens of millions, potentially more than $100 million of contracts as a, "We'll take care of you, good job," it's not surprising. Again, so little of this is surprising, but it is still remarkable.
Zoë Schiffer: To go over the timeline, they get a few government contracts and the Biden administration comes in zero government contracts. And now Trump 2 is happening and millions, if not more than 100 million. That's a really big rise for this firm.
Leah Feiger: To get into the specifics, some of these contracts, for example, in September, DOD paid Event Strategies almost $200,000 for what was listed as a backyard cookout and performance. Again, a lot of them related to America250, started as a bipartisan effort, we're going to be celebrating this country. That doesn't feel very—sure, it's inherently political, but it was bipartisan. And then to have Event Strategies come in and be entirely in charge, basically, of doing the event planning behind this. The tenor of these celebrations have already gotten a lot of consternation from Democrats who were like, "Where is this money going?" There was some great reporting on that. And now we're able to say, "This is where it's going. These are the people involved. These are the contracts." Over the last few months, these large banners throughout DC have been hanging from federal buildings all over. We weren't able to say with 100 percent certainty that this is exactly tied to Event Strategies, but those banners that feature Trump's face and give off very serious Grindelwald vibes are part of this supposed America250 celebration as well. We're in for a couple of months of some very weird stuff, honestly. I wish I could be more eloquent than that, but it's odd. It's very odd stuff. There's freedom trucks.
Brian Barrett: Did you just say Grindelwald vibes?
Leah Feiger: I did say Grindelwald vibes.
Brian Barrett: OK. And that is a Harry Potter character, Gellert Grindelwald?
Leah Feiger: Yes.
Zoë Schiffer: Wow. Brian, have you not read Harry Potter?
Brian Barrett: No, I've read Harry Potter. I'm just saying I'm not able to pull Gellert as the first name of Grindelwald. And also, I do forget who Grindelwald was in the Harry Potter lore, and I'm not ashamed of it.
Zoë Schiffer: You haven't read it enough. You haven't read it enough.
Leah Feiger: Yes. For anyone that's in DC right now that's seeing Trump's visage next to Make America Safe Again on DOJ, the DOJ building, the federal building, it's unnerving. It's almost comical to talk about, but it's very unnerving. Our reporter Makena Kelly has been walking around DC just looking at this. These banners are hanging all over and it's changed the tenor of the city. It's quite a choice.
Brian Barrett: And at the Department of Education, you've got banner hanging there, Charlie Kirk. I believe I'm right in saying, "Believe strongly that there should not be a Department of Education." So yeah, it is a mess. And again, I think, speaks to what we can expect from further celebrations this summer. I think we're looking at a UFC fight on the White House lawn, things of that nature. So no, it's going to be interesting. And then I'm sure this company will be at the center of a whole lot of it.
Leah Feiger: Absolutely. And again, just to be so clear, getting contracts, the way that getting federal contracts work is there has to be a competitive system. There is CICA, which is known as the competition clause, basically. There is supposed to be that to avoid favoritism. So the fact that all of these contracts were given without serious competition is also a cause for concern, and something that we're going to be paying really close attention to going forward with other Trumpworld and Trump associates. This might be the beginning of an apparent grifty nature, whatever we're looking at, but I have no doubt it's not going to be the last for Trump too.
Zoë Schiffer: OK. Before we go to break, I am going to wrench the conversation back to my favorite topic, which is artificial intelligence. So you guys, there has been a lot of talk and some evidence of AI disrupting jobs in certain industries, but few groups have been more bullish on betting on this technology than venture capitalists. But it turns out that VCs could potentially be replaced by AI themselves in the not too distant future. So we published a story this week by Arielle Pardes about a platform called ADIN, the Autonomous Deal Investing Network, which was launched in 2025. And it basically uses AI agents to do the work of human analysts that would typically be involved in venture deal making. If you put in a startup's pitch deck, out comes a very detailed analysis of its business model, its founding team, a list of diligence questions and compliance risks. This is stuff that can take analysts days, if not weeks, and ADIN can do in an hour or two. And then when the agents like a startup, they actually suggest how much ADIN's fund should allocate toward the deal. Of course, then humans come in and do their due diligence, but I think it's a very interesting look at where things could be headed. And obviously, there's irony in the fact that agents could disrupt VCs themselves.
Brian Barrett: The irony is my favorite part because I feel like venture capitalists have largely positioned themselves as immune to the effects of AI because they're very special and surely a machine can—
Zoë Schiffer: It's art, not science.
Brian Barrett: Yeah. It's art, not science. Machines can take every job, but not us. The ladder stops just below VC for them in a way that is entertaining and fun. So I wonder how many people are actually using this now, especially because venture capitalists themselves are so skeptical of it, it seems like. Who's the audience? Is it finding real traction out there?
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. So the way that ADIN works is they have scouts that go out and look for potential deals, and then those scouts can make money on said deals. So I think this would be something where VCs wouldn't necessarily be adopting the network, but people would be going around them, and they wouldn't be as necessary, as useful. I think there was another great irony, which Arielle pulled out in her piece, which is that also, if you can start a company with just yourself and a bunch of AI agents, you're vibe coding your way to success. Do you even need all of that venture capital money to begin with?
Leah Feiger: I don't know. There's so much to me, there's so much fear about AI taking jobs. I feel like every other article that is like, "And these people are nervous, and these people are nervous." Brian's right, the part that is funny is these are the folks that have just gone all in on AI, but I'm still waiting. I'm still waiting for AI to take the jobs. Has it yet? Will it yet?
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I think that there's recent research. I was talking to Will Knight, one of our fantastic AI reporters, about this yesterday, and he was saying, "Look, the evidence just isn't there yet for many, many industries. The hype has, as it often does, gone way out ahead of the actual data here. We don't know that AI is taking jobs." But I will say, being in San Francisco, I am hearing a lot of people say engineering teams in particular are very bloated right now. Agents can actually do a lot of the work, and you definitely need humans on top managing those agents, but you could cut a lot of teams by 80 percent, 50 percent, 60 percent. And so I think that we are going to see more AI-related job loss, first in engineering and then in other sectors.
Brian Barrett: Marc Andreessen, famous venture capitalist, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz, said this very thing in a recent podcast. Listen to how special he thinks his own profession is.
Marc Andreessen, archival audio: Every great venture capitalist in the last 70 years has missed most of the great companies of his generation. If it was a science, you could eventually have somebody who just dials it in and gets 8 out of 10, but in the real world, it's not like that. It's just you're in the fluke business. And so there's an intangibility to it. There's a taste aspect, the human relationship aspect, the psychology. And I don't want to be definitive, but it's possible that that is quite literally timeless. And when the AIs are doing everything else, that may be one of the last remaining fields that people are still doing.
Brian Barrett: I'll say these are the same people who think that AI can replace writers and artists, but it's VC that has that intangibility and that artistic process that really matters. It's rich. It's a rich text.
Zoë Schiffer: He sounds exactly like us when we're explaining why AI could never replace a human editor. We're like, "There's a taste aspect. AI could never."
Brian Barrett: So we're right. We're right though.
Zoë Schiffer: I know. I know.
Leah Feiger: Did I ever tell you guys about when I saw Marc Andreessen at a play?
Zoë Schiffer: Oh, yes.
Leah Feiger: It's pertinent here because the play was called McNeal, and it starred Robert Downey Jr. And it was about this novelist, this award-winning novelist who used AI to write his books. And the play gets into all of this. It gets into AI, reality. It gets into difficult family conversations, plagiarism, health, but all of this very much wrapped in and with the question of who can AI replace? What can AI replace? Well, humans understand that. So the fact that Marc Andreessen is sitting in front of me and Steven at this play as he is going on to make all of these statements, and this was his takeaway. We went in and had just such different experiences and takeaways. I'm going to think about that for a very, very long time. We consumed the same culture for a solid three hours.
Brian Barrett: Meanwhile, I think venture capitalists probably do have more to worry about from a looming recession than from ADIN anytime soon.
Leah Feiger: Yes.
Brian Barrett: Coming up after the break, we're going to share our WIRED/TIRED picks for the week. So stay with us.
Zoë Schiffer: It's time for our WIRED/TIRED segment. Whatever is new and cool is WIRED, duh. And whatever is passé, whatever we're over is TIRED. OK. Are we ready?
Leah Feiger: Yes. Very ready.
Brian Barrett: I'm ready.
Zoë Schiffer: Brian, you go first.
Brian Barrett: TIRED is Grindelwald. No, TIRED—
Zoë Schiffer: No.
Brian Barrett: Whoever he is. No, my TIRED is flying cars. Yeah. Eight regions across the United States are going to be taking part in a three-year pilot program that is going to actually let these electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, these flying car-type of vehicles, take to the skies. I think they're dumb. I think they're going to be basically helicopters, but more. I don't know. I don't really see the point of it other than to give very wealthy people a slightly shorter way to get places and to messy up our skies. So I'm TIRED of them already before they even take to the skies. And then WIRED, I'm going to say hybrid vehicles.
Zoë Schiffer: Wow.
Brian Barrett: The US has spent so long going away from electric and hybrid because oil prices were low, because the administration loves oil, but I think the current situation, Iran and spiking oil prices, is a good reminder that we cannot keep clinging to this as a way to power our cars. I wish there were more hybrid vehicles on the market. In the US, there aren't. So this is a WIRED and also a plea to get people to make them again.
Leah Feiger: OK, that's a good one. I'm interested in that. Can I go?
Zoë Schiffer: Please.
Leah Feiger: My WIRED is the fact that I'm not wearing this massive puffer coat right now anytime I leave the house in New York. It is finally becoming less horrific outside. It was a really, really rough two months, you guys. It was so cold, it was snowy, and then there was a ton of rain, and then it was super cold again. Meanwhile, all of our apartments are so hot because it's all this intense building heating, you're just opening windows. It feels ridiculous. I felt ill for the last two months. My TIRED though is vaguely depressing, which is on Monday it was the hottest day in record in March so far in New York, which is really concerning, climate change and all. I'm so excited to throw away my puffy coats and boots into the back of the closet for a couple more months, but it feels hard to celebrate this early, I'll be honest.
Zoë Schiffer: That's real. OK. I don't know if this—I feel like I keep expanding the definition of WIRED and TIRED. And Leah keeps saying, "What are you talking about?" But I'm going to try. OK. TIRED is the discourse regarding quizzes that are supposed to tell you if you prefer AI writing to human writing.
Leah Feiger: This is good.
Zoë Schiffer: I feel like this entire conversation misunderstands how people actually consume content and consume art, most of all, which is that we are influenced by knowing about who wrote something, and that you having a visceral and negative reaction to reading something that you later realize was created by AI is actually a legitimate part of that experience. And that just seeing something in a vacuum—it's not how humans consume things. I think WIRED is the take by Claire Dederer who wrote Monsters, which I thought was a very smart assessment of this very issue. And she argued—this was a “can you separate the art from that artist” argument. And she talks about it like a stain, that even if you want to separate art from artists, it is like a stain that sticks with it. And while you can still watch those movies, read those books by someone you think is a reprehensible human, it ends up influencing you for good or bad. I think that's valid.
Leah Feiger: That's our show for today. We're going to link to all the stories we spoke about today in the show notes. If you have any comments, you can find the episode transcripts at WIRED.com to discuss. Uncanny Valley is produced by Kaleidoscope Content. Adriana Tapia produced this episode. It was mixed by Amar Lal at Macro Sound. It was fact checked by Daniel Roman. Pran Bandi is our New York studio engineer. Mark Leyda is our San Francisco studio engineer. Kimberly Chua is our digital production senior manager. Kate Osborn is our executive producer, and Katie Drummond is WIRED's global editorial director.
