‘Uncanny Valley’: Donald Trump’s Davos Drama, AI Midterms, and ChatGPT’s Last Resort

Welcome back to Uncanny Valley! This week, WIRED’s Brian Barrett and Leah Feiger are joining the show as the new cohosts, alongside Zoë Schiffer. And our attention has been drawn to the drama going down in the quaint little town of Davos. Zoë tells us how at the World Economic Forum’s event, major AI players like Anthropic have been the protagonists—sharing the spotlight with President Donald Trump, who insists on invading Greenland. Brian has been looking at how ICE activity is developing, and Leah is forcing us to think about this year’s midterms because tech giants are already pouring millions into it. Plus, we dive into why OpenAI's decision to roll out ads in ChatGPT was a long time coming.

Articles mentioned in this episode:

• Pro-AI Super PACs Are Already All In on the Midterms
• ‘I’m Witnessing a Lot of Emptiness’: How ICE Uprooted Normal Life in Minneapolis
• Ads Are Coming to ChatGPT. Here’s How They’ll Work

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 [email protected].

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Transcript

Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.

Zoë Schiffer: Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoë Schiffer, WIRED's director of business and industry.

Today, we're starting a bit of a new chapter here on the show, and I want to introduce you to my brand new cohost, Brian Barrett, our executive editor here at WIRED, and Leah Feiger, our senior politics editor. Brian and Leah, welcome to the show.

Brian Barrett: Hi, Zoë.

Leah Feiger: Hey, guys. So thrilled to be here.

Zoë Schiffer: So longtime listeners know the show has taken on a bunch of different formats since it launched. We had the Gadget Lab days, the roundtable, news episodes. We really created this podcast because we want to bring you the best stories and the best takes about what's happening in tech and politics.

Leah Feiger: That's all going to stay the same, but this time we're going to go even deeper. We're peeling back the curtain and telling you what we're hearing from our sources across Silicon Valley and in DC. What trends you should be watching for, the news that's already happened or about to break, and how we are thinking about all of it. Basically, you're going to be added to the group chat on Slack.

Brian Barrett: God, help us all. No, it's going to be great. Mostly what we hope is that we can give you a sense of this rapidly-changing world from a WIRED lens. We're going to be honest, we're going to be curious, we're going to be looking towards the future and taking you there with us.

Zoë Schiffer: OK. So we have a bunch of stuff to discuss today. The World Economic Forum kicked off this week in Switzerland, and it's already produced a ton of drama.

Leah Feiger: I can't turn away from it, honestly.

Brian Barrett: I can. I can and I do.

Leah Feiger: Are you able to turn it off just immediately?

Brian Barrett: Very much so. It's so easy just to say, "Nope."

Leah Feiger: No, Al Gore is booing people. He's heckling the commerce secretary. How do we not talk about this at all times?

Zoë Schiffer: I know. I know. But also, ChatGPT announced it's going to start pushing ads, and Leah is going to force us to start thinking about the upcoming elections in the US with reports on Silicon Valley already pumping a bunch of money into the midterms.

I think we should start with one of the key stories. At least Leah and I have been watching this—

Brian Barrett: No.

Zoë Schiffer: —the World Economic Forum conference in Davos. So each year in January, global leaders from around the world, the kind of titans of business and government, they get together for a week in this very quaint mountain city in Switzerland to discuss pressing world issues.

Leah Feiger: I think that this has always been something that is this is for tech billionaires and world leaders to get together, CEOs. This is really a combination of honestly so much that is WIRED. But what makes this Davos particularly interesting is, to me anyway, is how the US has been positioning itself in the world recently, I say with no judgment whatsoever.

Brian Barrett: That is such a gentle way of putting that, Leah. How about, I'll take a stab.

Leah Feiger: Get after it.

Brian Barrett: It's interesting because of how the US is attempting to take over a country from a NATO ally and using threats of violence to achieve its aims.

Leah Feiger: Right in there. Let's get into it.

Donald Trump, archival audio clip: We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, but I won't do that.

Zoë Schiffer: Trump actually went to Switzerland to address everyone in person.

Donald Trump, archival audio clip: I don't have to use force. I don't want to use force. I won't use force. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland.

Leah Feiger: Look, during his speech, he did appear to rule out using military force to acquire Greenland, which is a wild thing to say out loud because he talked around it and didn't exactly say it like that and still just kept saying, "I want Greenland. I want Greenland. Give it to me."

Brian Barrett: I got to say though, it's the same way like if you're on a playground and you want someone's lunch money, it's like, "I won't punch you for your lunch money, but I could. I could punch you if you don't give me your lunch money, but I won't, but you should give me the lunch money so that I don't punch you, but I wouldn't." You know what I mean? It's like he said he wouldn't use force but it was also like, "By the way, I absolutely will if I don't get what I want."

Leah Feiger: 100 percent. 100 percent. And just talking about NATO as if it's a T-shirt that's maybe out of style or just not the show that you want to watch on a Saturday is wild. This is wild.

Zoë Schiffer: I feel like every year there's this question of is this conference still relevant? Is it going through the TED cycle where no one will care anymore? But actually this year it feels like it's maybe more important than ever.

Trump was there, all of the leaders in artificial intelligence were there, and that's kind of what we were hearing was the big topic that everyone was talking about, even more so than Greenland. Sorry, Leah. But all of the AI guys were there, Satya Nadella, Dario Amodei, they spoke on the stages, and the thing on everyone's mind was AI.

My favorite story so far, not to go into complete gossip mode, was that, you know the tech companies have houses? It's what a brand activation is called at Davos, and the Anthropic house was really the cool place to be, but they were very particular about who could get into their parties.

Leah Feiger: Oh God, I hate this.

Zoë Schiffer: So prominent officials would walk up to the door and the Anthropic person would be like, "You're not on the list. Sorry."

Leah Feiger: Stop. That didn't happen.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, no, I swear.

Leah Feiger: No, that didn't happen. Who got turned away? Do we know?

Zoë Schiffer: I can say no names.

Brian Barrett: What's the backup house? Is everyone just like, "Oh, sorry, you've got to go to Mistral."

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, you're more of a Meta house vibe. Sorry.

Leah Feiger: OK. But to peel that back for a second, this to me would've meant absolutely nothing seven months ago but, and tell me if I'm interpreting this wrong, even if this is perhaps the Davos of is NATO going to continue, and also, I guess we all love AI now, question mark? Anthropic is not exactly that. They might be this AI company, but they're also AI doomers in so many respects, so the fact that they're the cool kids here, what does that mean? What does that actually mean for this conference?

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, it's kind of a standout because one thing that has not been a huge topic of conversation as far as the people I've talked to at Davos is AI safety. It's kind of a rah-rah atmosphere.

But I feel like because Anthropic is kind of having a moment with its coding agent, Claude Code, which everyone is using and really loving right now, I feel like it's able to be kind of the lone voice in the room, being a little more pessimistic about the technology and still maintain its place as the cool kid on the block. I've heard that the Anthropic hats are pretty popular this year. They've got good merch.

Brian Barrett: That's how you go. I will say, I think one thing about the AI companies being here and being the cool kids and all that is that it speaks to just how geopolitical AI is at this moment. And Anthropic, even the headlines Anthropic made were, other than having the cool house and turning people away, was their CEO Dario saying, "It's crazy that we're selling chips to China. We shouldn't be doing that. Why in the world would you do that?" Which is a pretty big statement.

It's in line with other things he said, but it speaks to these companies, these startups, some of which with questionable finances for the future, are really shaping geopolitics and informing them in a really impactful way, meaningful way.

Leah Feiger: Look, obviously the AI Cool Kids Club is a headline for a certain section of society, many of our readers, I assume. The things that I couldn't tear myself away from, sorry to bring it back here, were Trump's speech and just the entire presence there.

I mean, in terms of what comes from this politically, I have a lot of questions, but with that in mind, when I'm looking at everything that's going on in the US, while Trump is over there making these overtures, ICE is everywhere, right? They're talking about expanding possibly to other blue states. And currently the situation on the ground in Minnesota is terrible.

So as we're looking at Trump talking about invading other countries quite literally, already there's a ground invasion in the US. And it's very jarring to see this go back and forth right now.

Brian Barrett: Yeah. Let's talk about Minneapolis a bit. It's been two weeks, a little over, it's hard to believe, since an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good. There had already been a strong backlash against ICE's presence in Minneapolis, it has only grown since then, the response from ICE has only grown since then. They've got over 2,000 people there now, agents there, heading towards 3,000.

It's really a model of how the US government would occupy its own cities in a way that really felt unfathomable even just a few weeks ago, I would say, months certainly.

Leah Feiger: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Our wonderful features desk published this story on Wednesday where they interviewed 10 different residents in Minneapolis just to kind of get into the day-to-day life.

So they talked to teachers who had to figure out how to have kids out on the playground and bring them inside when it's time to come in and while also being aware of helicopters buzzing them, and then as well as volunteers who have been detained by ICE.

We got some really scary stories in there. There's some quotes that are going to stay with me forever. Again, we are just a few weeks out from Renee Nicole Good, and in one of the stories we have, one agent said to this group of people that was in a car, "You need to stop. You need to stop obstructing us. That's why that lesbian bitch is dead." This is the back and forth on the ground right now. This is dire. This is really, really dire.

Zoë Schiffer: Do we know what support for ICE has been like? I read a report in Puck that said that support for this agency has plummeted in the wake of the shooting. Does that track with what you're hearing, Leah?

Leah Feiger: Yeah, it's low. This is not a popular thing to be running on right now. This is really not. I'm honestly, not to be crass about this, but I'm very curious with next steps. We had reporting last week about what happens to New York, what happens to California, and I'm very curious about this stretching into the midterms, to be totally frank.

This requires a lot of people to do a lot of things. It's not just enough to be a Democrat and be like, "We stand with our neighbors." No, you have to say abolish ICE if you want to be elected in a lot of these districts right now, at least that's what the polling is showing right now and that's what public opinion is showing right now. This could change in a couple of months if they're not doing these kinds of violent invasions. I'm very curious how the Trump administration will play this when it comes to the midterms.

Brian Barrett: I mean, it doesn't seem like they're going to back off from anything.

Leah Feiger: No.

Brian Barrett: And they've got an infinite budget to work with practically. In our own reporting, we broke a story just this week, they're planning to spend up to $50 million to create a center based out of Minneapolis where they can ship detainees hundreds of miles away throughout the Midwest, depending on where they need it.

These kind of procurement plans are ongoing. It's a ton of money. The recruiting continues, a ton of money to people signing up. So I think there is not enough of ICE to actually occupy New York or Los Angeles right now, but they're building towards having enough resources to do something like that. And I think the election point is really serious, not to doom it too much, but you could imagine easily a bunch of ICE agents in masks and no IDs standing outside of a polling station in a politically-sensitive district.

Leah Feiger: Absolutely. The Trump administration and DHS is encouraging citizens and residents to think of them as police now. These are your friendly neighborhood policemen. And that's not true for a variety of reasons, one of which is that they don't live in these communities, they are not your neighbors. They are employed by the federal government. They are not city. They are not state. And even just requirements for accountability are incredibly different.

The nameless, faceless agent is becoming ubiquitous in American society right now, which is wild. The US has dealt with police brutality for many, many years, but the nameless, facelessness of it all has taken a very different slant, I would say, this year.

Brian Barrett: Well, also too, the nameless, facelessness I find interesting too because ICE has also taken away so much... ICE values so much of its privacy and they're always wearing masks and they're always not showing ID.

At the same time, they are using facial recognition on anybody they stop for whatever reason. They are following people to their homes to intimidate them. They are using all the levers of the state to really dig into people's... If you speak out against ICE, there is a decent chance you will get an audit or a visit from someone.

So yeah, it's sort of this mirror world that they're creating for themselves where they get complete immunity from identification. Everyone else is totally subject to deep dives into whatever you've got in your past.

Zoë Schiffer: I think that's often the case with privacy. I feel like it kind of reminds me of asynchronous privacy relationships in the tech industry where for a company like Apple that takes its customers' privacy really seriously, if you talk to people at the company, they'll often tell you that internally they have very little.

They're encouraged to do things like linking their Apple ID to their work account and stuff, and so there's a lot of kind of perceived surveillance that the company does at the corporate level to enforce the kind of brand it wants externally. So it's interesting to see that playing out in politics.

And not to switch us so hard to the tech of it all, but I have been really curious about the situation or how tech leaders and tech workers are speaking out or not about this situation. We have seen tech leaders in particular stay notably silent about ICE, about the shooting, the killing.

It really feels different from the George Floyd protests years ago when we saw a lot of these same people speaking out pretty forcefully. Whether you think they meant those statements or were forced into it and kind of walked it back later, they were being much more vocal about politics then, and I really feel like we're in this era now where they've made their decision and their decision is, "I'll do what I have to do to put my company first, and right now that's staying quiet." Whereas the layer kind of one under them, people are being a little more vocal. We're seeing managers and tech workers speaking out, signing letters, saying, "This is untenable. The situation has to change."

Leah Feiger: I mean, which CEOs again in Silicon Valley were actually at the airport in, what was it, 2017 with the Muslim ban protesting themselves against Trump's policies? This is a different world. It's shocking to me that that was less than 10 years ago.

Brian Barrett: I think it's interesting, and so you mentioned that the people under the CEOs, sort of high-level managers, are starting to find more of a voice in this. That was a big part around the George Floyd protest as well and the Black Lives Matter protest, was internally within their own companies there were these huge worker movements that were promoting social justice, promoting Black Lives Matter.

And I think there was, to a certain extent, CEO response was both advantageous to them politically at the time, but also, internally they had to respond to their employees sort of revolting over this. Until we see something similar, I don't know that we're going to get... Well, I don't know we're ever going to get Tim Cook saying...

Zoë Schiffer: I don't think we're ever going to get it. I think we're in a really different moment. In fact, I think in some ways, just in terms of tech culture, the current moment we're in is a reaction to that earlier moment in 2018.

I think in 2018, if you talk to tech leaders, they will say, "Look, we did the things that our employees wanted us to at the time. We gave them a mental health day every month. We made political statements. We tried to kind of signal that we were supportive in these different ways."

And their perception was that employees only got more demanding, they'll say, "We're entitled," behind closed doors, off record, off record. They didn't feel like they got a lot from that moment. And so now they're making a very different calculation to kind of say, "Look, we're in a moment where Trump is extremely transactional. If you give something to Trump, you may actually get something in return." That wasn't true with Biden, it didn't feel true with our own employees, and so they're choosing.

Leah Feiger: I'm not even sure that was true with Trump 1.0 either. This is a different presidency, this is a different president, but all to say, everything that you guys are saying is absolutely right, but they're still political. They're still making these political choices.

I think can we talk about how Silicon Valley is already involving themselves in the midterms? This, to me, is we are in January, midterms are in November, get ready, guys. I'm going to be the worst.

Brian Barrett: No. No, Leah, no. I need more time. I need at least until Groundhog Day.

Leah Feiger: No, no, no.

Brian Barrett: At least until Groundhogs Day.

Leah Feiger: When everyone said goodbye to me for the holiday break in December, I was like, "See you in midterm year," because I chose violence.

But these tech companies and Silicon Valley investors are still choosing politics. Even if they're not doing the 2016, 2017, even 2020, they are making these decisions. Max Zeff wrote this excellent piece for us this week for WIRED about pro-AI super PACs already that are all in on the midterms.

Zoë Schiffer: Wait, so talk to me about that, Leah. Are they choosing issues and candidates that are specifically about tech, tech issues, tech policies, or is it a little more diffuse than that?

Leah Feiger: It's interesting. I think we're going to get closer to that point. We're very much at the starting point here. And I am vaguely ill to say this, the starting point is still tens of millions of dollars. So there's lots of cash going around.

But basically, and I know you guys already know this, in the absence of a lot of federal action and regulatory action when it's come to AI, state lawmakers in states around the country, New York, California, Colorado, et cetera, passed laws in the last year requiring these large AI developers to disclose safety practices, assess risks in a variety of different issues.

As we know, the Trump administration is super anti-AI regulation, as are a bunch of Silicon Valley's largest companies and investors, which argue that all of these kinds of state laws could really hamper AI progress. So that's really one side of it.

And then on the other, you have concerned lawmakers, AI researchers, safety-focused startups, non-profit groups that are pushing for more AI regulation. So the battle lines are very much drawn there, and I think that everyone's been kind of inching towards them for a while.

They remind me a lot of how we were talking about crypto in the lead-up to the previous election cycles. And I guess the super PAC that I really want to draw your attention to is leading the future, which is they have more than $100 million in backing from venture capital powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz.

Zoë Schiffer: I knew it. Leading the future was giving techno-optimism so hard.

Brian Barrett: Oh, yeah.

Leah Feiger: Oh, yes. It had to. And then OpenAI President Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna Brockman, they're involved. The group has launched television ads that have targeted a couple of congressional races. Not races that are, I would say, the most battlegroundy right now, but they are in a couple of really interesting states, we're looking at Texas, we're looking at New York, and I'm very curious where they're going to go from here. This is very clearly the beginning. This is the test case.

Brian Barrett: We mentioned crypto earlier and how it's reminiscent of that. A lot of the same people are working for, a fair shake, I believe, was the—

Leah Feiger: Yep. Yep. Exactly.

Brian Barrett: —and so a lot of those same people are now working for leading the future. I think it's interesting too that we've seen Meta get more directly involved, saying that we're going to go... Companies that that I think is relatively new, especially for a company that for a long time said, "We can't be political because people get mad about it in their newsfeeds." They've really gone all in when it's expedient for them. And then lastly, can I say? We have gotten this far without mentioning Elon Musk, but this is a perfect opportunity.

Zoë Schiffer: I was literally just going to say.

Brian Barrett: Zoë, do it. Zoë, do it. Go, Zoë, go.

Zoë Schiffer: OK. So Musk donated, was it $10 million last week to a super PAC affiliated with Republican Kentucky Senate candidate, Nate Morris?

Leah Feiger: Yes.

Brian Barrett: Uh-huh.

Zoë Schiffer: Basically, the person running to try and replace Mitch McConnell who is retiring. I mean, this is a lot of money to give to this one race, is it not?

Leah Feiger: It is so much money. It's a very, very interesting look at this particular race and McConnell's history and also Elon Musk's history in funding races. I mean, we have to talk about how Elon Musk's America PAC raised more than $170 million for Trump's 2024 bid.

And obviously WIRED spent all of 2025 covering Musk's incursion into the federal government and what that's meant. We have spent a lot of time as a society, I'd like to say, talking about how Musk and Trump had their big fallout, how he fully left government X, Y, and Z-

Zoë Schiffer: He said he was going to start America Party. That did not happen.

Leah Feiger: Uh-huh.

Brian Barrett: Not yet. Not yet, Zoë.

Zoë Schiffer: Not yet. Not yet, not yet, not yet.

Brian Barrett: It's coming.

Zoë Schiffer: I know. I know. Don't even say that. Now that I said it, it's going to happen immediately. Not yet.

Brian Barrett: As soon as he can run Optimus as a candidate, he's going to have America Party.

Zoë Schiffer: It's so true. Oh my God.

Leah Feiger: But Elon Musk is very clearly back. I'm curious what that money will do for that race, how much he's going to try and put his name on it. I mean, I think we can comfortably say he flew a little bit too close to the sun in a couple of ways, but as it goes, Elon got pretty much everything that he wanted, and so have a lot of these tech billionaires.

So I wouldn't say that the last year was a deterrent for them by any means. And looking at these tens of millions of dollars pouring into the midterms 11 months before they're slated to be held is a real, it's a real interesting look that we're going to be keeping a close eye on for sure.

Zoë Schiffer: Coming up after the break, we dive into why OpenAI rolling out ads for some ChatGPT users is a decision that was a long time coming, even if Sam Altman once called it the company's last resort.

OK, I'm going to wrench this conversation away from Leah's little clause and we're going to be chatting about something I want to talk about.

Brian Barrett: Let's do it.

Zoë Schiffer: OK. We have one more important AI-related headline to discuss, and it is about the fact that OpenAI announced last week that they are going to start rolling out ads on ChatGPT in the coming weeks.

The company said that the ads will not influence ChatGPT's responses. They will appear in a separate, clearly-labeled box directly below the chatbot's actual answer. So if a user asks ChatGPT for help planning a trip to New York, they will get a regular answer and then they might also see an ad for a hotel in the area.

Leah Feiger: That's gross. You know who this won't impact is me. In any way, shape, or form.

Zoë Schiffer: Leah, again, never used it, never will.

Brian Barrett: It can't hurt you if you never acknowledge it or use it in any way.

Leah Feiger: Keeping those eyes closed, guys.

Zoë Schiffer: So this change will be coming for users who don't pay for ChatGPT, so they're on the free or Go tiers. And so people in the kind of upper, the paid plans, they aren't going to see ads, at least not yet, but it's still an enormous departure from the business model that OpenAI has been holding onto until now. In fact, it wasn't two years ago that Sam Altman said that ads would be a last resort for the company.

Sam Altman, archival audio clip: I kind of think of ads as a last resort for us for a business model. I would do it if it meant that was the only way to get everybody in the world access to great services, but if we can find something that doesn't do that, I'd prefer that.

Leah Feiger: When was this? This was recent, right?

Zoë Schiffer: That was two years ago, I think.

Leah Feiger: That's recent. That's recent. That's ridiculous. That's a rollover. That is so fast.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. That is how he talks. It's a little hard to pin him down because he doesn't say, "We would never." He's like, "I mean, if we absolutely had to to give everyone access to economic prosperity and happiness for the rest of their lives, sure."

Leah Feiger: I'm doing this for you. My ad choice is for you.

Brian Barrett: The good news is now we're going to have economic prosperity and happiness for the rest of our lives because OpenAI is rolling out ads.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah.

Brian Barrett: Zoë, I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to use one of my favorite words.

Zoë Schiffer: Hypocrite?

Brian Barrett: Enshitification.

Zoë Schiffer: Oh.

Brian Barrett: No, enshitification. Hypocrite's good too. Enshitification, it is a term coined by Cory Doctorow, who is an author and technologist, an overall smart guy. And it's the word he used to describe that feeling that you get when every tech platform starts to feel worse and worse and worse because it is putting its own business interests ahead of your experience on there. Right?

Facebook launched without any ads. Google Search used to be usable in some way, but as you keep stuffing in ads, the worse it gets.

What's interesting to me about this is not that OpenAI is doing ads. It was inevitable, right? But it's that it's happening this soon, at least in terms of timeline. Yeah.

Leah Feiger: I have a dumb question. Do they need money? Are they bore? I don't think I get it. Everyone keeps telling me how rich they are, this is where the money is. I'm confused.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. It's confusing because they're, by some measures, most well-funded startup of all time, by other measures burning millions and millions, hundreds of millions, could say billions of dollars a year. So they both are making a ton of money but losing a ton of money, a common situation in Silicon Valley, but at a scale we haven't seen before.

Another thing that we should note is that while ChatGPT has hundreds of millions of users, I think 800 million weekly active users, it does seem like the company is kind of at a moment where it needs to look at other ways to kind of shore up its moat if you will, and try and beat the competition. So I think it makes sense that ads are happening right now.

Brian Barrett: I think too, part of it is they have to make money, but even more importantly, they have to show that they are capable of making money, right? To show investors if they want to have an IPO in the next year or two, which they do, they need to be able to demonstrate there is a business model here. Even if they're not going to shore up their balance sheet overnight with this, but they need to show, "Yes, we have 800 million active users." If even 1/2 of 1 percent of those clicks on a link, that adds up to significant money, and so you have to show that growth potential.

Leah Feiger: Zoë, you talk to people at OpenAI all the time. You interviewed Fidji Simo recently. Were you surprised that this was coming?

Zoë Schiffer: No. I mean, this is all I wanted in life was for Fidji Simo to break the news about ads during that interview, and wow, would she not do that. I tried every way. She was like, "Well, if ads were ever going to come, they might hypothetically look like this." So no, I think they were very strategic.

So to back up a little bit, Fidji Simo was previously the CEO of Instacart, and before that, she spent a really long time at Meta. She was kind of a top lieutenant to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. And so when we saw her become the CEO of applications at OpenAI, a lot of people were like, "Oh, OpenAI is in its enshitification era. They're going to roll out ads. That's Fidji Simo's whole thing." I think she's very, very sensitive to that perception.

And to be clear, during my conversation, she's also very thoughtful. She doesn't seem like someone who just wants to shove ads into the feed willy-nilly. She does want to make sure that they're useful.

I think the term that the company looks at is commercial intent of conversations. If it looks like someone's having a conversation to try and buy a product, then they feel like it might be a relevant time to show them an ad, versus if you're having a sensitive conversation, they're saying, "Look, we won't show ads in that time."

But I think it's interesting, I feel like we've all been covering Silicon Valley for long enough that we see all companies go through this process where at first they're like, "Subscriptions only, we would absolutely never." And then because they need to show investors a return, they start making compromises.

And so even when we see things like, "Look, ads will only be shown in these very specific times, we're going to be really, really thoughtful," in the back of my mind I'm like, "OK, for now, but you're already going down this path that you said you probably wouldn't go on, so it feels like it's only a matter of time."

Brian Barrett: Ooh, can we just, and Zoë, you reference this, can we go back real quick in terms of compromises and things they're doing that they said they wouldn't?

The fact that they started rolling out age verification this week in pursuit of chatbots you can have AI sex with, right? They are explicitly rolling out explicit chatbot experiences, which I believe is something they said, "We're not going to do that." But now again, it's like another xAI, for better or worse, has shown that that is something that people want. So that smells like desperation to me too.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I mean, CEO Sam Altman I think previously tried to kind of contrast himself with Elon and OpenAI against xAI by being like, "Well, we're not doing that." And yet it feels like, and this is something that Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, I think said previously, it does feel like the person who does the least in terms of safety and risk assessment kind of drags the industry down to their level, because allowing people to engage in romantic ways to have more kind of fringe conversations with chatbots, that actually is a popular thing. There are a number of people who want to do that. And so if you're the one that's quite buttoned up, you can only engage in these very specific ways, you're going to lose users. And so these companies are making kind of strategic decisions to try and get more people on their platforms.

Leah Feiger: Sounds like they need a new customer base. I am not available.

OK. It is time for our WIRED, TIRED segment. Whatever is new and cool is WIRED, and whatever passé thing we're super over is TIRED. Are you guys ready for this?

Zoë Schiffer: I'm so ready. I've actually never been ready, period, but this time I'm actually ready, so that's nice.

Leah Feiger: OK, Zoë, take it away. What do you got?

Zoë Schiffer: OK. TIRED, Pascal's wager, Fermi's paradox, the word orthogonal. I'm saying this because I was at, yes, a tech dinner last night, and wow, were people just using... Well, actually I'm unclear. It was Chatham House Rules, so I can't say anything specific about who was there, but I will say-

Brian Barrett: Zoë, can you add Chatham House Rules to your list of words that you want to get out of here too?

Zoë Schiffer: Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. In fact, I can. The number of frameworks that people were using to assess certain ideas, and then when I asked what said framework was, you would get a whole other explanation that was based on a different framework.

Leah Feiger: Awful.

Zoë Schiffer: It was a lot. And I think WIRED is short declarative sentences, which is also the best writing advice I have ever received, shout out to Casey Newton. And I would posit that it's also good speaking advice.

I think if you could say something in a more straightforward way, it will not make you sound dumb. In fact, it may make you sound smart. I think you could probably use the word distinct or independent in place of orthogonal a lot of the time and it would have positive implications on your social life, or at the very least, your ability to interact with me specifically. So that's mine.

Leah Feiger: Life lessons from Zoë Schiffer, you guys. That's what we're here for.

Zoë Schiffer: Yes, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Brian Barrett: This is awkward. My WIRED is orthogonal thinking.

Zoë Schiffer: Ooh.

Brian Barrett: No, it's not. Zoë has me because her WIRED and TIRED directly relate to each other, mine do not. They're just two totally independent things. My TIRED—

Leah Feiger: Is that allowed? I guess it's allowed.

Brian Barrett: Sure.

Leah Feiger: We'll allow it. This episode will allow it.

Zoë Schiffer: He's our boss. He can do whatever he wants.

Leah Feiger: Yeah, there we go.

Brian Barrett: I am the executive editor of WIRED, I can ... My—

Leah Feiger: Flexing that power.

Brian Barrett: My TIRED is age verification systems, sorry, it's a little bit boring, but no one does it right. These automatic AI-driven things are a mess.

We published this around Discord recently about how 12-year-olds are drawing mustaches on their faces and beards with marker and getting approved as 26-year-olds. 30-year-olds are getting pegged as 15-year-olds. No, it's a mess, especially if companies are going to try to do this in the first place, which pretty strong argument that you shouldn't. At least figure out how to do it.

And then my WIRED is playing people off for time. So I'll explain a little bit. I was watching the Golden Globes, and you know when people are giving a speech and the orchestral music starts to swell in the background when they've gone over their time? Sometimes a controversial practice, I've come to appreciate it in life.

And what I'm saying, what I'm arguing is it should apply to all contexts. So when I see Donald Trump giving an hour-and-a-half, two-hour-long press conference on Tuesday, what if we had a little bit of music to remind him that it's time to move on? Davos speech also. So I think playing people off for time, let's do it. For world leaders, let's do it for everybody. Let's keep people on a schedule.

Leah Feiger: I like that. I think that you could honestly bring back the umbrella coat hook or whatever from The Looney Tunes. I think it's a combination, first you play them off and then you hook them.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah.

Brian Barrett: I love it.

Leah Feiger: This is good.

Zoë Schiffer: Completely agree.

Leah Feiger: I'm going to tell Karoline Leavitt in the White House press office.

Brian Barrett: Thank you.

Leah Feiger: So just make sure she has her hook ready to go. Yep.

Brian Barrett: Yep.

Leah Feiger: Do I get to go? Do I get to share my WIRED, TIRED?

Zoë Schiffer: We're waiting with bated breath.

Brian Barrett: Please.

Zoë Schiffer: Please.

Leah Feiger: OK. Yours were smart, mine is dumb, but I stand by it. TIRED is making fun of millennials, not because it wasn't funny or because it was mean, it just, it's TIRED, it's over. How many times can you talk about a side part or whatever?

WIRED is the TikTok trend dedicated to millennial optimism, which is just photos and reels in really intensely sepia-featured and set in Williamsburg with a song that goes like (singing), and it's so fun and brings you back right to 2016, even though I guess that was a mediocre year as well. But it's this really fun thing that is happening and I cannot get enough of the bow tie mustache striped shirt era. Bring me right back—

Zoë Schiffer: You hear that Gen Z? We're fun. We're cool.

Leah Feiger: —into my veins. So that is mine for the week, you guys.

Zoë Schiffer: Love it.

Leah Feiger: Brian, are you a millennial? What are you?

Brian Barrett: Hey.

Zoë Schiffer: Wow.

Leah Feiger: I don't know.

Zoë Schiffer: And that's why he hates age verification, because they've been aging him inappropriately, so.

Brian Barrett: I keep drawing beards on my face. No, I am a millennial, I think—

Zoë Schiffer: He's an elder millennial.

Brian Barrett: We prefer grand millennial, thank you very much.

Zoë Schiffer: Grand millennial. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right.

Brian Barrett: Get out of here. I am a grand millennial, I'm proud of it. The fact that you even had to ask hurts my feelings a little tiny bit, but that's OK.

Leah Feiger: Sorry.

Zoë Schiffer: We're unclear on years and generation.

That is our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show notes. Adriana Tapia produced this episode. Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Matt Giles and Daniel Roman fact-checked this episode. Kate Osborn is our executive producer, and Katie Drummond is WIRED's global editorial director.