AI Slopaganda feat. Ryan Broderick (E319)

QAA Podcast

Julian Feeld, Travis View & Jake Rockatansky

News

4.5 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 12 April 2025

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Artificial Intelligence carries a host of risks: it could reshape jobs and the economy, alter educational practices, help powerful figures dodge accountability through AI-assisted decision-making, and even influence our personal relationships and mental well-being. But here’s the biggest question: how will AI affect the content filling up your social media feeds? In today’s episode, journalist Ryan Broderick joins us to discuss the influx of “AI slop” — which increasingly jostles for space alongside human-created content. We’ll explore the “Shrimp Jesus” Facebook phenomenon, a viral (yet entirely fabricated) story about Elon Musk saving a young girl with Neuralink, and the 1995 sci-fi horror film Screamers. Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: https://patreon.com/qaa Thanks for subscribing to QAA on patreon. /// Ryan Broderick https://x.com/broderick https://bsky.app/profile/ryanhatesthis.bsky.social Garbage Day Newsletter https://www.garbageday.email/ Panic World Podcast https://pod.link/1740187810 /// Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com) https://qaapodcast.com /// REFERENCES Nearly all Americans use AI, though most dislike it, poll shows https://www.axios.com/2025/01/15/americans-use-ai-products-poll Behold the AI Slop Dominating Google Image Results for "Does Corn Get Digested" https://futurism.com/google-image-corn-ai-slop Facebook's Shrimp Jesus, Explained https://www.404media.co/email/1cdf7620-2e2f-4450-9cd9-e041f4f0c27f/ Zuckerberg 'Loves' AI Slop Image From Spam Account That Posts Amputated Children https://www.404media.co/zuckerberg-loves-ai-slop-image-from-spam-account-that-posts-amputated-children/ Why you should be skeptical of that ‘leaked’ audio of JD Vance criticizing Elon Musk https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2025/jd-vance-rant-elon-musk-making-look-bad/ ‘Trump Gaza’ AI video intended as political satire, says creator https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/06/trump-gaza-ai-video-intended-as-political-satire-says-creator “AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism.” New Socialist https://newsocialist.org.uk/transmissions/ai-the-new-aesthetics-of-fascism/ Signal President Meredith Whittaker calls out agentic AI as having ‘profound’ security and privacy issues https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/07/signal-president-meredith-whittaker-calls-out-agentic-ai-as-having-profound-security-and-privacy-issues/

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm
0:02.0	Oh,
0:03.0	Oh,
0:04.0	Oh,
0:05.0	Oh,
0:07.0	Oh,
0:08.0	Oh, If you're hearing this, well done, you've found a way to connect to the Internet.
0:35.6	Welcome to the QAA podcast, episode
0:38.2	319, AI Slopaganda, featuring Ryan Broderick. As always, we are your host, Jake Rockatansky,
0:45.2	Julian Fields, and Travis View. Whenever the topic of the proliferation of artificial intelligence
0:52.1	comes up, often you'll hear somebody say something along the
0:54.8	lines of, you know, it's interesting, but I don't really use that stuff. Well, I have some bad news
0:59.8	for that person because they are almost certainly wrong. They use AI products without realizing it.
1:05.9	Artificial intelligence is a unique tech product category because of how it's been forcefully shoved into the hands of unwitting consumers.
1:13.7	Normally, when a kind of tech product is introduced, it's first picked up by tech hobbyists, like early adopters,
1:19.0	or maybe industrial users, and if it's potentially useful for the lives of normal people,
1:23.3	companies will roll out more user-friendly versions of that product until it slowly reaches
1:27.8	mass adoption.
1:28.8	But with AI, tech companies did things a little differently.
1:31.8	They took products that people were already using, then added AI-enabled features on the
1:36.5	assumption that everyone's going to love them.
1:38.5	Well, the American economy de-industrialized, and if this doesn't work out, we're basically
	...

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