Flock Used Cameras at a Children’s Gymnastics Center for a Sales Pitch

I think that this will have reverberations across other cities because it shows how intense and vast the Flock Network is. Also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access to that content at 404media.co. I am hosting this episode. I'm Jason Kebler. Sam was trying to, I could tell, I could see it in her eyes. I was ready. I was ready to jump in. She did it last week. He did it last week. So my turn. So Sam is here, obviously. And I also have Emmanuel. What's up, Emmanuel? Hey, what's up? Joseph, I don't know. I don't know where he's at. he'll be back at some point in the future, possibly as soon as next week. I think only housekeeping I have is my mom bought me this sweatshirt, if you're watching on YouTube, and it has a big-time copyright infringement on it. She got 404 Media embroidered in the most basic font possible. And also there's a crab. So I don't know. look forward to that lawsuit at some point. If you live in Maryland and you want one, let us know. Yeah, my mom will make you one. Okay, should we get into it? Yeah, let's get into it and start with Jason's story. The headline for this one is City Learns Flock Access Cameras in Children's Gymnastics Room as Sales Pitch Demo Renews Contract Anyway. uh back to our favorite company flock uh jason this all started with a foyer request by a guy named jason hunyar uh what what did he find yeah so uh kind of proud of this one because i talked to jason hunyar who is a resident of this city called dunwoody georgia which is a suburb of Atlanta. It's like right outside Atlanta. There are many Flock cameras there. And he told me that he basically learned about Flock from our reporting and also learned about FOIA-ing from us more or less, which is cool. But he filed a lot of FOIAs with the city of Dunwoody about Flock, their contracts, and then these things called access logs, which basically show who is accessing different flock cameras and for what purpose. So in addition to what we have written about in the past, which are audit reports, which are basically records of every time that a cop has searched the flock network, there's also these things called access logs, which show each time that a camera was tapped into. And these show the video cameras that Flock has. So not necessarily automatic license plate readers, but the actual video cameras. And it showed what I thought was a lot of interesting things. First of all, it showed that Flock's network in Dunwoody is not just Flock cameras owned by the city. There are Flock cameras that are owned by the city and the police department. But then there were also all these cameras that are owned by private entities. So there were like gas station cameras, there were cameras at gyms, and then there were cameras at this Jewish community center that were all feeding into the police's what they call a real-time data or real-time crime fighting database, more or less, which we'll talk more about in a minute. And it shows each and every time that someone looked at these cameras and what camera they looked at and what time and for how long. And what Jason Hunyar found was flock employees were looking at a lot of cameras that were in the children's gymnastics room at the Jewish community center, as well as cameras that were at the pool, cameras that were at a fitness center. and he basically dumped a lot of these documents and wrote a Substack post that was like, why are flock employees monitoring our children? And that set off this, I mean, frankly, shitshow in Dunwoody where all the residents were like, why are flock employees looking at these cameras? Flock employees are not really supposed to be looking at these cameras. Why are these cameras connected to this network in the first place? We didn't know that this was happening. We didn't sign up for this. What's the deal? I just want to pause and note that we have this situation with Jason Hanyar, who, because of our reporting, did this very fruitful FOIA request. and then uh joe was giving a talk in berkeley and he was just walking uh around there and saw there was like an anti-flock protest and obviously we've reported about many cities that uh are pushing back against flock now and it's just interesting that there's been been a sea change around flaw cameras at this point it's like it's such a different environment And then when we first started talking about it a year ago or something. And yeah, proud mostly of Jason and Joe for the reporting that brought a lot of this to light. I know also, I feel like every time we talk about it, I've explained what Flock is. And I mean, if you don't know, I'm sorry. But I feel like at this point, people actually know what it is. I have brought it up to people in my life. And they're like, oh, yeah, I've seen Flock cameras. I know what you're talking about. And that's pretty rare for a surveillance technology where it's reached this point where it's like, oh, I know what that company is and what they do. And videos and articles about Flock have become somewhat mainstream on Instagram and YouTube. I see a lot of people making videos about it and these different community groups opposing them and that sort of thing. And it seems like it's something where it's becoming this actual mainstream-ish issue, which is cool to see. Yeah, very similar to the Ring arc that we saw. So yeah, back to the specific story. What does Phlox say? Like Jason Hunyar reveals all this information. People are not happy about it. What is their explanation for why this is happening? Yeah, so I think that this is important because there's like a city council meeting that we'll talk about in a second. But at the city council meeting, the outrage over flock employees accessing these cameras is pretty intense. And some of the residents are like, I mean, these are their words, but they're like, why do they have like little Jeffrey Epstein's running around looking at our children? You guys want little Epstein's to have access to cameras all across your city? I mean, that's crazy to me. And that is what some of the coverage I've seen on social media has been like. And I think that Flock has been very upset at this framing. I think that to be fair to them to just explain what they say is happening here and what probably is happening just based on how I know Flock works. I've seen sales demos and things like this before that have either leaked or that I found unlisted on YouTube, is basically Flock does these sales demos where if you are a city and you're interested in buying Flock, you go watch and see how the technology works. And Flock sales employees who work at Flock basically pull up cameras in real time that are from cities that already have contracts with Flock. And Dunwoody, Georgia is near Flock's headquarters. Flock is based in Georgia. Flock was founded at Georgia Tech University in Atlanta. And they have this really deep integration with the city of Dunwoody. And so what Flock says was happening is basically they were doing these sales demos. there's this real-time crime center that the city of Dunwoody has. And it's basically like a desk with a gigantic television screen that has like 50 cameras on it all at once. And so what they are claiming more or less is that these sales employees were demoing this technology. They were tapping into that real-time crime center and they were showing like 30 cameras at once. and some of them happen to be in this children's gymnastics center, at the pool, at these places that are quite sensitive. And Flock says that to imply that our employees were pulling up these specific cameras for their own personal creepy uses is wrong and not fair. And that it's not fair that these employees are being singled out. And they're also claiming that they are one of the most transparent surveillance companies that exists because these access logs exist at all. They're basically saying that with other surveillance technology, this is not data that you would even have. You would never know. And they have this system so that people can... So that access like this can be held accountable in some way. And they were... Flock was basically like, this is our bad. we shouldn't have been demoing with these cameras. It's a mistake. We're not going to do it anymore. And when we do sales demos, we're not going to use Dunwoody anymore. We're going to use other cities. And in addition, we're only going to use cameras that are in parking lots that are away from populated areas. we're not going to use cameras that are, you know, at businesses that are in sensitive locations, that sort of thing. Like that is what Flock is saying. And I think we'll get more into it. But that is like, I understand that, I think, like, I think that's probably what happened here. But that answer is not very reassuring in any case, like the fact remains that basically, like, Flock was using this city of real people and real children and real businesses as a sales pitch to other cops and pulling them up at random just whenever they happen to have these sales calls. And I think that if I were someone who lived in that city, I would wonder why we were being used as a test tube, why we were being used as a sales pitch, why these cameras are even on the network at all, that sort of thing. And so I think that there's plenty of outrage to be had here. I think I just wanted to explain why Phlox says that, well, no, we're not. I mean, frankly, Flox blog posts about this are like, our employees are not child abusers. That's the level that this got to. And that's the rhetoric that ended up happening here. And I think that is probably an understandable place to be if you're a parent and you didn't know that this was happening. But that's their general explanation for it. And that is the explanation that the city of Dunwoody, its mayor and city council, has sort of taken back to its citizens at a city council meeting, where for like three hours, people were yelling at the city for saying like, how could this possibly happen? Why are you working with this company? I think it's totally understandable that Flock would put something out there in public saying, we're not creeping on kids, like standing up for their employees in that way, I guess, is fine. I do find the response to be contradictory in a sense that it's like on one hand, we did nothing wrong. On the other hand, we're very sorry and will never happen again. It's pretty weird. Do you want to talk more about what did go down at this city council? What was the vibe? Yeah. So the vibe was basically at any city council meeting, or at many city council meetings, there's time for public comment. And this city council meeting had the FLOC contract on the agenda. Basically, the FLOC contract was coming up for renewal. This all happened. And literally for almost three straight hours, citizen after citizen came up. They had three minutes to talk and they said, we don't want this technology in our town. Why are they spying on our kids? How could you let this happen? They were also saying this happened without us being consulted We didn know this was happening How can you like take how can we take you seriously as our elected leaders And like how can you basically like work with a company like this And I mean, I found the city's response to be extremely underwhelming. Basically, the mayor was like, I was surprised to learn that this was happening. Flock has promised that it's never going to happen again. They're not using Dunwoody as a test demo anymore. But y'all are overreacting. This was done as a sales demo. Flock is an important surveillance technology that's keeping us safe. And we're going to modify the contract slightly and renew it and move forward. And it was clear from what the residents were saying that that's not what they were asking for. They did not want these cosmetic changes to the contract. They didn't want these sorry, not sorry, apologies from Flock. I think that at previous city council meetings, Flock employees were there and they were saying, you guys are wrong about this. You're mischaracterizing what actually happened. Here's how our technology works, so on and so forth. And I think what was very clear to me was that the residents actually do know quite a lot about the technology. And they know all of the privacy and security screw-ups that Flock has had. They know that Flock data has been filtered up to ICE. They know that it's been used to track a woman who had an abortion. They know that there's been various security lapses. And pretty much every time something like this happens, Flock will say, this is being blown out of proportion. This is being taken out of context. Um, you know, the, the, these are like theoretical attacks. Like when we did that article about, uh, Flock Condor cameras, which are the video cameras that are at issue here, uh, being exposed to the open internet, they said, oh, well, these were like in a testing mode. They were only exposed for a few weeks. Uh, this is not like we fixed it basically. And that's sort of like what they've been saying over and over again is like, yeah, this happened, but like we fixed it. And by the way, there's a concerted... I mean, they basically say there's a concerted woke effort to destroy Flock, and you guys are overreacting. And I think that the citizens of Dunwoody really didn't like how it seemed like their concerns were being brushed off in this situation. And then basically, at the end of the city council meeting, the city council voted to renew the contract with Flock. Not even a slap on the wrist. I don't even know if they have the ability to do a slap on the wrist, but it's like, yeah, we tweaked the contract slightly. They said it wouldn't happen again. We're going to keep working with them. And at the end of this city council meeting, assuming this contract actually changed, like we had all this out, where do you think it lands? What is the reaction to this now? Can you tell on social media how people are taking it? What's the aftermath? Yeah, I mean, I think the interesting thing is, and this is maybe not super heartening for the people of Dunwoody at the moment, but I think that, as I mentioned, Dunwoody has a really intense relationship with Flock. They've had a contract with Flock for a long time. they see Flock as being this local company that they've worked with for a long time. And it seems like the politicians there are very in favor of Flock, both in Dunwoody, but also in Georgia more broadly. The Georgia Attorney General posted on LinkedIn, I'm so proud that Dunwoody renewed its contract. Basically, today, Law and Order 1. I mean, the post was insane. Let's see what it said, actually. It said, Mayor, thanks to council and you for supporting the use of Flock technology. Georgia's constitution says that the government has one paramount duty to protection of person and property. I'm proud to say that Dunwoody's leadership lived up to their duty by continuing to partner with Flock. Flock's CEO also emailed the Jewish Community Center at issue here and basically said, sorry, won't happen again. And then said, I look forward to protecting the Jewish Community Center and the city of Dunwoody for years to come. So they basically are like, we're going to continue on with this. But there are a lot of cities and towns around the country that don't have as close a relationship with Flock. that are looking at this, that are looking at other things that are happening and are deciding to cancel their contracts. And I think that this will have reverberations across other cities because it shows how intense and how vast the Flock network is just in this one city where it's not just Flock cameras, but it's all these private cameras as well that can be accessed basically at any time for any reason. And I think that it will have an effect. And I think that in Dunwoody, it has created this movement of people who are against Flock. And some of the people who stood up to speak actually said this, like, we've organized really well to oppose this. Right now, we're opposing something very negative, but we hope in the future, we can organize for something more positive. And I do wonder if people will run for office in Dunwoody on an anti-surveillance agenda. It seems like that is ripe for... People are very interested in that at the moment. And so I don't know what happens necessarily in Dunwoody. But I think that the tide is turning against these surveillance technologies and that people are going to start... People are pushing back. And it's sort of like in Dunwoody, they're starting from an extremely pro-surveillance government stance. But in places where there's already skepticism, there have been wins against this technology. And over time, I mean, we might see the same in places like Dunwoody. yeah uh i think if people are literally in the street protesting about flock it's easy to imagine it becoming an issue in like future local elections and if you see that's the case please get in touch if you're foiling your local government about flock and you find something interesting get in touch if you're not uh please subscribe to uh for for media and watch our foia forums. We teach you how to do this. Jason, I believe you guys already did a one FOIA forum on Flock specifically, right? We did. And also, people are in the streets in Dunwoody also. I got sent pictures and video of street protests. And it's like people are holding up GTFO, get the Flock out signs. They're holding up posters that say Flock out. They're chanting. This is a pretty small city. And I mean, there's dozens of people there. This is not something that I think is going away anytime soon. And I think there is now organizing against it. And so very curious to see where it all goes. And yes, please get in touch if you do know more about Flock. My signal is jason.404. Shall we break there? Yeah. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and it's a reminder that whatever you're going through, you do not have to go through it alone. Life is a journey. Sometimes you've got things that are going to keep you up at night. 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We're going to talk about two stories, one by Emmanuel and one by Sam. Both are about AI in education, which I feel like is a constant topic. Very important. First, we're going to talk about Nature, the massive journal, Retracting a Paper on the Benefits of ChatGPT in Education. The story is by Emanuel. I believe the paper came out in 2024? 2025. 2025. Okay, what did the paper originally say? The one at issue here. Yeah, so the paper was published in a nature journal called Humanities and Social Science Communications Nature has a flagship publication called Nature but it also has a family of journals This is one of them. And the title of the paper was, and I guess I should say if you don't know, Nature is like gold standard for science publishing. Very prestigious journal. the title of the paper is the effect of chat gpt on students learning performance learning perception and higher order thinking insights from a meta-analysis so the uh the key term there is uh at the end uh meta-analysis is something very common in academic journals a common type of study. Basically, it is not in the field doing research or collecting its own data. It is taking a bunch of studies on a similar topic and combining all the results from all those studies in order to provide an overview or a meta-analysis of what is happening. And in this case, it is two researchers from a university in China. They took 51 research studies that were published between November 22 and February 25 on the effectiveness of chat GPT in education. the bottom line is that they found that ChatGPT had a positive impact, specifically on, again, as the title says, on students' learning performance, learning perception, and higher order thinking. Okay, so why was this retracted? This does happen sometimes, but it's been a year since this was published, and then suddenly out of the blue, it's gone. So what happened? So we don't know exactly, but I've talked to some experts. I did some of my own digging and I read some other papers that talked about this paper and the methodology it uses and the similar papers like it with similar results. And basically, this paper came out last year. It was very viral. It got a lot of attention because it made a pretty definitive statement that chat GPT is good for students. It's good in an education environment. That goes a little bit against even what we know as non-experts on this subject and what we found in our reporting. I did a story a few months ago about Alpha School, which is an AI-powered private school that's very expensive. And their results are generally good, but the story goes through some of the problems with AI-assisted education. AI makes errors. That creates faulty lesson plans that frustrates students, etc. Not surprisingly, people in the education community and specifically people in the community that is the intersection of education and technology and education and AI were very skeptical about this. They pushed back against the results. They made arguments about why the research is bad. We don't know exactly what the thinking was at Nature, but at some point a few weeks ago, they put up a retraction note saying that they had doubts about the methodology and the data, and that they approached the researchers about this, and the researchers did not respond, and they decided to retract the study, which means you can still read it but they kind of it's kind of like a vote of no confidence in the findings and if you download the PDF I noticed you can get the full article but it has like a big redacted retracted sign across every page which is kind of interesting yeah yeah so you talked to Ben Williamson who's a senior lecturer in digital education at the University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh? Edinburgh. What did he say about this? And also, I think he's very smart here. But once he said it, I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. Like, what the fuck? Yeah. So like I said, nature doesn't make it clear. But I think it's pretty clear what the issue is. there are a few issues but like one that Ben pointed out is that if you recall I said it's a meta-analysis of studies that were published as early as 2022 and if you think back to 2022 I think that's like ChatGPT is that ChatGPT2 starting to make the rounds? It's like either 2 or 3. I think 2022 is when ChatGPT came out. It's when it became popular. It's very early on in the whole generative AI madness. November 2022 is when ChatGPT was released. Right. And it's like you're supposed to believe that someone as early as November 2022 noticed that people were using it in education or did some testing of using ChatGPT in an education environment, properly collected the data and properly analyzed the data and then was able to make some sort of credible claim about how it's impacting students. And not only that, that it's good for them. And in general, that's just not enough time to do that. And that's one group, that's one bucket of studies that are feeding into this meta-analysis. And then another problem is that the standard that the researchers used essentially seems to be that any study that was peer-reviewed was fair game to include in the meta-analysis if it was about these subjects. And that sounds good. Peer review is bare minimum for academic publishing. I think we all know that. But I think at this point, a lot of us also know that the academic publishing industry is not perfect. It's kind of shady, actually. And there's a lot of paper mills and there's a lot of not very credible journals where you can pay to get published or they just don't have really good... peer review process. And it doesn't mean what you think. And then the people who dug into the actual studies found that a lot of these were not reputable studies from reputable journals. And yeah, those are kind of like... Basically, you have a meta-analysis of peer-reviewed papers, and that seems like it's a legitimate pool of data to look at. But when you dig in, actually, each individual study is not that credible. I think just to put a little bit more context here, I did an article a few months ago about a FOIA I got back from different schools around the country, different school districts around the country. Because when ChatGPT was released, I FOIA'd school districts for what they're saying about ChatGPT. And this was like mid-2023, something like that. And I did an article basically about how no schools actually knew what this was. There was always a teacher or two who was like, oh, ChatGPT, we should look into this. This is scary. We should consider doing something about this. And almost none of them actually knew what was going on. So the idea, again, that there was all this very good science being done about whether ChatGPT could help students and was being published at this time, it defies belief. And so I think that is important to set up. I guess last, what do you take away from all of this? It's kind of a mess. I feel like there's been a few different cases where there's a highly hyped study that says AI is good and then it makes the rounds. And then at some point in the future, that study is retracted or wasn't quite right. And then it's unclear whether the coverage of it being retracted or of that being bunk science actually has the same level of impact that the original study did. yeah it's funny um because i think like at least half the story here is about the state of academic publishing but i think it's probably two years ago at this point but generative ai is also really crushing academic publishing like we wrote some some stories about how the peer review the peer reviews seem to be AI generated you know so it's like it's really they're getting it from all ends but I guess the other thing and we can get into this a little bit when we talk about Sam's story but it's like believe your eyes and ears and believe what students and teachers are telling us about this and they're not loving it. And it's like, we didn't do an academic peer-reviewed study unless you include our editing to be a peer-reviewed process. But Jason talked to a bunch of teachers about how this is going. It's not going good. I don't think you would have been able to do that story and come to the conclusions you did if ChatGPT was incredibly helpful in an academic environment. Speaking of AI being incredibly helpful in an academic environment, let's talk about an article Sam did yesterday. OpenAI, Google and Microsoft backed bill to fund AI literacy in schools. That's exciting. That's exciting. So basically, like the AI companies are pushing a bill. that would do what? Their situation with these two stories. So this bill, which was introduced by Adam Schiff, who's a senator in California, and also Mike Rounds, who is a South Dakota senator, Republican. It's a big bipartisan bill, which is always such a delight to see. But the bill would essentially fund the NSF, National Science Foundation, to allow schools to change the K-12 curriculum and encourage AI literacy. So building in AI literacy, and this is in major air quotes because we'll get into why that's bizarre and vague in the bill. But the bill would allow the director of the NSF to grant awards to support. educational curriculum that would advance AI literacy in school. Yeah, I mean, this is, it's just a layer cake of what the fuck, generally. Can I ask what AI literacy is? Do we know? Is it defined? It's defined in the bill. The bill, as it's written right now, is five pages long. One page of that is the title. I guess we should say the title of the bill. The title of the bill is Literacy in Future Technologies Artificial Intelligence Act, the LIFT Act. I'm always in awe of their ability to make an acronym in these bills. But one page is the title, one whole page is definitions that are very vague, and then there's only a couple pages of actual policy here. but they define AI literacy as having the age-appropriate knowledge and ability to use artificial intelligence effectively to critically interpret outputs, to solve problems in an AI-enabled world, and to mitigate potential risks. So that's both short and stupid. Literacy, by definition, is not using a thing. That's onboarding. This is just teaching kids how to use Chi-Chi-PT. by making them use ChatGPT or Gemini or any of these others that helped fund this bill, which, let's see, who funded the bill in total? It was Google, which obviously runs Gemini, OpenAI, which is ChatGPT, Microsoft. And then there were a couple others, the American Federation of Teachers. I don't know a ton about them, but they did have this big push for a $2 million partnership with Microsoft OpenAI and Anthropic last year to build this big like AI training hub, which I guess is going to be a physical space, like the Pokemon arena or something. Very scary to think about this, but they sloshing money into AI with the help and the support of all these other AI companies which is just The American Federation of Teachers is a massive, massive teachers union, like second largest. And the president of it is Randy Weingarten, who has been this figure in teachers unions for a long time. And I mean, I have no idea what her relationship is here, but she's been quite controversial in general. I feel like AI is probably not that popular with teachers based on what I've said. But there's like a long, long history in general of like they do lobbying in addition to just being a union. They do lobbying and there's a long history of lobbying organizations kind of like selling out their members for whatever purpose. Like Farmers Lobby has sold out as farmers like over and over and over again on right to repair and things like this. Uh, so it's not, it's disappointing, but not like terribly surprising that this massive teachers union is like pushing this. Yeah. And has been for, for a while. This is a big part of their agenda at this point. Um, another part of this bill that I think is important to note, and this is something that I didn't really realize until Matthew Galt, one of our contributors pointed this out while I was writing the story. But the NSF, last week, Trump fired every single board member that was responsible for guiding the NSF. And the NSF right now is without a director and has been for a while, for about a year. So right now it's kind of like who's going to lead the NSF next. And the leading name, like the Trump pick at this point is a guy named Jim O'Neill. And he is not a research guy, not a science guy. He just is a former employee of Peter Thiel and is of that world. And I think there's some speculation among the science community that Jim is nominated and is probably going to be the NSF director because it'll be kind of like a hat tip or like a consolation to Peter Thiel, who Trump is very invested in staying good with. so that's all very cursed because the person who is responsible for applying this funding so even if we could imagine a world where this bill might fund actual literacy and actual learning about what ai is and what it does and what it can't do uh the person responsible for handing out that money is this rich guy financier who's just like a teal buddy and i can't imagine that going anywhere but worse. I mean, this is like the knock-on effects also of fully gutting the NSF and just like science research and medical research and all that sort of thing in the United States in general, because the NSF has like a very long history of researching and doing like very important things and also funding like, you know, critical research and doing standards and all that sort of thing. And now, I mean, it's not without fault, but it's generally been a very important organization. And now it is like a rubber stamp for industry. And it's pushing... It would help these tech companies do what they want to do. On the interview podcast this week, earlier this week with Brian Merchant, he raised the point that AI companies have been lobbying a lot more. I mean, they've been lobbying for a long time, especially because AI companies are like Microsoft and Facebook and Google, which have traditionally just been massive lobbyists in general. But OpenAI increasingly doing lobbying, Anthropic increasingly doing lobbying, different effective altruists increasingly doing lobbying. And one thing that they've been doing is they have been pushing these bills that are extremely friendly to them, of course. That's what lobbyists do. But they've been pushing basically for legislation that would funnel money and reduce regulations on the AI industry. And then they're also pushing for bills that restrict states from putting restrictions on AI and from hampering them in any way. And so I think just the fact that there is a lobby that is pushing this very controversial idea that AI is going to be good in schools when, as Emmanuel just said, and as our reporting has shown, and as lots of reporting has shown, it's not clear whether AI is going to help in schools. And in fact, it's a lot of evidence suggesting that it's not good. And here, you specifically have companies pushing to integrate AI more deeply into schools. I guess the last thing that I am curious what y'all think is about this idea of AI literacy in general. As in, I think that's something that a lot of people have been beefing about is whether you actually need to teach people how to do this stuff. because at the beginning of the internet, there were computing classes and typing classes and how to use the internet classes. But if this technology is going to be so deeply integrated into our society and all of that, it's like people are figuring out how to use it on their own just because it's something that you'll encounter and need to know and all of that. And it's not like you need advanced skills to use ChatGPT or Claude or whatever. I feel like we've probably phased out. I don't think we have how to use an iPad class. It's like babies learn how to use an iPad naturally. I'm just curious what you think of this idea of we need classes to show how AI works. Did you guys do typing classes? Yeah. I did, yes. Yeah. Did you think that it helped? I can't type for shit, so no. I use these two fingers. It's funny because I also use two fingers and I type super fast and I'm a very good typer. And I feel like I was cheating. You know, like Mavis Beacon teaches typing. I also had Mario teaches typing. Shout out to that game. Very fun. And the teacher would sit there and make me use Home Row and all my fingers and I couldn't do it so well. And then I would go back to my two and a half fingers, three fingers typing and I would crush it and be amazing. And so I feel like often when they're like, you have to do these following rules. Here's how you do it. It's like, often you do it worse because it's like antiquated and kids figure out how to use technology because they're like smart and they have good brains. I had private typing lessons, which is so funny to think about. But my parents were like, you have to learn how to type really fast because it's like the future or something. And I went to this lady who like, taught me typing and it didn't work at all like this is like i don't know late 90s or something like that mid 90s and i just like wasn't using a computer a lot and it didn't take and then as an adult where i had to use a computer it's like i learned to type very fast but like it wasn't because of the class i'm only saying this to like agree with jason where it's like i don't know if you need to teach people how to use a technology that is made to be a mass consumer product. The people who make iPads or the people who make AI or the people who make phones make them in a way that assumes that they have to teach you how to use the thing. That's part of the whole effort. An iPhone is an intuitive device. That's why they make it the way that they do. So I don't think it's necessary. And then I would also note, just as a footnote, it seems like the worst time ever to push something like this because it is also the time where schools are really warming up to the idea of phone bans and getting computers out of school and people starting to question the whole Chromebook for every child policy and all of that. And I think parents are digging it and it does make sense to me. So I don't think this is going to go down so well like they assume. I think just when people are realizing that classrooms need less technology rather than more, trying to get chat GPT in the hands of every child is not a good pitch. No. I mean, these companies need kids to use it. The kids don't need it at all. the companies need the schools to do this it's it's very classic market capture from a young age like they'll be they'll get their favorite chatbot and that's what they'll rely on until you know they're adults i assume is the idea is this i assume is the thinking it's i mean it's the same way with like the chromebooks apple immediately got into schools when they as soon as they had a computer that they could put into schools they did and now you have you know people who are like oh yeah, I've been using an Apple computer since I was a child and that's always what I've used. It's something that brands do all the time. I think it's also, it's interesting, I think they're too late. I think, like you said, it's like, this isn't a weird time to be doing this because they're a little too late. I think maybe if there was less skepticism against these things at this point, maybe they would be, they would have an easier time of it. But it's, I think people are already realizing just on their own that this is not something that kids should have access to or need in a learning environment. I think they're probably like a little bit behind the ball, but they're also desperate at this point. I feel like this is such a desperate move to go to the legislation route is always like, it didn't work in the free market of capitalism. So we're going to buy a senator and make this happen on our own is just last gasp vibes. But it works sometimes. To go back to the previous story, I think the good research is going to come out and I think it's going to be abysmal for AI companies. I can't think of anything that's more detrimental to the development of a young brain than just having a machine do all your thinking for you. It's not good. And there's already some research that show that cognitive atrophy and all this stuff that we've talked about previously. It's funny also just because I got a push notification from the New York Times yesterday that was like, teachers are making students write essays in class by hand because of AI and that sort of thing. And it's like, I mean, that's something that we heard from teachers a year and a half ago, which is fine. Welcome, New York Times. I'm sure it's happening more and more now. And there's been a lot of really good articles about AI in schools from like New York Mag, LA Times, New York Times, etc. It's become a very mainstream thing to talk about how AI is changing school and how teachers are not doing well, students are not doing well, all this sort of thing. It's not something that's flying under the radar in any way, shape, or form at this point. It's like kitchen table conversation in the biggest media outlets, etc. So I think that this is not something that... It's not good. It's not good for the AI companies, I don't think. And I think to Sam's point also, I don't know if this is still the case, but every year for the last few years, there's been a spike in chat GPT usage and signups in late August as school gets back in session. And then people unsubscribe over the summer. And I wonder if that's holding true. But it's like these companies do need to capture these students early on, I feel, and addict them. Okay, let's leave that there. If you are listening to the free version of this podcast, that is the end of the podcast. But if you want to hear us talk about RightsCon and the shit show that has occurred with the world's largest civil rights conference, You can get that in the subscribers only section, which you can gain access to by going to 404media.co and subscribing. You'll get a top secret RSS link that is ad free and also includes these bonus segments every week. So you can find it there. As a reminder, 404media is a journalist founded company and is supported by subscribers. 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