Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoe Schiffer, Director of Business and Industry. I'm Brian Barrett, Executive Editor. And I'm Leah Feiger, Director of Politics and Science. Today on the show, we're diving into recent reports that the Trump administration is considering an executive order that would establish some sort of federal oversight over new AI models. And we're going to talk about whether this move actually signals a meaningful shift in future regulation of this technology. In another surprising turn of events, we're also going to get into how a federal worker who was fired earlier this year for filming Doge operatives entering her workplace is now running for a house seat. We're also going to check in with a Spirit Airlines worker who was laid off after the company shut down. And last but not least, we'll also talk through just how worried you should be about Hantavirus. Spoiler, probably not as concerned as Leah is. I'm very concerned. She's very concerned. A good week, you guys. Okay, so it's been an interesting week for the AI industry. On Monday, we heard that the Trump administration announced what on its face seems like a pretty big about face in its approach to AI regulation. The New York Times initially reported that there is an executive order being considered, just at that stage right now, that would create a group of tech executives and government officials who would essentially review AI models before they are released to the public. At the time that this was reported, it wasn't totally clear, at least to me, whether they would just get access to the models and be able to look at them and evaluate them or whether they would be able to say whether a model could be released or not. But it does seem like a pretty significant reversal of the very loose and pointed lack of regulation that the Trump administration has had until now toward the AI industry. It's been really interesting to see how as AI models get more powerful, they've sort of hit their limit, right? I think the Anthropic showdown we've talked about a lot. We're in a new era of, oh, wait, actually, this could be useful to us or terrible for us. We actually do need to set aside some of those free market principles and get a heads up here. Maybe going to be executive order. I feel like in the past, those have typically panned out to become the thing. I feel like this administration is pretty leaky. And so I think this seems likely to happen. I don't know. Zoe, how are companies taking this? You know, it's interesting because it's happening like right as a bunch of these companies, Google, Microsoft, XAI, Anthropic, OpenAI, already said that they would give the government early access to their models. And so, I mean, I think it's quite interesting, particularly when we think back to J.D. Vance not that long ago telling a group of regulators in Europe that the administration was going to take a very different approach to the Biden administration in terms of regulating this technology and really trying to, frankly, not regulate it. The AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety. It will be won by building from reliable power plants to the manufacturing facilities that can produce the chips of the future. So even the possibility that this could change, I think, is worth paying a lot of attention to. I was pretty shocked by this news for such a deregulatory-focused government at the moment. And, like, the administration very much prides itself on that. Like, that is part of campaign ads. That's part of internal conversations with their tech cohort. It's really, we're making this a comfortable place for you to do business, and you should feel comfortable here. So this is, again, we don't know exactly like how detailed this regulation or quote unquote oversight is actually going to look. But I'm I was I was surprised. I was surprised. I'm really surprised. I was surprised. But this is my question for you, Leah. Like when we're talking about who is going to be part of this oversight committee or who is even kind of drafting this, you know, supposed regulation or executive order. Like David Sachs is no longer in the mix, at least in the kind of official way that he was. My read was that it was like Michael Kratzios and Susie Wiles who were now kind of managing his former portfolio. I'm like, sorry, I don't want to be rude, but I'm like, you're telling me Susie Wiles is the person deciding whether mythos is too dangerous to release to the public? Like, come on. Known AI expert Susie Wiles. Here's my bad take is like, maybe I like that. Maybe I like the idea of Susie having to be on her little computer going, I don't get this. This seems bad. Huh? Huh? Anything there? Mm-mm. Okay. No. I hear your take and I want a yes and. Yes and no. Yes and no is what I do with that. It's half-baked and I'm not sure I'm actually fully committed to it. But yeah, it's one thing to say like we're going to have oversight and then who are the overseers, I suppose. Well, I think so many people who traditionally have cooler heads who are in the Trump administration sphere who are AI experts, I think there was a real break around the anthropic Pentagon stuff where they said this administration has gone way too far. This is really hurtful to American AI industry in progress. So I think you're not going to have those people in the mix. And if you don't have those people, the people who are left, you know, I think you're not going to have that no matter who it is. I think you're running short on people who actually know a lot about what's going on and actually have long term best interests of both the industry and human people who might be subsumed by it at heart. I also wonder how much of this is a play, is being able to say, like, look, we are doing this because there is just like increasing public concern, no matter which way you slice it, about AI threatening jobs, energy prices, privacy, mental health, like what have you. Like, this is in the news right now in a very big way. And if the Trump administration is able to even slightly go, OK, OK, OK, we hear you. Don't worry. We've got Susie Wiles on the case. Oh, my God. But like, I mean, it does like let's think back to when they said not too long ago in an executive order. Correct me if I'm wrong, that they were going to like de-woke AI. And we should look back at that. Did anything come from it? But what I had heard at the time was nary a reach out. It was an order that came out and then utter silence. Like no AI companies got, you know, a prod about it. I think that's the right question, though, too. Because even though I haven't done anything yet, like I am old enough to remember because it was like three years ago or whatever. when GOP Iyer was focused on news feeds and Facebook's algorithms. And it said, well, if you don't have the same amount of liberal and conservative quote-unquote content, then it's biased, which is not how anything works. I wouldn't be surprised if this panel, at least some element of it was. No, you have to make sure that you're training on Breitbart as much as you're training on the New York Times or Wikipedia or whatever. I mean, again, who knows? It's just a report of an executive order that might happen. But I don't know that that's gone away. Even though nothing's happened yet, it still feels like a very real possibility that that is sort of still a wave of culture war that we're headed for. Yeah, I did text Sam Altman about it. My text did say we can talk off the record but since he didn respond I going to tell you about it right now which is that I said we should chat Curious to hear what you think That man used to be really responsive and chatty but boy is he either very media trained or very much in court this week. So he is not answering his texts, at least for me. So talking about the U.S. government, there's another really interesting story that's happening right now that I am watching so, so closely as someone who obviously was a big part of Wired's Doge coverage. And we all went, what happened to these federal employees after they were Doge? What happened to the people who spoke out? So we have one person that McKenna Kelly, our senior politics writer, spoke with last week, Alexis Goldstein, a former employee from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, who was put on leave after she recorded how Elon Musk's so-called Doge members were actually seemingly accessing equipment at the CFPB very early on in their takeover without telling employees, without any sort of notice. So Goldstein filmed them. She quite literally went up to them and filmed them. Here she is now recalling exactly what happened in her own words in an interview with Democracy Now! I came in like I normally do. I drop off my toddler at daycare. There isn't stroller parking, so I wheel in my stroller, my empty stroller, to the CFPB headquarters in Washington, D.C. And I noticed a number of people who I had never seen before who were not wearing the required CFPB badges, and they were accessing what appeared to be CFPB equipment. So I wanted to take a closer look. I wanted to try and investigate. We are told over and over again that we are supposed to report suspicious activities, that we are supposed to defend the sensitive data that we hold of American people. I mean, like, it's so surreal to even hear someone speaking about this as an experience, to watch people, you know, go into your place of work and just really turn it upside down. And one of the things that Alexis also said is just, like, how much people trust them with this technology. These are like very, very important bits and bobs that were all of a sudden in the hands of people that weren't like actually government employees. She has a little bit more to say. Let's listen up. Millions of people trust us with their vulnerable moments, if they're scammed by their financial company, if they're having trouble with their mortgage. The technical term we use for it is personally identifying information. And we have a lot of very specific training about how to handle it. And so I was very concerned that the people that I had never seen before were there, appeared to have CFE equipment. So I tried to take a look. They moved from one conference room to the other when they saw me into a conference room that didn't have a window. And so I decided to go into that conference room. Goldstein told McKenna that she had tried to approach these DOGE members. They refused to share their names with her. A security guard eventually escorted her out, and later that day, she found out she was being put on administrative leave. Then earlier this year, a long time after, she was officially fired from the CFPB. The plot twist now, though, is that Goldstein is running for office. She's a candidate in a race for the U.S. House of Representatives in Maryland's 6th Congressional District. And a lot of her platform is about really exposing what happens in the federal government and, like, the machinations that have been going on in the Trump administration to the common voter. She had a lot of really interesting things to say. And frankly, her story of what it looked like to really confront Doge in a federal way and have that be entirely shut down and turned around was fascinating. This was a really, really interesting look for us. I just think there's a lot of deep irony to the fact that she's running on, like, exposing what's really happening in the federal government when Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency were all about supposedly shining light on what was really going on and finding fraud, waste, and abuse and showing the general public, like, what that looked like. Absolutely. I mean, that's so much of this is that, like, these individuals that she also found went on to be part of also so many other agencies throughout the federal government. These weren't like one-off folks. She was interacting with some of the big leagues. Yeah. How is her message resonating? Do we know with voters? Like, it makes total sense she would run on this platform like, hey, I've seen the worst of what happens when you are a government employee and Doge comes in and breaks the systems that we rely on, especially CFPB, which got gutted and which plays a very valuable role or did in this ecosystem. Are people buying it? Like, is she doing well? Honestly, it's hard to say because it's a little bit early and it's a very, very crowded race, like the 6th Congressional District in Maryland, crowded, lots of folks in there. From what we've been seeing online, though, federal workers love her. And a lot of federal workers, both current and former, live in this district. So she has a shot. But she's also, I found it fascinating, she's also not the only former government worker who was affected by Doge to be running for office now. There are more than three dozen people who quit or lost their jobs in the wake of those cuts who are out there running for office now, trying to change the system, and good luck to them trying to change the system from Congress instead of from their federal purchase. Yeah, absolutely. And look, Goldstein, she's running as a dem. She's been very critical of how Democrats have taken kind of a passive approach, like, you know, we'll get in there once we take back the House. And so I'm very interested to kind of see how that messaging plays in the midterm environment as well. She's said, for example, that it's a priority to, you know, continue the CFPB's work. And it's going to take, though, quite some time, which she recognizes, to undo a lot of these damages, especially when it comes to agencies like the CFPB that were just like so monumentally gutted. I'm really going to be following this one closely. I'm excited to see where she goes. Before we go to break, we have one more firsthand testimony to share with listeners. This one comes from Julian Richardson, who's a flight attendant, one of the more than 17,000 Spirit Airlines members who were affected by the company shutdown. Last weekend, Spirit announced it was cease and operations after 34 years, which I was shocked it had been around that long, and after filing for bankruptcy twice in the last two years. That I was less shocked by. Still, among all the rumors and the uncertainty, workers like Julian were caught off guard. I woke up early in the morning to go to the gym, like around four, four-ish. And, you know, like most people do, I check my phone. And I saw an email that came in like around 2 a.m. And it was from the company. So I looked over it and, you know, it definitely wasn't good news. And I was very, very surprised. You know, I was like, man, like I know this was in the back of a lot of our minds, but it's actually like real now, you know. Workers like Julian were well aware, in case you're wondering, that Spirit had a reputation of being budget friendly, but not always the most reliable. But he also said that as an employee, he saw a different side of that. You know, as a flight attendee, you see people come on flights, you realize a lot of people with families they depend on that particular brand you know because of their prices You know you have like three or four kids all over the age of two That means you have to buy plane tickets for everybody And if the plane tickets are cheaper, it helps you to be able to travel somewhere. So, you know, I really saw that when I started to work for the airline. As I have two kids, I feel that deeply. And also at a time when, you know, air safety is on a lot of people's minds, Julian also was particularly proud of the safety record that Spirit maintained. I mean, over the past, you know, they've been in business now 34 years. They never had any like fatal crash or anything like that. And I think that's huge, especially in an industry where you kind of have a job where your life is at risk like every single day, you know, when most of these airlines, they've had at least one within their lifetime. I think that's a big deal. Julian and his former colleagues are now having to reenter and navigate the uncertainty of the job market. But one thing he is at least not worried about, surprisingly enough, AI. There are things that happen on the plane that where you need an actual person. Like I can remember during COVID, that was the time when everyone had to wear a mask. Some people wanted to wear it. Some people didn't want to wear it. So almost every week there's a viral video of like fights or like something happening where maybe a baby's crying and this person is upset because the baby's crying. And then they say something to the mom. Then the mom says something back. Like this is It's like almost like every other other flight scenario on the airplanes. I don't know how AI would be able to, you know, help that situation, you know? Yeah, we don't need a Grok. Grok would just say that it's sick. Grok mitigating the fight between the mom and the person who's yelling at her about her baby. I really, really feel for these workers. And I really, really feel for all of these customers that were stranded. Spirit in so many ways, like something that we love to make fun of just a little bit. Like you take spirit when you have to. but also it was like actually available and it worked and it wasn't nearly as expensive as anyone else. It's kind of sad, especially when I look at like the shrinking airline industry in the U.S. when I look over at Europe and I'm like, you guys have so many low cost carriers. And especially with like all of the deals, everything back and forth between like JetBlue and Spirit that got like squashed. It was just like a little bit sad to see that happen. Well, Neil, when you say stranded, I want to be clear, that's literal. I think some of these employees, you know, they were not at their home cities when Spirit shut down. So they had to rely on other airlines offering them a jump seat or a travel pass to get home. You know, fortunately, it's apparently a very communal industry. Other airlines help them out. Other airlines are offering preferential employment interviews to Spirit Airline employees. But can you imagine, you know, I'm in London right now, and if Wired shut down, I had to find another way home. I mean, it'd be okay. No, but it would also just be like ridiculous. Like this is wild. I think of that 30 Rock episode when Liz Lemon is like, oh, yeah, this is my flight. And they're like, sorry, we're out of flights now. We just make popcorn, which was an incredible seat. But like, that's so real. I don't think from a consumer level, if you were going to book tickets for the summer, do it soon because now it's a sort of a supply and demand thing, right? A whole airline is gone. That's a lot of seats that aren't there. So there's more scarcity. Prices are going up basically at the worst possible time for people like myself who are kind of thinking about planning some summer or travel with, again, two kids. Coming up after the break, we'll be getting into the news of the Hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship. Should we be concerned or are we panicking for no reason? We'll find out. Comprehensive. Witty. Speculative. Critical. Insightful. Profound. Wide-ranging. Hopefully doesn't take itself too, too seriously. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world. I hope you'll join us for the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts. The thoughtful. Exquisite. Just, you know, real. So in recent days, there have been more and more headlines of a Hantavirus outbreak happening on the MV Hondias, a Dutch-flagged cruise ship. The cruise departed from the south end of Argentina over a month ago, making stops in Antarctica, the island of San Helena, among other stops. The trouble started when a man started showing symptoms like a fever, a headache, and eventually this became a respiratory illness. He died on board, and a few weeks later, his wife did as well. She was later confirmed to have the Hantavirus-2. As of this week, seven cases have now been confirmed, and the ship is currently carrying 147 passengers and crew. To help us understand what on earth is going on, we are joined by Wired staff writer Emily Mullen. Thanks for having me. Emily, thank you for being here. Before we get into how worried we should be, because I want to keep Leah in suspense. When we hear virus and respiratory illness, obviously we are a little panicked, conditioned to be, rightly so. But can you just tell us a little more about what hantavirus actually is before we get into sort of the nitty gritty of whether it's going to ruin the next several years of our lives? So this is a respiratory virus and it's quite rare. It's usually spread through the droppings and urine of rodents. Well, that's disgusting and terrifying. But the couple on the ship were the first ones to show symptoms, and then it seems like it's spread out further. So I guess, Emily, do we know how it spreads and how it gets transmitted between people? Right. So as of Wednesday, we know that three passengers have died, this Dutch couple and a German national. The World Health Organization on Wednesday confirmed that these deaths occurred due to the anti-strain of Hantavirus. and this is significant because the anti-strain can spread through human-to-human transmission. This is not the usual way in which hantavirus spreads. So hantaviruses are actually a family of viruses and they're found all over the world. They're typically carried by rodents as I said before. The virus is spread to humans usually when people breathe in air and dust particles that contain rodent droppings or urine. And here in the U.S., most of the hantavirus cases over the years have been in the Southwest, so New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and California. And there are some occasional cases in the state of Washington as well. In the case of the Dutch couple, one theory as to how they were initially infected is that they were apparently birdwatching in the city of Ushuaia in Argentina before boarding the ship. I spoke with a hantavirus expert this morning who said the virus has previously been found in rodents there And he said all it really takes is the virus to be present in animals in a particular location for there to be a risk for humans So are there any steps being taken right now to have this outbreak contained Has it already left the ship? I've been seeing some reporting. I'd love for you to spell that out a little bit more for us. So authorities from several countries are coordinating this very complicated response right now. Passengers are being monitored for symptoms and, of course, asked to isolate if they develop any symptoms. And in the early days of these symptoms, you know, this looks like really any other respiratory virus. So you can have fever, muscle aches, fatigue, dizziness, but then the disease progresses to some pretty serious stuff, which includes coughing, shortness of breath, and difficulty breathing. So as of Wednesday, two patients with Hantavirus and one suspected of being infected are being evacuated from the ship and are on their way to Europe for treatment. We also know that a man who returned to his home in Switzerland from a trip to South America who traveled on the same cruise ship, he has tested positive for the virus and is receiving treatment in a hospital in Switzerland. The patient's wife did travel with him on the trip. She has not yet shown any symptoms, but she is self-isolating as a precaution. And so now Swiss public health officials are working to trace people that this person might have come into contact with. This is the first time I've thought about contact tracing in many years, And I was so happy not thinking about it for so long because it is such a complicated process and something that is hard, really hard work to do. Emily, given all of that, what is the level of concern here, given what the World Health Organization has said and other organizations? It sounds like cautious about it, but maybe not freak out time yet. But I defer to you because maybe that's just me trying to make myself feel better. No, I think you're right. The hantavirus expert I spoke with said there have been past clusters of the anti-strain before, but not big outbreaks. And these clusters have tended to involve prolonged close contact with people suffering from the disease. This is a virus that does not spread nearly as efficiently as other respiratory viruses that we're used to, like COVID or flu, for instance. Hantavirus symptoms are also typically pretty severe. So this is not a virus, again, like COVID, where lots of people are going around infected with the disease, spreading it asymptomatically without knowing about it. So that's at least a little bit of comfort, even though the flip side of that is that the disease is quite severe. So the World Health Organization says the risk to the general public is currently low, and this is probably not another COVID situation. Leah, how are we feeling? Not good, you guys. I don't know. Are you kidding? How are you feeling? Maybe this is my moment to go, are you with me yet? No, I was good, but then Emily hit that probably pretty hard in a way that I suddenly felt a little more anxious. Yeah, it was a swallowing of the probably. That was me editorializing that World Health Organization did not include the probably. Okay. What if they had this like in italics and like, or like big quotation marks, like it's probably fine. I don't know, guys. I think, one, I'm fascinated that there's like different strains of this in this. And it really, it brought me back so early on to like the armchair scientists in early COVID who were like, no, no, no, this is totally fine. Yeah. So for there to officially be announced, yes, this is the strain that can get passed between humans, I think is notable, like at the very least. Got to give me that. I think that's true. And I think my open questions are, how long do these people have to stay on this ship before everyone says, okay, you can go now? Or do they send them back to shore and just have them isolate for a certain amount of time? The contact tracing is concerning because, again, I'm having flashbacks. But I do think the things that, Emily, that you said about how, you know, this is different from COVID in important ways in terms of how quickly it can spread, how easily it can spread, that does feels like, especially now that we have the mechanisms in place to do these contact tracing things, you know, I'm going to remain on my not too worried yet. Until we start to see the like random tech people who are becoming expert epidemiologists overnight and like doing really long tweet threads about the likelihood of a pandemic, I think I'm not going to panic because that was... How many people are asking Grok about Hantavirus right now? Oh, actually, no, a fair amount. I did do a little search this morning. And Grok was very measured, I have to say. First time I've liked a Grok response. Grok is not worried. If Grok's not worried, that's it. If Grok's not worried, I'm not worried. I think even if you are planning on taking a vacation on a cruise ship, if you've got a cruise booked for this summer, I think there are probably other things to worry about, like norovirus. Even COVID, we know, has been shown to spread pretty effectively on cruise ships. But I think hantavirus is pretty low on your list of risks unless you're departing from a part of the world where hantavirus is known to be found and recently seen in animals like in this case. Yeah, just don't go birdwatching in Argentina. Exactly. And you're in good shape. Emily, thank you so much for joining us. This was really, really helpful. Thank you. That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show notes. Uncanny Valley is produced by Kaleidoscope Content. Adriana Tapia produced this episode. It was mixed by Amar Lal at Macrosound. It was fact-checked by Daniel Roman. Fran Bandy is our New York studio engineer. Mark Leda is our San Francisco studio engineer. Kimberly Chua is our senior digital production manager. Kate Osborne is our executive producer. And Katie Drebin is Wired's global editorial director. This week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, our reporter asked President Obama the question on a lot of minds. Should he be doing more for the Democrats in a time of crisis? I think the real answer is, A, I'm doing more than you think. And B, I promise you if I was out there every day, you'd be tired of me. The post-presidency of Barack Obama. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour from WNYC. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
