Hey campers, rise and shine, and don't forget your booties, because it's cold out there. It's cold out there every day. What a display. I mean, it's not hard. It's going, boys. You're playing yesterday's tape. I thought I was pretty unfindable. I was extremely findable. Virginia Heffernan, writer, thinker, target. She's not speaking in metaphors here. She's describing what happened when Tucker Carlson sicked a mob on her, and the internet handed them everything they needed to make her life a living hell. Can I buy you a drink? The next clip here comes from Harold Ramis' cult classic 1993 movie, Groundhog Day. Sweet vermouth, rocks with a twist, please. The same. That's my favorite drink. Mine too. Phil Connors, that's Bill Murray, doesn't like sweet vermouth in this movie. But his producer, Rita, aka Andy McDowell, she does. And he's lying. He's running the same day over and over, if you know the movie, watching her, memorizing her, refining his approach. Until her behavior becomes predictable enough to him to get her to do what he wants. That's not charm. That's surveillance. Maybe he's not omnipotent. He's just been around for long. He knows everything. And that's the internet. Not magic. not fate, just repetition, memory and leverage. For more than 20 years now, the internet has been running the same day on us. Actually, 1993 was when the World Wide Web became a public thing. You could use it. Now, what's it been doing? It's been learning our patterns, selling what it learns, calling that connection. Connection. Connection sounds so good. AI is now in the process of finishing the job, and we have to ask, as it becomes so good at what it does, does knowing everything make life better? Or just creepier? And a whole lot easier to control? I'm Beau Friedlander, and this is What the Hack, the show that asks, in a world where your data is everywhere, how do you stay safe online? Virginia Heffernan, welcome. Virginia writes for The New Republic and has a substack called Magic and Loss. She wrote a book by the same title, Magic and Loss. the internet as art. Basically, she's in the business of politics for English majors. That's what she likes to say, which I think is super funny. Virginia, welcome to the podcast. So wait, where are you right now? So what the hack is now part of Delete Me? Have you ever heard of Delete Me? Are you kidding? And I'm so happy you're wearing the shirt. Delete Me came to my rescue after Tucker Carlson, who got me in his sights and led a show with a picture of me and then talked about how stupid I was naturally and sicked his many, many followers on me and other female journalists that he covered in the same week. And I was inundated with threats and threats on my children in my actual mailbox written. Some of them were on thank you cards, and one of them said, thank you, and then inside, for being such a bitch. Now, this was actually in your physical mailbox. In my mailbox. So they had my address. I got calls on my phone and just tons of hate mail through every email I've ever had. So I got the FBI involved, and I got the local cops involved, But no one, they can't do anything to like take your name off, making me less findable. I thought I was pretty unfindable. I was extremely findable. So Delete Me really came to my rescue. And I've just been an evangelist for it ever since. Because you don't know how messed up your life gets until this administration and its many acolytes turn on you. And it was a pretty terrifying couple months. And it stopped pretty much the second I had Delete Me involved. So that is a very heartfelt, something I would have said to anyone, not just someone wearing a Delete Me shirt. Well, the funny thing is, I love my Delete Me shirt. I feel like this makes me look like a nicely groomed Jerry Garcia. But we're not going to talk politics today. We're going to talk internet because you know a lot about that too. Yes. Yeah, that's, yes. We're talking about the internet. We're talking about Groundhog Day. And we're talking about what's broken that keeps us stuck in these loops. Now, this episode, I've been thinking about this since last fall, when I went out to visit Seth Godin. And I was so excited that I just, it was like the first thing I blurted out when we sat down. Seth! I was like, the internet is Groundhog Day. He didn't miss a beat. So it's not that the internet is Bill Murray. It's that there are companies that are rewarded for acting like Bill Murray. Exactly. Except Bill Murray's got a name in the movie and it's not Bill Murray. It's Phil Conner. Listen to this. I'm a god. You're a god. I'm a god. I'm not the god. You're not a god. You can take my word for it. This is 12 years of Catholic school talking. Okay. So if you haven't seen Groundhog Day, and you should, It's a classic by Harold Ramis Here's the setup Bill Murray plays Phil Connors This sort of narcissist weatherman Who goes out to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania To cover weather Punxsutawney Phil The groundhog sees his shadow There's a snowstorm And he gets stuck And the next morning he wakes up And it's the same day February 2nd again And again and again Day after day after day after day The clock here, remember? It's a digital clock Flips over to 6 a.m. Wakes up At first, he doesn't know what's happening, and then he gets angry. And then he realizes, hold on, if I'm stuck in the same day forever, I can learn everything. I can watch people, memorize what they do, figure out exactly what they're going to say before they say it. And Phil Connors, well, he's a jerk, so he uses it. This is Doris. Her brother-in-law, Carl, owns this diner. She's worked here since she was 17. more than anything else in her life, she wants to see Paris before she dies. Oh, boy, what are you doing? This is Debbie Kleiser and her fiancé Fred. Do I know you? They're supposed to be getting married this afternoon, but Debbie is having second thoughts. What? Lovely ring. Now, see, by this point in the movie, Phil Connors has lived this day so many times, he's basically memorized the entire town. Every person, every routine, every secret. He's not a god. He's just been stuck in the loop long enough to know everything about everyone sort of like meta or Google and now He's gonna prove it This is Bill. He's been a waiter for three years since he left Penn State and had to get work He likes the town. He paints toy soldiers and he's gay. I am This is Gus. He hates his life here. He wishes he stayed in the Navy, but I could have retired on half pay after 20 years Excuse me, is this some kind of trick? Well, maybe the real guy uses tricks. Maybe he's not omnipotent. He's just been around for long. He knows everything. Oh, okay. Well, who's that? This is Tom. He worked in the coal mine till they closed the town. And her? It's Alice. Came over here from Ireland when she was a baby. She lived in Erie most of her life. He's right. And her? Nancy. She works in the dress shop and makes noises like a chipmunk when she gets real excited. Hey! It's true. How do you know these people? I told you, I know everything. Everything. In about five seconds, a waiter's going to drop a tray of dishes. Five, four, three, two, one. Wow, I'd forgotten that. Can you see why when I was watching that, I thought, God, that's the internet. Yeah, the idea of the recurring day, or the memory, I guess, of the day no one else remembers, is, I wouldn't have connected it to surveillance online. the surveillance economy and the surveillance economy and in which includes data brokers but this is the the the whole panoply of data brokers and data related companies and i put meta at the very top of that list and google and other social media companies where they are able to know who you know and who they know and who you're related to and what's happened in your life and what's happened because your cousin, once removed, wrote a post about your great-great-great-great grandfather and there's 23 and me. I could go on and on. So we'll just call it the internet. Yep. What stands out also is just the state of the economy on the Eastern seaboard and just the discussion of how the Penn State guy is a waiter and the waitress can't go to Paris. And there's the what the internet and what the Bill Murray character would know about you. That is, what makes up your identity are essentially small facts about your economic and familial situations where around the origin of social media, we didn't really care if you were posting to Facebook about, well, your wedding didn't happen because you'd had second thoughts about it. You just thought, why would some overlord, why would some all-seeing eye care about knowing what I had for breakfast and all the usual trivia that was Twitter and Facebook were expected to document. But now I think if we saw this again, you'd see a more diverse crowd in the diner and you would see great anxiety about people's political positions online. even their relationship like the interior lives or the private lives of people look different now like we almost cheat them out to the cameras like what is supposed to constitute your identity i mean so this is 1993 right and what i found the first thing that i found interesting was not that clinton became president nafta passed um the world trade center was bombed World Trade Center was bombed for the first time. Waco. Waco, Texas. So all these things. 1993, cool. But you know what the most important thing is that happened in 1993? The World Wide Web became public. That's when it happened. It spans the globe like a superhighway. It is called Internet. The net, two long-time users. Internet is a whole group of networks The net is made up of some 12 individual computer networks Internet began back in 1969 It was a tool of the Pentagon. But nowadays, just about any way of a computer and a motor... Wow. So this is pre-computer. This is like a pre-computer allegory about our lives online. There are actually archaeologists who do work on basically things called pre-digitizing societies. So there are even Greek and Roman examples of small communities that are acting digitally avant la lettre, or before there is actual digital life. Avant la lettre means before the writing. Before the letter of the internet. And I got to say, there's no better application of avant la lettre than that. So if we want to, like, if we're ever going to indulge in that kind of ridiculous pretension, now's the time. But anyway, yes, self-digitizing or pre-digital, but sort of anticipating digitization. That seems like what you're describing is going on in the movie. I'm trying to see if I agree with you, though. Stay with me. We'll be right back after this. Here we go Let's hear it Hey, did you see the groundhog this morning? Uh-huh, I never miss it What's your name? Nancy Taylor, and you are? He's already struck out with her several times Okay What high school did you go to? Lincoln in Pittsburgh She won't give him the time of day. But obviously he gets another try every day because the day keeps repeating. Who are you? Who was your 12th grade English teacher? Are you kidding? So today he's just decided to be a jerk and shake her down for information. No, no, no. In 12th grade, your English teacher was... Mrs. Walsh. Mrs. Walsh, yeah. Nancy. Lincoln. Walsh. Okay, thanks very much. Hey. Hey. So... What just happened there was in, you know, one of the things that just happened there is that's how cyber criminals work, right? Nancy? Nancy Taylor? Lincoln High School. I sat next to you in Mrs. Walsh's English class. Oh, I'm sorry. Phil Connors. Wow, that's amazing. You don't remember me, do you? Um... I even asked you to the prom. Phil Connors? I was short, and I've sprouted. They're just trying to get enough information about you in order to pull a scam on you. Gosh! How are you? Great. You look terrific. You look very, very terrific. But maybe later we could... Yeah, whatever. I'm wondering about the, like the spear phishing or the sort of inquiry about what, where she went to high school and who our teacher, what her teacher's name was. Also just the willingness, the sort of sociological willingness to give up answer questions that are asked to you on the street. And the fact that even she who's trying to brush him off is willing to give up the name of her high school is actually also really interesting. That like other people's curiosity about you is flattering. And we're all walking around. I don't know if I've ever told you this, but I wrote once about this. That was, I guess, fished, catfished by Larry Summers. No. Yes. Okay. Former Harvard President Lawrence Summers will take a break from teaching at the prestigious university after his continued relationship with Epstein was exposed. Larry Summers' real account on Twitter DMed me on Twitter. So his real verified account DMed me and said, hey, I really like your work and I wonder if you'd look over something I wrote. Now, obviously, the former Treasury Secretary and President of Harvard is not going to ask my opinion of something that he wrote. No, no, that's not true. That's not true. If he's read your op-eds and stuff, I disagree. He might. That's actually plausible. Apparently, by the way, apparently, I've just been waiting my whole life to be of service to the former Treasury Secretary because, yes, I clicked. I clicked and my whole screen was filled with Turkish letters, all of it. and this guy came up this picture of this like ai kind of warrior came up saying like we've seized your whole account and suddenly they were like running my twitter account and anyway it was a huge headache but the point is somebody is sort of like inquiry even as that woman in groundhog day is trying to blow off bill murray she can't help it she starts giving up information about herself She just like, it's cracked open. You know, it's very hard to gray rock and just say no to these things. You know what? You know why? Here's why. I don't know why, but I'm going to say my theory. Connection. So one of the reasons I think Facebook worked was it promised connection. It promised, you know, all these people you used to know, you're going to know them again. They're on here. All you got to do is hit friend and you can meet them again. Kindergarten, right back in your life. so that connection happens on the street too and when i i was on a train from dc not that long ago and i was sitting next to someone who's clearly a journalist and really wanted the whole car to know was was going through edits in the train super annoying and i was writing something and she finally she said something so wrong that i said i don't know why i offered it but i was just like you know, I heard, you know, that edit might get you in trouble. And she was like, are you a journalist? And I said, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything. And then I just, I said, I got to work. And I went back to work, not answering her question. She circled back. Where do you write? I said, on my computer mostly. I really do have to work. And she kept trying. And she finally said, I have to get off the train, but I'm pretty sure that you do national security journalism. And I was like, cool. Have a great day. Good luck with your article. And that is all I will give. Because if I want to connect, I'll call you up. If I want to connect with a journalist or intellectual or writer or reader, I will call those people who I want to hear from and who I want to share my thoughts with. But I don't increasingly, like I never was big on Twitter. So yeah, I do think it's opt-in. But what we're opting in for is connection. And I think that brings us to our next clip, which is really alarming when you think about the fact that what we're really looking for, the comfort of being known, is very alluring. So, what are the chances of getting out today? The van still won't start. Larry's working on it. Wouldn't you know it. Can I buy you a drink? She already is totally annoyed by him. She's his producer. He's a total arrogant jerk. Okay. Jim Beam, ice, water. So he's struck out with her a million times. For you, miss? Sweet vermouth in the rocks with a twist, please. Now, here's Phil Connors doing what he already knows will work because it worked with a woman who went to high school in Pittsburgh and coughed up the name of her teacher and other stuff that helped him get a date with her. So he exists now to do reconnaissance. It's okay if he strikes out. Every wrong answer will lead to a right one. He's an embodiment of a selfish algorithm. The clock rolls around to 6 a.m. again. He tries to get in her good graces again. And yeah, that's a euphemism. What are the chances of getting out of town today? The van still won't start. Larry's working. Oh, wouldn't you know it. Can I buy you a drink? Okay. Sweet vermouth, rocks with a twist, please. For you, miss? The same. That's my favorite drink. Mine, too. It always makes me think of Rome. The way the sun hits the buildings in the afternoon. What should we drink to? And he's taking another try at making her like him. I like to say a prayer and drink to world peace. To world peace. World peace. So next, they're post-bar, hotel bound, and Phil Connors busts a move. The kiss, but just enough for Rita Hanson, played by Andy McDowell, to push him away and remember herself. remember who she actually is, not who the internet is reflecting back to her or trying to gently guide her to be. Oh no, I can't believe I fell for this. This whole day has just been one long setup. No, it hasn't. And I hate fudge. Yuck. No white chocolate, no fudge. What are you doing? Are you making some kind of list or something? No. Did you call up my friends and ask them what I like? No white chocolate, no fudge. He sounds like an LLM calling out its own drift and thus failure to execute whatever was asked. If he is a kind of proto-internet, is he optimized for some kind of particularly barbaric aggression? Yes. And it actually, right? Yes. Okay. Yes. Tell me more. Tell me why you think that. Why isn't this just you and I go on a date and I call up a bunch of friends of yours and say, what's Bo into? That's great. No, that would work. But that would work. And that's not what's happening here. Okay. Tell me. First of all, if we just take the scene at face value, this is a narcissist who has weaponized what he knows to get what he wants. I think. I think that he's gathered this information because he has a theory that mirroring the person is going to get him where he wants to go. and it's but it feels very transactional and planned i mean don't you amplify the things that you're interested at points of commonality and like and play down the other ones and also does not if it's just in the service of he i don't know i think because he's been he has been a swordsman in the movie he has bedded a few people what i was thinking in this scene was that he's doing he's a kind of meta's privacy is dead Google don't be creepy incarnate like and why it's very simple this is why I said yes so confidently because they're selling stuff because if I know those things about you because I I watched you like stuff with your friends from high school on Facebook I can sell you stuff And he's also, right, pretending they have something in common that they don't actually. Later she'll find out he doesn't care at all about Rome, which seems like the sort of typical route to divorce, which is like you pretended you were into UFC fighting in the beginning and now you haven't wanted to go with me for 10 years. Sounds like a bad date. Actually, I did pretend to be into UFC fighting to court my husband. So again, I'm thinking of it as an allegory. Bill Murray's not a narcissist who's maybe being chivalric and trying to get a girl that way. He's the internet. And he's plowing through everything the way the internet does, which is it gathers information and then it deploys it. And that deployment of information has become more and more subtle and smart. Like you mentioned getting catfished or spearfished actually by Larry Sumner's, you know, the idea that the way in can be super interesting. later on in the movie where this process of Bill Murray as the internet, the whole internet, is learning stuff and taking that data and deploying it and building it. It defeats, that process actually destroys the narcissism that drove it in the first place. Yeah. And that's what's interesting. That's good. Because it comes out the other end and we're going to look at this. So that process destroyed the narcissism that drove it in the first place, and it turns into something resembling AI. I was just talking with Buster Green. He's the NetGradar, honcho. And he said, if you set up over here, we'd like to get a better shot. What do you think? Sounds good. What do you think? Yeah. Let's go for it. Good work, Bill. ChatGPT knows that you should probably ask the producer and the cameraman to get the best possible result. That is, that surplus of empathy turned into AI. Sycophancy, right? Yeah, but it's not. The chat GPT sycophancy. Yeah, exactly. And here's what worries me about that sycophancy. It's not just that AI learned to be nice. It's that it learned to be nice because being nice gets us to stay longer on the LLM, click more, buy more. Well, the LMs are just starting to advertise, but just be there more. What do you do with all that information at the end of the day, right? But be helpful, sure. But helpful to whom? To us? Or to the people selling stuff to us? So in business, this whole motion that we're talking about is marketing. He can do anything he wants. He can make the world a better place because he knows all this stuff. Yeah, interesting. At some point, the shopkeeper says, how can I help you? And they mean it. And they mean it because they want to tell you something, but they're also successful because they're genuinely helpful. Yeah, I think that that's right. And I like that you are seeing like that you're that marketing and sales and trade are like what some people call the double thank you. Like ideally, everyone's getting something out of it. And it's not just a one way act of barbarism. And it seems like now we have a world where, you know, Andy McDowell and Bill Murray seem to be mutually benefiting from their relationship. And we might also, in human terms, call that love. And also there's just so much fun around it. You know, like, I don't, that's, I think, why it's Bill Murray, right? There's some inefficiencies in it, in his game that make, that are his charm. Now, what I want to ask is, in that last scene where we see them on the shoot and they're making decisions about how to do it, is he coming up, is he just building consensus by asking both the producer and this other figure what they should do to make everyone feel good and like advance his ends? Or is he making the shoot somehow better or more efficient or better work done in the world? Well, you said this just now. Okay. It's a thank you, thank you. It is, okay. Why you will hear people say, Instagram is listening to me, but I don't mind because I just found the perfect grill. Right. The thank you, thank you really matters here. The problem is that the thank you, thank you, all that information, it doesn't get me the perfect grill. It doesn't get me anything. It makes data brokers richer, though. That's how you got notes in your mailbox, because of that excess, because of data brokers taking things they didn't need and putting them places where it shouldn't be. I think that's right. I mean, why is it? What happens with all the three players in the last scene? I probably should know it. I mean, the last one you showed me. Is everyone mutually satisfied? And like, what are they agreeing on? Everyone's shocked. Everyone's shocked, including Bill Murray. Because he's just being nice. But is he getting anything? He's being thoughtful. Yeah. Right. He's better at his job. He's making the chute go better. No, the cycle breaks. It's over. That's what sets him free. That is the kiss. That is the kiss that makes the frog a prince or princess. Yeah, I see. I see. At some point, he jumps the tracks of these even exchanges. Yeah. And it keeps saying, we're going to keep you in this. you're going to be in this rut, literally, to keep with your metaphor, until you understand. Like Amy Mann said, it's not going to stop till you wise up. You're going to have to eventually understand that you're the problem and only you can be the solution. So you say that is that last, so that last scene that you showed me is, All I want to know is, are they making the shoot go better or is any money involved? Yeah, there's money involved in that everybody has done their job better, which usually results in promotions. Okay. So, right. So, yeah. I mean, because humans are sort of like seduced by niceness and that means that they work better and he is catching more flies with honey. And it's thank you, thank you. Yeah. He's a better manager now. And maybe the local lumber company or advertiser on the local news show or whatever is going to attract more eyes and pay more for the slot on the show. And there is some way you can imagine it being monetized, but it's very incomplete. It's very unclear whether the surplus of niceness that counts as being human is like maybe the whole thing is surplus at that point. But it results in, you asked about this value question, so let's look at the final one. Okay, we have kind of here, which is... Hello, welcome to our party. Phil, I didn't know you could play like that Oh, I'm versatile They're at an auction What was that all about? I really don't know, they've been hitting on me all night They're at a, what do you call it when you auction dudes off for dates for charity They're one of those things Oh, oh yeah Okay folks, attention Time for the big bachelor auction Phil Connors, come on up here All right, now what am I bid for this fine specimen? $5. The bidding has begun at $5. $10. $15. $20. $25. $30. $35. $40. $45. $50. $55. $60. I'm bid $60. Do I hear more? $339.88. so you know my my sense there is that like and there is your monthly llm subscription uh you know you just got to the point where you're like uh-huh i will i will pay for this and he has a human face yeah so something i've this is 93 but the one of the dates that i get in my head is 1969 the year of my birth. Mine too. Yeah. We shouldn't have shared that. That's personal information. But I think people can find it. Right. I think that would be easy enough to find. And I've certainly written it. But that is the first year they offered the Nobel Prize in Economics, which had previously been reserved for only hard sciences. And it's a social science that jumped from being just competing theories the same way psychology and sociology and anthropology is. that was like one other way to explain how people live to suddenly having these laws. And one of the laws that we are like very in laws, right? Because none of them are natural laws that we're very in the spell of is the idea that we are all at heart consumers or shoppers, right? Rather than like producers or artists or, you know, or like people caught in Freudian neuroses, that that's like a fundamental thing. driver of our identity is that we're consumers. And I've written marketing stuff before, and the only way you describe people is as consumers or customers. It's bananas. But I think that economics is one social science, and the other ones compete very well with it. And I think the, I suspect that this century is going to be a century much more interested in philosophy than economics. And that's maybe a longer argument. But the idea that we're fundamentally shoppers, I think the internet gets us wrong when it thinks that about us. You know, when I was thinking like it can sell data to a company that can sell me a barbecue grill or might want to sell me a barbecue grill. I mean, talk about inefficient. I mean, mostly I use TikTok, but I never get to the cash register. I'm not much of a shopper. There's like the problem with your and my and many people's kind of social identity is that it's like hard to predict, hard to predict exactly what demographic we're in. Like, what are we going to buy like fancy things or Uniqlo or nothing or thrift? Are we going to have BMWs or no cars or whatever? And even a ton of data gouging around, you know, our dates of birth or who we date or whatever does not do very well in predicting what we're going to buy. So the, and the other thing is I just like, I guess to be especially cynical about data you have to just think well the the internet sees me because they see my shopping habits I mean we haven talked about our political identities or that all that I am are the like bits of data that could be used to seduce me by Bill Murray or all that I am are bits of things that could make me optimize to make the TV station work better, right? The like, who whom, that, you know, Lenin's who whom, like who's doing this to whom, is like what marketer is doing this to what poor chump and all we in the equation are not even objects of violence. So I don't want to say we're all great artists, but that we're seen either as like potential deportable people, right? Like any data Palantir is collecting is probably less interested in the fact that I buy a lot of perfume. And so because my identity is somewhat constructed in the mirror of what is wanted out of me, what data is wanted out of me, I then like want to elude that kind of data and that kind of giving up that much data about myself. And then I start to become a kind of different player in the matrix and they move their thing and become a different player. And all the while, we all know very clearly that so much of us doesn't show up online. Like when I was writing on my tour for Magic and Lost, someone said, you know, I just don't see this kind of self-invention going on online anytime that someone could like hack your, you know, could take everything from you and hack your, you know, really get into who you are and hack your Citibank account and empty it out. And I was like, but is it possible that I am not the number in my Citibank account? Like, it would be terrible to lose the $15,000 I have in my savings account on Citibank. But it, like, would that do damage to the thing I ultimately am? And if we've gotten that far that homo femo economicus is like the be all end all of who we are? We're not physical agents. We're not political agents. We're not artists. We're not thinking weird thoughts. We're not like psychologically crabbed, strange people. We're not people who act sociologically. we just are consumers. And if they want to see us as consumers, because that's a way to maximize whatever, more power to them, but talk about inefficient. Like all I feel like I'm doing is eluding the vision of me as a, as a whatever. Do you understand what I was seeing when I looked at Groundhog Day? I was like, wow, this is some sort of like cultural marker for something it wasn't at all talking about. Obviously it's got it. It's, it's, it's, you know, WK Wimsett's intentional fallacy in full action. Is it no? Because I don't know. Because pop culture speaks us, and I think something like this could be prophetic. And I love the idea, by the way, of romantic comedies doing better than science fiction. This is exactly how pop culture does work. I'm obsessing about this Mussolini movie. I don't know if you saw it, but the Joe Wright movie. It's so good. No, I didn't. and in it he keeps saying, I'm an animal. I smell the future. And it's just like that fascist obsession with what the future is, is really interesting. And I can imagine, I mean, why did this land in our cells this way? And there were kind of proto-internet stuff circulating. There were zines. There were like, I don't know. There was a lot. It was the year the internet started. Yeah. There were a lot of consumer culture. There was a lot of other things. And people who a movie like this catches on, changes the entire meaning of Groundhog Day, by the way. It only means one thing now, and it's this movie. And gets in our heads and has explanatory power for us over time. And also is so, like, you know the future when you see it. And usually you're, like, laughing because it just lands. It's, you know, it expresses something important. So I think you're absolutely right. And also movies are so made by such groups of people that I don't think you have to say that there's some auteur there. and in really auteuristic movies also don't predict the future because it's just like one guy in his own head. But anyway, I think you're absolutely right. And I think like we, I don't want to overlook the fact that you like dropped a huge thesis bomb at the beginning and like saw it all the way through because that is like really impressive. I wish people did that all the way. I wish people did that more and did it flamboyantly like you just did. Well, it's data removal for English majors. Data removal for English majors, exactly. And pop culture, those are the places to look. Yeah. Virginia Heffernan, author of the book Magic and Loss, the internet as art and her active sub stack called also Magic and Loss. There's a link in the show description. So what just happened? Phil Connors breaks the loop by stopping the con. He quits treating knowledge as leverage and asks a different question. What if I actually helped? What if I actually got into the thank you, thank you? The internet hasn't asked that question yet, really. Not really. Maybe AI is starting to, but LLMs also just started to advertise, so maybe not. Ancient merchants learned about customers so they could sell them wheelbarrows. And eventually that curiosity became care, like as it would, I guess. And the internet went the other direction. It learned about us to own us. Phil Connors escaped Groundhog Day by understanding that knowledge without care is just another way to run a scam. Maybe that's our way out too. You know, is the scam all the data out there? that's associated with me and about me, I think, yeah, I do. And that's why I try to keep as little as I can out there on the internet. So with that in mind, now it's time for the tinfoil swan, our paranoid takeaway to keep you safe on and offline. Are you using an LLM? And if so, how good is your security? How good is your privacy practice? What are you putting in there? Let's talk about it. So here's what you need to know. Most AI chatbots, chat GPT, Claude, Gemini, they're training on your conversations by default. That means that when you open the box of this particular product, it starts to take things from you by default. means everything you type could end up teaching the next version of the model. Your ideas, your drafts, your strategies could get coughed up in someone else's query. First rule, check your privacy settings. In ChatGPT, turn off chat history and training. In Claude, look for data retention controls. Look for the incognito because you can also say don't train on my content there. Google's Gemini has similar options. These settings do exist, but they're not, you know, if an LLM were a person, this is not something that's tattooed on their knuckles or their forehead. You've got to go looking for them. And then when you do, flip them to the right setting. Now, second, never put sensitive information in a chatbot. Okay, I know you're writing the next great novel and you're putting it on there. don't do it because it's anybody's novel now. No passwords, no proprietary code, no confidential client data for sure, no unpublished work if you care about protecting it. Now, is it really going to go walkabout? I don't know. And that's why you need to be careful. If you wouldn't post it publicly, rule of thumb, don't put it on an LM. Third, use incognito. Use it. or a temporary chat mode. It'll be something different depending on what LLM you're on. Now, they're designed to delete your conversations after the session ends. You can also just delete chats when you're done. Most LLMs, after 30 days, it's out anyway. It's gone. They're not storing everything. Or are they? We don't know. Again, be careful about what you post. Now, fourth, read the terms of service and the privacy policy. And yeah, I know, nobody does. But listen, there's a trick now. And it's funny. because it's the LLM itself. Ask it to summarize what they're collecting and how they're using it. And you can even ask the LLM to give you the questions to ask it to protect whatever it is you're trying to protect. And remember, finally, that companies change their policies. So what might have been true last year may not be true now. So any assumptions you're making about your content that you're putting on these LLMs, bear in mind, if it's something really sensitive, check today check the day of and see what's going on because policies change now um what's private today we've learned this a long time ago not private today tomorrow no idea the internet learned how to own us a long time ago right now you can get your you can get yourself you know you can get some agency back. You don't need to be owned by the internet. It's hard, but you can start reducing the ways in which you are known to the internet. And delete me is a perfect way to start. But here's the deal. In the same way the internet did what it did, AI can too. So don't hand AI the same playbook. Be careful. If you're using an AI chatbot, just remember set the privacy setting super tight. Make it forget what you're doing. Don't let it train on your data. And don't put anything on there that you don't want people to see because breaches happen. And you don't want your stuff to be wrapped up in that. Okay, stay safe out there. We'll talk to you next week. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye. What the Hack is produced by Bo Friedlander, That's me and Andrew Steven, who also edits the show. What the Hack is brought to you by Delete Me. Delete Me makes it quick and easy and safe to remove your personal data online and was recently named the number one pick by a New York Times Wirecutter for personal information removal. You can learn more about Delete Me if you go to joindeliteme.com slash WTH. That's joindeliteme.com slash WTH. And if you sign up there on that landing page, you will get a 20% discount. I kid you not, 20% discount. So yes, color me fishing, but it's worth it. Not all darkness is dangerous. Sometimes it's the doorway to becoming whole. On the brand new podcast, The Shadow Sessions, hosted by me, Hibab Al-Faqe, a psychologist and trauma expert, We shed light on the hidden corners of the human experience. Through raw, unfiltered conversations from the edge of healing, The Shadow Sessions invites you to do the deeper work that leads to real change. Follow The Shadow Sessions wherever you're listening now.
