OpenAI’s Two-Week Pause + Jill Lepore on the Threat of the “Artificial State” + Train of Thought

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Most enterprises putting AI agents in front of customers hit the same wall. The agent itself is fine, but it sounds flat or off-brand. Eleven Labs develops the models that give agents a natural voice with a tone, emotion and rhythm of real speech in over 70 languages. And Eleven Agents wraps them in a full platform for conversations across voice and chat, recognizing customers, resolving requests and escalating when it makes sense. Learn more at elevenlabs.io/fork.
That's e-l-e-v-e-n-l-a-b-s dot i-o slash fork.

**Casey Newton** (0:35)
I thought this was interesting. ICE has now barred its employees from wearing Meta's smart glasses, Kevin, saying they could unintentionally capture, record or transmit sensitive information. And I thought, you know you have a brand problem when you do not hit the ethical standard required by ICE.
When ICE is taking a look at your product and saying, this is bad for the brand, you may have a problem on your hands.

**Kevin Roose** (1:01)
You know, the public sentiment is turning against these Meta Ray Bands like faster than I thought possible.
I have now had several conversations in the last week. I was at a children's birthday party this weekend wearing my Meta Ray Bands because, you know, I like to like, you know, take photos of my kid on the playground and not have to pull out my phone and stuff. Anyway, a parent comes up to me and are like and is like, are you recording me?

**SPEAKER_1** (1:27)
This is my nightmare. What did you say?

**SPEAKER_4** (1:29)
I was like, no.

**Kevin Roose** (1:30)
And like, there's a little indicator light, but sometimes you can make it stop going off by drilling into it or like paying a sketchy guy to do that.

**Casey Newton** (1:38)
Before you explained that to the person?

**Kevin Roose** (1:39)
Well, because they were like, really, does that work? You know, so anyway, now I have been forced into a defensive crouch whenever I wear these things. And frankly, it's not worth it to me anymore.
So you're out. I think I'm out.

**Casey Newton** (1:50)
You've made the same decision that ICE has made and said these glasses are not for me.

**Kevin Roose** (1:55)
Well, I like them is the problem. This is my problematic trait, but it feels like driving a Cybertruck on my face.

**Casey Newton** (2:01)
Absolutely. Well, I think you should have the same policy for the glasses that you would for a Cybertruck, which is that it's fine on your property.
If you want to take the Cybertruck for a spin around your driveway, that's fine. Don't take it out onto the street where I have to deal with it. Same thing with glasses.

**Kevin Roose** (2:14)
Yeah.

**Casey Newton** (2:14)
Yeah.

**Kevin Roose** (2:15)
In hindsight, I do recognize that like, from an outside perspective, I was the creepy guy at the children's birthday party, like with the camera on his face.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:23)
Yeah.

**Casey Newton** (2:23)
You know what no one wants to see on a playground?

**SPEAKER_1** (2:25)
An adult man with camera glasses.

**Kevin Roose** (2:33)
I'm Kevin Roose, a tech columnist at the New York Times.

**Casey Newton** (2:35)
I'm Casey Newton from Platformer.

**Kevin Roose** (2:37)
This is Hard Fork.

**Casey Newton** (2:38)
This week, OpenAI pauses training of a new model to make it safer. Will it work? Then, historian Jill Lepore is here to discuss her new book on the artificial state. Finally, why is Google buying up the data of a defunct airline? It's time for our new segment, Train of Thought.
Although maybe it should have been Plane of Thought.

**Kevin Roose** (3:03)
Well, Casey, as the father of a four-year-old, I spend a lot of time thinking about PAW Patrol, but today we're going to talk about PAWS Patrol.

**Casey Newton** (3:10)
That's right, Kevin, because as we've been patrolling the AI landscape for PAWS, we found a big one.

**Kevin Roose** (3:15)
Yes. OpenAI this week announced that it had paused the training of its Frontier AI Models due to some recent security incidents, and we should talk about this. It is the first time that we know of that a major lab has voluntarily slowed down themselves and their training processes for new models because of a safety incident.

**Casey Newton** (3:38)
Yes, and it comes out of the hugging phase breach that we spoke about recently on the show. This is essentially part of the fallout of that attack, but I do think it represents a milestone in the development of AI.

**Kevin Roose** (3:52)
Did that pause patrol?

**Casey Newton** (3:54)
It landed huge.

**Kevin Roose** (3:55)
Great.

**Casey Newton** (3:55)
They were back in the... The four-year-olds were... They were dying in the studio.