112: AI and the Future of Radicalization feat. Luke Barnes

2026-06-08

Download

Turns out AI chatbots can do more than create pornographic images of Miss Piggy...Jared and Mike are joined by Luke Barnes, a senior research scientist at NYU who explores issues related to tech and democracy, to talk about cases where AI chatbots have radicalized people and encouraged them to harm themselves and others. But before that, the guys discuss how the landscape of extremism has changed since Trump returned to power and why an attempted terror attack in San Diego seemed to evaporate from the public consciousness so quickly. But before we can nail any of that down, we need to ...

Turns out AI chatbots can do more than create pornographic images of Miss Piggy...

Jared and Mike are joined by Luke Barnes, a senior research scientist at NYU who explores issues related to tech and democracy, to talk about cases where AI chatbots have radicalized people and encouraged them to harm themselves and others. But before that, the guys discuss how the landscape of extremism has changed since Trump returned to power and why an attempted terror attack in San Diego seemed to evaporate from the public consciousness so quickly. But before we can nail any of that down, we need to start at the beginning:

“The White House was our primordial soup, a base of evolution…”

Links for Luke