Did a Human Write This?

Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube What happens when the majority of content on the internet tips over into AI slop? On this episode of Galaxy Brain, Charlie Warzel talks to Max Spero, a co-founder of Pangram, an AI-detection company. They discuss how AI-detection tools work and how effective they can be at identifying what’s made by humans and what comes from a chatbot. They explore the cultural concerns around authenticity in the large-language-model era, and whether detection can keep up as models improve. The pair discuss how the speed of AI development and synthetic content threatens to degrade the quality of human writing and pollute the internet—and what, if anything, can be done to stop it.The following is a transcript of the episode:Max Spero: I want to see people using AI to cure cancer and, you know, make senior care easier and make all of our lives better. And I also don’t want to see AI polluting the internet. So sort of like: There’s these two sides, and I want to see the good side of AI flourish, and I want to help mitigate the harmful effects of AI as much as possible.[Music]Charlie Warzel: I’m Charlie Warzel,