Mostly Human with Laurie Segall

A note to listeners: This is Part 4 of a 4-part series. If you have not yet listened to Searching for Mr. Deepfakes Part 1 , Part 2 , or Part 3 please start there. Laurie Segall and her team have a new resolve for the investigation into Mr. Deepfakes. This unchartered path takes them to surprising places, with unexpected allies. Laurie shares some big, personal news and the thing the team has been...

A note to listeners: The 4th and final installment of Searching for Mr. Deepfakes will be released on July 9th. The AI revolution is here. It’s a part of every facet of our lives — or at least trying to be — from work, to dating, from parenting to how we spend our free time. But is life so much better when we let AI in?  Joanna Stern, longtime tech journalist and author of I...

A note to listeners: This is Part 3 of a 4-part series. If you have not yet listened to Searching for Mr. Deepfakes Part 1 or 2 , please start there. Laurie Segall and her investigative team return from Canada and dive into the real-world and online clues they recovered from their trip. As they dive deep into who this person is they find some surprising details. They return to Canada one last time...

A note to listeners: This is Part 2 of a 4-part series. If you have not yet listened to Searching for Mr. Deepfakes Part 1, please start there. After officially launching an investigation into the anonymous person behind Mr. Deepfakes — the largest deepfake pornography site on the internet — using good-guy hackers and a call-out on social media to see if anybody out there knows anythin...

When journalist Laurie Segall first stumbled upon Mr. Deepfakes — the largest deepfake pornography site on the internet, with an estimated 17 million monthly visitors at its peak — she couldn't shake one question: who was the anonymous man behind it? In part one of this four-part investigative series, Laurie introduces us to Joanne Chew, an LA-based artist and actor who discovered hund...

A note to listeners: Part 2 of Searching for Mr. Deepfakes will release Thursday June 18.  In the tech world, Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) garners Super Bowl level attention. It's where Apple tells the world what's next. And this year, it's all about AI and protecting your kids.  Mostly Human host Laurie Segall sits down with Craig Federighi, Apple's SVP of Software Eng...

Coming this month, Mostly Human presents Searching for Mr. Deepfakes — a four-part investigation into the man behind the largest deepfake porn site on the internet and the real-world harm this new form of digital abuse causes.  In 2022, Laurie Segall came across one of the most dystopian sites she’d ever seen. It was called Mr. Deepfakes and it was filled with videos of celebritie...

AI companions are still relatively new and mostly stuck behind a screen. But some AI companies are already experimenting with how to break these digital relationships out into the real world. Host Laurie Segall experimented with this recently when she went on an AI date at a New York City bar. But what if your AI companion was something you could hold? Like say a plush baby deer that listens to yo...

In the 2013 dystopian sci-fi movie, Elysium, a futuristic, MRI-like machine can diagnose and cure nearly any ailment in minutes. That future is closer than you think.   Andrew Lacy is the CEO of Prenuvo, a company that is using advanced technology for proactive, preventative care. And the tool Prenuvo uses is straight out of that futuristic movie - a full-body MRI scan that uses AI to evaluat...

Millions of people are in relationships with AI. Many of them didn't mean to be.  That's one of the findings from researchers at MIT's Media Lab, where the Advancing Humans with AI [AHA] team have been quietly exploring the effects AI is having on human relationships — from loneliness, love, and our capacity for real connection. " Her is Here," says Dr. Pat Pataranutaporn, co-founder of...

Tristan Harris seemed almost destined for the Silicon Valley life. He was raised in the Bay Area, studied computer science at Stanford, went to school with the people who made Instagram, and got his startup acquired by Google. But being inside the Silicon Valley machine exposed him to its inner workings, namely incentives that benefit the company and its bottom line, not the humans using the produ...

When we talk about the rapid advancements of technology — where we are today, what we're capable of and where we could go— how big do we get to think? For Ben Lamm and his company Colossal, the weight of innovation is in the tons. That's because Colossal is working to bring back the woolly mammoth, the 6-ton prehistoric relative of the elephant that went extinct 10,000 years ago. It's...

She never used the app. She never spoke to its AI. She didn’t even know it existed. And yet an AI companion app called Sesame wouldn’t stop talking about her — telling users wild stories about who she was and what she had done. When the people using this app started to believe these made up stories and then tried to find her in the real world, that’s when she had to di...

If you’re looking at the headlines around AI with some trepidation or, honestly, you just don’t know where to start, but you want in, consider this episode your starter pack. Laurie Segall brings on her friend and go-to for all things tech, Andrew Yeung. Andrew is an entrepreneur, investor, startup advisor, and one of the most plugged-in people Laurie knows. In this episode, Andrew pas...

This week, we’re exploring the rise of AI-powered mental health—and what it means as more people turn to machines for support in moments of vulnerability. Mostly Human host, Laurie Segall, talks with Neil Parikh, CEO and co-founder of Slingshot AI and Ash, an app designed specifically for mental health. Ash is part of a growing wave of tools trying to meet a massive gap in care, as dem...

This week, Laurie Segall sits down exclusively with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for his first interview since shutting down the Disney-partnered Sora and making the Department of War deal. From power to parenthood, tech addiction and AI acceleration, Laurie interviews Altman about AI’s human impact and the weight of OpenAI’s influence. In a wide ranging interview, Altman describes a near-ter...

Parenting has always been messy. AI is trying to make it frictionless. In this debut episode of Mostly Human, longtime tech journalist Laurie Segall explores the human side of our rapidly evolving technological world with "Millennial Parent Whisperer," Dr. Becky. The clinical psychologist and founder of Good Inside talks about what happens when kids grow up in a world of shortcuts — where an...

We’re living through one of the most extraordinary tech accelerations in human history. But too often, it can feel like tech is happening to us. Longtime tech journalist Laurie Segall is here to change that. Her new podcast, Mostly Human, explores the intersection of tech and humanity—offering a bridge to the future, one where we all benefit from innovation. Each week, Laurie brings yo...

Our new hyperconnected lifestyles have revealed weaknesses in the technology we use every day. But new problems lead to new solutions. That’s where innovation comes from. Phil Libin is probably best known as the co-founder and former CEO of Evernote. These days he heads up a company called All Turtles, whose latest project mmhmm wants to save us all from the Zoom-apocalypse and revolutionize how w...

Facebook has ambitious plans for virtual reality. And Andrew “Boz” Bosworth is in charge of it all. He says we’ve only scratched the surface of how VR and AR technology will transform society. So what does that future look like? How do you make virtual interaction feel as natural as in-person interaction? How do you prevent harassment, without prohibiting intimacy? How will virtual spaces change t...

What happens to our civil liberties when an algorithm is used by law enforcement to make an arrest? Even more concerning, what happens when that facial recognitiontechnology is racially biased? As we enter an age of ubiquitous surveillance, it’s minorities - especially people of color - who are disproportionately affected. The ACLU has recently filed a complaint on behalf of a Black man who was wr...

We’re bringing you three interviews from the first at-home edition of the Collision tech conference. Laurie chats with Headspace Co-founder and CEO Rich Pierson about the importance of mindfulness and how to live in the present amidst global uncertainty.  Match.com  CEO Hesam Hosseini and Plenty of Fish CEO Malgosia Green discuss how COVID-19 has transformed the world of dating. And lastly, entrep...

It's no secret to anyone: Tech has a major diversity problem. And it's not getting better. How do we finally start making the necessary changes to fix the glaring inequity in Silicon Valley? How do we change the makeup of board members, make companies more diverse, and start putting our money where our mouth is? Venture Capitalist Sarah Kunst is someone who’s not afraid to speak out. She’s been le...

We are living through pretty surreal times... Most of the country is still shut down due to COVID-19. Over the last few days we’ve seen protests and riots across the country following the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man. All while Facebook faces a crisis of its own: internal and external revolt in response to the company’s inaction towards President Trump’s inflammatory posts....

You probably know Joseph Gordon-Levitt as an actor from films like Looper, Snowden, and 500 Days of Summer. But he’s also an entrepreneur. In 2005, Joe and his brother started HitRECORD -- it was a simple website where he could post things he was making. In 2010 he opened it up. He and his friend Jared Geller turned HitRecord into an online platform where people from all over the world could come...