ICYMI | Stop Trying To Make A.I. Trendy

Slate Technology

Slate

Society & Culture, Technology, History

4.6 • 636 Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay get into tech’s latest effort to turn A.I. into a status symbol. Anthropic has been pushing “Thinking” caps into the trendy streets of New York. OpenAI has been handing out awards for power users akin to YouTube subscriber plaques. But one of the worst offenders is Friend, a $129 wearable necklace that spent a million dollars to infiltrate subway stations and bus stops. Why are A.I. companies trying so hard to be trendy? And how are people revolting against them? Finally, we have some news. Get more of ICYMI with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of ICYMI and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the ICYMI show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/icymiplus for access wherever you listen. This podcast is produced by Vic Whitley-Berry, Daisy Rosario, Candice Lim, and Kate Lindsay. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, I'm Candice Lamb.
0:14.6	And I'm Kate Lindsay.
0:16.1	And you're listening to I see why am I.
0:18.2	In case you missed it.
0:19.9	Slate's podcast about internet culture. And Candice,
0:23.6	count yourself lucky that you are a Los Angelino. Is that what they say? Do they say that?
0:30.6	Yeah, sure, Los Angelinos. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because there is a cursed object that has descended on the streets of New York City.
0:40.8	Okay, is it a Waymo car? Is it one of those boxy robots that deliver your food?
0:46.5	Not yet, but I've heard Waymo's are coming. And my God, good luck to them. All the luck in the world.
0:59.8	But no, in this particular instance, I'm talking about a baseball hat and this hat says thinking on it in like a Times New Romanesque font. It looks very
1:06.1	weathered and 90s and sophisticated. I'll give you a hint that it is merch.
1:11.8	Oh.
1:12.1	Do you have any guesses as to what it is merch for?
1:15.3	What company is selling this hat?
1:17.4	Okay.
1:18.5	Thinking, hat.
1:20.5	My brain kind of goes to like New Yorker trying to sell totes while giving you the
1:25.7	subscription.
1:26.3	Is it like a newspaper, a media org? Those don't exist anymore, but like something like that?
1:31.3	No, it is not, because there are none, as you've said, yes. That's right. No. In fact, I would argue it's the opposite of that. It is Claude.
1:39.7	Claude is an AI assistant. It is built by Anthropic, Anthropic, who you may have heard from our episode about using author's works to train their AI, aka Claude.
1:50.9	They actually recently just settled that class action copyright lawsuit for $1.5 billion.
	...

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