Show Notes
Brian Chau has figured out how to use AI for journalism without producing AI slop: make the models read mountains of documents, then make humans write the story.Brian is the founder of Effort News, a publication using long-context AI to comb through federal databases, financial records, legal filings, and other giant piles of public data for stories everyone else missed. He joins Lukas and Saila to explain the refugee-resettlement grant investigation that convinced him to launch Effort, why ordinary journalism is often built around stories sources want “placed,” and what changes when you can query an entire government dataset instead.They also get into why frontier models are becoming better at math and worse at prose; Claude’s sycophancy; the different sources models inherently trust; taxpayer-funded NGOs; the funding behind anti-data-center and anti-AI activism; SBF’s Anthropic investment; Nick Shirley’s fraud counters; the EU’s attack on the open internet; zoning, NIMBYs, giant trucks, and “full-force centrism”; writing separate websites for humans and AIs; why Brian’s p(doom) is negative; and whether Effort can become a new source of truth for the AI age.Guest:Effort News: https://effort.newsBrian Chau on X: https://x.com/brianchau57Sponsored by:Polymarket: https://polymarket.comZcash: https://z.cashCitizenX: https://citizenx.comNetwork Press: https://network.press_______________________________Plausibly Deniable: https://plausiblydeniable.orgBonus episodes + every new release by email: https://plausiblydeniable.substack.comLukas: https://x.com/SCHIZO_FREQSaila: https://x.com/sailaunderscore Brian Chau: https://x.com/brianchau5700:00 — “Unaligned NGOs” and the anti-AI money trail01:06 — Welcome and Brian Chau02:01 — From machine learning to Effort News02:47 — Why AI writing keeps getting worse08:21 — Sycophancy and models that instantly agree with you09:37 — Which sources different models trust13:54 — How Effort News finds stories15:34 — The refugee-resettlement grant investigation25:00 — Data-first journalism versus planted stories27:08 — A million AI agents versus government databases28:58 — Data centers, unions, and political extortion31:29 — Why Brian is optimistic about the next 20 years33:19 — Europe, censorship, and the open internet37:30 — A white pill wrapped in black pills42:22 — Taxpayer-funded media and manufactured consensus44:10 — What does it mean for discourse to be “fake”?44:57 — Who funds anti-data-center activism?50:13 — Nick Shirley, fraud counters, and due diligence57:49 — Full-force centrism58:28 — Zoning, NIMBYs, and the affordability crisis1:04:04 — “Things can just be better”1:06:43 — How regulation made trucks enormous1:09:03 — Rebuilding a shared political reality1:13:02 — Tucker, Candace, and the right-wing influencer problem1:15:13 — How Effort News is funded1:16:00 — Who gets to shape AI’s values?1:17:09 — Writing one website for humans and another for AIs1:20:16 — How much of culture is manufactured?1:22:50 — The anti-AI funding network1:24:47 — SBF’s attempted crypto regulatory monopoly1:27:06 — Why Brian’s p(doom) is negative1:29:01 — The UK, France, and nuclear instability1:31:01 — The accidental founding of Effort News1:32:25 — Subscribers, B2B data, and a future newswire1:35:24 — Building a new source of truth1:39:29 — The Plausibly Deniable exclusive1:42:48 — Publicists, the Vice mafia, and founder-led media1:47:13 — Effort’s team and the disgusting CTA1:48:13 — Pre-made Twitter threads and “we read AI text”1:49:36 — Why real scoops sit next to total slop1:54:24 — Substack, data visualization, and $80,000 subscriptions2:02:23 — Final plugs and farewell
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